Early May, 2018 CE

Dear Cicero,

I watched the movement of autumnal winds over the vineyard today, like the passing of a great invisible beast, its presence causing all the natural world to shiver for a moment, and then, to lay still again. I thought of you and your son Marcus. They say it is better for sons to bury fathers, than fathers to bury sons, so I suppose that your death may have caused feelings other than grief. Pride, I hope. Knowing how your son fought for your good honour and respected name after your murder...well, you set an example, and you son grew to be an important and well reasoned man. Successful and wise. You should be proud of him too. Still, I wonder what you two might have talked of if you had made it to Athens. I am sorry that you did not get to see him one last time. I imagine night and day and night passing without notice as the greater light of you conversations made a dimness of the sun and moon. It is not good to dwell on what might have been, and so today I write to you, dear Cicero. Today on the day that I watched the wind move over the vineyard and I imagined you watching the wind on your own farm, and the two centuries that separate us are nothing but a paper trail. You died only yesterday.

I have much to ask you, many letters to write to you, and hopefully you take pleasure in what stories and diversions I might entertain you with as well. So lets start here: was Julius Caesar really mad? Or was he dying from some illness and plotting his own assassination? Is it as Shakespeare said and that 'all the word's a stage'? Was he just playing the part of a tyrant and a God for an audience that needed a sacrifice? Perhaps the question is foolish. It is impossible to summarise a person in a handful of words. I ask myself, 'was Rome mad?' was your whole society a mess of battle trauma and child sexual assault? How does the madness of your age make sense in light of the madness of my own?

Some heavy questions to start us off with I know, but I didn't wish to bandy about with polite small talk, not with you. Our qualities as men are first defined by the qualities of our thoughts, and then by the actions they inspire. My present action is writing, inspired by your own writing. Your essays and speeches, even your letters. I am so pleased to hear your voice in my head as I read, your personality is so strongly expressed, your whole feeling and rhythm as an orator...but I am flattering you, which I am sure you must tire of.
So my question is this. Was Julius Caesar like he is in the stories? If he wasn't, can you tell me a story about him that shows him differently? Was he a clever killer and a womaniser? Was he a fashion setting, free thinking, fast talking, fast walking builder of an empire? Or was he something else?

You knew him, what was he like?

And If you can answer that, then can you also tell me of Cleopatra, of Clodius and his sister Clodia, of Pompey and Crassus? Or Octavian? Or perhaps that is too much, perhaps you do not want to speak or think of them ever again. So I will ask you a different question.

Did you see the wind in the vineyard today? Stepping like a great invisible beast making all of nature shiver as it passed...

with admiration and friendship

Morgan.

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Dear Cicero,
I hope it does not bother you, my writing you so soon after my last letter. Every day I am overtaken by the changes of the world and find that I am in need of your wisdom. Today the rains came, gentle and prolonged throughout the morning, I sat in bed reading a letter your son wrote to Tiro concerning his time in Athens with Crattipus, and of his great respect for you, his father. I also read of the death of your daughter Tullia and I could find no glib wisdoms to console the grief of a father who must bury his child. In time of peace or of war, there must be no greater heartbreak than this, a sorrow that knows no consolation.

Take consolation from this then, for you could not know of the destiny her death would weave into the vast future. Know that the lamp lit in her tomb burned for fifteen hundred years, and it was burning still when archaeologists uncovered her body, and found it as fresh and beautiful as if she had been buried only the day before. I do not regard a need to prove or disprove such legends, since belief in them is far more beneficial than doubt, so take consolation knowing that your daughter's death, and the legend of her tomb serve as an eternal torch in the darkness of history, burning untended through the lost centuries. How bright she must have shone in life, that in her death she burns brighter still.

Here in the borderlands where I live and write, the first rains of Autumn will turn green all that has been burned brown and white by the prolonged summer. Already the air is filled with the smoke of bonfires as farmers gather cut branches and broken timbers for burning. Soon the land will echo with the sound of Autumn festivities, as families and communities all along the River Meechi celebrate the restoration of the soil through the annual boon of winter rains. I pray only that the floods of recent years do not plague us again. Last year, for two weeks the bridge to my farm lay under water and I could do no work.

My question for today is this.

Your era, the last years of the Roman Republic, are described by our historians as being driven by a strong cultural standard that encouraged each citizen to strive for glory. Personal glory, glory for their family, and for their nation. Your generation are remembered for their intense ambition, and for the legends of their success. This ambition is also sometimes credited with being one of the causes of the collapse of the Republic. You know all this I'm sure, you lived and died through it.

You saw the cost of that ambition. You saw how it tore apart all bonds of kinship and was the cause of unjust wars, of corruption and murder. Your nation seemed destroyed from within by its desire to see its dreams come to life.

Tell me, is an individual a microcosm of their nation? Is the individual subject to the same forces that drive and divide their nation? Is there a world inside each of us? Can the story of the individual be divined from the story of their world?

It has been said that he who seeks to destroy Rome, can only destroy himself in the process. I fear that I may be subject to the same destructive forces, and that my ambition, once a source of great pride, now threatens to topple me.

