Dear Francesco Petrarca,
It is with some small embarrassment
that I write to you this late in my project. You who in 1345 first
discovered the collected books of Cicero's letters, and who, so
enamoured of that great author's humanity, wrote letters to him. I
only just found out about your initial discovery yesterday, and only
began reading your letters to Cicero then. Imagine my
surprise and delight however to find that you were writing to him
about the very same things that I have written to him about, even
making references to the same quotes.
I don't yet know enough about you or
your writing to scribe a full letter to you yet, but rest assured
that you will hear from me again soon.
So dear Petrarch (as you are known
these days), this letter was written to you in the land of the
living, on the rocky slopes upstream of the Meechi River in the
Adelaide Hills in Australia, on the thirty first day of May, the last
day of Autumn, in the two thousand and eighteenth year from the birth
of that God whom we both knowest.
With
a growing sense of destiny,
Morgan
Peter Philip Stephen Taubert
...wait. I want to tell you something.
At the hour of the setting sun, I travel from my home in the
Borderlands, towards the city. From the rocky fringes on the green
edge of the woodland, I climb winding roads through trees growing
taller and through towns growing smaller, more wealthy, until the
hills are dotted with lonesome estate homes. The red fire of the
departing sun brushes its rouge upon the cheek of grey storm clouds
hanging close to the forested hilltops. I pass through a tunnel
carved straight into the heart of a hill and emerge upon the city
entranceway, a road hidden snakelike within a steep valley whose
sides have been cut deep to make way for the needs of man.
The
city roads wet and crowded with cars (modern wagons), the footpaths
empty, my destination is a tavern on the road to the port, named
after an early governor of the city. I go to meet with a dancer and
a harmonica player.
These
are the last days of Autumn.
* * *
(A fragment of the original text of Histories, by Herodotus)
Dear Herodotus of Halicarnassus
...uh...
I'm starstruck, tongue-tied. Your book
Histories is...well,
where do I start? I asked Plutarch for advice on what I should write
to you about and he told me about the Greeks Artabanus, and
Themistocles. They seemed a good bridge to cross to since you and
Plutarch both wrote about them. But I won't start there.
I asked my wife what I should say to
the Father of History, the Father of Lies, and she said I should
start with a lie. (She always has the best ideas...)
So...
I will start with a story, and I want
you to tell me whether or not it is true.
A king and a pauper went walking down
to the river one day. They knew each other but were not exactly what
you would call friends. The King saw a fish in the river and asked
the pauper to catch it for him. This the pauper did and when he
brought the fish back and gave it to the king, the king discarded the
fish and slew the pauper, throwing his body into the river which
floated downstream to a lake, where it sank.
Unknown to the king, a guard was
watching from the castle tower and at first he did not tell anyone
about what he had seen, but kept it secret and turned it over in his
mind. When he had decided what the king's actions meant, he spoke to
his wife and told her that he had been asked to report for night duty
that week. She, knowing her husband better than he credited her,
suspected her husband of some clandestine purpose. She had seen how
troubled his mind had been and knew that he was at pains to hide
something from her that he believed might cause her harm if she knew.
At first she did not tell anyone what
she knew, but turned it over in her mind and went at last to the
oracle. She told the priestess of her dilemma, to which she replied:
What harm may come of ignorance
may also come of knowledge.
Tell me, which do I trust, my husband
or my king?
The woman went home and considered that
her husband must be involved in some plot against the king. So the
woman told her mother, who was a household servant in the king's
service. The mother began to ask among the palace servants and
guards if anyone knew of a plot to kill the king?The questions
started a rumour that such a thing was true, and soon there were
whispered fears even among the kings guardsmen, of which the husband
was one.
When the husband was asked by his
officer if he knew anything of a conspiracy against the king, he kept
a straight face and spoke the truth. He had not heard of any such
thing.
That night the husband went home to his
wife and told her the truth. Together they decided that the king did
indeed have to die. So the wife invited her mother over and the
three of them made their plans.
