Dear
Lucius Plutarch,
I
am reading The rise and fall of Athens: nine Greek lives. As
I mentioned in my last letter, modern publishers do not group your
Roman and Greek lives together as you did, but prefer to keep them
separate, to let each nation have its biographies considered
separately. That aside, I have a few questions, and comments to make
concerning the first noble Greek, Theseus.
In
your tale of the life of Theseus, founder of Athens, you describe his
early heroic adventures, subduing and slaying thieves and bandits in
his homeland. In Erineüs,
Theseus slew Damastes (aka Procrustes) “...by forcing him to make
his body fit his own bed.”
What
on earth does that mean? At first I imagined Theseus pulverising his
enemy and spreading him like jam upon the bed. Then with a little
further reading, I discovered historians saying that it was a method
of torture that Damastes used on his own victims and that Theseus in
turn killed him by means of his own cruel device, the Procrustean
Bed, as it is called; a sort of rack used to stretch and break
the victims bones, or if the victim was longer than the bed, to
shorten him by cutting off his limbs. I tend to think of such a
torture as being from the European middle ages, the period best known
for the witch burnings, so it is a little disheartening to learn that
this torture and execution method was known long before the
Inquisition. It is however satisfying to read of a terrible criminal
reaching his doom by the methods he used to doom others. Poetic
Justice we call it these days.
Yet
in the same story you also say:
“The
truth is that every man's soul has implanted within it the desire to
love, and it is as much its nature to love as it is to feel, to
understand and to remember. In this desire it clothes itself, and if
it finds nothing to love at home, it will fasten upon some alien
object...It is quite common, for example, to find men of harsh temper
who will argue against marriage or the procreation of children but
who, as soon as their servants' or concubines' children fall ill and
die, will be tormented with grief and give way to the most abject
lamentations, or others who suffer the most degrading and intolerable
anguish even at the death of dogs or horses.”
Many
writers and thinkers of my time condemn the violence inherent in men,
and though it must be observed that since time immemorial the
violence of man has indeed been excessive, it seems now unpopular for
men to speak on the strengths of their own gender, since many of
those strengths have been used to oppress others, particularly women.
At the same time women are lauded for speaking on their own
strengths, while quieting any talk on feminine vices. Reading your
thoughts on love is comforting to me, yet you go on to say how
“...those who have failed to learn how to fortify themselves
against the blows of fortune lay up endless troubles for themselves,
and it is not affection, but weakness which brings this about.”
This
kind of tearless stoicism is unpopular now. Men are expected to feel
and to express their anguish, holding back nothing of their inner
turmoil, but to release it through conversing, and so transform their
pain into something less burdensome. The man who silently overcomes
his sufferings, and stands proud of his strength in the face of
adversity is now sometimes confused as weak and insecure. His
unwillingness to submit to his feelings is described as the root of
male violence, rather than an expression of (as you write) the
reason by which he may forearm himself against misfortune. Yet,
many men take their own lives from the loneliness of their heroic
inner struggles, unable to by reason alone conquer the beasts of
their nature and survive the stones of adversity.
I
cannot pass judgement on the strength of any position, since all
opinions seem to omit and include truths vital to real understanding.
Still, it is exciting/frightening to read of men's strengths and of
their valour, unburdened by a modern sense of criminal guilt and
uncomplicated by our modern confusion of psychological terminology.
These heroes you write about, and the violence of their solutions to
a violent world, are totally absent from my society where nearly all
weapons are banned for possession by civilians, and where nearly
all murders are investigated with the full force of a police force,
law courts and prisons. There is still lawlessness, not all that
different at times with the banditry of Theseus' time, but it is not
solved by heroes who slay criminals and free towns from terror, or
who unite tribal confederations to defeat their neighbouring enemies
I live in a VERY peaceful country, foreign invaders have not brought
war to our shores in around seventy five years, and the rule of law
keeps the peace among the people who are almost all immigrants and
their descendants, from nations all around the whole world. I live
in a country where large scale armed civil dissension has not been
seen since the days of war with the natives, over one hundred and
fifty or so years ago. It is difficult to describe the modern world
to you, so I am trying to translate it in terms that you might
understand, for it is precisely this difficulty that I am trying to
address with this letter.
