Book Two, Letter Nine

Part 3 of 6

To Thucydides, on men, women, and democracy.

I found three entries regarding women, that I would like to discuss specifically.

This first is from the speech given by Pericles (an Athenian leader), at the Athenian annual public funeral for the war dead. (Book 2, Chapter 4):

“Perhaps I should say a word or two on the duties of women to those among you who are now widowed. I can say all I have to say in a short word of advice. Your great glory is not to be inferior to what God has made you, and the greatest glory of a woman, is to be least talked about by men, whether they are praising you, or criticising you.”

                                                                           Pericles

Book 3, Chapter 5: Revolution in Corcyra

“The women also joined in the fighting with great daring, hurling down tiles from the roof-tops and standing up to the din of battle with a courage beyond their sex.”

This third passage is from the final words of Book 5, chapter 7:

“...the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves.”

So that's about it. There a few other references to women being taken as slaves, but basically that's all you have to say about women. I'm not criticising you, not specifically, but it's the whole, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence thing again. Now I'm sure it seems obvious to say that there would have been very few women among the officer corps with which you lived, but very few, and none at all mentioned ever, is a different thing entirely. No mothers, daughters or wives are ever mentioned by name. (At least I'm pretty sure...your book is huge, my copy is filled with my scrawled notes and underlined passages.)

You chose specifically to not write about women in anything but the broadest terms.

But I also wonder about the role of gender separation in your society. I understand that Athenian women in particular often led rather cloistered lives, separate from the affairs of men. Their lives and influence perhaps held little relevance for you. For a writer such as yourself, that is, a conspicuously detailed narrator of facts and figures and events, from political and social customs and ideologies, to the legal minutia of peace agreements - I suspect that you didn't write about women, because you might not have known much about women.

                                                           Athenian Women

I understand that your book is a political history book, you are very careful to not get dragged down into philosophy or overly emotional descriptions of battles or civilian suffering, but women are pretty much everywhere, and they exert their influence, political and otherwise in every sphere of human endeavour, even in the ancient world, so the lack of women in your book is conspicuous, and a little suspicious. It seems that there should have at least have been something said of Spartan women who are famous even now for their bravery, physical prowess and assertive natures.

                                                                Spartan Women

Archidamia: a Spartan Queen

340 - 241 BCE

Thucydides, you seem to confess to an unwillingness to write about women, by quoting from the aforementioned Pericles, and his intentional desire that nothing ever be known of women; a declaration that their silence and invisibility are their only glory.

Fascinating.

But there must have been women everywhere...what were they doing I wonder? You either didn't know, or didn't recognise their influence, or you would have written something about them other than to say they were sold into slavery or killed. Just how separate were the lives of men and women in your era? Did you really consider women not worth writing about at all? Herodotus before you, and Xenophon after you wrote about influential women, but not you Thucydides.

This actually plays into another idea I toy with, that is knowing something by its opposite.

We all know that war is a visceral, terrifying, murderous mess, but you rarely describe it in this way. Since I know you are omitting these details, all your descriptions become like code phrases for the actual terrors hidden beneath. Hence, lay waste to the land, has its real meaning in all the things it doesn't want to mention, and you, Thucydides, do not want to mention women.

Who exactly are you protecting with your mythology of battle? The soldiers? Well certainly, you were one of them, you saw both sides of the war. You served with the Athenians in battle for years before you were exiled to the Spartan allied territories, after your failed command at Amphipolis. You would want to justify your life, everyone does, that's normal. You certainly weren't pulling the wool over anyone's eyes who was there at the time, but I am from that forever you wrote this book for, and you certainly don't fool me either.

Why this romance of War?

I'm not criticising, again, not at all. I'm just struggling to understand you. I have nearly finished reading your book and I have loved every page. I live within a culture who romanticises war in ways just as powerful and illusory as you seem to, so I get it. You have to do it, you have to believe in the beautiful lie, because if all you believed in were the terrible facts, you couldn't possibly go on living.

In my day, Thucydides, many do not. Go on living, that is. Suicide amongst returned soldiers is currently at appalling levels, and I don't think for a moment that your book's romantic notions will help cure that ill in any way, but I do think that it says something about the usefulness of rose coloured glasses.

