Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis? aut cur dexteris
aptantur enses conditi?
parumne campus atque Neptuno super
fusum est Latini sanguinis?
non ut superbas invidae Carthaginis
Romanus arces ureret,
intactus aut Britannus ut descenderet
Sacra catenatus Via,
sed ut secundum vota Parthorum sua
urbs haec periret dextera.
neque hic lupis mos nec fuit leonibus,
numquam nisi in dispar feris.
furorne caecus an rapit vis acrior
an culpa? responsum date!
aptantur enses conditi?
parumne campus atque Neptuno super
fusum est Latini sanguinis?
non ut superbas invidae Carthaginis
Romanus arces ureret,
intactus aut Britannus ut descenderet
Sacra catenatus Via,
sed ut secundum vota Parthorum sua
urbs haec periret dextera.
neque hic lupis mos nec fuit leonibus,
numquam nisi in dispar feris.
furorne caecus an rapit vis acrior
an culpa? responsum date!
tacent, et ora pallor albus inficit,
mentesque perculsae stupent.
sic est: acerba fata Romanos agunt
scelusque fraternae necis,
ut immerentis fluxit in terram Remi
sacer nepotibus cruor.
mentesque perculsae stupent.
sic est: acerba fata Romanos agunt
scelusque fraternae necis,
ut immerentis fluxit in terram Remi
sacer nepotibus cruor.
~
HORACE
What
purpose does the story of humankind serve if not to offer the painful
experiences of the past as a guide to present choice? Yet did humankind take
history’s lessons to heart – and mind – George Santayana would have had no
occasion to make his famous statement:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Sixteen hundred and ten years ago, at the very end of December, the Rhine froze in a bitter winter. On the night of 30/31, a massed horde of barbarian tribes crossed over to Mogontiacum (Mainz) and cruelly sacked it, pouring into Gaul, laying waste as they went, and setting off a chain of revolts in Britannia and elsewhere.
Four years later, Rome itself fell to the Visigoths.
In a way that Horace (65 B.C. – 8 B.C.) did not have in mind, himself having known only the civil war that followed upon Julius Caesar’s assassination, the state of Rome – then the western Roman empire – died by its own hand (urbs haec periret dextera). The latter was a prolonged self-murder and different from the wars that destroyed the Republic. Yet madmen rushing on their doom there have always been. Not lions, or wolves, says Horace, are so mad as to tear their own kind apart (neque hic lupis mos nec fuit leonibus,/ numquam nisi in dispar feris); “has rage blinded you?” (furorne caecus) he asks, and getting no answer to his question supposes that his countrymen’s minds have been stunned by constant battering (mentesque perculsae stupent).
Sometimes Nature provides an opportunity to the enemy at the gates. Sometimes it wants only a person to leave open the Kerkoporta, and Byzantium falls. Sometimes a people fail to heed the lessons of history. Always, history’s wheel turns again in the same place. It has worn a deep rut. Can it ever be raised out of it, to move forward?
Sixteen hundred and ten years ago, at the very end of December, the Rhine froze in a bitter winter. On the night of 30/31, a massed horde of barbarian tribes crossed over to Mogontiacum (Mainz) and cruelly sacked it, pouring into Gaul, laying waste as they went, and setting off a chain of revolts in Britannia and elsewhere.
Four years later, Rome itself fell to the Visigoths.
In a way that Horace (65 B.C. – 8 B.C.) did not have in mind, himself having known only the civil war that followed upon Julius Caesar’s assassination, the state of Rome – then the western Roman empire – died by its own hand (urbs haec periret dextera). The latter was a prolonged self-murder and different from the wars that destroyed the Republic. Yet madmen rushing on their doom there have always been. Not lions, or wolves, says Horace, are so mad as to tear their own kind apart (neque hic lupis mos nec fuit leonibus,/ numquam nisi in dispar feris); “has rage blinded you?” (furorne caecus) he asks, and getting no answer to his question supposes that his countrymen’s minds have been stunned by constant battering (mentesque perculsae stupent).
Sometimes Nature provides an opportunity to the enemy at the gates. Sometimes it wants only a person to leave open the Kerkoporta, and Byzantium falls. Sometimes a people fail to heed the lessons of history. Always, history’s wheel turns again in the same place. It has worn a deep rut. Can it ever be raised out of it, to move forward?
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