Caesar Augustus (63BC-14AD)
Over the past year or so, I have
been reading ancient Roman history and biographies of notable Romans of that
time. I have done so out of interest and at the recommendation of my doctor, a good
friend who insists I need some mental popcorn to balance the nonfiction staple
of my literary diet. Rather than the fiction he recommends I have opted for the
grandeur that was Rome!
I finished my most recent book, Augustus,
this morning, in my bed. I mention where I was to express how grateful I am to
be retired and have the time to read as much as I want, of what I want.
Happily, government reports and white papers, emails, congressional inquiries,
immigration law books, have not appeared before my eyes since November 2007. With
that and having in mind my friends many of whom are also in their good, old age, I offer
below some excerpts from the last pages of Augustus. Pages that focus on the emperor’s final days, his summing the counts of his personal life and the
accomplishments of his rule. As background, a good summary of Caesar Augustus’s
life may be found here.
Augustus was written by John Williams, a
native Texan who was educated at the University of Denver. Williams obtained
his Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Missouri in 1954, and thereafter
returned to the University of Denver to teach literature and creative writing. Williams’s
previous books include Butcher’s Crossing (1960) and Stoner (1965). I have read
neither.
Augustus was published in 1972 and
received the (US) National Book Award in 1973. This book fits best in the
category of historical fiction. The contents are factual but the book is no
straightforward narrative of events through time. Its format is that of a
collection of fictional letters and journal entries by members of Augustus’s
family, friends, comrades in arms, enemies, and the prominent poets and
historians of his time.
The entries are arranged in an out-of-sequence
manner. For example, in one instance you will be reading a letter from 22BC and
next a journal entry from 4AD. Then you might go back to 20BC. This took some
getting used to for a non-classicist like me, but I adjusted. The method was effective
for narrating events and for conveying deeper meanings from the reflective
depictions and reminiscences of the writers.
Not being deeply knowledgeable of
European classics and geography, I found using Google Maps and Wikipedia
useful. I even listed the main characters in chronological order of the dates
of their lives. One does not need to go to these lengths to enjoy and learn
from this book. It is a true page-turner of mostly short entries written in a
clear style, but a notch-up characteristic of the literati of that time. The
editors and proofreaders of this great work were meticulous.
From the first page, I simply let
my eyes flow and mind relish the vivid imagery of Rome, its people, and their
Empire. I did not mark this 305-page masterpiece with marginalia until I reached
its final forty pages or so. I then began very minimally placing brackets and asterisks
in the margins. I would have begun marking key events in the earlier pages when
I was younger. But now, I wanted to focus on writings about living, meaning, dying;
understandings of such arrived at by Roman men and women at the close of long, virtuous
and often unvirtuous lives.
It is from Augustus’s final
letter my excerpts begin. This one is to historian, biographer, and the emperor’s
friend, Nicolaus
of Damascus. Nicolaus was a Jewish historian and philosopher and intimate
friend to Roman client King
Herod the Great of Judea. The following are for all of my friends and readers,
young and old.
“It is fortunate that youth never
recognizes its ignorance, for if it did it would not find the courage to get
the habit of endurance. It is perhaps an instinct of the blood and flesh which
prevents this knowledge and allows the boy to become the man who will live to
see the folly of his existence.” (p. 271)
Then, on page 292, deep into his
letter to Nicolaus, Augustus writes:
“As one grows older, and as the
world becomes less and less to him, one wonders increasingly about those forces
that propelled him through time. Certainly the gods are indifferent to the poor
creature who struggles toward his fate; and they speak to him so obliquely that
at last he must determine for himself the meanings they portend. Thus in my
role of priest, I have examined the entrails and livers of a hundred beasts,
and with the aid of the augurs have discovered or invented whatever portents
seemed to me appropriate to my intention; and concluded that the gods, if they
do exist, do not matter. And if I encouraged the people to follow these ancient
Roman gods, I did so out of necessity rather than any religious conviction that
those forces rest very securely in their supposed persons. . . .
