The Tides of March

Rome is called the Eternal City.

It is quite a boast, and one whose claim can never be truly confirmed, nor refuted, for over Time, we shall all pass this way along a journey, but the journey, and Rome may continue forever.

While teaching for the in situ study-abroad program some years ago, Rome, naturally, was a port of call for the trip. Over the years, I have been to Rome several times, and each time have come to love it more, despite a less than savory first experience with it some 25 years ago. But, just as with all things in life, to determine something by a singularity is premature and incomplete. As Judy Collins said of the suicide death of her son, one should not be remembered for how he died, but for his life. My good friend brought to my attention a quote about the Greeks, saying,

Greeks didn’t have obituaries.

They asked one question-

Did he have passion?

This is a good summary, however urban legend it may sound, and does reflect a sentiment within ancient Greek philosophy that it was the Quality of life that was ultimately important. The Greeks, as we know from Thucydides, loved a good funeral oration, however, something that the Romans were not foolish enough to give up once they had conquered the Greek world.

Romans, however, certainly did have obituaries of sorts, and monuments, and lots of ritualized ways to remember the Dead.

A funny thing happened on the way through the Forum though, and funny in a peculiar way as I did not expect it. About a third of the way into the Forum, if you are entering from the Arch of Septimius Severus at the base of the Capitoline Hill, then you will find a memorial to Julius Caesar, which, to my surprise, is still decorated regularly. I was reminded of Caesar yesterday from the famous lines uttered by the Shakespearean Soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March.” And, it did remind me of walking through the forum and standing at the purported spot where Caesar was stabbed and killed by his fellow statesmen of Rome.

I will be very honest, it moved me.

I was further reminded of this today, during Belgium’s official National Day of Mourning for the bus accident victims from Sierre, Switzerland on the way home from a ski trip. The lines above are from “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” and the nation I currently live in mourns a tragedy of another sort.

I remember really feeling the history of the forum and especially the events of the assassination of Caesar, who had been perceived as forgetting the Primary Dictum that Momento Mori,  “You are Mortal.” Caesar’s crime against humanity was that he began to think that he was no longer part of humanity, that perhaps, he was Immortal, and Divine. And, he was killed for that ambition. Though, in the words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, becoming one of the most famous utterances in the history of the English language as he bid his fellow countrymen to listen to his oration of the Death of the Man, Caesar:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; 
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 
The evil that men do lives after them; 
The good is oft interred with their bones; 
So let it be with Caesar.

It is interesting that often it is the Evil that lives on, despite the balance of the Good, whereas both are ill-calculated, and ill-fated, for there is also a Sum.

Fickle are the Winds of Change and fickle are the Sea Changes of Time, and the memory of what men and women do can often determine, for better or for worse, the Tides of ones fortunes and failures. But, again, this can be myopic at best.

Spring has sprung here in Belgium, and with it, the promise of Life, even in the face of Death. From the Death of Caesar sprung what would become a very powerful reign of Octavius, ultimately Augustus, considered by many to be the one of the only true living paradigms of the elusive and ideological Platonic Philosopher King (though not nearly to the extent of Marcus Aurelius), thus securing the role of the Emperor for many centuries to come, perhaps mores so had Caesar not been murdered. Though that, is mere speculation, which leaves us nonce the richer.

Rome is the Eternal City in some respects, because the Past, Present, and Future all coming crashing together in the forum to some degree. It was hard not to feel the presence of Time flowing and ebbing through the ruins. But, ultimately, all does come to that, the ruins eroded by Time .

Today, and for quite some time now I suspect, people will be visiting the site of the crash, or visiting some physical marker in the towns from where the victims hailed, for we, as humans, seem to need a Place associated with an event, to be in situ of tragedy, when the answers seem so elusive and fleeting.

Beware the Ides of March, indeed, and hearken the portents and omens of living well, though, the Tides of Time will never cease, on into eternity.