We live with a lot of terrible facts, and the romance of life doesn't always cover over the stain of reality. People slip off the edge all the time. We call it post traumatic stress disorder now. It used to be called other things...battle sickness, shell shock. Soldiers from the Vietnam War of the nineteen sixties and seventies are famous for returning from the war with the thousand yard stare.

Sometimes I think that no one really survives a war. Not the soldiers, not winners or the losers, and not the civilians caught in between.

P.S.

Here is the third and final promotional video for my album launch kickstarter campaign.  If you like multi-instrumental world fusion, well, just check it out...and watch a few other videos while you're there, I play a lot of different instruments.

Youtube Video

And the link to the Kickstarter page:

Kickstarter Page

Book Two, Letter Nine

Part 2 of 6

To Thucydides, on men, women, and democracy.

I'm finally going to talk about democratically elected dictators, and I'm going to start with what Plato said on the topic. I'll try to summarise in my own words:

The struggle between rich and poor, between the working, intellectual and ruling classes, has been going on for all human history it seems,

Plato, in The Republic (Book VIII) outlines the path from oligarchy, through democracy, to tyranny.

(Oligarchy: the ruling of the many, by a select class of wealthy families or corporate bodies.)

As a society ruled by an oligarchy becomes more powerful, more influential, and grows as a nation, its governing bodies, being vulnerable to many of the same corruptions as a democracy (financial, political, military etc.), gradually grows greedy for greater and greater control, thus squeezing the people tighter. The people who, across all levels of society, demand more freedoms, more wealth, more liberty, then more land, more empire, and finally voting rights...and thus through this struggle, a democracy is born.

Democracies are vulnerable to many of the same corruptions as an oligarchy, and so, as individual freedoms increase, so too does the impunity with which the ruling classes behave. A large proportion of the population are now involved in the management of the democratic government, servant drones, as Plato calls them, I guess we'd call them bureaucrats. These drones serve the powerful people in the government, and are subject to the will of the ruling class. The drones grow fearful and obedient, and do not allow anyone to speak out against the government they serve.

This manifests as the perpetual class struggle between rich and poor, and gives rise to the people's hero, (a demagogue), a politician who cries for justice, who stands for the people's rights, for economic reform, for land reform.

The ruling class then have one of two choices, either assassinate this popular leader, or become subject to him. They usually exile or imprison him, but he always comes back, stronger than ever.

The people's hero, in order to inflame the passions of the mob, will gather a bodyguard around them to protect themselves from the violence of the ruling class. The people will demand that their leader be allowed to have this guard, “Let not the people's friend be lost to them”, they will say. This bodyguard will incite violence against their enemies, killing or exiling all who oppose them.

Then the people and their demagogue will finally overthrow the established ruling class, and install their tyrant hero, who, in defence of the freedoms of the people, will actually strip away all the people's rights and establish himself as dictator, taxing the people harshly so that they have no strength to oppose him. He will start facile wars in order that the people should require a leader, he will murder his enemies, and when he can get no more support from the people, he will hire fake mobs to protest for his cause. All who serve him, do so compelled by fear of death.

Thus tyranny is born from democracy, democracy from oligarchy.

*

So...reading Plato reminded me a lot of the rise of the Nationalist Socialist Party (the Nazi's) in Germany during the nineteen thirties, and of the people's hero gathering his private police force, which became an army, which marched over Europe, east and west, spreading chaos and destruction.

When I read The Order of the Death's Head: a history of Hitler's SS, by Heinz Höhne, I had in mind that the patterns of tyranny might have repeating echoes, and that by studying the details of past examples, I might understanding something of the other kinds of despotism in the modern world. I worry about my own country, Thucydides. A looming Australian tyranny seems to be rising from the cesspit of Parliament House, and it is as ugly as the nineteen thirties, motivated by similar fears and prejudices, though it is not yet as bloody.

Plato is just the context though, a way to understand the broader meaning of the Peloponnesian War. I really want to talk about some of these speeches included in your book Thucydides. They are really my favourite parts of your book. Sure the battle descriptions have their charm, but the speeches - the intellectual concepts, and the clever, cunning, manipulative use of wartime propaganda language is fascinating.

And, just like Plato, it all feels very familiar.

*

PS....
Zebulon: Music of an Invisible Enclave (Kickstarter Promo #2)

Dear Readers,

Music of an Invisible Enclave - promo video

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-from her review of the album

I would like to tell you about my solo album : Music of an Invisible Enclave.

