Interim Letter - between Book 2 and 3

Interim letter.

(A bridge between Book 2 and Book 3)

*

Dear Cicero,

The Autumn rains are here again, and I have seen the first towers of bonfire smoke rising from the valley lowland farms near my home. I have been writing letters to you and our other dead friends for a year now.

So much has changed. Nothing has changed.

This morning, a chilly Sunday, I sit in bed to write and to read. I have Tacitus beside me, telling stories of despots and suicides and all manner of terrible debaucheries from the reigns of the early Roman emperors. I have your letters, Cicero, telling me the tale of your year in Cilicia. I have a book of poetry by Yevgenny Yevtushenko telling me stories of Russian revolutions, of failed uprisings, of oppression and of love.

And my story...what of my story?

So much has changed. Nothing has changed.

Every day I read, I write, I play music, I draw pictures late into the night, never sleeping before midnight. I rise in the morning to take my son to school, I go to work, I pick my son up from school and come home, I play games with my children, I make dinner, and in the evenings I sit and draw pictures late into the night.

What picture am I drawing now, Cicero? A line between two points? A line between two minds separated by two thousand years? Is it a circle?

The bonfires are being lit, burning away the old dead wood of summer, to make way for the new growth in the spring to come. The hours of daylight grow shorter, the sunlight is colder, the frost and fog and rain cloak the land in their green bounty, while I sit wrapped in my black woolen robe on a chilly Sunday morning, writing a letter to a long dead friend.

Thank you Cicero, thank you always and forever. Without you, I might have gone mad long ago.

With Gratitude and Respect.

Morgan.

*

A message to my readers...

Letters to Cicero: end of Book 2

First, I want to thank you, my readers. I, like most artists, feel the need to have an audience, and your attentions to this blog have made it possible for me to continue in this work with the happiness and enthusiasm that make it a pleasure to write, as well as to read. I am trying to understand the past, and in doing so, to gain perspective on the present, as well as a better sense of what might be possible for the future. I hope that my search is of benefit to others, as well as myself.

The future...

Book three is already part written. I have been writing to Ovid, Plato, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, and of course, Cicero. I feel as though I am wading into deeper and deeper water, and this makes my progress slower, more considered. Expanding my list of authors to include in this blog gives me the perspective that I seek, and grants me the nuanced understanding that I have always wanted. More than just info-bites, more than just anecdotes, I want to understand history, not so I may draw conclusions, but so that I might understand more about human nature. For now, my study is focussed on ancient Roman & Greek writing. The future, is unwritten...

I have also been working on a few other things.

My new solo album is now complete, (Zebulon: Music of an Invisible Enclave) and is ready for release in a few weeks time. You can watch and listen to my previous music work here:

Zebulon on Youtube

Zebulon on Bandcamp

My band, Iron Dwarf, also put on a show in this year's Adelaide Fringe Festival, re-telling the Epic of Gilgamesh, as a hard-boiled detective story, presented with funk music, puppets, and a belly dancer. I have been editing the video from the show, which will be available on youtube soon. Here is a video of the band performing one of the songs on the street.

Iron Dwarf (my band), playing on the street

My novel, The Hangman Tree, is about to start 4^th draft editing. It tells the legendary tale of Djinnee One-Hand, Shaman of the Red Sands. It will be a couple more years before it is ready for release, but it is a project I am still very passionate about bringing into the world.

In the last few months I have also produced a small book of poetry called “Love in the Age of Gasoline” and a short espionage sci-fi story called “Necessary Beast”. Finally, I am in the process of a what might become a new novel, “Monkey and Tortoise”, which is a sort of Platonic dialogue between a small community of animals who are trying to solve the mystery of their own natures.

I am considering making these other written works available for purchase in e-book format.

But for the moment, I will give you a taste of Monkey and Tortoise, and leave you with a promise that my Letters to Cicero will continue for the foreseeable future, expanding slowly to include the poets and playwrights of the ancient world.

The future, however, is unwritten.

*

Monkey and Tortoise (Chapter 1)

Hey Tortoise, Monkey said one day,

Hey Tortoise, are you listening to me? Monkey raised his voice. It always seemed as if Tortoise wasn't listening to him.

