Herodotus

Those who would detect his lies and fictions would need many books – Plutarch, The Malice of Herodotus

Catullus LXXXV

odi et amo. quare id faciam fortasse requiris?
nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

— Catullus

It is the prerogative of first-time lovers
To claim yourselves the creators
Of the language of romance. I know that.
And yet, if in singing to uncomprehending Latins
About things that did really did not as yet have names,
If in locating the precise intersection
Of friendship, obligation and desire,
If in explaining what it is to find yourself
One of many and only one of many
And never more than one of many,
If in curdling inside and
Calling her obscene and calling worse things
And yet still closing my eyes and seeing
That full red lower lip, that cream-white throat,
Those soft pale upper arms around which
I could close my fingers without hurting her,
If in remembering her salt and wit and filthy lovely laugh,
If in being crucified across loathing and wanting
I failed to see that I was a true pioneer of heartbreaks,
What difference will it make?
You will be able to invent all these things yourselves
Perfectly well without me.

Res Gestae

He called us to his bedside.
We brought our dictaphones,
Batteries refreshed
Ready for our Master's Voice.

He said, erect these words
On pillars of brass and stone
In every city of My empire:
“I changed the world forever.

I shut the gates of war, and three times
Peace achieved by force of will
And simple force whose equal none
Will see again for centuries.

These have been My times:
I already have a month of My own
And one day I know the years shall be counted
Beginning with the day I was born.”

He spoke for an hour or more,
listing the things he had achieved.
(I cannot remember them.)
When he was done, he closed his eyes.

He exhaled, and I thought
how frail and used-up he looked
And wondered if, when he had died
And had achieved his promised godhead,
I would think of him, the man deified,
As old and hoarse and dying.

Written in Water 20: Beard-Hater

Bearded men and ideologies unpopular with the establishment, eh?

In June 363CE Julian, the Emperor of Rome, led a cavalry charge against a defeated Persian army. Only shortly before, Julian had won a victory outside the walls of the Persian capitol Ctesiphon, making his campaign in Persia the most successful the Romans had ever managed.

Maybe that made him reckless.

A strap broke on his breastplate; he shrugged it off, threw the offending piece of armour away.

And a spear came from nowhere, and lodged in his side, and he fell, and that night, in his tent, Julian died, discoursing with his comrades about the immortality of his soul, as Socrates had.

And the Roman army found itself far from home with no leader, and no clear route home.

And that was how Julian the Apostate, the last pagan Emperor of Rome, died.

Written in Water 17b: Adapting the Golden Ass

Note strategically placed sticker on shrinkwrap.

As a postscript to my piece about The Golden Ass, I recently got hold of Milo Manara's comic book adaptation of The Golden Ass, recently reissued in English. Because someone made a comic book version of The Golden Ass. And I like European comics.

It's... disappointing.

In reviewing Manara's book, I'll mention a depiction of a rape, along with objectification and misogyny. If these things upset you in any way, or might bring back things you'd rather not think about, best move on.

Written in Water #19: Enlightenment

A meditation. A confession.

Written in Water 18: Alypius's Fandom

(This isn't the intended update, but I kind of need my bookshelf for that one and I'm holiday, so Julian the Apostate is going to have to wait for a week or two.)

If you'd ever studied any kind of classical subject, you've probably come across part of this passage at some point. It's really popular (for instance it's on the GCSE Latin syllabus, in the Sources for Latin paper – it even made the exam last year).

Written in Water 17: Lector Intende, Laetaberis.

By Jean de Bosschère, from an early 20th century edition of The Golden Ass.

This is the first page of one of the most contradictory and bizarre novels ever written. It seems a rambling sort of preamble; in fact, it's heavy with occult significance.

Written in Water #16: Imaginal Armies, Part Two

The Theban Legion, early modern style.

In the last post I talked a bit about the mythology of the Roman Army, about how its representation in literature ensured that it would become remembered as the greatest military machine of antiquity, wreathed in glory, invincible and mighty, disciplined and perfect and all the other things that the armies of empires are. And how this might not have been the whole truth.

