In Plutarch’s Life of Phocion, the author points out that Demades the orator excused his own behavior because “he was in command of a shipwrecked state.” While Plutarch thought that too much for Demades, he had no problem saying it was true for Phocion. “[M]uch power must be granted to Fortune in her conflicts with good men: instead of the honour and gratitude which are their due, she brings base censure and calumny upon some, and so weakens the world’s confidence in their virtue.” (see link to Plutarch below)
Plutarch, paragraph 2: “so often words of truth and soberness sting and exasperate those who are in an evil plight, unless uttered with kindness and complaisance”…” and so a city that has fallen on unfavourable fortunes is made by its weakness too sensitive and delicate to endure frank speaking, and that at a time when it needs it most of all, since the situation allows no chance of retrieving the mistakes that have been made. Therefore the conduct of affairs in such a city is altogether dangerous; for she brings to ruin with herself the man who speaks but to win her favour, and she brings to ruin before herself the man who will not court her favour.”
Plutarch compared Phocion to Cato the Younger, a man that “fared just as fruits do which make their appearance out of season,” a man whose virtue was “out of all proportion to the immediate times.” “[B]oth were good men and devoted to the state,” although their states were at slightly different points in their decline.
Part of Plutarch’s approach was to hone in on the differences between Cato the Younger and Phocion:
“But the virtues of these men [Cato and Phocion], even down to their ultimate and minute differences, show that their natures had one and the same stamp, shape, and general hand; they were an equal blend, so to speak, of severity and kindness, of caution and bravery, of solicitude for others and fearlessness for themselves, of the careful avoidance of baseness and, in like degree, the eager pursuit of justice. Therefore we shall need a very subtle instrument of reasoning, as it were, for the discovery and determination of their differences.”
Paragraph 5: not an excellent orator like Demosthenes but “a most powerful speaker.”
Phocion “saw that the goddess Athena was a goddess of war as well as of statecraft, and was so addressed.” (an modeled his behavior on)
Phocion “arrayed himself against their [the Athenians’] desires and impulses.” Which is why they chose him as general 45 times. He thought he made a bad argument when the people accepted what he had to say.
He scolded the Athenians when they thought he had been too timid, robbing them of a military victory: “Ye are fortunate,” said he, “in having a general who knows you; since otherwise ye had long ago perished.”
“Phocion, then, wrought no injury to any one of his fellow citizens out of enmity, nor did he regard any one of them as his enemy; but he was harsh, obstinate, and inexorable only so far as was necessary to struggle successfully against those who opposed his efforts in behalf of his country, and in other relations of life showed himself well-disposed to all, accessible, and humane, so that he even gave aid to his adversaries when they were in trouble or in danger of being brought to account. When his friends chided him for pleading the cause of some worthless man, he said that good men needed no aid.”
Phocion was generally for acceptance of Philip’s demands on Athens when they were ‘kindly,’ but always wanted to know terms before accepting them (guidance the Athenians rarely took).
After Philip’s death, Alexander sought a private council with Phocion because of Philips’ admiration for the Athenian. Phocion supposedly got Alexander to “turn his arms away from Greece against Barbarians.” (after the razing of Thebes). Note: I didn’t see anything on Phocion in Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander.
Phocion rejected a present of one hundred talents of silver from Alexander. Alexander’s messengers, seeing how meagerly Phocion lived, pressed the gift on him more. Phocion rejected it again, saying “it will do me no good to have it; or, if I use it, I shall bring myself, and the king as well, under the calumnies of the citizens.” Alexander was “vexed,” thinking the rejection was of him and not just the gift. Later, Alexander granted certain wishes from Phocion, in particular regarding certain men freed.
Mixed messages on adopting Spartan lifestyle: appropriate for some men, not for others (?).
Phocion’s message to the Athenians: “[B]e superior in arms or…be friends with those who are superior.” If you can’t defeat Alexander, then be on friendly terms with him.
Phocion’s ability to keep those with level heads in office during Antipater’s overseeing: “But nevertheless Phocion successfully pleaded with Antipater for the exemption of many from exile, and for those who went into exile he obtained the privilege of residing in Peloponnesus, instead of being driven out of Hellas beyond the Ceraunian mountains and the promontory of Taenarum like other men in banishment. Of this number was Hagnonides the public informer. Furthermore, by managing the affairs of the city with mildness and according to the laws, he kept the men of education and culture always in office, while the busybodies and innovators, who withered into insignificance from the very fact that they held no office and raised no uproars, were taught by him to be fond of home and to delight in tilling the soil.”
“[H]e would rather be found suffering wrong than doing wrong” To which Plutarch chastises Phocion: “Now, such an utterance as this might seem honourable and noble in one who had regard to his own interests alone; but he who endangers his country's safety, and that, too, when he is her commanding general, transgresses, I suspect, a larger and more venerable obligation of justice towards his fellow citizens.”
Phocion’s sentence of death viewed akin to that of Socrates: “But Phocion's fate reminded the Greeks anew of that of Socrates; they felt that the sin and misfortune of Athens were alike in both cases.”
Source: Plutarch’s Lives, “Phocion” From the Loeb Classical Library, Lives, Volume VIII, Translated by Bernadotte Perrin, 1919.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Passage through the Red Sea by Zofia Romanowicz
Passage through the Red Sea by Zofia Romanowicz
Translated by Virgilia Peterson
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. (1962)
Originally published in Polish as Przejscie Przez Morze Czerwone
(3) The night before Lucile visits, Narrator has a dream in
which Paul is alive (and Lucile is asleep beside her)
(7) The narrator’s life: “I had so mismanaged without her”
Originally believed Lucile “Could help me straighten out my life,” not to “rake up the memories we had in common.”
Originally believed Lucile “Could help me straighten out my life,” not to “rake up the memories we had in common.”
(8) Narrator counting on “the renewal of our old intimacy
when we met”
(9) Misreading the dream of being with her in camp—not
realizing it was a “premonition of disaster”
(10-11) Shared bread from Micheline—defensive, excuse at the
ready, ashamed for several reasons. Acting animalistic—can’t refuse despite it.
We find out later the Narrator brings back eczema after visiting Micheline’s barracks,
which Lucile gets and it disfigures her fingers and hand.
(15) Paul—Lucile’s husband.
Narrator loved him, too.
“[T]he living were no less lost to us in those [camp] days,
no more accessible to us, than the dead. Narrator writes to Lucile, asking her
to come visit: “no longer bear this burden alone.” The past still overwhelmed
her…she hasn’t moved on.
(16) Narrator longed for the reunion with Lucile, “the
reunion that I had longed for all these years.”