How
on earth am I to make sense of your stories, when the moral values
your noble Greeks prize are so confoundingly different from my own,
yet so intermingled with wisdom relevant to the pressing questions
being asked by ordinary people today?
Are
your heroes still heroes if today their behaviour would be described
as murderous and seditious war-profiteering, or vigilante killing
sprees, or tyrannical crimes against humanity?
The
heroes of today are pioneers, they are inventors, civil rights
activists, explorers, entrepreneurs, sports stars, actors,
musicians...all civilian peace time careers.
I
don't want to get into our modern wars here, but it is something I
will have to address in the future. If I am to understand the value
of your historiographies, then I feel that I must understand how to
reconcile these moral differences between our heroes.
But
your stories are not only about violence, that would make you a poor
author indeed. What makes you great in my mind is that you write
about everything. Some people criticise you for letting your
feelings about a subject over-ride the importance of absolute
historical facts, others, myself included, also claim that this is
your biggest strength. You are trying to tell us something about the
world, about the people who moved and shook, who took command and for
good or for ill directed the course of human endeavour. In telling
us of these men, you tell us of their world. You tell us of the
women too, and the influential roles they played. I have written to
other friends about Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, and the story of his
mother Volumnia marching with all the women to confront him before he
invaded his own home city with a foreign army.
The story of Coriolanus and Volumnia
It's
fair to say that women's stories are sadly lacking in the broad
spectrum of writings from the ancient world, but from you at least,
women are present, they are not central, but neither are they
disregarded. Your decision to include the stories of women, I think,
is another reason why you are still so popular today. Herodotus too.
I really should write to him soon, but I don't know where to begin.
What do you say to the Father of History? What do you ask of the
Father of Lies.
I
didn't plan for this letter to be a discussion on gender politics, I
was actually just going to mention Theseus and the whole Procrustean
bed thing, and then go on to talk about Solon and his pioneering
efforts in democracy, but it feels like that should wait for another
time. So instead I will return to Theseus and what has become the
theme of this letter, being that of the meaning of violence, and
heroism.
You
quote Philochorus in claiming that Theseus, when commanding an army
against the Thebans, was the first man ever to call for a “...truce
for the purpose of recovering the bodies of the dead...” and also
that Theseus was “...the first to restore the bodies of the dead to
his enemies.”
So
when we talk about violence, when we talk about men, when we talk
about war, this is also what we are talking about. We are talking
about a soldier's ability to see his enemy as human, and to honour
him and the sacrifice he makes in service to his own cause. Even in
war, men can still stand up from the mud and blood and declare that
honor and fair conduct still have value in Hell. It is naieve to
simply declare that all war is evil, and that men are to blame for
all violence. Some wars are just. They are, and I will stand by it.
All wars are hell, and none who enter may leave. Those people who
walk home from battle may have been like us once, but they are
transformed upon their survival. I will not try to say what they
are, but they are not like the rest of us who have never fought in
war, we who have not been burned cannot claim to understand the fire.
My Grandfather, Snow Pedersen fought in a war for four years. The
eyes he saw the world through were not like anyone else's. He knew
the value of Peace. The value of Life, of Time, of Roses and
Children. He knew it down to the pennies and pence.
I
try to understand.
In
the midst of the meat grinding butchery of armed combat, there come
to us these legends of men who invented new standards for behaviour.
