This passage deserves a theme song...

From modest fountain blood-red Rubicon
In summer's heat flows on; his pigmy tide
Creeps through the valleys and with slender marge
Divides Italian peasant from the Gaul...
The cavalry first form across the stream '
To break the torrent's force; the rest with ease
Beneath their shelter gain the further bank.
When Caesar crossed and trod beneath his feet
The soil of Italy's forbidden fields,
"Here," spake he, "peace, here broken laws be left;
Farewell to treaties. Fortune, lead me on;
War is our judge, and in the fates our trust."
Then in the shades of night he leads the troops
Swifter than Balearic sling or shaft
Winged by retreating Parthian, to the walls
Of threatened Rimini, while fled the stars,
Save Lucifer, before the coming sun,
Whose fires were veiled in clouds, by south wind driven,
Or else at heaven's command: and thus drew on

The first dark morning of the civil war.

Perhaps this music would be appropriate... http://www.archive.org/download/O_Fortuna/CarminaBuranaOFortuna.mp3

Lucan's Pharsalia

Ok, my next read is to be Lucan's Pharsalia - Only Lucan wasn't his name and Pharsalia wasn't the name of the poem. Lucan is the Anglicized version of Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39-65 AD), Friend of Nero, state poet, some say Lucan was of the ranks of Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil. Pharsalia is the common name given to a (probably) unfinished poem about the Roman Civil Wars surrounding Caesar and Pompey. Lucanus only ever referred to the poem as 'The Civil Wars.' The word Pharsalia is a reference to a battle at Pharsalus.

...Armies akin embattled, with the force of all the shaken earth bent on the fray; and burst asunder, to the common guilt, a kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met, standard to standard, spear opposed to spear. Whence, citizens, this rage, this boundless lust to sate barbarians with the blood of Rome? ... Why wage campaigns that send no laurels home? What lands, what oceans might have been the prize of all the blood thus shed in civil strife!

Wow! and that's just an excerpt of the invocation!

Interstices

I tend to read several books at once. I keep one etext on the computer, a paperback on the nightstand, something at the toilet/bathtub, and a book on tape in the truck. Currently, I am working on C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Dan Simmons' Hyperion. In the truck I just finished Lamour's Daybreakers and have started Lamour's Sackett.

Finished Anabasis (for now)

Well, I finished giving Anabasis an initial read-through, though I have to admit I sorta faded out at the end and didn't get much out of the last parts. After X. got his folks to the Black sea they went west, partly by boat and partly by land, until they got to the far side of the Bosporus strait, at which time they crossed into Byzantium (later named Constantinople now Istanbul). There was some sort of conflict there, in which his soldiers almost took the city for themselves, but if I read it right, he talked them out of it.

Anyway, the upshot of it was they successfully made their fighting retreat from Babylon back to Hellenica. Overall a very interesting book. As Adler says in How to Read a Book, great books like this one have to be read over and over and one gets something different out of them each time.

Mutual respect

An interesting thing that shows up in Xenophon's Anabasis is the mutual respect of warriors for one another. Consider the following passages.

Cyrus (The Persian Prince) addressing his Greek soldiers:

O Greek men, not because I lack barbarian soldiers have I made you my allies, but because I consider you better and stronger than many barbarians; for this reason I added you to my force. Be sure then to be men worthy of the freedom that you possess and because of which I consider you blessed. For know well that I would prefer to have freedom than all I now own and much more than that. I who know will explain to you so that you know into what sort of contest you are going. The mass [of the enemy] is vast, and they advance with great shouting; should you withstand these things, regarding the rest, even I feel ashamed at what sort of men you will find the inhabitants of this country to be. (Dillery, John. Xenophon and the History of His Times. London, UK: Routledge, 1995. p 60.)

Xenophon (a Greek soldier) upon the death of Cyrus:

So died Cyrus; a man the kingliest and most worthy to rule of all the Persians who have lived since the elder Cyrus: according to the concurrent testimony of all who are reputed to have known him intimately...In this courtly training Cyrus earned a double reputation; first he was held to be a paragon of modesty among his fellows, rendering an obedience to his elders which exceeded that of many of his own inferiors; and next he bore away the palm for skill in horsemanship and for love of the animal itself. Nor less in matters of war, in the use of the bow and the javelin, was he held by men in general to be at once the aptest of learners and the most eager practiser...He would tell no lies to anyone. Thus doubtless it was that he won the confidence alike of individuals and of the communities entrusted to his care; or in case of hostility, a treaty made with Cyrus was a guarantee sufficient tothe combatant that he would suffer nothing contrary to its terms...So that, for myself, and from all that I can hear, I should bedisposed to say that no one, Greek or barbarian, was ever so beloved. In proof of this, I may cite the fact that, though Cyrus was the king's vassal and slave, no one ever forsook him to join his master... (Dakyns Translation)