(17) concerned that Philippe “could ruin our reunion,”
though she wasn’t sure how he could
(18) “Carpe diam, carpe horam” was Philippe’s motto
(20) In camp: “an underlying will to survive”
“feeling distraught and defenseless” at the thought of
meeting Luicile
(21) Her pellet and the feeling of freedom (or power) it
promised/gave her
“No one
knew it was there, as they transported us for a night and a day, and still
another night and still another day, while through the cracks between the
boards of the freight car we peered at the unidentifiable landscapes we were
passing, and it seemed to us, not as though they were transporting us farther
and farther, but as though they were sinking us deeper and deeper, even deeper
than the depths. No one could possibly suspect that I was, in fact, free; that
I was there only for as long as I was willing to remain, since at any moment,
if I so desired, I could with one gesture, with one single little gesture, turn
the handle of that door of mine and remove myself from this collective fate,
from this transport, changing my body into something over which no living soul
would ever again have power.”
She never took the “pellet,” giving up her coat when the
prisoners arrived at the camp. Even though she lived through the ordeal, the
experience marred her and her captors still seemed to have power over her.
Narrator’s normal life is to “go on enduring instead of
living” which is “all the more tragic for being normal and routine.”
For a while, the pellet’s existence is what gave her courage
and hope. This was replaced by Lucile.
(24) “Perhaps…I had been overwhelmed by an instinct stronger
than reason or will”
When she saw Lucile she decided not to commit suicide
(25) They saved each other’s life through “loving
reciprocity”
Narrator loses her identity—“From then on, in my mind, it
was not ‘I,’ but ‘we’>”
(26) Curiosity caused her to be human.
Narrator and Lucile knew of each other before the camp.
(27) The links and attraction made all that would happen
easier to bear
(28) The pellet was “my veto of all that was happening, my
refusal to accept it.”
Was the Narrator expecting the same saving grace from Lucile
a second time when inviting her to visit?
(29) Narrator is dependent on Phillipe
The only object in her room she had feelings for “was a
framed print pictureing the passage through the Red Sea.”
(30) Those fugitives in the painting had two foes, though
they didn’t necessarily realize it: the parted sea waiting to crash over them
and Pharaoh’s army.
Likewise, does Narrator recognize one foe but not the other?
She identified with the lost Jew on the Egyptian shore—of
little faith, hesitant. In her hesitation, “I challenged the patience of the
waters.”
(32) What had been burdening Narrator—guilt, betrayal
(33) Contrast between the life Narrator was living vs. the
life she lived in amp.
“In those
days, there was a sharply drawn line we would not cross, the line beyond which
there was no point in survival, no point in waiting for deliverance, a line
pushed back, it is true, to the extreme limits of human endurance, but all the
more rigid therefore, and it was Lucile who, as judge, kept watch over it for
us both. She herself was ready to die ,if necessary, at any moment, whereas I,
the weaker of the two, the more vulnerable, held on, precisely because of my
cowardice and weakness, more desperately, and sometimes beyond the point at
which we had decided that life was not worth living.”
Lucile orders Narrator to “Let go!” (an order she had given
her earlier to drop a rotten turnip she had foraged and was ready to fight to
defend it.
(34) Letting go could also mean sinking to inhuman depths in
exchange for survival. Seeing others succumb to those depravations “set us on
edge…because it was a warning.”
(35) Human ties allow us to see ourselves in others and help
us act in a way we find acceptable.
There’s a price for deliverance, and for Narrator and Lucile
some prices were too high.
Small things can change the desire to cling to life, to
decide to survive.
(36-7) Phillipe—the same as scraps she wouldn’t acquiesce to
or sink to lower depths?
The thought of Paul being alive, of hearing his step, haunts
Narrator.
(46) Narrator initially missed Lucile at the air terminal
due to “trivial circumstances”
They met at camp by chance, by trivial circumstances, too
Her courage deserted her, as when “something one has been
wanting for too long, something one has counted on too much, comes within
reach…” (ellipsis in original)
(47) Memory of Lucile lost to reality when they met.
“uneasy to see Lucile as she really was”
(48) “memory is one thin and reality is another”
remembrance ¹
existence
(49) memory can “cast its distant shadow”
The history gradually unfolds
(51) Lucile left the hut they had found after leaving the
camp, while Narrator stayed.
Separated on day of liberation.
(53) Lucile “deserted me without a word”
(55) “An instant had changed my life, far more drastically
than war or even deportation.”
When Narrator “meshed” with Lucile, “That was the first, and
indeed the only, time in my life that I was able to become part of someone
else, to become inwardly one with someone else.”
(56) Being together in camp was a “necessity,” but for
different reasons for both of them
That “meshing” was also the Narrator being let into Paul and
Lucile’s world.
“By taking over my
life and joining it to hers, Lucile was saving us both.”
(57) Meeting Lucile at the air terminal, Narrator “found her
again, but again she was beyond my reach. Between us stood the transparent but
impenetrable wall.”
(59) seeing Paul and Lucile kiss—something attainable for
Narrator, but still outside it.
Gave her a feeling of hope, but also deprivation.
(60) Lucile shared with Narrator “her advantage over me”
(61) Though Narrator already “felt” those facts, an thinks
Lucile “did me the greatest wrong”
Lucile
tells Narrator about being a woman. “Lucile, in giving me all she had to give,
all her riches, was at the same time robbing me of even more. She was closing
all other doors to me, just when the door that led to Paul had already been
forever closed.”
“[T]hat
night she determined my fate and her own.”
(64) Rationalizing Lucile telling her about love, etc. “Once
a thing has been put into words, the words themselves have a way of changing
it; it becomes something outside and separate, it takes on a shape, a sound, an
image of its own, and one is somehow freed of it, somehow rid of it.”
Is that what Narrator
is doing with her story? Is she freeing herself of what she has done?
(65) Narrator feels her relationship with Philippe is
treacherous. She is incapable of breaking down a barrier between them, and
Philippe has “no wish to break it down.”
(66) Narrator wanted to be part of Lucile’s life after the
war (and still dreams of being a part of Paul and Lucile’s world), but that was
her own disappointed hope. Lucile didn’t want that. Narrator can’t let go while
Lucile moves on, and Narrator feels betrayed.
(67) Can’t force fate—when pressed hard, “It takes revenge.”
Narrator realizes she got what she wanted while in the camp
instead of “in better times.”
Fate gave her what she wanted “ahead of time.”
Freedom was an embarrassment, useless. “I did not know how
to choose anything, any purpose, any direction; I did not know how to allow
myself the exercise of choice.”
(69) Phillipe—“takes” Narrator in the same way he takes food
or drink; not to help her but to satisfy himself.
Repetitious nature of story-telling. Repeating phrases,
revisiting parts of her story now that the reader knows more of other
circumstances around them, tying current discussions with those that have
passed.
Almost half the book passes/leads up to Narrator and
Lucile’s first post-camp meeting.
Narrator seems to enjoy living her life through Paul and
Lucile (spying on them, following them)
(70) Lot’s wife—has to watch even knowing (or in spite of)
what will happen
(73) Red Sea painting reference: “[W]here the last of the
Jews, the most mistrustful of them, still hesitated on the Egyptian shore.”
