Before I move on too far from having read, and been deeply moved by, Taylor Caldwell’s ‘A Pillar Of Iron’ - the story of a noble man of his day - and sink too deeply into the murky waters of our day, with this ‘The Big Short’ kind of atrocious business, a word about that earlier story, of the Follies of Man.
* “The family did not live in Arpinum, itself, but with Arpinum they enjoyed the Roman franchise, and so were Roman citizens.” They lived on a river island nearby. “The area had none of the wild color of southern Italy and none of its gay exuberance. The people were calmer and colder and spoke of Rome disdainfully as a welter of polyglots. Here the spirit of Cincinnatus and the Republic still lived. The inhabitants spoke of the Constitution, which the Roman Senators and the courts were continually violating without challenge from a supine urban populace. The people of Arpinum remembered the old days when a Roman was truly fearless and free and revered her gods and practiced the virtues of piety, charity, courage, patriotism, and honor.”
* Cicero’s father embraced him when he was still a small child, enjoying life on their island. “My son, he thought. Where will you be, and what will you be, when you are a man? Will you flee the world as I have flown it or will you challenge it? Above all, what will the world of men do to your spirit, which is now as a cup of clear water? Will they make your spirit turbid and murky, filled with the offal of their evil imaginings, as the Tiber is filled with offal? Will they taint it with their lies and their malices, as a well is tainted by the bodies of serpents and dead vermin? Will they make you as one of them, the adulterers and thieves, the prideless and the ungodly, the brutal and the unjust, the false and the traitors? Or will you be stronger than your father, and surmount them all, despising them not in silence as I have done, but with words like burning swords? Will you say to them that there is a Force that lives not in weapons but in the hearts and souls of righteous men, and cannot be overthrown? Will you tell them that power without law is chaos, and that Law does not come from man but from God? What will you tell them, my son?…
“Tullius lifted his eyes to the sky and prayed. He prayed as the ‘old’ Romans prayed, not for wealth or lustre for his child, not for fame and glory and the snapping of banners, not imperial power or lustful ambition. He prayed only that his son would be a man as the Romans once knew a man to be, just in all his ways, resolute in virtue, strong in patriotism, ardent in piety, courageous in all adversity, peaceful of temper but no secret server of the strong, protector of the weak, prudent in decisions, ever for justice, temperate and honorable.
“Tullius offered his child to God, pleaded for mercy for him that he might be kept from dishonor and greed, cruelty and madness, that he avoid no battle but engage in it in the name of right, and that he fear no man ever, and fear nothing but that or him who can maim the soul. He prayed as fathers had prayed before, and was comforted.”
* Marcus as a boy told his younger brother one day during their playing together that he wanted to be a lawyer. “‘There is nothing nobler than law,’ said Marcus. ‘It distinguishes men from beast, for beasts are ruled only by instinct and man is ruled by the law of his spirit and so is free.’”
* When a young lawyer, but because of his fervent belief in the Roman law he had already become dangerous to ambitious men, Marcus Tullius Cicero once told his young friend Julius Caesar, one of those Romans so inclined, but pretending not to be, in talking about a client: “‘I ask only justice,’ said the lawyer. ‘If (the guilty party in the case) is exempt from the law, then it is because he has bribed someone of importance. Are we to be ruled by favor, and not by impartial law? By exigency and extortion, and not by honor?’”
(Clearly a man to be feared by the corrupt…)
* Cicero “grieved endlessly for Scaevola.” (His lawyer mentor, who was assassinated. A common occurrence in a Rome that was in the throes of falling from a Republic into an Empire.) “But Scaevola seemed still to live, and was not dead in his thoughts…His sardonic spirit ws always at Marcus’ elbow, his voice always in his ears.
“’Sic transit Rome,’ he told Marcus in a dream. ‘Do not be distressed. Rome will perish, but your memory shall endure.’
“I prefer not to be a memory, thought Marcus on awakening. I prefer to be potent. I prefer to be a Roman to the last day of my life, and I hope that life will be long in the service of my country. I have no desire to encounter Cerberus and to cross the Styx. So, I will be prudent. One should, perhaps, hide virtue.”
