Of Pride, Falling, and Rising

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ancient greek, apollodorus, bible, G. Julius Caesar, latin, philosophy, Plato, proverbs

“Pride cometh before the fall.”

That was the comment a family member made to me when I was reminiscing with someone else about my youth and the times shared with a dead person at his funeral. The subject was how “awesome I had been when I was young, and how much my son loved my stories, so much so that he did not mind if I was his teacher at school – it was not embarrassing for him at all.” The person I was speaking to agreed that the deceased had always admired that about me – my stories and personality. Then my family member (in-law, thankfully) said:

“What was that again? Pride cometh before the fall?”

My answer was as quick as it was clear:

“And I am still falling.”

“Yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

My friend, who was actually the mother of one of my best friends said:

“He has always been like this.” Then she let out a hearty laugh.

I am not sure what my family member was going for with that comment. Perhaps it was that she wanted to be part of a conversation that was clearly not including her. My in-laws have known me for fourteen years, most of my friends for twenty. Nevertheless, I thought of the comment for a while – well, I am still thinking about it – and realized the problem. Let us quote the verse of which this individual was probably thinking:

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)

I prefer the Latin:

Contritionem praecedit superbia et ante ruinam exaltatur spiritus.

Overbearing pride (hubris) shall precede contrition and before ruin an exalted spirit.

Fascinating, is it not? It is not pride that brings the fall, but the overstepping of pride into hubris or, as the verse says, overbearing pride. Now, here is the trick. Pride is not bad. One can be proud of his/her accomplishments.

Let’s try the Ancient Greek:

Πρὸ συντριβῆς ἡγεῖται ὕβρις, πρὸ δὲ πτώματος κακοφροσύνη.

Hubris (I was right) is made to come before the crushing, and before the falling (associated with epilepsy, interestingly enough) an accumulation of bad deeds (folly, basically).

There is only one thing I dislike more than lazy translation: lazy quoting.

The pride that both the A. Greek and the Latin speak of is ‘overbearing pride.’ To the Greeks, this kind of pride brought on nemesis, in other words, righteous anger. To the Romans, the equivalent punishment to their overbearing pride was the bringing on of contrition, that is, the crushing of the soul and the body with the things pride has made truth when not so. I am certain that thinking myself good enough so that my son does not feel shame to call me father and teacher does not qualify for this overbearing pride. Considering my response, however – and I am terrible at responses on the spot – the verse becomes even clearer.

When does this fall take place?

“I am still falling,” I said. In the moment I answered like Apollodorus (the Gift of Apollo was his name). When Apollodorus’ friends were making fun of him, thinking him crazy for being a philosopher and not making money, he replied ἐγὠ μέντοι ὑμας οὐκ οἵομαι άλλ΄ εὐ οἰδα (Plato Symp. 173.2-3). “You think it, I however, know it well.” I know it well too. I am in a state of fallness. I drank my hemlock, like a good boy. Yet are we not all fallen? Man is in a fallen state, this individual and I both believe this as a product of our religion. I am down, perhaps if you think you are not so yourself, you should help me become risen as well – those of us who are still fallen and are not, unlike you, it would seem, enlightened. Instead, the comment made was not geared towards enlightenment, it was a pun. A pun on my fallen state from an individual who thought herself too far above me to make any other comment. Now that sounds like overbearing pride to me. Hold the hemlock for a second.

I really like the second half of that verse. Let us recall it in the three languages:

…and an haughty spirit before a fall.
…et ante ruinam exaltatur spiritus.
…πρὸ δὲ πτώματος κακοφροσύνη.

The conjunction ‘and’ is inseparable, all three languages use it (and, et, δὲ). That alone should tell us that those who do not quote the verse as a whole are missing out on something.

What could it be?

Well, that the fall only happens after one suffers of a haughty/exalted/badly-accumulated spirit. It is the spirit who thinks itself above others that causes the body to fall. As the Greek suggests, it is not a matter of if, but of when. Πτώματος is the fall provoked by the gods (nemesis) due to our κακοφροσύνη, not much different than epilepsy to the Greeks – of course, to them it was just the falling caused by pride, something that would annoy G. Julius Caesar quite a bit. Kακοφροσύνη is in direct opposition to συμφροςὐνη, which means to act wisely or to ‘act with wisdom’ – aka moderation. The opposite literally meant to ‘act with bad wisdom.’ Bad wisdom indeed, to quote scripture to give weight to words that would otherwise be absolutely empty but must be spoken nonetheless in order to bring ease to an exalted spirit.

