The Men Who Think of Rome

Res Publica (Poem)

I’ve ensconced myself this summer in Roman history, and quite by accident. Although perhaps it was fate, as it’s been said, in memes, that men think about the Roman Empire every day. It might’ve been on my mind without my realizing it.

I haphazardly decided to get around to reading my copy of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which had been sitting on my shelf for some years (A unique joy of having physical books, by the way—you get to find your way back to them) I read the first volume and then, wanting some of the backstory filled in, I read Tom Holland’s trilogy (Rubicon, Dynasty, and Pax). I’ve also started a biography of Augustus, and I’ve ordered some Cicero.

I’ve always had a general interest in the time period, always as it connected to literature. I’ve read The Aeneid, The Meditations, Horace, Ovid, some Tacitus. I teach Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to my students every year, so I was familiar with the general outline of Ancient Rome.

Now, it seems, I have a desire to fill in the gaps, to gain a view of the civilization as a whole (although I’m less interested in the Roman Kingdom at the moment, sorry Livy).

I wrote this piece over the course of the day, about the environment surrounding the end of the Republic. It’s a first draft, and might be the first in a series about the Roman Emperors.

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Res Publica

A judge was beaten and lay prostrate.
Things were bad and everyone knew it.
The rivalries no longer good for the state.
The poor head of Bibulus covered in shit.
Another round of elections had to wait
for gangs at crossroads were so commonplace.

To them, compelled no longer by the law
but by those inner, atavistic gods,
bloodshed seemed no worse than what they saw.
They hailed the nooses, the knives, and the rods,
upheld the ways of cruelty and awe,
and sighed, relieved, when their neighbors were gone.

Because they could not of their own accord
act out what the law compelled
they would have to kneel before the sword.
So soldiers in the Forum, and Senate, swelled.
So justice was abandoned to the horde
and in a thousand different ways ignored.

Yet the circus ceased to satisfy.
The spectacle, the lavish entertainment,
dulled by excess, did not gratify.
Nor was there much merit in achievement
for any honor or title that might glorify
seemed but naked ambition to be pacified.

Because to the law they had no recourse,
so bowdlerized it could not be remembered
or trusted to, theirs was an empty discourse.
Rights, and their reasons, had been surrendered,
razed like the Twelve Tables on the Forum’s porch,
walked over with ease in great shows of force.

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