(But, of course, he could not. And, of course, the drama of his times played its way out to its foretell- able end. In the meantime, there was this sort of climate, inducing his angst:)
* “The winter insensibly began to flow into early spring. Marcus sedulously practiced law. At times he was filled with despair and a sense of the ludicrous. He argued Constitutional law before magistrates while he well understood that the old Constitution had been abrogated and an iron one of mercilessness and militarism substituted. He invoked the honor of judges, when he was aware that honor was dead. Often he felt that he was a grotesque actor in a ridiculous comedy written by a madman. The judges, hypocrites all, would nod seriously, for they liked to believe that they were still men in a world that had become chaotic and filled with beasts Sometimes Marcus could hardly refrain from bursting into wild laughter. Still, he thought, was it not better for a criminal and a liar to pretend to honor law and justice than to have him openly defy it and sneer at it?” (Wow…)
* (In talking about Sulla “and his gray dictatorship”:)
“There was, in man, a suicidal impulse that led inevitably to madness and death and fury when unrestrained by principle and rectitude…”
(Here, I was reminded of the observation of Will Durant: “Inhibition - the control of impulse - is the first principle of civilization.” We higher primates - that is to say, we souls in such meat suits; spiritual beings having a human experience - still have in us/our programmed brains the impulse to do in the other guy before he does us in, after having learned, by much experience, that this world is a world of such beasts. Yet to be tamed. Needing advanced souls to incarnate to help guide us through the rough waters of our passages about Earth.
One such soul, to help Man find his way in the darkness:)
* “Aristotle compared God with a perfect crystal, glowing with light, the Giver of life to which all life must return…”
* “(Marcus’s publisher’s) eyes filled with tears. ‘You are a brave and resolute man, dear Marcus,’ he said.
“‘Not so brave, not so resolute,’ said Marcus. ‘I have, all my life, walked the prudent way, the way of lawyers. So, in many respects, I have betrayed my country., for he who does not speak out when honor and anger command it is as guilty as any traitor. Cowardice is often the companion of lawyers..
“‘Atticus, I will do what I can. But when governments are determined to defame, disgrace, and murder a hero they do so with impunity in these days. For, we are now ruled by men and not by law.’” (Indeed.)
* (Marcus, arguing a case before the dictator Sulla, and explaining why a mob had come to hear him propound; albeit having been rounded up to do so:)
“It is said, lord, that Romans love justice before all things, and they have come to hear justice. Law is like eternal granite. It is not an airy butterfly, a creature of the idle breezes, or a wanton of the whimsies and passions and vindictiveness and envies of little men. It is the soul of Rome. The people cherish it more dearly than their lives.”
(And yet, they sold their birthright for a mess of pottage…it was ever thus. As the lessons come, and go. And come again…
* (As to this idea of the incessant return; and specifically in relation to the murders going on at this time in this day:)
“Marcus, who had despised and feared Lepidus, who was of an unstable and violent character, was nevertheless greatly disturbed over the murder. It was another example, to him, of lawlessness overcoming law in the name of expediency…”
* (On the verge of giving up on Man, Marcus Cicero had an epiphany:)
“Suddenly Marcus’ languor and pain diminished and he was filled with a brilliant courage and new fortitude, as if a divine Hand had touched him.
“‘I had thought,’ Marcus mused, ‘that only Rome was important, that her death would be the death of all mankind. But now, suddenly, I know that even if Rome passes away God will remain, and all His plan for humanity. Nevertheless, that does not give me warrant to cease my personal fight on evil, for those who fight evil are the soldiers of God.’”
* (But still, while vacationing in Egypt, trying to get his strength in the constant battle back, he cries out at one point, that:)
“‘my heart hungers and thirsts for hope!’”
As does mine, Marcus Tullius Cicero, hero of his times.
And fortunately,
I think that we are finally
there.
It has been a long and winding road.
But it has had its purposes. And its ultimate Purpose:
to separate the wheat from the chaff.
