VALEDICTIONS - 1’
Welcome to this site which contains a new verse cycle by the author of de Res Historiae Antiqua, now being published for the first time on the Internet. Nevertheless it is subject to the same copyright rules as in the printed media. Free access and for reference purposes is hereby granted via the Internet but all quotes extracted and used must be fully acknowledged. All other rights are reserved. Subject to this provision only, no further reproduction copy or transmission of this publication or any parts thereof may be made without specific written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as now and subsequently amednded.) Any such unauthorised acts will be subject to prosecution and relevant cclaims for damages.
Copyright Louis Francis 2004,
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SUMMARY
The poet, ageing himself, imagines himself as individual famous classical figures in their final moments. They reflect on their past lives, expresing regret for lost friends, opportunities and false ambition. However Death, not unexpected, still catches them unawares!
CONTENTS
1: HOMER - Προ-λέγω Ιλιάδος
2: ALEXANDER - Βαβυλών: έξοδος βασιλέως
3: AUGUSTUS - Epilogi Principis
4: VIRGIL - Post Scripto Aenedi
5: HORACE - Rationi Quatro Libro
6: AULUS PLAUTIUS -
‘Κλαυδιος έλε φαντων?’
[1.]
Come, sit with me boy. I am old and almost blind.
Let me tell you of a time when I too was young.
I was there, with Achilles and Agamemnon
At the beginning of our new world, surviving
Both, to tell of their tragedy to that unknown
World, yet to be. Our fathers came from cruel north plains,
Rough men without women to slow them down, into
The soft belly of Pelops. There, they killed farmers
And their sons, ploughed the wives with their own rampant
Seed and fertilized the earth with their victim’s blood.
Upon hilltops they built rough stone settlement walls,
Temples to the Gods they had left behind, hoping
That the God’s curse might be appeased and their venture
Succeed. But to no avail for, all unaware,
They had trespassed far into a mighty empire
Whose God’s were greater, whose armies were vast and whose
Ships enforced their rule with fierce and unrelenting
Might. They were engulfed by alien minds and ways
So, generations passed by in tyranny, crops
Were tithed, tribute paid and each year twelve young boys were
Surrendered to become catamites to strange Gods,
First to pleasure their priests with their rounded bodies
Then, thrown from high cliffs in some temple sacrifice
To those self-same Gods. Until, that is, my twelfth year,
When my turn came and I stood with eleven companions
Fearfully waiting for their ship to come for us.
An island state, Thira, awaited us, soft in
Comfort, made rotten by the spoils of all the world.
Morals corrupted by greed and vice, whose very
Existence cried out for the vengeance of the Gods
Who created us. That same year our Gods replied.
Poseidon stamped hooves, Zeus sent fire, Aeolus
Blew waves into the bowels of earth where Gaia
Stored molten rock. Thira vanished beneath the sea!
The ship never came, for their navy was destroyed,
Their army marooned upon high Akro-Thira
Behind stout walls, for all that proud city’s plain lay
Desolate. Their false Gods had left and their empire
Was no more. Agamemnon seized upon the hour,
Made treaty with our fellow states. An alliance
Was formed and we made ready to repossess our
Lives. We set sail for that place known to us as Troy. ‘
Pass me my lyre! Let me tell you how it ended.
Melpomene! Muse! Let me live again those days.
" Now, speak to me, Muse, dweller on high Olympus,
Of how the wrath of Achilles, Peleus’s
Divine son, driven by bitter anger against
The heir of Atreus, royal Agamemnon,
Brought death to many brave Achaens, sending
Their souls to dark Hades and leaving their bodies
As food for swift-winged carrion and starving dogs ….. "
[2.] ΒΑΒΥΛΏΝ: ΈΞΟΔΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΈΩΣ
They tell me I am dying. For reasons unknown!
From something acquired on that long march from Indus.
I know better! Olympias, my mother, has
Contrived to have me poisoned. Her tentacles are
Long, her friends are many and will do her bidding
Even here and now, amongst those who have followed
Me to the ends of the known world, without falter.
I should have heeded the Oracle at Ammon!
‘Alexander! Ambition will be your downfall
And Olympias will become your Nemesis!
Just as your father perished at her hand because
He favoured another woman instead of her
And took away her power, so you will copy
Him, by trying to move the centre of her world
Far to the East, away from Macedonia!
Will you wonder when she will seek to destroy you?’
But I only sought to find new worlds and bring them
Enlightenment! But I found an old world that brought
Enlightenment to me! I thought to bring culture,
Civilisation and the rule of law to where
Barbarism held sway, only to find that I
Was the barbarian in lands which had cradled
These things three thousand years before! With vanity,
And warfare; blood, carnage and destruction, I thought;
I could give them that which they already possessed!
