Giving Life to a Period in History

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Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero (100-43 BCE)

How many letters and journals have come down to us from Ancient Egypt or Classical Greece or Biblical Palestine? None. Consequently, our view of their respective civilizations is an incomplete one. For the last years of the Roman Republic, however, we have a voluminous orator, letter writer, and philosopher who was very much at the center of the action.

Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of the most powerful members of the Roman Senate. From him, we have political orations, speeches for the prosecution or defense of murder trials, essays on the gods and growing old (among other subjects), and letters to friends and political associates. In particular, his letters to his friend Atticus give us a picture of his times such as we do not have from any other ancient civilization.

What is more, his works are eminently readable today. In fact, his oration attacking Mark Antony was so effective that the Roman general promptly sent out an assassin to shut him up permanently.

I have just finished viewing the HBO/BBC co-produced mini-series called Rome (2005-2007) which covered the last days of the Roman Republic. The twenty-two episodes include incidents in the life of Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Mark Antony, Pompey the Great, Brutus, Cassius, Cleopatra, and Cicero.

David Bamber as Cicero in the HBO/BBC Mini-Series Rome

Both the mini-series and Cicero’s own writings portray the senator as a deeply divided individual. He was a follower of Gnaeus Pompey and was with him when he lost to Julius Caesar at Pharsalus. Then he sided with Brutus, Cassius, and the other slayers of Julius Caesar and was with them at the Battle of Philippi. That did not sit well with Antony and Octavian (later renamed Augustus), who agreed to his demise.

Even more than two thousand years later, we can see clearly that Cicero was a follower of the old, traditional senate and of Cato the Younger, who committed suicide after Philippi. In 63 BCE, he led the overthrow of the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catiline, having several of the participants executed without trial. Ever after, he was disappointed that the people did not express sufficient gratitude. It was clearly a case of, “Yes, but what have you done for us lately?”

I strongly urge you to read some of the excellent Penguin translations of Cicero’s work and, if you have time, view the Rome mini-series, which is still available on HBO.

Mexican Rules

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Benito Juarez Airport in Mexico City

I was reading Oliver Sacks’s Oaxaca Journal—a book I do not recommend you read unless you are a botanist—when I came across this passage which reminded me of past trips to Mexico:

“What gate do we go from?” everyone is asking. “It’s Gate 10,” someone says. “They told me it was Gate 10.”

“It’s Gate 3,” someone else says, “It’s up there on the board, Gate 3.” Yet another person has been told we are leaving from Gate 5. I have an odd feeling that the gate number is still, at this point, indeterminate. One thought is that there are only rumors of gate numbers until, at a critical point, one number wins. Or that the gate is indeterminable in a Heisenbergian sense, only becoming determinate at the final moment (which, if I have the right phrase, “collapses the wave function”). Or that the plane, or its probability, leaves from several gates simultaneously, pursuing all possible paths to Oaxaca..

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This reminds me of a trip my brother and I took to Mexico in 1979. We flew into Mexico’s Benito Juarez Airport and were to take a connecting flight to the misnamed city of Villahermosa. Not only was the gate uncertain, not only was the time uncertain, but whether the flight would take place at all was uncertain. (You can read more about it here.) This was a interesting lesson in traveling under Mexican rules.

This was no longer the precise Anglo-Saxon world we had just left behind. There was uncertainty everywhere. If you let it bother you, you will mot enjoy your vacation. If, on the other hand, you take it as a “Heisenbergian” event and hang in there to see how it all sorts out, you not only win but you learn an interesting lesson that, in the end, you can take back home with you.

A Brief Tenure

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Statue of Julius Caesar as a God

I have just finished reading Adrian Keith Goldsworthy’s biography, Caesar: Life of a Colossus. While not pertaining directly to the subject of his biography, Goldsworthy includes an amusing anecdote about a consul who dies on his last day in office and the consul-for-a-day who succeeds him:

When Fabius Maximus went to watch a play and was announced as consul, the audience is said to have yelled out, “He is no consul!” He died on the morning of his last day in office. Caesar received the news while presiding over a meeting of the Tribal Assembly, which was going to elect quaestors for the next year. Instead, he had the people reconvene as the Comitia Centuriata and vote for a new consul. Just after midday another of his legates from Gaul was chosen, Caius Caninius Rebilus, whose spell as consul therefore lasted no more than a few hours. A few days later Cicero joked that ‘in the consulship of Caninius nobody ate lunch. However, nothing bad occurred while he was consul—for his vigilance was so incredible that throughout his entire consulship he never went to sleep.’ At the time he is supposed to have urged everyone to rush and congratulate Caninius before his office expired.

Tojásleves

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The Plaza Mayor in Cuenca, Ecuador

My brother and I were in Cuenca, Ecuador. In a few days, he had to leave to honor a work commitment, while I was to stay behind for another week. On the Plaza Mayor in Cuenca, Dan and I made an interesting discovery. There was a café that served a perfectly authentic Hungarian tojásleves, or egg soup.

When we checked for any Magyar influence in the kitchen, we were met with looks of confusion and consternation. What reminded us so much of our mother’s beloved egg soup was actually a local dish.

Sometimes, one can travel halfway across the world only to find something that reminds one of home. Not always. More often than not, one makes strange new discoveries.

This time, after a couple weeks in Ecuador, Dan and I had a taste that sent us back to our childhood in Cleveland. Here is a copy of the original Hungarian recipe. Only, Mom would add some sour cream in ours.

Top 10

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Daily writing prompt
What are your top ten favorite movies?
View all responses

In no particular order:

  1. John Ford: The Searchers
  2. Buster Keaton: The General
  3. Howard Hawks: The Big Sleep
  4. Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo
  5. Carl Theodor Dreyer: Day of Wrath
  6. Jean-Luc Godard: Alphaville
  7. Jean-Pierre Melville: Touchez Pas au Grisbi
  8. Yasujiro Ozu: Late Spring
  9. Kenji Mizoguchi: Sansho the Bailiff
  10. Federico Fellini: La Strada

It’s a Dog’s Life

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I could not believe my eyes. When I woke up this morning, I joined Martine on the living room couch while she was watching the news. Fox news, as it turned out. Somewhere in South Los Angeles, a pedestrian was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The newscasters practically ignored the dead human, spending all their sympathy on the victim’s dog. Much was made of the fact that a good Samaritan had volunteered to take the dog.

In some future newscast, I fully expect to see the dead pedestrian ignored entirely while an ambulance and psychiatrist are called in for the victim’s pet.

Only in America …

Peele Castle in a Storm

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George Howland Beaumont: “Peele Castle in a Storm, Cumbria, 1800”

William Wordsworth is and always has been one of my favorite poets. The Beaumont named in the poem is the painter George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827), creator of the above painting.

Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then, if mine had been the Painter’s hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
mid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;—
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been,—’tis so no more;
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O ’tis a passionate Work!—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, the trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.