Hey! Tort...

Yeah, Monkey. What is it? Tortoise cut him off. It was true that sometimes he didn't listen to Monkey, but it was also true that sometimes Monkey didn't say anything worth listening to.

Do you think that all art is portraiture?

Uh...Tortoise had an opinion on this, but he was not good at quick responses.

I mean, Monkey continued, uninterrupted by Tortoise's lack of reply, I mean, is all art, Self portraiture?

What is art? Tortoise loved the Socratic method.

Well... Monkey thought for a moment, but then recognised the smile on Tortoise's face. Don't try to side-track me. You already know what I mean, you're just avoiding the question. (Monkey paused, for effect.) You're avoiding the question because you're lazy.

Tortoise was silent for a long time. He hoped that Monkey would just go away. All around them the grass continued to grow, and the sky turned a darker shade of blue. Finally Tortoise gave his answer.

If all art is self portraiture, then there is no longer any difference between subject and object, and the meaningful relationship between artist and art is one of solitary significance, relating only to the nature of the artist. As the art either disturbs or comforts the artist, so its purpose is served in the continued development of the human relationship with the concept of self.

If all art is self portraiture, then everything which mankind, (or monkey, or tortoise-kind) has created, in every field of endeavour, is also self portraiture. From the automobile to the sex toy to the missile to the basketball, from shoes to shawls and crowns and bells on ankles. Everything is just an effort to express and explain and describe and translate, the mystery of the individual.

Monkey thought about this for a while.

Yeah, OK. But what do you really think?

What do you mean by 'think'? Tortoise did this out of habit, not really meaning to divert attention away from the question Monkey was trying to ask.

Monkey just stared, waiting.

Tortoise used a stick to draw a picture of himself in the sand. If all art is self portraiture, then what is self portraiture?

Monkey smiled a great big smile. Yeah, that's what I thought too.

Book 2, Letter 21 Part 2 of 2 To Cicero, on Catiline

Book 2, Letter 21

Part 2 of 2

To Cicero, on Catiline

*

I cannot rest in despondency, so I kept digging, and I found this in your book On Duties, Book II, sections 21 - 24

You make some statements about land and grain distribution that made some sense to me.  People like Catiline, and many who came before him, clamoured at the injustice of all the land in Italy being owned by a staggeringly small number of people, and the poor being unable to own land due to this monopoly. Many of the plebeian tribunes tried to break up the large estates of the rich, and distribute these land parcels to returned soldiers. They also tried to cancel debts that were driving the poor into slavery. Of course, there were plenty of decadent rich folk who were in debt up to their eye balls and loved the idea of debt cancellation as well.

You, Cicero, being a wealthy landowner yourself, take a stand firmly against any sort of property land tax, and believe that to take land from the rich, through the application of laws that limit the size of acreage an individual can own, is simply theft. You feel the same thing about debt cancellation.

In your book, Cicero, you say that “...it is the peculiar function of the state and the city to guarantee to every man the free and undisturbed control of his own particular property.”

“And how is it fair that a man who never had any property should take possession of lands that had been occupied for many years or even generations, and that he that had them before should loose possession of them.”

“And what is the meaning of an abolition of debts, except that you buy a farm with my money; that you have the farm, and that I have not my money.”

This book of yours, On Duties, was written as a gift to your son, it is the distilled wisdom of your life for him to read and learn from in your absence. These ideas you deliver to him give me a much clearer sense of your real beliefs, than, say, the Catiline Orations, or the Philippics, which are so thick with propaganda and party line rah rah that it is hard to say what you believe. Having said that, the above quotes seem to show me where your loyalties lay, and show your peculiar lack of concern for the welfare of the poor.

But then you tell the story of Arytos of Sicyon,

“When his city had been kept for fifty years in the hands of tyrants, he came over from Argos to Sicyon, secretly entered the city and took it by surprise; he fell suddenly upon the tyrant Nicocles, recalled from banishment six hundred exiles who had been the wealthiest men of the city, and by his coming made his country free. But he found great difficulty in the matter of property and its occupancy; for he considered it unjust, on the one hand, that those men whose property others had taken possession; and he thought it hardly fair, on the other hand, that tenure of fifty years' standing should be disturbed. For in the course of that long period many of those estates had passed into innocent hands by right of inheritance, many by purchase, many by dower. He therefore decided that it would be wrong either to take the property away from the present incumbents or to let them keep it without compensation to its former possessors. So, when he had come to the conclusion that he must have money to meet the situation, he announced that he meant to make a trip to Alexandria and gave orders that matters should remain as they were until his return. And so he went in haste to his friend Ptolemy, then upon the throne, the second king after the founding of Alexandria.