Kickstarter Campaign

After nearly three years recording and mixing this eighteen track album, I just need a little help to get the project over the finish line. If you are interested, a $10 pledge to the kickstarter campaign will buy you the album in pre-sale, which will be released in February 2019, available in digital download format at zebulonstoryteller.bandcamp.com Your pledge will help me cover the cost of having the album professionally mastered.

I have previous albums already available through Bandcamp and my Youtube channel has a mixture of music, dance and poetry videos.

Also, the blog Music of an Invisible Enclave is the story of the nine months it took to do the initial recordings, documenting my my life as a musician playing in several bands, working with dancers and poets and teaching middle eastern drumming, all in a little city by the sea.

The blog, Indivisible From Magic is sort of a weird sequel, but it's mostly about magic. Writing this blog helped me finish writing my new novel, The Hangman Tree, which is still a few years from release. (The third draft is done, it's in editing as I write this). I'll tell you more about the novel later.

So if my music interests you, I would be grateful for your support. If you could share the kickstarter promotional video amongst your friends and family, that would help a great deal too.

Thank you,

Morgan (Zebulon) Taubert

...Now, on with my letter to Thucydides...

*

Book Two, Letter Nine

To Thucydides, on men, women, and the tyranny of democracy

Part 1 of 6

Dear Thucydides,

I've been reading your book, The Peloponnesian War every night for months, (the 1954, Rex Warner translation). I thought at first that it was a ten year story, but that is only the beginning. You describe twenty one years of war, including the six tumultuous years of so called 'peace' in the middle. It is an epic tome of the conflicts of many nations, struggling for dominance, or independence, in the long aftermath of the failed (and still famous) Persian invasion of Greece by King Xerxes. This will likely be a long letter, you certainly deserve a carefully considered response, but I'm not going to just flatter you with praise for your book which, in your own words, “...is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever.” I've got some hard things to say as well.

I'm going to start with a couple ideas that I don't think you'll like, but here goes.

Democracy can be just as tyrannical as any other form of government.

and

Men are not the stronger sex.

To begin:

Dying in battle seems easy. It doesn't take much to be courageous for a moment, to fight for, and die for your country, or your beliefs.

Being a woman in time of war is hard. Staying alive is hard. Keeping the children fed is hard, ignoring one's own needs in favour of the next generation....that takes true strength. Submitting to the violence of one's enemies, and living on for the sake of one's children, in forced hostage marriages or slavery, is hard. Ancient warfare was every bit as horrid as its modern equivalent, and in typical fashion, the civilian populations suffer just as much than the soldiers.

Yet in twenty one years, in 541 pages, you mention women only three times, Thucydides. To be fair, you hardly mention civilians at all, yours is a political and military story that only lightly touches on the experience of those not serving in armies, but still, women are everywhere you go in the world, but they're not in your book.

This got me thinking about the notion that the absence of evidence, is not the evidence of absence. So, in the almost complete absence of any reference to women in your book, I can see a great sea of information hidden behind the question: where are the women?

If you read between the lines, it's all there. The women are at home suffering through the famine and plague and pillaging armies who “lay waste to the land”, as you so often repeat.

What does that mean? Lay waste?

I can imagine it, and if you are a woman, I'm sure you don't want to imagine it, but that is what this letter is going to be about, among other things.

Men are not the stronger sex.

I say this because men go on and on and on about how strong and brave and courageous they are and I just keep thinking...the gentleman doth protest too much. Books and scrolls and treatises and volume after volume of writing about the courageous acts of heroic men in battle, but the more I read the more I sense a smoke-screen, a beautiful, romanticised smoke screen for a code of behaviour that is in actual fact, the opposite of its professed virtue. Now I know there's the issue of high levels of illiteracy among women throughout history, resulting in very few of their stories being told, but many other authors go to great lengths to include women in their histories. Herodotus, who wrote before you, goes out of his way to find stories of women, and Xenophon, who wrote after you, does the same, as does Plutarch, and he loves your book.

But you don't write about women and I ask myself why? I don't have a straight answer, but my thoughts do seem to take me down a certain path.

I suggest that:

Men are weak who submit to the violence of their natures.

A true gentleman man is known by his restraint.

Yet ...

