Dear Cicero,

One drop of water is all you need to sound the depth of a well, and if the light you shine down the shaft is bright enough, you might even see the ripples. So it is with history. It only takes one story to drop into your mind for you to realise with sudden awe, the depth of history, and for most people, that one drop is enough. If that story stays with them, and they are moved by the veracity or the message of the tale, then that depth is added to their depth, and all of their present actions carry with them the depth of the history that is known through them.

For others, the well must not only be sounded, it must be explored and dug deeper. The stack of books on my bedside table now casts a long shadow across the bed as I excavate the mysteries of the past. All my dead friends are here with me to help with the work.

A woman approached me in the market yesterday, a familiar face from the crowd of parents who gather at the school in the afternoon to pick their children up from class. I sometimes play music as I sit and wait, and one day, some weeks ago, this woman sat beside me as I played. We didn't converse, we were both listening to the music I guess.

When she approached me yesterday, she told me that on that previous day when she had sat beside me, her father had but recently passed, and that the music reached into her heart and made her feel better. As she spoke, I could see her tears welling up as the tide swells beneath the moon, and she could say no more. I thanked her as best I could, glad that my music had reached her and given her something good.

Cicero, how deep is the well of history, and how deep is the well of our hearts? Is music a language that all can speak, and is the history of music a parallel mirror to the development of human feeling?

I have been trying to learn the First Delphic Hymn. This is as far down as I am able to hear the water droplets in the well of music history. It is as close as I can get to hearing the music you might have heard.

Original Delphic Hymn fragment

First Delphic Hymn (choir)

I have a little Glockenspiel, a delightful instrument, and despite my inexperience in learning music from written sources, and despite the knowledge that the way I am playing the melody is rather different from the other recordings, I am enjoying the experience immensely. The scale alone is fascinating, so haunting and dreamy, each resolution seems to offer deeper mysteries.

I had thought that I was going to write to you about some music quotes I've found from other writers. I wanted to discuss the social attitudes towards music and musicians, but I think I will bring that up with Plutarch. Now that I have finished reading The Fall of Athens, I can see that he had a much greater interest in music than you Cicero.

With you I would rather talk of friendship. A virtue you share in praising with the Epicurean philosophers and which you have at length written about. However, since your essay, 'On Friendship' has yet to arrive at the book store, I will instead talk of Giraffes. You see, I've been reading this other book about a Giraffe that was transported from Egypt to France in 1826 CE. It tells a fascinatingly detailed story of the journey, along the way talking about a lot of other related history, including the tale of the Giraffe that Caesar transported from Egypt to Rome in 46 BCE. He presented it to the people as part of his triumphal procession through city, paraded along with “...hundreds of caged lions, and leopards and black panthers and other strange and dangerous beasts, baboons and green monkeys, hunting salukis (the world's oldest breed of domesticated dog), Nile parrots and parakeets, flamingos and ostriches, slaves and ivory and emeralds and gold and a great number of elephants bearing torches...”, or so Michael Allin, author of Zarafa writes. So I decided to look for some eye witness reports, just to confirm.

                                                           Saluki Dogs

Suetonius remarks of Caesar, that "if anything rare and worth seeing was ever brought to the city, it was his habit to make a special exhibit of it in any convenient place on days when no shows were appointed.” Later emperors were not always so kind, and giraffes sometimes ended up being killed by lions or gladiators in the circus.

Cicero, did you see this Giraffe? The first of its kind to travel so far. You were in Rome at the time weren't you? You married Publilia that year. I wonder if it's mentioned in any of your letters, or if you make reference to it in some other essay or speech. It would have been a pretty big deal at the time, just as it was still a big deal in the 1820's when Muhammad Ali, Ottomon Viceroy of Egypt, sent a Giraffe to King Charles X in Paris, and a second to King George IV in London. Politically motivated of course, this was not done in the name of zoology. Ali wanted to curry favour with the European monarchs to gain their support for, or at least non-interference in the war he was about to launch on Greece.

The giraffe sent to England fell ill en route and died in London in 1829, but during her time in the city, she was cared for with great attention by King George. A portrait of her shows an amulet around her neck, containing verses of the Koran, a protection against the evil eye. The same amulet was worn by her sister, Zarafa, who was sent to Paris.

Zarafa's story is longer and more interesting...but...I haven't finished the book yet, so I can't finish her story for you. There is another tale I can relate however, of another giraffe making the journey from Egypt to Florence, in 1486. Sent by the Mameluke Sultan, Quait Bey to Lorenzo de' Medici as a gift to maintain good relations with the Christians (or so the history books say). Lorenzo the Magnificent returned the gift with a white bear.

Saint Hiliare recounts that the giraffe sent to Florence “...was associated, sentimentally at least, with the second storeys of the noble houses of the city...she went every day to take food from the hands of the ladies of Florence, of whom she became the adopted daughter; these repasts consisted of several kinds of fruit, principally apples.”

I don't know where I'm going with all this...historical wells, music, giraffes...it hardly matters. I could talk to you about anything. I'll write more later...

* * *

A strange day at work, a bluster, a pre-storm heat blown ahead of a crumbling reef of clouds.

Then sunset, like the shining face of God peering through the roof of the world, beams of brilliant golden-orange-purple-and-white light. My son and I stare in silent wonder.

Then evening, band practice at the tavern on Port Road. Food and drink and dance and laughter and children playing and all the world outside that room turning and we play on unawares.

Through the glittering night, the homeward return

Through deepening darkness to a moonlit valley

Beneath the shadows of trees, a glimmer of light

Home.

Home.

Did you see the giraffe Cicero? Was your daughter Tullia there? I imagine the two of you standing in the crowd watching Caesar's Triumph, smiling and happy as the wild beasts from foreign lands were paraded through the streets, as proud soldiers and chained slaves and plundered treasures and dancers and musicians filled the city roads for hours. This might have been a happy memory for you and Tullia together, in the last year of her life.

Before everything fell apart.

I will write again soon, dear friend.

With compassion.

Morgan.

TheTriumph of Dionysus