(75) On meeting Lucile, Narrator can’t decide who seemed
“the more lost, the more dead” (Paul or Lucile)
On their meeting, Lucile seems to mock Narrator in front of
a man she met on the plane. Lucile is surprised Narrator looks so well despite
the desperate tone of her letters.
(77) There’s a “false note” in their meeting and on the taxi
ride. Narrator feels Lucile’s meeting with the man was “in secret, … and right
then by that lie, Lucile had severed the ties between us.”
Lucile was the axis around whom the Narrator revolved.
(78) Narrator was wanting to “lean on” Lucile, but Lucile
was not cooperating.
(80) Narrator lives under the delusion that being together
with Lucile would somehow bring Paul back, or at least the feeling he was back.
(85) When “that whole awkwardness of our meeting had
disappeared—one word from Lucile, her outstretched hand, had been enough to
enable me to yield to my joy at last.” But that word or gesture did not come.
Narrator’s joy, in the camp and now, had been “unfounded because
it was not shared.”
(88) Narrator describes their shared duties of guarding
meager possessions in the camp, and always fear of separation.
(89) All the strangers in the camp: “In the dormitory, lined
with tiers of bunks up to the ceiling like the shelves in a beehive, were
huddled people, thrown together by chance, hating each other, yet condemned to
sleep in this intimacy. They quarreled over blankets and bunks, they fought
over a piece of bread. Until the last siren sounded, until the shouts of the
night patrol were heard under the window, the tumult and the wrangling went on,
the tumult of a great upheaval in the midst of which our bunk, spread as always
with our blanket, was like an oasis.”
Inmates strive to leave “some trace” of their life since,
“We counted for so little, our life was so uncertain.”
(90) “Together” was the Narrator’s word (or motto, or
mantra). Together is how she liked to think of herself and Paul and Lucile,
whether in the camp or in the park.
(90-911) “[F]ar up ahead where the lines began, a terrifying
voice called out the numbers one by one, and from beyond the walls, above while
we could see the highest branches of the birches swaying, volleys of shots rang
out.
“Those who
were summoned to die moved away without looking back. Tomorrow, or even in the
next moment, our turn might come, but what did it matter, providing we were
together?”
Narrator savors being able to judge Lucile since she felt
she was always judged and need to apologize.
(91) After Lucile stayed out all night: “The moment had
come, not to begin again, not to live a second time, but to judge.”
Quote: “Forget the camp!” Lucile had said to me that evening
before she went off to keep her engagement. “When will you ever make up your
mind to escape it child?”
“with that evil clarity of the nighttime that dramatizes and
poisons everything”
(92) Something about Narrator’s look showed “some touch of
sadness.” Narrator has aged a lot since the camps. Lucile still looks young.
Narrator gives Philippe credit “for having taken an interest
in me all this time.” (because of her poor looks)
(93) Narrator appreciates Lucile’s interest in dressing her
in nice clothes, but “she had no interest in changing me; all she was doing was
to dress me.”
(94-5) Narrator was always passive, acquiescent…letting
Lucile dress her, letting Lucile and Paul plan for her. Once out, Narrator had
no interest in making decisions. “[N]othing…could ever match the future we used
to plan for ourselves.”
Lucile chides Narrator to put the camp behind her.
(95) “clarity of nighttime”
“It was then, for the first time, that I was afraid of my
own impulses.” (wanting to cut up Lucile’s dresses)
(96) Red Sea reference: Narrator is incapable of moving
while everyone else passed through the sea.
Her dream with Paul—Paul offers her the “little pellet of
death.”
Quote: “So this is all it is,” I thought with relief…
(97) Quote:
It was
then, for the first time, that the absurd and saving idea struck me that it was
wholly in my power to put an end to that life flowing secretly along its hidden
course beneath her skin and that I, more than anyone else, had the right to do
so. It was in my power to put an end to Lucile, to fasten her here forever,
beside me, before time moved on again, before the earth revolved, while we were
still, however insufficiently, together, alike, and before we became total
strangers to one another, each for herself alone.
I was more
and more certain, indeed I was convinced, that this was the real purpose and
meaning of our reunion, that from the beginning it had been predestined, and
that it was the only way to make everything clear and be done with it.
(98-9) The first night was bad, but the next day was better.
The visit had ups and downs, “dreams mingled with reality.”
(100) Narrator feels Lucile is recanting all she said in the
camp.
(Reflecting after the following events occur) “Now that
everything is over, now that I am myself again, that I am finally and forever
appeased…”
(100-101) “Everything one touches proves tainted and
condemned from the start. So what is there left to us, other than that which
prompts us to recognize the inherent flaw in ourselves and in everything, and
to accept it? But willing as I was to accept any flaw in myself, I was unable,
I had not the strength, to tolerate a flaw in Lucile.”
(101) “We had survived, and we doubtless do not survive in
order to demand the fulfillment of what we once promised ourselves in order to
be able to survive; we survive in order to live. It does not matter how we
live; what matters is to be alive.”
In the camp, despite their captivity, they felt a type of
freedom. What could the guards do, kill them? They would get to heaven faster
if they did.
(102) But what if paradise was “meaner, less perfect?” Or if
it doesn’t exist at all? Since we can’t be sure, Narrator prefers to “burn and
thirst forever” instead of accepting the mirage of “a higher and more just form
of existence.” (end of sentence is from 101)
(103) “What a mockery it is, when our desires come true.”
Longing, therefore, is futile. Desire, then, turns into
shadows.
(104) Lucile’s mutilated hand and fingers are from eczema
that Narrator brought into their barracks. It not only punished Lucile, but
Narrator, too.
(105) Lucile had avoided contact in bed with Narrator when
Narrator had eczema. Probably afterwards, too (at least it sounds like she did)
Narrator was a child that “needed comforting, counseling.”
But “Lucile was contemptuous of sentimentality” in the camp
and afterwards.
(106) Narrator—little natural dignity in her except from imitating
Lucile. In comparison, the “natural dignity that Lucile seemed to embody, which
was our salvation.”
Narrator tried to please Lucile and win her approval,
receive “demonstrations of affection I so craved.”
(107) Did Lucile’s “present way of life, … her rather
cynical new wisdom” come from the scars?
She felt the need to “make a more definite break with what
was too painful for her, with what bound her too closely, that she had so
promptly rid herself of me, without delay, on that very first night of freedom,
before there was time for us to form any new habits of a new, free life
together.”
(108) “I alone…clung to that imaginary future, to that hope,
and only because of it had I been able to keep afloat.”
Lucile must have abandoned hope in the future or even desire
it.
Narrator feels safer thinking of (living in) the time of the
camps.
Quote:
“And
suddenly, with the wild longing of those who are not truly saved and who feel
the taste of the heavenly rain on their tongues, I went back once again with my
whole being into that other time, into that circle of suffering and damnation,
that closed and therefore unalterable circle, forever safe from disillusion,
cut off by the unknowable succession of days and nights, by the hope of that
illusory [thirst-quenching] rain. I went back to what had been or what had only
seemed to me to be.”