Out of the bloodlust and barbarism of ancient war, Theseus, it is
claimed, restrained his savage human nature and declared that his
enemy was deserving of kindness and compassion. Theseus, who
declared that though war must be fought, that savagery need not be
its only law. In my own era we are quite proud for outlawing the use
of chemical weapons in war, and for some decades this has been
largely successful. One war was fought before the ban, a
holocaust of such magnitude that even if you added together all the
dead in all the wars that Caesar fought, they would not compare in
the slightest to the scar that the War to End All Wars war has
left on the human race. Chemical weapons were used with impunity by
all sides of the conflict, poison clouds drifting low and heavy
across the land, killing every living creature who breathed in the
noxious gas. One hundred years later, there are still parts of
France (Gaul to you I suppose...) that are forbidden zones where the
earth is still poisoned.
When
this chemical war was concluded, an (almost) global organisation, a
League of Nations was formed with the intention of preventing
future wars. They banned the use of chemical weapons in war, a ban
which has been largely successful, though many of their other efforts
have failed.
Theseus
returned the bodies of his enemies. Perhaps he did so in disgust at
the sight of so many heaped corpses. Perhaps he simply looked his
enemy in the eye and knew him to be human and decided that it would
be the honourable thing to do. Perhaps it wasn't Theseus, perhaps it
was some other general, some ordinary man who found a reason to be
honorable amidst the dishonor of organised killing and Theseus
claimed the legend for his own.
I
don't have answers to these questions, and neither do you.
Questing,
questioning, curious,
Morgan.
* * *
Dear Cicero,
I
wanted to share this with you, regarding your daughter Tullia. On
the same day that I found out about her death and her tomb, I read
this poem. Poetry has changed a lot since your time, it has expanded
to include thousands of forms, some casual, others ornate, but
suffice to say that the creative human spirit has continued unabated
by war, deprivation, horror, gluttony decadence and peace, and that
in the twentieth century, a poet of such popularity was born that his
works are translated into dozens of languages, and who wrote this...
For
Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough:-
I
pick up the skirt,
I
pick up the sparkling beads
in
black,
this
thing that moved once
around
flesh,
and
I call God a liar,
I
say anything that moved
like
that
or
knew
my
name
could
never die
in
the common verity of dying,
and
I pick
up
her lovely
dress,
all
her loveliness gone,
and
I speak
to
all the Gods,
Jewish
Gods, Christ-gods,
chips
of blinking things,
idols,
pills, bread,
fathoms,
risks,
knowledgeable
surrender,
rats
in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad
without
a chance,
hummingbird
knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I
lean upon this,
I
lean on all of this
and
I know:
her
dress upon my arm:
but
they
will not
give
her back to me.
Charles
Bukowski was a very different writer from you, but
like you, his works have been translated and spread around the world
influencing people from all walks of life. The above poem For
Jane, is from his first book, published in 1969, entitled, The
days run away like wild horses over the hills. He was a working
class man, a plebeian if you will, born in 1920 in Germany, but he
lived in America...which is a country so far from Rome that I don't
know how to describe it...lets see, if you went east of Persia...all
the way to other side of the world...that's about where America is.
idols,
pills, bread,
fathoms,
risks,
knowledgeable
surrender,
Grief
smothers everything, makes madness of mundanity, pain inconsolable,
incontestable.
I
thought it a lovely coincidence to have found that poem when I did.
What little consolation it might be, but that you might know that
grief is a common ground between us. By that I don't mean between
you and I, for I have not lost a child, or even a close family
member. I mean between you and NOW. I've mentioned it before I'm
sure, that our common humanity shows itself in the raw meat of our
lives. I mentioned in a letter to Xenophon, that the world we both
look upon is the same world. We are united by common cause of our
animal nature, and by the peculiar awareness we call intelligence,
that arises from that nature.
But
let us turn to lighter matters, perhaps I will tell you of the rain
dripping from the brim of my hat as I worked today. There are
moments when the sun catches a falling drop in just the perfect way,
and the spectrum of light splits and I can see all the colours of the
sun. Or I could tell you how I watched my fingers fly across the
fret board of my ukulele tonight. Free from my control, the melodies
that they (my fingers) play are far superior to the melodies of my
cranking, clunking, cluttered and corn-seed-counting mind. My hands
know exactly what to do, if only I would get out of the way and let
them feel the music. Let the music play my hands.