Men are frequently obligated, in the name of courage, valour, freedom and dignity, to submit themselves upon the altar of Phobos, and join forces with other men to fight in wars all over the globe. Men are frequently required by law to commit violence upon their fellow man, when called upon by their sovereign or government to do so. Some wars are fought for reasons that to me, seem good, or if not good, then at least just. Other wars seem nothing more than the piteous outcomes of political greed, or corporate meat grinding battles for resources. The restraint and gentleness that defines a man in civilian life, becomes a burden and obstacle in times of war. (Although Marcus Aurelius seems to offer an alternative....I'll write to him soon)

Your story Thucydides, is not about gentlemen. It isn't even about heroes and villains. I'm actually very impressed by your seemingly fair and balanced telling of the conflict between democratic Athens, and Sparta (which was a sort of fundamentalist, religious, oligarchical monarchy, I suppose). Though you are Athenian, I don't feel like you pull any punches when you describe their callous , criminal behaviour towards their subject states, and despite having been exiled part way through the war, and living among the Spartans afterwards, I do not feel that you favour them overmuch either, showing their insecurity and corruption in equal measure with their nobility, cleverness and honourable conduct.

But where, Thucydides, are the women?

Book Two, Letter Eight

Early Spring 2018 CE

Dear Herodotus, Father of Lies.

I have another story for you...

There was this girl, sixteen, I was twelve, we were friends in the way only lonely kids can be, when they live on the same street in the same dusty town. Awkward, secretive, honest, weird...

She said one day

I wanna' show you something, but I've only been practicing for a while, so...

We went out to the edge of town, where old cars and farm machinery had over the years been dumped, and together they rusted at the bottom of a little ravine. It was a wild place, an abandoned place. We felt safe there, hidden from the prying eyes of grown ups.

She showed me her hand, and, taking a deep breath, she closed and opened her fingers, only when they opened, there was a glowing orb there, floating a few centimeters above her palm. A green-blue-black light-ball of energy.

What is it? I asked

It's a door.

Huh?

She poked her finger into the orb, and pulling it out again, a small flower was stuck to her skin. Its tiny yellow petals were streaked with white veins and it smelled faintly of honey.

Oh...a door. I get it.

I didn't get it.

Then she put her whole hand into the doorway and pulled out a crumpled piece of yellow paper, thin and ragged with age. She offered it to me, and smoothing it out I read aloud.

A-door A-wall A-window

A-fold A-crease A-wrinkle

A-secret-secret-

Another way Another day

A-door A-wall A-window

A-fold A-crease A-wrinkle

She moved away pretty soon after that, and I haven't seen or spoken to her since, but I kept the yellow paper. And though I do not know if my memories are real, that paper and its poem, are in themselves, A-door A-wall A-window.

*

Herodotus, there are events in my life, sometimes important things, of which I have no memory at all. I can be told stories about these events, but I do not have even the glimmer of recollection. If real things might be missing from my memories, might I not imagine new truths to fill those gaps?

If these fictions I create for myself are of benefit, can they really be called lies?

There was a girl, but not really, and she showed me a door, but not really.

In truth, I imagined her, and I imagined the door and I imagined the flower and the poem, but now they are in the world, drawn forth from the Pandora's box in my mind, and their impact upon my character will be as much or as little as I allow them to be. If useful truths can be found in these lies, what is the overriding value of facts?

Do facts really matter, when what we build our lives around are stories?

Neither true nor untrue.

There are things that I do remember though. There was a boy.

I was that boy...

...and you, Herodotus, were a boy once, growing up in a city on the coast, Halicarnassus, dreaming dreams and writing stories.

Thank you Herodotus. I'm re-reading your Histories, and finding more and more stories you didn't include. In my next letter I will tell you the story of the Secret Scythian Wedding, which I'm sure you'll love. It's got adventure, and conflict and...well, you know.

'til next time.

Morgan.

*

PS. I discovered a funny coincidence to do with a building in your home city. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was built just a little while after you lived Herodotus. This picture is, amusingly, a miniature scale model of the building, located at Miniaturk in Istanbul.

In the city of Melbourne, in my home country of Australia, stands The Shrine of Remembrance, a war memorial, the design of which was inspired by the design of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

On the Stone of Remembrance inside the shrine, are engraved the words, “Greater love hath no man.” At 11am on the 11^th of December each year, a shaft of light shines though an aperture in the roof to illuminate the word, “love.”