(109) Lucile had broken with the past and with Narrator “in
order to ensure her own salvation.”
(110) Upon gaining their freedom:
“This consciousness of having recovered free will threw us
into confusion, since for years we had been accustomed to walking in step,
unthinkingly, obeying orders, and our joy at having escaped was mixed with
anxiety, even with a certain sadness, a somewhat melancholy feeling of
uncertainty, of having been abandoned, as though we were the first human beings
to walk the earth.”
(111) Evidently Narrator and Lucile had escaped from the
camp relocation.
They saw a husband and wife farming and tried to hike to their
field.
(112) However their attempt to hike to their field took them
off course, putting them in another part of the woods.
They accidentally stumble on a different camp during the
night.
(113) They hear a call for help. Narrator would have left,
avoiding the call for fear of losing their fragile freedom.
(114) Lucile chose “the better, the harder way” and returned
to the camp, which turned out to have been opened.
That’s one reason Narrator longed to see Lucile, to have her
around her again. Quote:
Without her, I could only choose
what was less good, without her there was no life with which I could be
content. In her lay all my hopes and all my potentialities. It seemed to me
that I had only to be with her, to follow and imitate her, for the right choice
to force itself upon me, the choice of the harder way, to be sure, but also of
the better way the way one can remember without remorse.
Yet it was that very night—there
are times when I am sure of it—that something cracked in Lucile. But I did not
realize that the Lucile who left me was another person, someone who too heavy a
load had broken, someone who, after that, would refuse every burden.
(115) They find a man, who had died after his call for help,
in the remains of the camp.
(116) Lucile still takes the dead man’s hand. They bring a
mattress out to him and try to dress his wounds.
(117) It was “as though the salvation of the world, as
though our own salvation, depended on him.” (and bringing him back to life)
Narrator falls asleep, waking alone except for the dead man
nearby.
(118) Narrator catches up with Lucile, who was leaving
through the camp gate. The “slight weight” of the dead man had been enough to
break Lucile, and cause her to desert Narrator that night (although she had
already detached herself emotionally fro her).
Narrator feels upbeat and the world full of promise.
“Someone had died in the night, but that was no doubt the last death in the
world.”
(119) “Then we started off together, seemingly together,
that is, but actually already separate, walking straight ahead, fleeing from
what had been—though we were carrying it within us—fearing what was to come,
dodging here and there, choosing paths, choosing fates, seeking people out and
then running away from them, dozing with our backs against tree trunks, until
we found the refuge of the wooden hut.”
The hut makes Narrator think that it was like having a house
of their own (or at least the first step toward that).
Lucile leaves during the night, but she had already left
earlier in the day because of “the dead man she had been unable to save,
together with everything which, for her, was dead, dead and ended, and which,
if she was to go on living, had to die for her, had to end had to cease to have
any importance whatever.”
(120) Narrator “tests” Philippe and Lucile by dropping back
as they walked, waiting for them to turn around and notice her lagging. They
don’t…the reassurance she wanted did not come.
“But as the people between us, between those two and me,
began to form a living and increasingly thick wall, little by little there
arose in my mind a wicked thought, a wicked hope that drove out the other:
that, on the contrary, Lucile would not turn around, that they two would do the
rejecting, that they would go off together, ridding themselves of me. That was
how I wanted it; there was something within me that desired the worst.”
(121) Narrator thought “that Lucile had only to appear for
Philippe to disappear.”
She had tried to break with Philippe when she knew Lucile
was coming. Philippe had ignored previous attempts (fleeting, desperate) to
break things off.
(122) “But this time, I meant it” in order “to put myself in
order.”
She felt she had been submitting without love, consenting
without desire.
(124) Narrator paints Philippe as a “cynical seducer who had
cast his spell over me and was holding me in humiliating bondage” to Lucile.
Narrator notes “It was not very just,” even though she notes he debased
“everything to the level of a vulgar game” and she “had agreed to play the game.”
She tries to excuse herself by noting her relationship was
her “one link with the world, my one way of having a part in it, my one
security.”
(125) Small thanks for him finding her an apartment and a
job.
Again she mentions that being fair now “can no longer be of
any use to anything or anyone, now when in my case everything has been decided,
crystallized in its unforeseeable finality” as she desires “to understand more
clearly.”
(126) Narrator feels her “whole present life was also a
betrayal of the death that had spared me, washing me up as on a shoal, after
having lifted me so high.”
Narrator believes there was a barrier between her and
Philippe (and anyone else?) on the night Lucile, in the camp, told her the
facts of life. She believed there was a paradise (like between Paul and
Lucile?) and she “would never renounce completely the hope of attaining it.”
(127) Narrator notes how Lucile and Philippe are “in tune,”
“akin.”
They didn’t even have “the decency” to notice she wasn’t
with them.
Philippe showed up unexpectedly at the apartment door.
Narrator slams the door in his face.
(128) Narrator had not told Lucile about Philippe yet when
he showed up at the door. She had postponed it so much that “he had ceased to
exist.”
(129) Philippe’s first words made him “intolerable” to
Narrator, who described him as a “fat beetle.”
Philippe simply opened the door with his key.
How narrator describes her life as full of misery,
hypocrisy, uselessness, and had become unendurable.
(130) Narrator mentions again that “Lucile had only to
appear for Philippe disappear.”
To Narrator, Lucile defined the line of demarcation for
hanging on, surviving.
TO Narrator, she “was the enemy, for already they [Philippe
and Lucile] had become allies.”
(131) “[W]e are slow
to accept the truth we fear.”
Narrator wishes she could have met Lucile halfway
(distance-wise) in order to hide everything about her life.
Imagery of nakedness being pure, while being clothed is
corruption.
(132) Narrator feels she is diseased.
A “film of hope that covered my heart” would “tear apart”
during Lucile’s time with her.
Lucile was needed to “reconcile me to myself,” and Narrator
felt she could only hold contempt on herself—“there was no place for Lucile.”
She forgave weakness in herself, but if Lucile were weak it would be a
catastrophe for both of them. Even worse, Lucile didn’t feel guilty about what
she done.
Narrator has held an idealized view of Lucile because of all
she did for her in the camps. Now when she meets her and sees she has faults,
that view is destroyed and sends her off the deep end.
“[S]he had withdrawn everything on which, long ago, she had
made me build, so there was no reason for her to feel guilty.”
(132-3) Even worse was when Narrator woke up next to Lucile,
and Lucile pulled away.
“There had also been that morning when everything had been
laid bare enough for me to discover another, an intolerable, a grotesque truth,
when Lucile, awakening beside me with an expression I had never seen before,
with the face of a stranger, drew away from me and wrapped herself more closely
in the sheet to avoid touching me. That was what she used to do, so many years
ago. With a look and a smile, she was picking up the thread of those years
again, but the look and the smile were such that, hiding my wounded hand,
folding around it a corner of the sheet, which reddened at once, I too drew
away, with tears of revolt against the present and against the past.”