I
wonder what music is to you? I mean, your writings don't seem to
make mention of music except in passing reference, and in your letter
'On Duties' written to your son, you disapprove of musicians and
performers as a class of people. So too with dance, since in your
society, dance was something not to be done by persons of higher
standing. A lady might sometimes dance, but never a
gentleman. In my culture, everyone is allowed to dance, even
encouraged, the young, old, rich and poor. Dancers as professionals
are not always regarded with respect, but dancing in general is
something that no strong taboos prohibit. Still, whatever you think,
I will continue to tell you about my own experiences because they are
central to the way I engage with and experience my society. Most
everywhere I go, it is with an instrument in my hand (or a book), and
my most active pursuit outside of my home and work, is music. I have
no standing politically, and no aspirations for such. If we are to
understand each other I cannot suppress the importance of music in my
life, just as oratory is your primary passion. As such I will speak
on it with openness, regardless of any prejudice you may have against
it.
Yet
I and people all the world over feel that we have a great deal in
common with you, and despite our differences, despite the centuries
divide and cultural obliquity, we strive to understand you, and to
call ourselves worthy of having been inspired by you. For it is in
your courage, honesty and discipline that we find commonality. as
well as in your fidelity. Your moments of weakness and doubt, your
fear and your pride, your striving and your kind words and your
scalding, scathing, burning vitriol. Your passion for scaling the
heights of your intellectual capacity is what inspires us.
But
I have a difficult question to ask you, about the Gracci brothers and
the Cataline conspiracy, because from my perspective there is some
very muddy water, ethically speaking, in this story.
So
let me make sure I've got this at least a little bit straight.
Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus; on the surface they seem like democratic
reformers, representatives of the people, standing up for the rights
of the Italian citizens, for the allies, for the returned soldiers.
I'm still a little vague about the connection between them and the
later Cataline Conspiracy, but basically it seems as though it was a
class war, with the senatorial class upset about their 'liberty'
being challenged, and the poor plebeians fighting for voting and land
rights as a result of economic disparity caused by a massive influx
of foreign slaves.
That's
a pretty broad summary, and I think that I need to do a bit more
study before I really discuss this with you. The gist of my
question, the root of my doubt, is that the story of the Gracci
brothers, and your role in the much later Cataline Conspiracy makes
the senators seem like the villains, and you who supported their
continued oligarchical rule, look like a defender of the old,
corrupt, violent and greedy order. Both the Gracci brothers were
assassinated, then Saturninus, then Drusus the Younger. Their
multi-generational plight seems the root of the political gang
violence in Rome, and led to the empowerment of the the most savage
dictators in the republic's long and noble history.
Cataline.
He's the real issue. His attempt to deal with the shocking wealth
disparity in Rome by proposing a bill to cancel all debt, and his
swift, illegal arrest, imprisonment and execution, looks like a very
standard sort of totalitarian suppression. It looks like every other
anti-human institution in history, disposing blithely with their
enemies, treating the poor and the foreign as expendable resources
without rights or needs of any kind.
I
definitely need to read about this more before I bring it up with you
in full. It's an incredibly complex story and it throws doubt on
your name, nobility and your humanity. I read Petrarch's letter to
you, and I will quote from him for I cannot think of a better way to
say it.
I
grieve at thy lot, my friend; I am ashamed of thy many, great
shortcomings, and take compassion on them.
The
Cataline Conspiracy makes you seem like the eloquent defender of
upper class privilege. Some modern historians warn me to be more
cynical and to consider the Gracci brothers, and Catline as shrewd
politicians manipulating the mob in order to gain tyrannical power
over the Republic. Two thousand years have clouded the issue, but
there is something about the whole drama that strikes me as having
great contemporary relevance. I want to understand. I cannot
possibly understand. I am trying to learn.
With
grief and compassion,
Morgan