So, is this just an instance of a Men's Club in which the players inflate their own egos by inflating the other man? As in, "I'm really cool because that super-cool guy over there says I'm really cool." I don't think so because Xenophon is not hesitant to write about the negative personality traits of other soldiers - even his allies - even his leaders. Xenophon was not blowing smoke about Cyrus. He was writing about his feelings and his perceptions of the man. And if Cyrus was as truthful as Xenophon says in the above passage then this lends credence to Cyrus' esteem of the barbarian Greeks as better than his own countrymen.

In our modern era of backstabbing spin doctors, political smear campaigns, and dog-eat-dog business practices, this sort of outspoken mutual esteem is refreshing and, honestly, somewhat alien.

A terrible spectacle displayed

Here is an interesting account from Xenophon's Anabasis. The 10000 were retreating northward from the vicinity of Babylon toward the Black Sea. They came upon a fortified town, and needing provisions attacked the "motley crowd" of men and women in the fortress. The villagers managed to hold the army off for a while, but they soon ran out of rocks to throw and...

"...the three of them took the fortress, and when they had once rushed in, not a stone more was hurled from overhead.

And here a terrible spectacle displayed itself: the women first cast their infants down the cliff, and then they cast themselves after their fallen little ones, and the men likewise. In such a scene, Aeneas the Stymphalian, an officer, caught sight of a man with a fine dress about to throw himself over, and seized hold of him to stop him; but the other caught him to his arms, and both were gone in an instant headlong down the crags, and were killed. Out of this place the merest handful of human beings were taken prisoners, but cattle and asses in abundance and flocks of sheep."

I wonder if the townspeople would have bartered if the army hadn't immediately attacked them? I wonder if these folks were just that scared of being taken prisoner? I wonder if this would have turned out differently if the townspeople had been left a way out? Would it matter to history if these people had lived?

Take-away points from this incident...

• People get desperate when you push them to the point of no return.
• Desperate people are dangerous because they have nothing to lose.
• You can kill yourself trying to stop a crazy person form jumping.
• A fortress can be a trap for the defenders.

One heck of a hike

A few first observations:

• That's a heck of a hike, across half of modern-day Turkey, down nearly the entire length of the Euphrates river, back up nearly the entire length of the Tigris river, and back across Turkey to the Black Sea.
• The word meander comes from the Meander river in Turkey, mentioned early in this book.
• This journey takes place through the heart of Persia - modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq - particularly important places in the news these days.

Xenophon's Anabasis

The first thing I'll be reading in this project is Xenophon's Anabasis. Xenophon was a Greek soldier in a group of mercinaries that hired out to a Persian prince to help in a family war. They wound up getting their butts kicked and Xenophon rallied the troups and led ten-thousand men in a fighting retreat through a thousand miles of enemy territory to get back home. The Anabasis is the story of the retreat of the 10000. About 70 years later, Alexander the Great used the Anabasis as a field guide in his expedition into Persia. Should be interesting reading...

The Self-Education of Pat

A few years ago I had a running debate with one of my students about the nature of education. He was a pragmatist. That is, he felt education must serve some practical purpose. It must immediately gain you something otherwise it was worthless. I, on the other hand, felt that education was a more internally-motivated pursuit. You undertake an education to become more than you are now. I understand both points of view, though I subscribe predominantly to the latter.

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Around the same time one of my mentors was discussing how he went about educating himself on some topic of interest to him. He got a book on the topic and read it. Then he got copies of all the books referenced by that book and read them. Then he got copies of all the books referenced by all of those books and read them. And so on... While this seems obsessive, and perhaps even obsessive-compulsive - it was certainly an effective method - and as my sister-in-law (a pediatric neurologist) has told me, "not all obsessive-compulsion is bad."

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Lately I have been listening to books on tape by Louis Lamour. Lamour was largely self-educated and his characters were often self-educated. Lamour advocated beginning a self-education by obtaining a load of essentially the cheapest books you can find and reading them compulsively and obsessively. Lamour records reading 25 books one year while waiting in lines, riding trains, sitting at diners, etc... Steven King says in one of his essays (he's a better essayist than horror writer) that he reads roughly 80 books per year.

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I don't know if I'll get 80 books per year, but I intend to begin the Self-Education of Pat. Project Gutenberg has plenty of perfectly good books for free, and I'll be reading them and thinking about them and responding to them in this blog. If anyone wants to jump in and discuss them with me, then bring it!