(133) Narrator thinks she wiped out all of this from her
memory because she was anxious to do so. She’s also concerned about Philippe’s
role”
“Instead of compromising me, Philippe had raised me in
Lucile’s estimation.”
(134) Narrator is ashamed of Philippe.
Narrator’s two days with Lucile finds her attitude toward
her shifting, “from contempt to remorse to adoration.”
Narrator assumed Lucile would hate Philippe as much as she
did, that they would be “adversaries,” “enemies.”
(135) Of course they weren’t. Their “formal ballet,” a
“grotesque dance for two,” were assigned parts. Philippe thrived on their
masquerade…”enchanted, intoxicated” by it.
(136) “I was too slow in realizing what was happening.”
Tries to join in, but feels everything has been “trampled down.”
“I was suddenly certain that this had already happened to me
before.”
(137) Narrator fills in past events, with Philippe in the
role of Paul. “Paul did not exist. He had never existed. Lucile had never
existed, either. People had come between us and hidden us all from each other;
they had replaced us; we were all replaceable. We had all been replaced a long
time ago.”
Gives up on everything. Narrator felt completely
replaceable.
“There was no passage through the Red Sea, there was not
even an opposite shore.”
(138) “What happened, happened through me. Essentially, I
was the cause of it, and if I were to be judged, I would certainly be found
guilty.”
(139) “I wanted it, I longed for it, but still it had to be
within my power to accomplish it and it had to end by being more than mere
intention or that little gash along the hollow of my palm.”
(140) “Afterwards [after the first murder] no one could ever
again take the body for more than it is, for more than a mere receptacle, and
such a fragile receptacle, the content of which—a little breath—disappears when
it suffers the slightest damage. It is possible to kill, and it is so easy that
this most astounding of all things has long since ceased to astound us and
everyone resorts to it.”
(141-2) “If the slain were to rise again, if it were
impossible to kill, and if we had to wait till our bodies fell away from us of
themselves and abandoned us, then the impotence of hatred would be equal to the
impotence of love, and dominance the same as slavery.”
(142) “Thank God, we always had, we always felt beneath our
skin, that invisible little pellet, that blessed flaw in the receptacle
containing us, enclosing us; that key which no lock, no enclosure, could have
resisted. They could kill us, it was true, but they could not compel us to
survive for a single day against our will, they could not drag us across the
line we ourselves had drawn.” That line may be redrawn, but “the line existed
and depended, not on them, but on us, on a gesture, not of theirs, but of
ours.”
Which is funny since Narrator sleepwalks through life, doing
everything either against her will or at least not with her acceptance.
“All violence, therefore, is canceled out by the acceptance
of it, and no change of direction is needed to escape, since escape is always
possible by going out to meet it.”
This seems monstrous. Violence is done to us only if we
accept it. It seems like she’s excusing her on (soon to be described) violence.
She has become little better than her captors in the camps, saying she is
helping Lucile, who doesn’t have the strength to do it herself.
(143) Narrator says she wish she had been shot as they were
leaving the camp, as those lagging behind or trying to escape were shot. “I,
for one, was hoping they would shoot.”
It was at this point that Narrator had helped Lucile, saving
“her once in spite of herself” (142). “For some time, Lucile had no longer been
her usual self.” She was exhausted, seemingly ready to “be crushed, canceling
out with a single stroke the years of our hard-won, secret independence.” (144)
(144) Narrator had planned and caused their escape to
happen, leaping “off the road, into the night, into the forest.”
(145 ) “The wind carried the echo of the shots and also the
great collective lament, the tramping of that thousand-footed monster, enslaved
to its last breath, writhing in agony on the road a few yards from where we
stood, still so close as to be almost brushing against us, still trying to
devour us again, and only slowly dragging past us the last of its coils.”
That feeling of being free, being saved: “Life was no more
than an appendage to salvation.”
The three of them (Lucile, Philippe, Narrator) are in the
car, Narrator in the back (apparently asleep). She can see the looks, gestures
between the other two in the front.
(146) “Indeed, they were not far wrong in assuming that I
was asleep. The truth is that I had never fully awakened since that night
before Lucile’s arrival, when the dream that had been living in me for so many
years had returned to find me and carry me back into its own time; it was this
dream that had set in motion, had put into gear, all that was to happen to me
thereafter. I was asleep, this was nothing but a dream.”
(148) They eat at the same inn where Philippe and she had
first met for a “bang-up meal.” Narrator is upset that Lucile: “It was not
jealousy that made me sit there in silence, appalled at the sight of Lucile
picking up where I had left off instead of helping me to free myself, taking my
place instead of taking my hand to haul me to the opposite shore.”
Narrator wants to convey to Lucile how special that “first
evening I spent with Philippe, the only good one,” something that had saved her
to a certain extent, using it to “justify to a certain extent my subsequent
defeats and compromises, for that evening seemed to me to have been a mitigating
circumstance.”
“But now that whole scene, instead of merely being described
in a conversation, was being re-enacted before my eyes in an inexcusable
parody.”
Narrator seems to have long stretches of her life as well as
certain incidents where everything is dreamlike, like she’s not fully
participating in what is going on around her.
She often visualizes what she should do, a “gesture” she
should make, long before she actually does it. This is what she feels in the
back seat, and has for a while since Lucile arrived—a particular gesture she
should make.
(149) “I started to make the gesture, but once again, only
in my mind. Huddled in a corner of the back seat, I was bathed again in the
sweat that comes of immense effort or of immense fatigue.”
Narrator reaches from the back seat and turns the steering
wheel “with all my strength.” She doesn’t remember if they cried out or not.
(150) Lucile’s hands reach over and are placed on top of
hers, “in a gesture that was not meant, I am certain, to repulse me, that was
not made in self-defense, but was on the contrary intended to show her full
consent.”
Narrator does this not so Lucile to stop being herself,
instead “to stop her, to hold her back, so that she would cease not being
Lucile.”
Narrator is telling this story a month after the events
happened.
(151) Narrator comes to: “I knew that I was alive and
probably I was glad.”
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn Tempest
Brutus: The Noble Conspirator
by Kathryn Tempest
Yale University
Press, 2017
Both a biography of Brutus and a study of how he has been
presented in literary works from his time to the present.