Shrine of Remembrance

Herodotus, with two and a half thousand years between us, somehow you've never been so close.

Book Two, Letter Seven

To Cicero, on making the world a better place.

Late August 2018 CE

Dear Cicero,

We can't change the direction of the wind by blowing hot air, but the trees we plant can give us shelter from the storm.

I've been thinking a lot about change, and about the problems of government and the persistent quandary of tyranny. The story of dictators being voted in by popular demand comes up again and again in the ancient books, and it seems that nothing has changed in the modern world. Fascism wears a different mask in each country it invades, and demagogues are always ready to manipulate the public through the reasoning of fear and insecurity.

Nothing has changed in thousands of years in regard to this problem, so the question seems to be one of survival. How do I survive these years of growing unrest? How do I survive this ever more insidious terror that grips the policies and actions of my nation?

Can I make the world a better place?

What is my duty to the world, or to those around me, to fight injustice, or to struggle against cruelty, violence, greed and vice?

I will quote you, Cicero, from Book III, of your treatise On Duties:

“Will a good man lie down for his own profit, will he slander, will he grab, will he deceive? He will do nothing of the kind.

Surely the reputation and the glory of being a good man are too precious to be sacrificed in favour of anything at all, however valuable and desirable in appearance. No so-called advantage can possibly compensate for the elimination of your good faith and decency and the consequent destruction of your good name. For if a human exterior conceals the heart of a wild beast, their possessor might as well be a beast instead of a man.”

There are few everyday opportunities to display the valour and goodness you praise, Cicero but plenty of opportunities for the other end of the spectrum. May a man set limits on how far he will go, for the sake of his world? I could argue that your own struggles against Marc Antony were futile, certainly harmful to yourself. Could you have served your family, your friends, Rome itself, by restraining your anger, and submitting to one kind of tyranny, in order to prosper in another kind of freedom?

What is one's duty?

Well, I planted cucumbers yesterday, and played my ukulele, and made a salad for my family to eat and I went to work today and pruned the roses in time for their spring renewal. I write every day, and I share my writing so that others may benefit from the insights I am gaining from these ancient texts. I hope that these insights are of benefit to the world. It is a strange pursuit, writing letters to the dead in order to better understand the living.

Because I cannot change the wind by blowing hot air, but the shelter I can give my kith and kin, with my kind words and actions must be worth something. So as the worst people of my nation lead us in their violent ignorance towards war and civil strife, I drink tea with my woman and warm my hands on the cup, warming my heart by the fire of our love.

Not even you, Cicero, could prevent the collapse of the Republic.

So I will learn from your lessons, (your failures?) and drink tea in peace, for as long as that peace shall last, and plant trees for those who come after me.

*

Spring is almost here

and I am still waiting

for winter to arrive

My friends and I, we dance in the shadows, waiting for our time to bring forth music and light and laughter and to change the world by making it more beautiful.

“In such an ugly time, the only true rebellion is beauty” Crimethinc

When I stand in the night, staring through the branches of gum trees up into the endless worlds of outer space, I am reliably overwhelmed with the feeling of REALNESS. The darkness, the cold, the trees and the earth and the light of distant stars – all real. Then there is the loneliness, but not a painful loneliness, just a satisfaction of solitude, a relaxed state of body knowing that I cannot be seen, cannot be judged, cannot be confused by the conflicting opinions of philosophers, or family or friends..it's just me and...

Well, it's just me and you.

Just me and the world as it is.

Without commentary, without description, and if I let go enough, it is a world without names.

That nameless emptiness is so beautiful to me that even thinking about it begins to create a sensation inside me like a great canyon in my chest, filled with wind, a vast and stony red desert, brilliant and resonant with sound. The wind inside me, that's what I'm really talking about. The empty, cleansing, nameless wind inside me that unwinds my stress, that hollows out my bones and makes me sing like a flute.

When I am empty, and can be with the world AS IT IS, then I have no doubt. That nameless world that I experience, is a world I can believe in. It is always itself, never duplicitous, never misleading, always honest – the natural world is perfect and at ease with itself. Mysterious, but not secretive. Serene, but not bored. Nameless, but likewise so full of implied meaning as to make of every moment an encyclopaedia of philosophic and poetic wisdom.

I stand humbled before the vastness.

Humility.