Perhaps you were right after all, my dear Nicolaus; perhaps there is but one
god. But if that is true, you have misnamed him. He is Accident, and his priest
is man, and that priest’s only victim must be at last himself, his poor divided
self.” (pp. 292-293)
~ ~ ~
“I have come to believe that in
the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond
whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge
or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be
no other than the poor thing that is himself. I look now at my thin shanks, the
withered skin upon my hand, the sagging flesh that is blotched with age; and it
is difficult for me to realize that once this body sought release from itself
in that of another; and that another sought the same from it. To that instant
of pleasure some dedicate all their lives, and become embittered and empty when
the body fails, as the body must. They are embittered and empty because they
have known only the pleasure, and do not know what that pleasure has meant. For
contrary to what we may believe, erotic love is the most unselfish of all the
varieties; it seeks to become one with another, and hence to escape the self.
This kind of love is the first to die, of course, failing as the body that
carries it fails; and for that reason, no doubt, it has been thought by many to
be the basest of the varieties. But the fact that it will die, and that we know
it will die, makes it more precious; and once we have known it, we are no
longer irretrievably trapped and exiled within the self.” (pp. 293-294)
~ ~ ~
“It has occurred to me since that
meeting with Hirtia that there is a variety of love more powerful and lasting
than that union with the other which beguiles us with its sensual pleasure, and
more powerful and lasting than that platonic variety in which we contemplate
the mystery of the other and thus become ourselves; mistresses grow old or pass
beyond us; the flesh weakens; friends die; and children fulfill, and thus
betray, that potentiality in which we first beheld them. It is a variety of love
in which you, my dear Nicolaus, have found yourself for much of your life, and
it is one in which our poets were happiest; it is the love of the scholar for
his text, the philosopher for his idea, the poet for his word. Thus Ovid is not
alone in his northern exile at Tomis, nor are you alone in your far Damascus,
where you have chosen to devote your remaining years to your books. No living
object is necessary for such pure love; and thus it is universally agreed that
this is the highest form of love, since it is for an object that approaches the
absolute.
“And yet in some ways it may be
the basest form of love. For if we strip away the high rhetoric that so often
surrounds this notion, it is revealed simply as a love of power.” (p. 295)
~ ~ ~
“[A]fter all there has been some
symmetry to my life, some point; and that my existence has been of more benefit
than harm to this world that I am content to leave.
“Now throughout this world the
Roman order prevails. The German barbarian may wait in the North, the Parthian
in the East, and others beyond frontiers that we have not yet conceived; and if
Rome does not fall to them, it will at last fall to that barbarian from which
none escape—Time. Yet now, for a few years, the Roman order prevails. It
prevails in every Italian town of consequence, in every colony, in every province—from
the Rhine and the Danube to the border of Ethiopia; from the Atlantic shores of
Spain and Gaul to the Arabian sands, and the Black Sea. Throughout the world I
have established schools so that the Latin tongue and the Roman way may be
known, and have seen to it that those schools will prosper; Roman law tempers
the disordered cruelty of provincial custom, just as provincial custom modifies
Roman law; and the world looks in awe upon that Rome that I found built of
crumbling clay and that now is made of marble.
“The despair that I have voiced
seems to me now unworthy of what I have done. Rome is not eternal; it does not
matter. Rome will fall; it does not matter. The barbarian will conquer; it does
not matter. There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die; the
barbarian will become the Rome he conquers; the language will smooth his rough
tongue; the vision of what he destroys will flow in his blood. And in time that
is ceaseless as this salt sea upon which I am so frailly suspended, the cost is
nothing, is less than nothing.” (pp. 299-300)
Other recent Roman histories and
biographies I have read and recommend include (Kindle versions):
The
Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca by Emily Wilson, 2014.
Dying
Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James S. Romm, 2014.
SPQR:
A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard, 2015.
Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays, 2002.
Rome’s
Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar by Rob
Goodman and Jimmy Soni, 2012.