Hah! They say those whom the Gods would destroy, they first
Make megalomaniacs! I joke! What Gods? Which
Gods? We have marched through lands where all men acknowledge
Only one God! Omnipotent! Omniscient!
And, believe me! Be sure my friends! I am not He!
In the silence of night, the stillness before dawn,
All mankind must face that most terrible of foes,
Their inner self. Where no deceit or vanity
Prevails; no truce observed, no quarter given.
Where there is no God to pray to, no trusted friend
To intervene. Where one must endure the painful ,
Reality and censure of one’s own vile deeds.
I have reached that state so many times before, but
Pride has always averted my eyes. Now that death
Must close those eyes, I can see no other way out..
So, Father, we must yield the field once more to her.
Yet, we will have lived; posterity will be ours.
Of Olympias, all that will be remembered
Is that death took her, but left no memorial!
[3.] EPILOGIS PRINCIPIS
As a boy, ‘ Uncle’ Julius buggered me and
Let influential friends also. They still killed him!
I often remind him of this when I converse
With his Shade. These days, the only pleasure I get!
" For I am a survivor, a bumbling old man,
Eating his frugal lunch of figs, picked by himself
From his own private tree. For a survivor lives,
Not by trust in others, but by his own caution,
Lest he fall by poison at the wayside of life.
So many have gone that way, at my behest or
For my benefit. Mark Antony died of his
Own ambition, Cicero of his own utter
Righteouness. Maecenas and Agrippa, also
Who set me on the road to fame, Virgil and Horace,
Who could have sung my praises but, for some reason,
Declined. So, in bronze and marble, I have explained
My rise from the common herd to become ruler
Of the known world so that posterity will know.
My ‘RES GESTAE DIVI AUGUSTI ‘ makes it so!
I sent a gift of poisoned wine to many
And those I missed out, Livia attended to.
Erstwhile friends who sought patronage and betrayed trust,
For absolute power brings absolute loneliness.
Where an Emperor rules supreme, a God has to
Sit in isolation. Bestowing both titles
On me, they have taken away from me all that
Matters. Ashes now, that once burned bright with glory.
Now, lonely palace rooms are my kingdom, only slaves
For audience, the vanities of life no more.
Even I, w ho made this new world, turning the wet
Republican ideals to hard Imperial
Pragmatism and making Rome the mistress
Of the known world, now know the gnawing of despair.
Even these figs are not as nice as yesterday.
Has their season passed on as quickly as mine?
Suddenly, I feel quite sick. My eyesight wavers
And my legs are leaden. How droll! Has the biter
Himself been bitten? A slave returns with Livia.
Her lumbering son, Tiberius is with her.
There is malice in his glance, triumph on her face.
The royal vultures gather! He seeks the purple.
He hears the roar. ‘All Hail Caesar!’; "Ave Caesar!
Moriturus, te misereo, recturum! "
Well, ‘ Uncle ‘. We meet once again All passions spent
All triumphs shelved. No ‘bottom’ line to glorify!
How does it feel to have fallen before your time,
While I arrive in glory? Your abuse of my body
Justified me in all betrayals, all shameful
Deeds. Imperial Rome has much to thank you for!
[4.] - POST SCRIPTO AENIDI
‘Get out of Rome, they said, Varius has told all!’
But, when I got to Athens, Caesar was waiting
And I was lost. He was charm itself, and his friend,
Torquatus, equally so. "I must go with them,"
They insisted, "back to Rome, there was much to talk
About. My ‘great work’ was finished? Varius was
Enchanted. The scope of its theme, the greatness of
Its hero, the real symbiosis with the Rome
Of today. Come, Virgil, do not be so modest.
Read to us the first few lines at least." Then I knew
The worst. Varius had let me down. How to read
To Caesar those first lines, expounding the virtues
Of a great man; not of one who had turned honest
Farmers off their land, to bribe troops who had torn
Rome apart. I had been told that such lines would earn
Caesar’s fury but in my literary arrogance I thought
That the fame I held would save me. Oh vanity!
So I called on compromise instead and declaimed,
Beginning halfway along the sixth line, the words,
"And I sing of a man-at-arms, who came from the
Trojan coast, a refugee exiled by fate, settling
First in Italy, upon the Lavinian shore."
At first there was silence, then Torquatus clapped his
Hands. "Virgil, you are unique. What literary
Brilliance! What daring! To start a major epic
Upon an unsupported, subordinate clause! "
Caesar spoke, "A bold stroke! Varius was quite wrong.
He told of a prooemium, castigating
Rather than saluting me. Virgil, such nonsense!
Tell me it was not so." I told Caesar a lie
And agreed with him. "The lines were a discarded
Attempt at shallow humour," I said, "unworthy
Of the event". Caesar smiled with his teeth and said
"That is good news, let me send you some special wine."