Marcus Junius Brutus (c.85
– 42 BC), later Servilius Caepio Brutus
Challenges of a biography of Brutus
Brutus has been a controversial figure through the ages,
starting with his own time. Some of the earliest references to him evidently
treated him with respect. While the works of Titus Livius, Gaius Asinius Pollio,
or Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus that cover Brutus have not survived, mentions of their passages
referring to Brutus reveal the conspirators against Julius Caesar were regarded
in a positive light. While Plutarch’s biography of Brutus paints a glowing
picture, we have to keep in mind the author’s concern, which was drawing
moralistic lessons in the comparisons of key historical figures. Plutarch’s
pairing of Brutus with Dion, who overthrew the tyrant Dionysus II of Syracus in
the 4th century BC, highlights the author’s praise for men who put
Platonic ideals into action. Criticisms
of Brutus and the conspirators appear early, too, with charges of parricide and
banditry common. The letters between Cicero and Brutus and other letters of
Cicero’s that speak of Brutus help provide a portrait of the conspirator, but
also have to be weighed against the concerns and agendas behind the correspondence.
Tempest’s approach presents the many points of view regarding Brutus in order
to let the reader arrive at their own evaluation of the man.
“As we go in search of Brutus, this book will take an
approach that combines history and historiography , in order to examine what we
can learn not just about his life, but about how that life has been recorded
and transmitted from antiquity to the present day.” (11)
“But Brutus, we are told, was not accused even by his
enemies of such a departure from his principles; nay, Antony at least, in the
hearing of many, declared that in his opinion Brutus was the only conspirator
against Caesar who was impelled by the splendour and by what seemed to him the
nobility of the enterprise, whereas the rest banded together against the man
because they envied and hated him.”
From Plutarch’s Parallel
Lives
The Life of Brutus: 29.7
Chapter 1
Brutus tried to shape how he was viewed, not just a “victim”
of others for his reputation.
In Roman history/legend, his ancestor Lucius Brutus had
deposed the last king of Rome and helped usher in the Republic era. Such a
legendary ancestor could help Brutus’ career and aid in his self-promotion and
defense. On his mother’s side he could boast the ancestor Servilius Ahala,
killer of the (alleged) aspiring tyrant Spurius Maelius in 439BC.
Although little known of Brutus’ early life, Tempest sets
the scene for what a son of the nobility would have experienced in Rome, Athens,
and Rhodes during his studies there. Also, she examines likely influences that
would have shaped his thinking during these years.
Pressure to achieve at level of forbearers’ reputations.
Brutus may have been privileged, but he faced his own challenges (father’s
early death) and political challenges (Sulla’s changes in the laws, Pompey’s
and Caesar’s domination in politics, for examples).
“From these opening two chapters, we have seen how Brutus
used his ancestry and name to forge a political identity, and how his wealth
and education enabled him to accumulate both the social and cultural capital
needed to succeed in political life.” [54]
“All in all, then, we should see Brutus not just as
eloquent, cultured and an outspoken defender of the res publica, but as an active manipulator with his own interests,
an independent operator who knew what he wanted and how to get it.” [54]
After the murder of Julius Caesar, much of Brutus’ life was
viewed with that in mind. He has ceased to be a historical figure and one from
mythology instead.
In civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Brutus chose Pompey,
despite Julius Caesar’s overtures (wanting to avenge the deaths of M. Brutus
and others. His role in Pompey’s camp, though, is uncertain. (60-62)
After Pompey’s loss at Pharsalus (Aug 48 BC), Brutus turns
to Julius Caesar. Uncertain where Brutus was in 48-7 BC, when JC met Cleopatra,
that long affair, and JC’s defeat of Pharaceses II in Zela. (65)
How much of Brutus’ actions around this time reflect an
independent streak? Or opportunism? Or ploys based on his limited but
potentially great political power?
[66] …”Brutus’ whole career displays a remarkable knack for
political side-switching…” Can we assume
consistent principles then? Or does his principles precipitate the switching?
[68] Important to Brutus about his reputation: virtue,
familial devotion
KT positions Brutus as a bridge-builder between Caesar’s
camp and those he had pardoned, such as Cicero (after Cato’s death; see page
74). It is difficult to tell exactly given so missing documents mentioned in
other writers work (contemporary and later).
Marriage as political maneuvering. Brutus divorces his first
wife to marry Porcia, a daughter of Cato. Was this to try to unite or at least
force to “live together” opposing sides? Cato: republic. Brutus’ mother
Servilia: Caesar’s former lover.
Caesar had been calling for reconciliation with former
enemies (such as pardoning the ones he didn’t kill)…Brutus seems to be acting
in accordance.
Chapter 4: Thinking about Tyrannicide
Influences on Brutus joining/leading a plot against Caesar:
Caesar’s actions. While Caesar took many popular actions,
there were many unpopular ones, too, particularly in the political realm. His
taking of the title dictator perpetuo
seems to not just acknowledge but cement the desire of tyranny (despite the
ambiguity of perpetuo, which can mean
either ‘uninterrupted’ or ‘for life’).
Brutus’ family history, which the graffiti mentioned would
throw in his face every day that his ancestors had rid Rome of tyrants. Having
emphasized this background in his own political career, he can’t very well
ignore it now. Having accepted favors from Caesar (such as governorship of
Cisalpine Gaul), his reputation appears to have been compromised.
Peer pressure: cries of libertas may mean freedom for the people, it also
meant the ability (right?) for the leading classes to participate in the spoils
of governing. There is also the “Porcia legend” that grew about his wife,
goading Brutus for retribution (father Cato, husband Bibuius).
Cassius: leader? Co-conspirator? Follower? His involvement
seems to go against his Epicurean background, although jeopardizing his own
happiness to help others in need would be consistent. Did he feel left out in
seeing others’ political rise (people like Brutus)? Cassius did show some
pushback against the honors given to Caesar at the end of 45 BC. Regardless of
which one first approached the other, it seems likely that a plot against
Caesar would have been very different without the cooperation of these two.
For Brutus personally, he had achieved office, but not
honorably…it had been gifts from Caesar. How long would he be dependent on the whims of
Caesar? Brutus was dependent on Caesar and was participating in his regime. He
had sworn an oath to protect Caesar’s life. If Caesar was a tyrant, Brutus was
aiding and abetting a tyranny. Was murder, especially of a friend and
benefactor, the best solution? Apparently Brutus seemed to think so.
If you can access a copy of “The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius”
by David Sedley, please do so since it provides a more detailed look at the
philosophy used to justify the assassination.
As Tempest points out, such philosophical bases may not have
been the impetus behind Brutus’ participation in the conspiracy, but it would
help seal his commitment to do so. [97]
Once the conspiracy begins, who should be killed? It seems
Brutus was insistent on only murdering Caesar so their actions could be viewed
as just. Thus Antony was to be spared.
[109-110] Conspirators conflated the concern of Caesar
seeking to be monarch with that of tyranny as criticized by the Greeks, and so
misreading what the populace wanted. They didn’t want the killing of Caesar,
simply the return to the rule of law they had enjoyed beforehand…a major reason
there was not popular support for the assassination.
Hindsight clouds our judgment. Because of the great number
of extant letters of Cicero Tempest concentrates on what is in the letters as
well as what is between the lines in order to understand how the assassination
was received by Brutus’ contemporaries (while also providing an appendix
comparing the major early historians’ accounts).