To him he explained that he wished to restore constitutional liberty and presented his case to him. And, being a man of the highest standing, he easily secured from that wealthy king assistance in the form of a large sum of money. And when he had returned with this to Sicyon, he called into counsel with him fifteen of the foremost men of the city. With them he investigated the cases both of those who were holding possession of other people's property, and of those who had lost theirs. And he managed by a valuation of the properties to persuade some that it was more desirable to accept money and surrender their present holdings; others he convinced that it was more to their interest to take a fair price in cash for their lost estates that to try to recover possession of what had been their own. As a result, harmony was preserved, and all parties went their way without a word of complaint.”

I can see now that you were perhaps not so much on the side of the rich against the poor, as you were on the side of peace and harmony against those who would throw the state into turmoil with ill-considered and aggressive tactics. Catiline did actually try to attack the city of Rome with a mercenary army. Those who came after him, Milo and Clodius, resorted to hiring street gangs to augment their political campaigning efforts. Then Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and the rest is history...

There are many who can criticise their political opponents, but few who can offer useful alternatives to their polarising policies. The inclusion of the story of Arytos of Sicyon in your book, shows me that you believed that there was another way, a third option between the rioting of the Plebeians and the death squads of the Senators.

You tried, Cicero. You tried.

*

I seek wisdom like the drowning seek the land. I seek solutions to problems I cannot solve on my own, Cicero. I seek the giants of antiquity that I may stand upon their shoulders and keep my head above water.

There is a lot more to read, Cicero, a lot more. I have begun reading your Tusculan Disputations, and soon I will visit the little book store to order your other treatises on politics and ethics. I have been learning this week about the early history of Athens, and in doing so, I learned that the word Stasis is the term they invented to describe the class struggle between rich and poor, in which the poor were gradually forced into slavery to pay off the debts they owed to the rich. There are stories about Solon, the elected tyrant of Athens (600's BCE) that help to illustrate by comparison the agrarian and debt issues of the Catiline conspiracy, and to offer alternative solutions. It seems that this issue of Stasis has been well understood for centuries, yet never resolved with any lasting stability.

The History of Ancient Greece podcast - link

There is always more to read. I continually feel as though my understanding lacks nuance and subtlety. I read a story and it fills my mind, each detail seems overwhelming. As I am exposed to the thoughts and words of scholars who have devoted their lives to the study of these histories, they reveal to me the broader scope of societal pressures that brought about these major events and every page I turn makes me feel smaller and smaller.

Stasis. The past and the present and the future seem bound up in this struggle.  But you, Cicero, at least you believed there was another way.

So, with a glass of wine in one hand, and a book of your letters in the other,

I salute you.

With Gratitude and Respect.

Morgan.

Book 2, letter 21 Part 1 of 2 To Cicero, on Catiline

Book 2, letter 21

Part 1 of 2

To Cicero, on Catiline

*

Dear Marcus Tullius Cicero,

It is federal election day here in Australia, and I am neck deep and sinking fast in the quagmire of reading regarding Catiline. The more I read, the less I know, and my ignorance seems vast, without limit. I want to condemn you, I want to condemn Catiline, I want to take sides and to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, left and right, republican politics, and plebeian revolution.

But I can't.

I can't make up my mind about Catiline. I can't see where the story really begins, or where it ends. I can't tell the story without feeling like I am telling it the wrong way, or deliberately misguiding myself by including or omitting certain details. I thought that if I started with the Gracchus brothers, one step after the other I could eventually say what I wanted to say about the endless conflict between the Populares and the Optimates, the people's party and the oligarchical party. I tried making a summary...

Tiberius Gracchus – a populare killed by the Senate.

Gaius Gracchus – a populare killed by the Senate.