Recently, through the discovery that a vast array of my preconceptions about the world were inverse to the actuality, I found within myself a knee bending humility as I stared up into the staggering vista of my own ignorance, and saw how very small was my knowledge.

Have I told you of my recurring dream since childhood?

Holding one grain of granite in my right hand, and a one tonne block of granite in my left, I know how many grains are in the one tonne block. Then I look up to the night sky and I know how many stars there are and …

I wake up screaming.

It hasn't always been that exact dream, but every variation on the theme has pointed towards the same truth.

So today, I bend my knee and bow down before my ignorance. I empty myself of the shame of my ignorance, and instead embrace the liberation that is the acknowledgement of infinity.

I acknowledge that infinity goes both ways, in and out.

As above, so below.

*

Thank you Cicero, it is always good to talk to you. A bit of an odd letter, but it is of foremost importance that I be honest with you, dear friend. I've been busy reading Thucydides and Xenophon and Marcus Aurelius, so I haven't gotten around to read your all of books On Duties. Some days I can sit in bed and read for hours, and some days I must work. My beard is growing longer, as is my hair. Spring is nearly here, but I am still waiting for winter to arrive.

The world is dry, but with you, my cup runs over.

Morgan.

Book Two, Letter Six

To Cicero – Death Sentence

Dear Cicero,

What's two thousand years between friends, right?

You can hear me fine can't you, I can certainly hear your voice bright and true, still reverberating outwards from the forum as if yesterday were today. Your voice is full of love and noble striving and hope and some days your voice is more clear than my own thoughts.

I have been re-reading your biography, written by Anthony Trollope, getting swept up chapter after chapter in the adventure and importance of your life, in the value of your deeds and the wisdom of your principles. I could cheer sometimes at your triumphs and also I will admit to feeling your tears wet upon my cheek as again I read of the death of your daughter. I don't know why it effects me so, I have not known such loss, but I can feel your heart beating in my chest, Cicero. Your happiness and agony are alive in my blood.

But approaching the last chapter, my mind rebels against the words I read, as I turn the pages closer each night towards the tragic conclusion of your mortal story. I find myself excited, thrilled at your heroic deeds, and every moment, hoping, that this time the story will end differently. Half believing that this time you will escape! Wishing that I missed a part of the story last time I read this book, and that you didn't really die at Caieta.

But Romeo and Juliet die every time. Their story never changes either.

Yet your tragedy Cicero seemed to have had so many opportunities for a different ending. You contemplated sneaking into Augustus Caesar's house and slaying him on the hearthstone in revenge for his betrayal of you, but your fear of torture persuaded you to run for your life. Having lost everything, you still found reason enough to live, even if the instinct to fear pain was your only motivation. You did not submit to the violence of your desire for revenge, but sought only to live on in the hope, yes HOPE, that some good may yet still come of your life.

You fled, sailing to Caieta, aiming for the shore near a temple to Apollo, wherefrom a flock of crows descended upon your little boat and pecked at the sail ropes. The ill omen was felt by everyone on board, yet for some reason you went ashore to your villa to rest, draping your toga over your face as you collapsed on the couch. But the crows followed you, perching on the window sill and cawing tumultuously, one bird landing beside you and ever so carefully lifting the cloth from your face in an attempt to wake you. Your servants, ashamed that beasts of the wild should try to help you while they only looked on, picked you up and dragged you to your carriage, taking you towards the sea on December seventh, forty three years before the birth of Christ.

It would probably have been a cold day. Your servants took you along a path through the dark shelter of the woods towards the coast. The assassins, following close behind, came to your villa and found it empty. They might have lost your trail, they might have turned away and you might have escaped, had it not been for Phililogus, a freedman of your brother. Your brother Quintus, who had only days prior been slain, along with his son, while they packed what they could before leaving home for the last time.

Philologus betrayed you to your enemies, though I imagine that he was tortured by the men whose duty it was to slay you. I will not recount again the grisly moment of your death. We've talked about that in the past, but for this one last detail.

Of the two assassins, there was one Popilius, a tribune. Popilius, whom you had years before defended in court. Popillius whom you had acquitted of the accusation of parricide, a crime for which he most certainly would have himself, been executed, or at best, exiled.

Popilius whom you had saved, was ordered to stand witness at your assassination.

On a cold day in the woods, near the sea shore at Caieta.

Every time I read the story I hope that it will end differently.