The conspirators seem not to have thought too far ahead,
about what would happen after (and if) their plot succeeded. Antony remained
aloof from them, then began his opposition to them. The senate was split on
whether to avenge Caesar’s death or honor the “liberators.”
A compromise was reached…the assassins were pardoned,
Caesar’s appointments for the next two years would go as planned, and his acts
would be carried out (including grants of land to army veterans). There are
many ironies here. Caesar’s actions, in ignoring the law and precedents, was a
major reason the conspirators had acted. Yet they would benefit from his
appointments being carried out, as several of them would have influential
posts. They would have to wait for free elections.
Cicero repeatedly harps on the conspirators’ lack of
proactive intervention in the first 48 hours after the assassination. Even if
the conspirators had followed Cicero’s request to have immediately called a
meeting of the Senate, they could have only done so much. As it was, within a
month of Caesar’s death, most, if not all, of the assassins had left Rome. By
failing to seize the initiative immediately after the assassination, they were
more at the mercy of what followed from the Caesarians.
Atticus had held that a funeral should not be held for
Caesar. Because there was one, Antony helped shape the opinion of Caesar and
his assassins, a turning point against the conspirators.
Antony appears to have pushed through measures that benefitted
him and the Caesarians on the pretext that they had been intended by Caesar,
and thus covered by the compromise that allowed the dictator’s mandates to be
carried out.
Antony leaves Rome to shore up support with troops loyal to
Caesar. Octavian returns to Rome in the meantime and stakes his claim to
Caesar’s inheritance and plans events to honor Caesar. This pushes Antony to
have to decide…abide by the amnesty, working with Caesar’s assassins, or work
with Octavian and honor Caesar.
“[O]pinions in how Caesar’s rule was to be remembered
represented a new battlefield…” [128]
Antony returns to Rome with army veterans, which causes
enough concern with Brutus and Cassius write to him about their concerns with
what is going on, and why they don’t feel safe returning to Rome. Antony is
also seeking control of both Gaul provinces, a direct affront to Decimus. While
Brutus and Cassius did not immediately seek to profit individually from
Caesar’s death, with the level of fear in Rome and the changing political landscape
it would be hard to convince everyone of that. Since they were still away from
Rome, it was difficult to gauge their intentions.
Lots of political jockeying over routine events and annual
spectacles, each side trying to outmaneuver the other and present their
politically correct version.
However, with Antony in Rome, he had access to politics and
the public that the conspirators did not have.
Things weren’t smooth for Antony, though, as his struggle
with Octavian escalated through many political and public fronts. While Antony
seemed to have sizable military backing, Octavian was winning the hearts of the
Roman people. Despite the enmity between the two (Octavian and Antony), they
made a public display of reconciliation. The big losers would be the
conspirators.
[136] Friction between Octavian and Antony. Oct. may have
public sympathy, but Ant. Had soldiers and direct access to people of Rome…and
the Senate. Oct. held games for Caesar, following Brutus’ successful fames of
Apollo.
After competing edicts to the people, they eventually had a
public reconciliation.
Brutus’ and Cassius’ public edict annoyed Antony, and
impacted the courtesy he had been extending toward them. Campaign on all sides
to influence public opinion. Brutus and Cassius painted themselves as
Liberators, not assassins. On the opposing side they asked see what Julius
Caesar’s clemency got him? Now we’re in chaos and fear because of it.
Cicero: did not condemn the assassination, but did criticize
Brutus’ handling of it afterwards (armchair QB)
{141] “Yet, given the
intensity with which Cicero later attacked Antony, it is easy to forget just
how inactive he had been in the Liberators’ cause up until now. When Brutus
raised his bloody dagger and called upon Cicero by name, he did not respond; at
least, there is no response that we hear of. He had made his support of their
deed publicly known, and he had negotiated and addressed the people on the
matter of the amnesy agreement. But he had for the most part criticised Brutus’
handling of the affair: he blamed the poor planning and believed that Antony
should have been killed too. He regretted that Brutus and Cassius had not
summoned the Senate immediately and complained that they had allowed Caesar a
public burial. He thought that Brutus’ oratory was lacklustre and inefficient
in winning over the people. At the same time, he pinned the future of the res publica on their shoulders
alone. ‘The deed was carried out with
the courage of men and the policy of children’, is one of his more damning
verdicts.
On nearly
all these points, Atticus disagreed with him; a reminder that, however
compelling and clear Cicero’s voice can be, we should always seek to engage in
the debate with him. So what could and should Brutus have done? Caesar’s assassination
had seemingly failed to restore freedom. Does that mean the dictator should
have been left to live out his days and conduct the Parthian campaign on which
he was set to embark? Even Cicero blushed to admit it: ‘The Ides of March do
not please me. He would never have come back; fear would not have compelled us
to confirm all his measures…he was
not a master to run away from.’
Yet, here and elsewhere, Cicero has
underestimated the extent of the problem; as had Brutus, Cassius, Decimus and
the rest of the Liberators. For, as we have seen repeatedly throughout this
chapter, Caesar was more than a man and, dominant though he was, there were far
more players batting on his side than we sometimes remember, all with far too
many vested interests. In other words, his celebrity, popularity with the
veterans and plebs, and the movement Caesar spurred in Roman political life
were far greater than the force of the assassins’ daggers. As the disagreements
between Cicero and Atticus reveal, from the differing perspectives of two
friends and contemporaries, each with his own view of Brutus, there is no
simple answer to the question of why the conspiracy failed. Fear, anger,
jealousy and pride have all played their part in this narrative, as indeed they
did for a large part of republican history. But one thing appears certain: the
real enemy was not Caesar, but Caesarism—and that was proving far more
difficult to stamp out.”
[143] [o]ne of the paradoxical elements inherent in the
republican system was that, although in theory it heavily guarded against
monarchical ambitions, its leading men strove to outperform each other in the
accumulation of wealth, glory, and dignitas.
Nice little tidbits, such as Dio’s comment that statues were
erected to Brutus and Cassius in Athens, alongside other tyrannicides. Recent
archeological finds may support his
claim.
Brutus and Cassius leave Rome for lowly (to them)
administrative posts. As Brutus heads to Macedonia (although his designated
province was Crete), Cassius had been assigned the grain commission in Sicily. Cicero
makes Brutus sound compliant, willing to carry out the task. Cassius had
supposedly been defiant, wanting to head to Syria instead, probably to set up a
base there from which to defend/attack as necessary or wanted, seemingly more
set on war. Two different conspirators with two different plans, and had been.
Tempest reminds the reader that though the two had agreed on assassinating
Caesar, they differed on other major points (like whether Antony should be assassinated).
As Brutus heads east, he finds himself feted by
anti-monarchical / anti-tyrannical mood in Athens from a younger generation of
Romans finishing their studies in Greece. In an aside from Plutarch, it appears
Brutus may have immersed himself in literary/philosophical pursuits while in
Athens.