Is there a line separating hubris from ambition? Do all who dream of glory walk a road of flames?

The rain has stopped and the sun has hidden behind thick clouds all afternoon. Life here in the borderlands is quiet and undemanding. The noise and rush of city life does not echo in these rocky valleys, instead only the shadows of birds breaks the stillness.

I look forward to your reply.

With admiration and respect.

Morgan.

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Dear Penny,

I keep seeing you, on the street, in cafe's, every tall tough looking girl with tight jeans makes me flick back to make sure it is not you. I have been surprised by the richness of feelings your death has brought about in me. There is a beauty in the inevitability of death for all of us, that you, who chose the day, the time and the means, seem to be a shining example of the courage by which we might all face our own lives, and the endings of them. Your death was an end to intolerable suffering, and in that regard it was a good death. Yet the strength of your convictions, the gravity of your inner resolve to have fought on through the pain for as long as you did, seeking every day a new reason to live, that is what I keep sensing as I see the reflections of your ghost on the street. Your will to live was immense. Your crutches were not the mechanical appendages of a crippled victim of life's cruel vicissitudes, they were the extensions of your courage, your physical and emotional strength. They were like twin swords, or staves of office. With them you stood tall, you walked quickly and with head held high. Though in the darkness of your fear and pain you would weep, the armour you put on to face the world was made of your greatness, it was a sign for all to see that here stands a warrior, wounded but undefeated.

Until of course defeat was the only course left. When the pain had taken you from your life completely.

Today the sun was shining and I thought of you, just like you asked us to in your death note, and when the cake is amazing, and when the cats are themselves, and whenever I see a tall, tough looking girl on the street.

My question, …

I don't think I have a question for you. Only gratitude. For your life burned so brightly that your image is burned into my retina, and your death has made it all the more easy to talk with you, and reflect on the wisdom you gave me when you were alive.

So thank you Penny White. Tiger Moth.

With gratitude and love.

Morgan.

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Dear Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,

First off I'm a big fan of your writing, and I must say that your biographies of the Graccus brothers were very stirring. A lot of what you had to say about the fundamental differences between the rich and poor still rings true today (sadly). The political and social intricacies of those decades are no less complex than the politics of my own time and country, and I have come to better understand the events of my own time, through gaining an understanding of the events of yours. Actually, you were the first ancient author I read. Your original books have been broken up a bit by modern publishers, and the lives you wrote about are now published in new compilations, not always the Greek/Roman comparisons you arranged them into. So the first book I read of yours was called 'The Fall of the Roman Republic'. Do you like the title? It has six lives in it, all Roman, all from the last generations of the Republic. This book was the first time I had ever heard of Marius, Sulla, Crasssus, Pompey and Cicero. Perhaps it is telling that I already knew of Caesar, but not of Pompey or Cicero. Caesar would probably have been pleased that after two thousand years, his name is still the better known of all his contemporaries.

Next I read 'The Makers of Rome'. Did you know that people are still talking about the Graccus brothers. I went to the forum the other day (Youtube), and there were two historians discussing the very questions you raise in your writing. Were the brothers motivated by a sincere desire to champion the poor and to share the wealth of Rome with all of Italy, or was it a cynical power play, using the mob as their weapon? I wonder now how you would write about the leaders of my time?

Cicero. His name now rings louder than all the others in my ears. Holding firm against the storm of centuries, his his eloquence is today still lauded, and his written works on oration are taught in universities. The example he set in his life and the incredible wisdom of his writing seem now to be rooted in the foundation of the modern global reality. He slept for a long time, but from the time his writings were re-discovered by Petrarch in the 1345 CE, they have influenced the foundation of many new Republics, new Philosophies, new Democracies. Caesar might be more famous by name, but he is famous for being a Dictator, an Emperor, the man who killed the Republic. Cicero is seen as the First among men. The greatest mind of western literature and political/social thought. Hundreds of his letters even survived the centuries, and through them we have come to know Cicero even better than you did when you wrote of him.

Plutarch, (can I call you Plutarch? That's what everyone calls you these days...) this is what I would love most for you to know. In this age, my age, with modern scientific methods and technology, we are able to have a richer, more realistic, more verifiable understanding of history than ever before. We can see further back in time than any civilisation before us, going back twelve thousand years or so. We have museums all over the world, with collections and catalogues of ancient artifacts, and together we have pieced together the history of the world into a more complete, more interwoven picture of the real story of the human race than anyone could ever have dreamed of in your time.

But a big part of WHY, we have so much knowledge about the past, is because of you. Your whole biographical narrative style is so easy to read and understand, and even though you have bias, even though sometimes you get things wrong, we love history because you loved it and you wrote about it. We read it and the horizon of our global historical understanding ballooned outwards. Your passion lit a fire in us and it is still burning strong.

I'm gushing, sorry. I'm just such a huge fan of your books, you've changed my life. That's all I really wanted to say. Thank you for everything.

With thankful happiness,

Morgan.