                     Tiberius & Gaius with their mother, Cornelia

Gaius Memmius – an optimate beaten to death during an election.

Lucius Appuleius Saturninus – a populare stoned to death after the murder of Memmius.

                                           Saturninus

Gaius Marius – a populare, seven times voted Consul, killed himself having lost the final battle against Sulla.

                                        Marius

Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix - an optimate, died of disease after retiring from his dictatorship, having killed 8,000 or so of his political enemies.

                                         Sulla

Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline) – a populare killed in battle after his failed attempt at revolution. The conspiracy having been uncovered by you, Cicero.

                                                               Catiline

The discovery of Catiline's body after his failed coup

Titus Annius Milo Papianus – an optimate, killed in a battle against Caesar

Publius Clodius Pulcher– a populare killed by Milo's bodyguards in a street gang fight.

Gnaeus Pompey Magnus – an optimate killed by his own soldiers having lost the war against Caesar.

                                       Pompey

Gaius Julius Caesar – a populare, turned dictator, murdered in the Senate by his fellow Senators.

                                          Julius Caesar

To tell the story of Catiline, is to tell the whole story of the collapse of the Roman Republic, and the story doesn't end with Catiline, but encompasses the rise of Caesar, and of Octavian, and it goes on long after that.

The problem I face lies in the observation that the Catiline conspiracy doesn't seem over, not by a long shot. The societal problems highlighted by the story of this failed revolution are all still present in my own time. Crippling interest rates making debt repayment impossible, resulting in the slavery of whole nations. The chronic overcrowding of cities, the decay of public trust, the overt corruption of politics at all levels, violence in the streets and in the senate house, a people's hero rising to champion the cause of the poor, self serving greed rotting at the heart of everything.

Cicero it seems you were just a cog in an ever turning wheel grinding the bones of all humanity to dust, century after century, and Catiline, your nemesis, was just another sacrifice on the eternal bonfire pile.

You Cicero, were just another sacrifice on that same crematory mountain.

The same conflicts, never ending.

Rich versus poor.

Optimate versus Populare

I hate that it has come to this. Are we all just grains of dust, ground out by this conflict that has no origin and seems to have no solution?

What use are our efforts to understand and to change, when every generation a new Catiline is born, a new Caesar.

A new Cicero?

Book 2, letter 20: To Xenophon on Gratitude

Book 2, letter 20

To Xenophon; on Gratitude

*

Dear Xenophon,

I've been thinking about work, and duty and discipline and I've been wanting to write to you again about your book, Cyropaedia. There's some stuff in the early chapters about the raising of boys I wanted to talk about. You describe it as the Persian method of education, though it is generally considered that you are really describing a weird mix of Athenian and Spartan culture. Let's not forget that your book is a sort of political/philosophical/military/romantic-fantasy novel.

However, there are many cultural principles you describe that seem relevant today, and with Gratitude being a modern buzzword among meditation and mindfulness teachers, I found this little gem interesting for the alternative perspective.

“The culprit convicted of refusing to repay a debt of kindness when it was fully in his power meets with severe chastisement. The reason (being) that the ungrateful man is the most likely to forget his duty to the gods, to his parents, to his fatherland, and his friends. Shamelessness, they hold, treads close on the heels of ingratitude, and thus ingratitude is the ringleader and chief instigator to every kind of baseness.”

I don't expect that my society will start legal proceedings against the ungrateful, but it makes me want to consider to whom I owe a debt of kindness.

My Family. My children, my mother and father and my three sisters.

My brothers, none of whom I am related to by blood.

The lady who runs the local second hand book store, and who has helped me source most of the ancient books I am studying. The family who employs me in my work as gardener. My bandmates. My students. My friends. My readers.

You, Xenophon.

It's nice being able to write to you. I feel like I can speak quite openly, use common language. You seem easy to relate to.

Perhaps it's because you're a storyteller, and a soldier. Like my dad.

Thank you Xenophon.

With Gratitude and Love

Morgan.