The next day the mother asked amongst
the servants if anyone else had heard a rumour of the assassins plans
to dig a tunnel beneath the palace and so gain access to the king.
Soon even the king had heard these rumours and demanded that his
bed-chamber be moved to the tallest tower, while guards were posted
on every floor beneath.
Next the husband reported to his
officer that he had heard someone in the kitchen talking about
poisoned fish. When the guards interrogated the kitchen staff but
found no-one willing to admit to knowledge, the King ordered them all
to draw nets across the river and catch every single fish in it, and
have their entire number burned. This was done and the smoke of the
fire clouded the sky. The king in his tower grew more fearful every
day.
Then the wife, who had been working in
her own kitchen for many days, crafted a poison which contained no
odour nor flavour, but which killed every rat or mouse or bird that
she fed it to. So, going to the river, she collected a pitcher of
water and brought it to her mother, who took it into the palace where
guards and other servants drank from it, and many died.
When news of the poisoned river water
reached the king, who now lived in an anxious state of mortal fear,
he ordered that the river be destroyed, broken up and diverted to
pass the city but not to enter it. All water must come to him only
from the sky. He imprisoned all his servants, and all his palace
guards, along with the husband, the wife and the mother.
When the river was diverted, the lake
dried up and there in the mud the people saw hundreds of bodies.
People of every class and station, sodden and rotten and decaying in
the quagmire of the king's madness. Many of the kings enemies were
found among the dead, and many more of his own subjects.
The people liberated the imprisoned,
and locked the king in his tower, where he quickly died of thirst.
* * *
Of course, its not true. But that's
not the point is it. It's the stories that matter, and you the
master storyteller seem to have told them all first. The rest of us
who followed after you can only stare into the oceanic narrative of
your epic tome of history with awe and wonder and a delightful sort
of helplessness. You wrote everything. All the writers who came
after you are mimics of your styles, of your plots, and your
character archetypes. Your book is the catalogue of all our striving
and failure and beauty and savagery and nothing new has really
happened since, only scenes played and played again with costume and
backdrop changes, new names and faces, but always the same stories.
Why? Because we are repetitive? No. Because we do not learn? No.
Why? Because you wrote so much, so many stories and
biographies and geographies and murder mysteries and romantic dramas
and war tales and political conspiracies and religious miracles. The
world you describe is colourful, complex, diverse and so broad that
its borders simply fade gradually from first hand knowledge into the
realm of hearsay and eventually into pure myth.
A king and a
pauper went walking down to the river one day.
It's hard to fully
estimate just how popular and well known the tale of the 300 Spartans
is. For you it seems to have been an important story to tell in
great detail, and the people of the future are grateful for the care
an attention you took to amassing all the information that you did.
Not many people believe any more that Xerxes had 1.7 million soldiers
marching with him when he invaded Greece from Persia. Modern
estimates are generally around the 5-600,000 mark. These figures and
their inflation are trifling exaggerations, their inaccuracy does not
detract in the least from the lively and passionate depictions of
courage and virtue that you give to the Persians, the Spartans and
the Greeks.
Plutarch, who
seems to have been a big fan of your work as well, says something rather memorable in his Moralia. (I'm paraphrasing here, not quoting exactly...)
“Lay down you
arms and we will make you kings of all Greece.”
Said the
ambassadors from from Xerxes to the Spartan King Leonidas, who stood with his 300 warriors, ready to lay down their lives to defend Greece.
“Having come,
take.” He replied.
Molon Labe
in the original Greek. These words are incredibly famous. They are
translated and expressed in a few different ways in modern popular
language, including, 'Come and get them', or more lavishly, 'Come pry
them from our cold dead hands' which while certainly more colourful
than regular Laconian speech, conveys the implied meaning of the
original.
But I don't want to go on about the Spartans. I'm sure you've had
your fill. I'll write again soon, but next time I want to talk about
the Scythians, and Queen Nitocris, since she seems like a singularly
fascinating woman whose name, like Sparta, has survived into the
modern world.
I could read your book a hundred times,
With admiration and respect,
Morgan of the Borderlands
No comments:
Post a Comment