But it doesn't.

*

I apologise old friend, for the gloomy airs I wear. The sun has been gone for days and each morning I find a new white hair has grown in my ever lengthening beard. I will write more when I am feeling better, for I have been reading many books and wish to discuss them with you, even if only briefly. I will not send this letter until I have written something else from a better mood.

Thank you for understanding....

*

A day with a saw in my hand, clearing away the old, crooked branches of a fig tree, cutting away the woody shoots sprouting like spears from the soil all around the trunk, opening the heart of the tree.

Opening the heart.

I cut back the wicked thorn branches of a winter green Bougainvillaea. In summer it is a riot of pink flowers. In winter, it is a thorn ridden tentacle beast disguised in green leaves.

Cutting back the reaching talons of a disguised beast

I haul away the discarded wood.

In the distance a bonfire roars the song of conflagration, but I cannot hear it. My rough hands are cut and bruised, my nails black rimmed with the paint of earth.

I know that the sun is up there, in the sky somewhere, and if I dive deep into my imagination I can feel the warmth of Spring on its way. But it is not here today.

Not here today at all.

...but if I dive deep into my imagination,

dare I say it?

Happiness glimmers at the bottom of the well, a second sun in the earth that mirrors the sun above me that I cannot see and cannot feel and sometimes do not believe is real.

But there it is, happiness looking up at me from the bottom of the well.

*

I am ever grateful, dear Cicero, to know you. It is enough sometimes to know that you lived and strove to be a good man against all odds, and to struggle for what you thought was right. Even though you failed. Even though you were killed for your efforts. There was never any other way for a man such as you to meet his end.

In this, my thirty eighth year upon the earth, I look at pictures of your tomb and weep.

Where have all the good men gone?

Morgan.

Book Two, Letter Five

To Xenophon on the Education of Cyrus

Dear Xenophon,

I'm going to start with Bukowski. Ahh... Bukowski.

The miracle

To work with an art form

does not mean to

screw off like a tapeworm

with his belly full.

Nor does it justify grandeur

or greed, nor at all times

seriousness, but I would guess

that it calls upon the best of men

at their best times,

and when they die

and something else does not,

we have seen the miracle of immortality:

men arrived as men,

departed as gods -

gods we knew were here,

gods that now let us go on

when all else says stop.

Xenophon, I had you all wrong. I thought you were just an old soldier, telling tales of old glory and military custom. You wrote books on history and horsemanship. I thought that's all you were. Then I found out you studied with Socrates, and then I found the Cyropaedia.

Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus is a work of such magnificence and inspiring beauty that it....hmm, no that's not how I want to start this. I don't want to just heap praise upon you like a springtime romance. I want to really feel this one out. I want to ask...what is this story really about?

The wisdom of children? Or the fictions that are more important than truths? Cyropaedia is beautiful, inspiring, complex, funny and humbling. The way I could describe it, is that it is a philosophical work woven through a sort of fictional biography of a real king, but most of the things you describe never really happened to him. It is a dream, a utopia. It is a tale of grace and kindness and love and good judgement and the learning of hard lessons, of grandfathers and fathers and sons. It is these fictional truths that really amaze me. “Never was there a king so wise nor subjects so happy in their subjection.” This is a tale painted with the romance of war, royalty, loyalty, nobility and intellect. It is a beautiful lie, and we know it is a lie, but we still want to believe in the ideals the characters live by.

A hero like your Cyrus is a philosophical fairy story, and like all good fiction stories, it is about truth. It is a dream. The wisdom of the boy prince is a glowing coal, a glowing goal in my imagination and I have eagerly awaited the chance to tell some of those stories to my son. So I guess that's what I'll write to you Xenophon. This is how I would tell my eight year old son, one of the stories from the young life of Cyrus, King of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Of course, I am going to steal without compunction from the H.G. Daykins translation I have, adapting and shortening it to my purpose.

*

                                                               Cyrus: King of Persia

           

There was a boy named Cyrus, a prince who knew how to see the truth, and all his life he used this power to see through to the heart of people and of problems. He knew how to give men what they wanted and rewarded those who served him well. He was both clever and kind, cunning and compassionate, honest and poetic. Such was his spirit that as a man he inspired magnificent service from his friends and allies, who were all willing to stake their lives on his cause and who competed to outdo each other in heroism and generosity towards him.

