In the Footsteps of the Legions

On Hadrian's Wall.
I'd been looking forward to this moment for almost my whole life.

As a boy, in my daydreams, I would walk that wall as a Roman, guarding the border, guarding the Empire . . .
Or, also as that boy, daydreaming, I'd climb and cross that wall as a Celt or Pict, seeking to drive away the invaders . . . .

Rough Duty in Virgil's Roman Epic: A Great Read

Rough Duty in Roman-Britain: A Good Read

Nautical Know-How

"Before you try to steer,
learn to row."

--Aristophanes

via Peter Green
and his novel about Lucius Cornelius Sulla,
Roman dictator,
The Sword of Pleasure

Roman Holidays?

Or, CLASSICAL DOGGEREL (circa 1995)
     And "doggerel" means fairly bad poetry, or wannabe poetry, or something that looks a bit like poetry, but isn't quite.  I've written my share of sea-doggerel.  Here's a piece of classical doggerel from an old notebook . . . though at the bottom of the blog-entry, there's a chorus from a really cool dysfunctional would-be love-song: "Rome Fell."

NOR SWIMS*
     Neither reads
A fool the old
Roman gibe
But Caesar
Swam, wrote
Books, scrolls
Historical, political
Who knew
The Rubicon, the die
Once only, but cowards
Cleopatra loved
Egyptian grain
Against odds
King Nicomedes 
Too, but after
Laurels, bald
Truths too few
Posterity, can't
Plan for it:
Paine's idea,
Burke agreed.
Julius, wily
Julius: he
Flourished
For a while.

--I just found this doggerel in an old notebook from grad school, the notebook itself entitled "Dioscuri" and dated "1995."  I've lightly edited this piece, something that had grown out of my reading in Julius Caesar, of course, but Byron too--however unnamed--as well as Shakespeare, Talbot Mundy, English Romantic era political theory, and Roman history.  Barton's Sorrows of the Ancient Romans is probably the source of the Roman proverb, the Roman definition of a fool*--He neither reads nor swims--which I've presented previously here.

About that time I also wrote a song called "Rome Fell," but I can't quite recall nor find those old lyrics.
I can sing the chorus for you:

ROME FELL
Like I fell for you
ROME FELL
You can walk through the ruins
ROME FELL
Empires never last
ROME FELL
Who cares about the past?

(REPEAT!)

(REPEAT!)

When In Rome . . .

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.
------------William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (4.3)
The character Brutus is speaking.


Never let the future disturb you.  
You will meet it, if you have to, 
with the same weapons of reason 
which today arm you against the present.
------------Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book VII
(Staniforth translation)


The gladiator takes his counsel in the sand.
------------old Roman proverb
(Barton translation)

The Roman Definition of a Fool

"He neither reads nor swims."

I just found that in an old notebook from 1995.

I'm wondering where I found that characterization originally. In Horace's odes? In Juvenal's satires? In the histories of Tacitus or Livy? Could Virgil have composed such a characterization in The Aenied or The Georgics? Or, was it quoted in Barton on gladiators or in Sprawson on swimmers? Barton--where is that book--provides that other wonderful proverb: "The gladiator takes his counsel in the sand." Does Sprawson even cover the Romans? Horatio on the bridge? Cloelia across the Tiber? Or was that Macauley in those Latin lays?

In life, Julius Caesar was a strong swimmer, much stronger than in Shakespeare's version (though Cassius is probably lying anyway). Did Caesar pause in the assault on Gaul to offer such a thought?