*

PS. I've listened to an audio recording of your book “On Horsemanship', and it's fabulous. I'm not even all that interested in horses and I've listened to it twice. I'm going to visit my book dealer soon and ask for a copy of your Hellenica, since I need to read the end of the story of the Peloponnesian War. I've been powerfully moved by Thucydides and I need to know how the war ends. I know that Plutarch wrote about it, but that was hundreds of years later, so I want to get your version of the story.

*

PPS. I've just learned that Socrates never wrote anything down, so knowing you, Xenophon, is a way of knowing your teacher. I will have to look into Socrates' other students.

*

PPPS. (Weeks later...I still haven't sent the letter) It is midnight, there is wine in my blood and my brother is singing a sea shanty, a melody from a familiar foreign land. Sing it again I cry, and he plays again, joy in his voice and in his heart as he calls out the chorus again, again...I sail around the shrivelled barrel of your skull again.

                                      My brother in music:  Lord Stompy

I have been thinking about your journey Xenophon, across Asia with your ten thousand soldiers. Those campfires, like stars glimmering upon the mountains. What songs and stories your men must have shared, what lamentations, what proud declamations of bravery. I remember the dances you described, but tonight, somehow my imagination strains to hear the songs you sang with those men with whom you shared the common bonds of loyalty.

In my mind I can see them singing. I can see their gestures as they tell stories and recite legends, gathered around campfires in the mountains of Turkey. The stars above them telling stories too.

I cannot actually hear them, though I can imagine that I do.

Book 2, letter 19 Part 3 of 3 To Cicero on Pompey

Book 2, letter 19

Part 3 of 3

To Cicero on Pompey

Cicero, it is sad to say that Pompey was not as good a friend to you, as you were to him. I'm going to refer to a couple of your letters to Atticus, in which you speak of your friendship with Pomey, in the months leading up to your exile. Clodius, a rival, was manoeuvring senators against you, arranging for a law to be passed which would ensure your conviction and execution as punishment for a past action during your Consular year. The atmosphere in Rome was one of looming violence, some historians describe it as 'gangster' style politics. Political gangs were arming themselves on the city streets, senators hired gladiators as body guards. The killings of the past had emboldened a cynical and savvy class of citizen to buck the rules and swagger about with confidence that 'the sword is mightier than the toga', a reverse of that famous phrase of yours Cicero. (The stories of Clodius alone are astounding, I will have to write about him in another letter)

But despite this threatening and electric state of affairs, you were confident in your allies ability to protect you and counter the bill being pushed, you had friends on all sides of politics. Your letter says it better than I can describe. 

From Letter XLVI (a ii20) To Atticus BCE 59. July. Rome.

“...Pompey loves me and regards me as a good friend. “Do you believe that?” you will say. I do: he quite convinces me. But seeing that men of the world in all histories, precepts and even verses, are for ever bidding one be on one's guard and forbidding belief, I carry out the former - “to be on my guard” - the latter - “to disbelieve” - I cannot carry out. Clodius is still threatening me with danger. Pompey asserts that there is no danger. He swears it. He even adds that he himself will be murdered by him sooner than I injured.”

But Cicero, in your very next letter, written in the same month, you describe a very different man, and the image of him is terrible. I think I understand his situation...Pompey was in the middle of a loosing struggle against a political rival named Bibulus. The details are complex, and I'm not sure that I understand it well enough to describe it, but that's not important. What is important is the description you give of him, Pompey the Great, Pompeius Magnus, as a heart broken man, crushed by the sway of public opinion against him. 

From letter XLVII (a ii, 21) To Atticus, Rome, July, BCE 59

“Accordingly, that friend of ours, unaccustomed to being unpopular, always used to an atmosphere of praise, and revelling in glory, now disfigured in body and broken in spirit, does not know which way to turn; sees that to go on is dangerous, to return a betrayal of vacillation; has the loyalists his enemies, the disloyal themselves not his friends. Yet see how soft-hearted I am. I could not refrain from tears when, on the 25th of July, I saw him making a speech on the edicts of Bibulus. The man who in old times had been used to bear himself in that place with the utmost confidence and dignity, surrounded by the warmest affection of the people, amidst universal favour—how humble, how cast down he was then! How ill-content with himself, to say nothing of how unpleasing to his audience! Oh, what a spectacle! No one could have liked it but Crassus—no one else in the world!”