In his youth, Cyrus lived with his grandfather Astyages, the King of the Medes. The two loved each other very much, and the King would never refuse the boy when he wanted to keep company with him. They would talk about everything, enjoying each other's wit, intellect, sincerity and warmth.

Cyrus loved to ride his horse and to shoot a bow and throw a spear, and he worked hard to be the best among his friends, but also the most humble. He would always encourage his friends on their hunts in the royal parks, cheering their successes and laughing with kindness at their mistakes. But as time went on, Cyrus and his friends grew weary of the poor beasts in the little hunting grounds of the palace, and wanted to hunt wild boar and deer in the forests beyond the palace. His friends begged him to seek permission from the king, for Cyrus was known to have great skill in persuasion, and if the king allowed it, the boy's parents would allow them to go also. But Cyrus was reluctant.

“I cannot think what has come over me,” Cyrus told his friends, “I cannot speak to my grandfather any more; I cannot look him straight in the face. If this fit grows on me I fear I shall become no better than an idiot. And yet, when I was a boy, they tell me, I was sharp enough at talking.”

His friends retorted, “Well, if you can do nothing for us in our hour of need, we must turn elsewhere.” When Cyrus heard that he was stung to the quick. He went away in silence and stirred himself to put on a bold face, and so went to see his grandfather, though not without first planning how he could best bring in the matter.

Cyrus stood before Astyages the King, his grandfather, and asked: “If a slave ran away, and you caught him, what would you do to him?”

The King replied: “I would clap irons on him and force him to work in chains.”

“And if the slave returned of his own free will?” Asked Cyrus.

“Why, I would give him a whipping, as a warning not to do it again, and then treat him as if nothing had happened.” said the King.

“Then you should prepare your birch whips, because I am going to run away and go hunting in the wilds with my friends. When I return you can punish me any way you see fit.”

“Very kind of you to tell me beforehand,” said Astyages, “And now listen, I forbid you to set foot outside the palace grounds. A pretty thing” he added, “if for he sake of a day's hunting I should let my daughter's lamb get lost.”

So Cyrus did as his grandfather ordered and stayed at home, but he spent his days in silence and his brow was clouded. At last Astyages saw how bitterly the lad felt it, and he made up his mind to please him by leading out a hunting party himself.

When out on the hunt, riding together through the forests and hills, the king was overjoyed to see the way that Cyrus would applaud his friends successes and laugh at their mistakes, but all without the slightest touch of jealousy. Their time together was so wonderful that ever after, whenever Astyages would go hunting, he would take Cyrus, and never failed to take his friends as well, “to please Cyrus.”

Thus did Cyrus spend his early life, sharing in and helping towards the happiness of all, and bringing no sorrow to any man.

*

There is something important about the beautiful lie.

Without these romanticised versions of reality, all we have is reality.

I want to believe in a boy Prince who was wise and kind and special. I want to believe in the idea that a noble and virtuous man might exist, or has existed, and that I might strive to be like him. Inspired by his virtue. Inspired by the fantasy.

Is that what this is? Fantasy? Is that what philosophy is? The dream of a better world where we understand ourselves and we understand each other and though life is full of ignorance and suffering, we can be wise enough to make good choices. We can be generous enough to give without expectation.

Thucydides said that history is philosophy taught by example.

Xenophon, I ask you this. Is Cyropaedia a speculative philosophical fantasy novel? A utopian lightning rod? I think that you want me to believe in something. You want me to believe that such a man as your Cyrus could exist, and you want me to believe that this imaginary prince, with his noble virtues and generous spirit, might teach me something about being a man.

Reading The education of Cyrus is an opportunity to re-live my own childhood, and take on all the lessons of this Prince among Princes, this King of Kings, mixing them in with all my own experiences, and from that intermingling, a new wisdom might emerge, through me.

It's not enough to just say that the wisdom of the ancient world is alive through these books.

The wisdom must come to life through me. Today.

Whatever wisdom there be.

Thank you Xenophon.

PS. My father was a hunter, so I suppose that I was drawn in particular to this story, in part, because of that. I remember the wild goat horns above my bed as a child, and the wild boar tusks in the lounge room. There are more stories there, but they are for another time.

                                                                                       
                                                  My Father, with the first wild boar he ever hunted.             

                                               My Father, much later in life, hunting Pheasant.