[146] “The role of philosophy as a tool for reviving
republicanism and recruiting for war should not be consequently overlooked in
piecing together an overview of Brutus’ activities in Athens. For, when we
remember the role of philosophical discourse in the fomenting of the plot
against Caesar, it seems arbitrary to separate these two spheres of activity in
the latter part of 44 BC. “
Speculative, but extremely possible since that seems to
coordinate with his activities before the assassination on civil war, etc.
[148-9] Brutus’ masterful play to take control of rich
eastern provinces by controlling Macedonia. Some quaestors returning to Rome
transferred money to Brutus instead.
[149] Brutus usurped control of provinces that had not been
allocated to him and was now the commander of a sizeable force of men.
[150] The Senate voted to grant Brutus the power he already
realized. The Senate’s vote, though, was unconstitutional.
Ebb and flow of power
Cicero’s return coincided with Octavian’s increase in power.
Was Oct. the lesser of two evils? Cicero
clearly hated Antony.
Decimus Brutus, governor of Cisalpine Gaul, refuses to hand
over power of Cisalpine Gaul to Mark Antony.
[156] Cicero advocated war against Antony. “Brutus feared
Octavian and he still hoped that a peace with Antony might be achieved.”
Brutus hoped to make the republican base stronger, which
should (in theory) offset ambitions of people like Octavian and Antony.
[158] Brutus’ letter explaining why he hadn’t killed Gaius
Antony. —The Senate had not declared it OK.— ((How does this carry over to
Caesar’s assassination? Maintaining republic vs. defending it? No order to kill
Caesar. Picking and choosing republic support when convenient?))
[159-60] Antony defeated at Mutina, declared a public enemy.
Decimus saved.
Tempest questions everything, including sequence of letters.
Dolabella, Antony’s co-consul, sets his eye on Syria. Brutus
charged to attack Dolabella in east instead of returning to Italy against
Antony, whom he probably thought was defeated and out of the picture after
Mutina.
[169] Flaw in Brutus’ plan according to Cicero: ‘[H]e had
placed his trust in men who were not to be trusted.”
Cicero’s backing of Octavian was similarly misplaced.
Octavian led his troops toward Rome, had himself and Quintus Pedius (a
relative) made consuls, and promptly sought revenge against Caesar’s assassins.
[170] Octavian and Pedius revoke the hostis decree against Antony and Lepidus.
On 27 November 43BC, Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus were
“granted the ‘impereum’ of a consul for five years.”
Now there was open civil war, with the proscription list of
enemies. Terror. Murder. Cicero murdered.
Recommendation: Flower 2010 Roman Republics
Gaius Antonius finally executed (Mark Antony’s brother)
after several attempts of inciting mutiny in Brutus’ ranks
[179] Three defenders of res
publica: Brutus, Cassius, Sentus Pompeius
[181] Their defense of the Republic, though, was just as
brutal in the Eastern territories as was their opponents’ in Rome. Their
“defense” of the republic was “remembered as a shocking and aggressive assault
on the Greek east.”
[181-2] Mass suicide at Xanthus (Lycia) reflects badly on
Brutus (you call that liberating?), but may be more of a reflection on Roman
rule
[185] Cassius fares worse in history than Brutus (and that’s
saying something). There is a “good” Brutus and a “bad” Brutus in the
historical records, depending on the author.
Mark Antony’s marketing sought to conflate Brutus and
Cassius’ actions in the East, making both equally bad. Brutus could also be
seen as the noble, while Cassius seen as disreputable. The battle for how
history would remember Brutus began while he was still alive.
[190] Lepidus (Brutus’ brother-in-law and governor of parts
of Hispania and Gaul) backs Antony
[202] Cassius’ suicide after first battle of Phillipi…mixed
results…
Brutus’ men route Octavian, but they stop to plunder instead
of pressing the point. Antony’s men, though, are successful against Cassius’
troops. In the confusion, Cassius kills self (or has Pindarus do it)
[203-4] Brutus, in order to please soldiers, makes promises
Plutarch finds abhorrent (loot Sparta and Thessalonica, which had supplied
Octavian/Antony’s side)
Despite wanting to outlast Oct/A’s troops (and not hearing
of their supply ships being destroyed), defections of Brutus’ troops caused him
to initiate 2nd battle
[206] Casualties of 2nd battle not recorded, but
the scale was huge in “current and late reflections”
Virgil’s Georgics—bewildered
that such a thing could happen with the god’s blessing
[207] Brutus escapes, flees
[208-9] Differences in Brutus’ body’s in treatment in death
as varied as his later reputation. Antony showed respect … Octavian wanted
“Brutus’ severed head to be sent back to Rome and there cast at the feet of
Caesar’s statue.”
Bad Brutus: conspired and killed a man “constitutionally
elected,” plundered provinces in the east, fought battles against succeeding
leaders of the res publica..
[210] “As we have repeatedly seen throughout this chapter,
the wrangle over Brutus’ reputation generated competing sides to the man, as
his friends and enemies alike tried to shape the memory he was to leave behind;
already at his death, different ‘endings’ were being written for Brutus’ life.
But these competing narratives in the historical material are a blessing rather
than a curse. The legend of Brutus, the complexities of his character, and the
questions that surround his legacy are all significantly enriched when we trace
them back to the beginning, as we shall attempt to do in the next chapter, to
the life of Brutus and how he was received by his contemporaries.”
[213] “Even though we do not have full access to these works
today, what is clear is that in the years both before and after the
assassination Brutus had singled himself out as a man who acted upon an ideal
code of conduct, one which he had partly inherited, parted shaped for himself.
Hence his reputation as a man of virtue first and foremost stemmed from the
works in which he engaged in the philosophical and political debates of his
times. But Brutus had also engaged in other literary activities, which give a
further insight into his character.” Poetry, summaries of history, debates
(came across as exceptional)
Early questions focus on Brutus’ lack of gratitude—Caesar
spared his life. Good of country vs. personal…what wins out? What should he
have done?
Dilemmas faced when a ruler is bad, or perceived to want to
do bad things…how are they to be handled? Is tyrannicide justified? Addressed
by Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, and many others.
[219] Ronald Syme in 1939’s The Roman Revolution: “to judge Brutus because he failed is simply
to judge from the results.”
[232] Quote: The more
we look at the evidence for Brutus’ life and how it shaped his later legend,
the less sure we may feel at making definitive statements about the historical
man: a detailed study only demonstrates that there were many sides to Brutus,
and that he drew a wide variety of responses from those who knew him.
Undoubtedly an eminent man
Politician
and orator: made a name for himself
Philosopher:
only fragments survive, but established a reputation for being moral
Words and
deeds after the assassination: was he different? Or was that a return to being
a champion of freedom?
Questions that cannot be fully answered today. Final
judgment: to us today, like those of his time, an enigma.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