Then a few months later you wrote to your brother, as the struggle against Clodius continues.

From letter LII (q fr i, 2) To his brother Quintus (In Asia) Rome, 26 October, BCE59

“All promise me the aid of themselves, their friends, clients, freedmen, slaves, and, finally, of their money. Our old regiment of loyalists is warm in its zeal and attachment to me. If there were any who had formerly been comparatively hostile or lukewarm, they are now uniting themselves with the loyalists from hatred to these despots. Pompey makes every sort of promise, and so does Cæsar: but my confidence in them is not enough to induce me to drop any of my preparations.”

“Pray to God, but row for shore” we might say today. Does that phrase tickle you? It seems you had the foresight to arrange for the worst, and the worst was on its way. Only six months later, you were writing to Atticus from the road as you fled Rome in self directed exile, begging your friend to join you in Vibo, but it was to be a long time before you and Atticus were re-united.

Letter LV (a iii, 3)

To Atticus (At Rome)

Vibo, April

BCE 58

I hope I may see the day when I shall thank you for having compelled me to remain alive! At present I thoroughly repent it. But I beg you to come and see me at Vibo at once, to which town I have for several reasons directed my journey. But if you will only come there, I shall be able to consult you about my entire journey and exile. If you don't do so, I shall be surprised, but I feel sure you will.

                        (Vibo....a couple thousand years later)

It seems that all your hopes and expectations of friendship and alliance with Pompey were ill placed, and that in the end, his political needs and his own weakness of spirit combined to produce the betrayal which...well, Plutarch finishes off this part of the story very well in his biography of Pompey. Nearly two hundred years later when Plutarch was writing this, it seem that people did not forget, and Pompey is punished by history for his abandoning of you in favour of himself.

“Pompey, defeated and harried as he was, found it necessary to look for support to popular tribunes and young adventurers. Of these much the most unscrupulous character was Clodius. One may say that Clodius took Pompey up and threw him down at the people's feet, causing him to roll about ignominiously in the dirt of the forum. He carried Pompey around with him, using him as a means to give weight and authority to his own speeches and proposals, all of which were made simply to gratify and flatter the mob. He even went so far as to ask to be paid for his services, as though he were doing Pompey good instead of bringing him into disgrace; and later he got his reward, when Pompey betrayed Cicero, who was his friend and indeed had done more for him in politics than had anyone else. Now when Cicero was in danger and implored Pompey to help him, Pompey would not even meet him face to face; he kept his front door barred against those who came with messages from Cicero and slipped out himself by a back entrance. After this, Cicero, fearing the result of his trial, secretly fled from Rome.”

Pompey collapsed. What terrible desires he must have struggled with that could make him side with such a popular despot as Clodius. It seems that all his former glories and triumphs were for naught and when the chips were down, Pompey turned out to be rather spineless. His story is more complicated of course, there were many political defeats he suffered before this alliance with Clodius. Many times he had reached for civilian achievements, only to be put back in his box by severe opposition from the Senate. This collapse of Pompey's moral certainty and loyalty to you was a low point on a long slope downwards, but it was such an extreme betrayal that even two thousand years later, the pain of it stings me.

*

It has taken me a few weeks to write this letter, and today as I finish, the world outside my bedroom window is blurry with heavy rain. It's amazing the change of feeling that rain brings about in my whole body and mind. I think that rain lets me believe in the future, it allows me to hope that tomorrow might be better than yesterday. Certainly the hills will be greener, the dams will fill up at least part way and the cattle will have something to drink for another month or so.

I have been a bit despondent over some recent personal failures, but in writing to you of Pompey, I have come to see my own life in reflection. I am somewhat disgusted by Pompey's betrayal of you, and of his lack of willpower in not facing up to his own failures with more courage.

So, I will face my troubles with more courage, knowing that they are tiny by comparison. I will go on knowing that you, Cicero, fought harder than I can possibly understand, for causes greater than my own, and that even in the despair of exile, you had your good friend Atticus to write to. To express all that was in your heart, to share with him your private fears and woes, knowing that he would always support you, even as you watched Pompey betray you.

It is good that I can write to you Cicero, very good indeed.

Always, with admiration and respect.

Morgan.