Thus was I condemned. I have no regrets. Say to
Posterity. ‘ Let my prooemium still stand ! ’
"I am he who, once, modulated graceful song
Upon the Shepherd’s pipe but was forced to leave
The friendly pastures so that they might be given
To Caesar’s own civil war veterans, grateful
To become farmers, giving birth to fruitful land.
So now, incensed, I sing of a true man-at-arms."
[5.] - RATIONI QUATRO LIBRO
"Flaccus", they said. "Virgil is dead! Of Caesar’s wine!
When I first heard these words I was stricken with grief.
That Virgil’s sweet voice should now be forever stilled
Was too much to bear. When I heard that he died at
Caesar’s hand, I was filled with a consuming rage
That he had so wantonly killed that golden voice
Because it would not sing false and fulsome praises
To his vanity. When I heard that poor Virgil
Was made to renounce the opening lines of the
Aeneid, I was filled with a resolution
For revenge. It is said that Torquatus bore the
Poisoned wine, for which he has since been brought to trial.
Cassius Severus made the charge, acquittal
Being a foregone conclusion. Caesar saw to that!
The final vicious act came as no great surprise.
Book Six of the Aenied, adulterated
By that false friend, Varius! Those twenty false lines
He inserted do not deceive, they do not speak
As Virgil would. The theme they convey, transparent
Propaganda. As though the past might hold mention
Of our present Caesar!, heralded on his own?
Such a crass defiance of credibility?
I have written another book of Odes,
One that Caesar has been urging, but not such a
One that he is expecting! Not adulation
For himself and friends, but satire concealed
In a cunningly contrived, unctuous verse form.
I doubt if he will have the wit to catch its drift.
The joke will reverberate around Rome, no one
Will dare to tell him and Virgil will be revenged!
Alas, Onysius has revealed all. Caesar
Has sent an angry note. Macaenas is condemned!
Under a new law, to defame the head of state
Is now a capital crime. Caesar sent him some wine
And we lit his funeral pyre only last month!
My patron, Macaenas, now lies in his grave
On the Esquiline. His last words to Caesar,
‘Treat Flaccus as you have me!’, condemns me also!
Virgil, I embrace your Shade. I have remembered
Our love in my verse. The cost is of no concern .
Flaccus! Caesar’s emissary is at the door.
He bears a message from him and a gift of wine!
[6.] - ‘Κλαυδιος έλε φαντων?’
Caesar sent his trusted Greek servant, Narcissus.
‘Aulus Plautius! Go to Britain, take Berikos,
Defeat the invaders and give him back his throne.
Should there be a chance for glory, send for Caesar
So that he might be seen amongst the serried ranks!’
I was puzzled. This last instruction was from early, Epic
Greek. ‘
Αχιλλεως ελε φαντων ‘ – ‘ Let theLikeness of Achilles be seen in the battle ‘
A paraphrase from Homer when Nestor’s advice
Is sought to put fear amongst the ranks of Trojans.
Put fear! CL-Cl-Claudius? Club-footed, hunchbacked.
My officers, misunderstanding epic Greek,
Read it as ‘Claudius will come with elephants!
The cry went up, ‘How will the Britons know which is
Which?’ I had been given a vexillum from the
Second legion with a cohort of native horse
We set sail for the port of Noviomagus
In a large troop trireme, one that Caligula
Had built some years before, when he defeated
Neptune! Getting everyone aboard was not easy
Then the troops found themselves seated in oarsmen’s seats,
Far from happy at travelling backwards, crossing
Dreaded Oceanus! Sailing overnight, land
Was a welcome sight with the new lighthouse to greet
Us. Which was more that the populace did! The town
And harbour of Noviomagus was very
empty. They were only used to trading vessels:
Armed soldiers on a warship were best avoided!
We journeyed inland to meet the Dobuni tribe.
The last British king, Cunobulin, had two sons;
Berikos and Togdumnus, one by his wife,
One by his mistress. Her son had fled the kingdom,
Raised a war band with his cousin Caractacus,
And stormed through Dobuni lands, unseating the true
Heir to the throne of Britain , who then fled to Rome .
Well, we brought them to battle, defeated them and
Sent for Caesar so that he might complete our task
And enter Camuludunum for the triumph.
It took him six months to arrive, with three legions.
We had organised a set piece. All the tribes paid
Homage and Claudius was ‘seen in battle’ to
Behead some poor citizen, paid to pose as a
Warrior. The legions were posted to key points
To the north and west, Vespasian, my chief aide
Was sent to pacify the absent Dubrogni,
Berikos was renamed Cogidumnus, ‘rightful
King’, Caesar departed and I was now in charge
Of the new province of Britannia. Just my luck!
Back in Rome, Messalina had set her lover
On Claudius’s throne. All hell will be let loose
On his return. Better to remain here than burn!