Written in Water #15: Imaginal Armies, Part One

The Roman Army wasn't immune to the collapse of history. As the Empire entered its final state of narrative disintegration, the army entered into the realm of myth, of story. An imaginal state, where the idea of the military forces of Rome transcended the reality. I have two stories to tell regarding this.

Before I get to the first, let's go back a bit. For context's sake.

He has fixed His sign in the sky

I wonder how long it took for the news to filter through, that things had changed, that the sons of the old emperors had fought and one had died, driven headlong into the river as the Milvian Bridge collapsed and his own retreating forces, panicking, tried to cross, dragged to the bottom, drowned.

Written in Water #14: Prophets of the Sands and Stones

St. Jerome in the Wilderness, Bernardino Pinturrichio, c.1475

It's one thing to maintain an active religious belief when society at large is against you, and much has been written, ancient and present day, about what it's like to be in what everyone else calls a cult, and like it or not, that's what Christianity was for the first two and a half centuries of its existence. The fact is, it takes a certain kind of steel in your back to keep it up when they're kicking down your door and barbecuing you.

Written in Water, Digression: Virgil, the Magical

agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.

Last night, before sleeping, I found my old copy of Aeneid IV, the story of Dido and Aeneas, and read it, in the Latin, and my heart broke over it.

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Virgil.

Written in Water #13: On The Value of Invisible People

This grave portrait, from Roman Egypt, haunts me.

Today, I want to talk about invisibility.

Written in Water #12: Saints of the Sex Workers

Mary of Egypt, by José de Ribera, 1641.

When you talk about gender, particularly when dealing with issues from ages less sensitive, or when dealing with things that might be considered hate speech now, it is important to remind readers that the dissection of gendered slurs and just general misogyny are a par for the course in this sort of thing, and to warn that if these things distress or perhaps recall unpleasant and painful experiences, then perhaps this piece is better not read.

OK. If you're still here, let's begin.

Written in Water #11: Fauna of the Far-Away Places

St. Anthony and the Centaur, by Francesco Guarino, 1642.
I picked this one because the look on Anthony's face cracks me up.

As a kid, I was always fascinated by monsters. Movies like Jason and the Argonauts, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Clash of the Titans, Warlords of Atlantis, and a dozen others were always a source of excitement for me, and my favourite bits were always the bits with the amazing Harryhausen monsters. It was a picture of a Lemurian that made me care about the Theosophists. I got older and got into Dungeons & Dragons, and the monsters were always the thing I had most fun reading about.

Written in Water #10: The Word of God in the City of the Cannibals

"Excuse me, Jesus. How do we steer this thing again?"

Today, I want to talk about Bible outtakes. And that means angels, demons, vomiting statues and, most of all, cannibals. Lots of cannibals.

Written in Water #9b: A Brexit Story

This book? Every bit as awful as you'd expect.
Ends with him saying Turkey should join the EU.
Draw your own conclusions.

Yeah, all right, I wasn't going to talk about Brexit, seeing as how it's turned out worse than we could ever imagine, a horrifically compromised mess that has more in common with the plot of The Producers than actual politics ("I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast.... where did I go right?") but then I remembered the Roman Brexit and how it wound up, and how it falls into the same period of historical collapse that I've been writing about, which seems appropriate seeing how history is collapsing around our ears as I write.

Let's talk about how well Brexit went back in the day, back in the collapse of history.

Written in Water #9: A Dream of Magnus Maximus

The Welsh epic, the Mabinogion, includes in its middle section a short romance that begins like this:

Macsen Wledig was Emperor of Rome, and he was the handsomest and wisest of men, and the best fitted to be Emperor of all who had gone before him.

The Dream of Macsen Wledig, trans. Gwyn Jones

Written in Water #8: Why Aren't You Dead?

Yes, that's right. This is an icon of Lawrence, smiling, with the barbecue grill that killed him.

So the Great Persecution ends, and the Church breathes a collective sigh of relief. But those years of hiding. Two attempts to extirpate the Christian faith entirely in living memory. The death of any number of brave, good, honest men, women and children, yes, children.

You don't get over that in a day. You don't get over that in a lifetime.