Well, no. That is the answer. You are not better than me. I am not superbus, I am not hubristic, I am simply proud of the fact that I am a good enough father that my son won’t feel ashamed of me if I have to teach him and his friends in a classroom setting. Further, if we are all fallen, must we not learn to rise on the things we have been given? Are we forever to remain fallen? I don’t think so. Whether we have been cast into this world by god or by our parents alone, we were born to nothing, and it is up to us to use Good Wisdom in order to rise to something. Pride, the good kind, is not so much a tool of destruction as it is the rope by which we can pull ourselves out of this mud-pond that is life.

Besides. It is a funeral, we are supposed to tell stories and remind ourselves of the fools we were when the person now deceased came into our lives and made things run in a different direction. We are supposed to remember the dead, through the effect he or she had in our lives. Perhaps next time I will be able to answer that destruction happens in two stages to the religious. Overbearing pride brings about a destruction of the body, an exalted soul the fall of the spirit. Perhaps next time I won’t feel like I have to smile while explaining to others why my in-laws are the reason the word Bad-Wisdom exists at all.

No worries. I will drink my hemlock now.

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Thinking of Caesar, Grammar, and How Conservatives Behave

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conservatives, G. Julius Caesar, Grammar, latin, Life, philosophy

I have been thinking on a phrase that Caesar used in his De Bello Gallico for a while now. Perhaps I am just overthinking it (yes, it happens) but I really like how the sentence speaks to his battle tactics.

Caesari omnia uno tempore erant agenda.
To Caesar, all things had to be done at a single time.
Para César, todas las cosas debian de haber sido hechas en un sólo momento.

The composition of the sentence, which flows quite well in the Latin, needs all sorts of prepositions and complex participles to make it work in English and Spanish. I could render it in English somewhat all-encompassing-like (how’s that for an adverb) without losing a lot of the meaning but, surprisingly, the Spanish gave me a lot of trouble. The verb to be, usually smooth in the Spanish, was somewhat awkward here, perhaps due to the language’s aversion to participles. Who knows.

The cool thing about this bit of writing, is that Caesar is talking about himself in the third person. Caesari is Caesar himself, in the Dative. Not only is he third person, but he makes himself the Indirect Object of the sentence (and the verb). Humility? I doubt it. Rather, he was expressing his opinion about a fact that he had experienced, and that all should consider, especially since he knew first hand. Sometimes will will construct something like ‘to me, it seems the best…’ In that sense, we are placing ourselves as an indirect actor, allowing the real subject of the sentence to come through in hopes that we can carry a point. So, what is our subject, if not almighty Caesar? Everything.

No, literally, omnia is the subject of the sentence. This little word in the nominative case and neuter gendered (I am not a fan of the neuters because they like to make you think they are direct objects – accusatives – when they aren’t) literally means ‘all things.’ ‘Everything’ as the subject seems almost fallacious. After all, no one can like ‘every kind of food,’ or ‘every person,’ or even ‘every good thing;’ but the use of the expression brings Caesar’s mind to us in an interesting way. The guy loved his extremes. Believe or not, conservatives tend to be far more all encompassing in their statements than liberals or democrats (ya, I just went there), and therefore use more words like ‘every,’ ‘always,’ ‘never,’ or ‘none’ more often than the aforementioned people. Why? Conservatism is pretty close to an ‘all or nothing’ sort of philosophy. In other words, conservatives are like the Sith.

The bad guys are conservatives? Well, sure; but hey, you didn’t think the Jedi weren’t liberals, right? Freedom for all races, rights for all creatures, nature(force)-lovers…

It is no wander that Obi Wan Kenobi’s answer to Darth Vader in Episode III is “Only the Sith deal in absolutes.” After all, “you are either with me or against me” is quite a conservative statement to make. Things are black and white when extremes are applied – ask any conservative. Caesar is doing the same thing here by separating ‘all or nothing.’ By saying ‘all things’ Caesar forces the reader to take into account everything they think about when they ponder Roman issues, culture, and ideals. In writing this to the senate at Rome, which is what Caesar was doing, he was challenging their changing beliefs, because he had won in Germany and that gave him the right, therefore he was in the know of life, right? Well…

Uno tempore is an Ablative of Time in Which, ya, that exists. This ablative set the reader into a time, a single dot of time in which the action of the sentence happens. Why choose to write it here? Well, Caesar, like the Romans, was a Subject-Object-Verb kinda guy. We, English speakers, are a Verb-Subject-Object people. We say ‘The Dog Runs to me’ because that’s how we like our sentences, and we don’t really have a way to express the same idea in any other way. If I were to say ‘The Dog me runs’ people would wonder if you got run over by some Great Dane or something. Romans didn’t care as much for word order, because the ‘to’ in the sentence was embedded into their dative case. Equally, here, instead of using a preposition, such as ‘in,’ the position and spelling of Uno tempore tells us that ‘one time’ is the time in which the action happens. Fun!

But here’s the kicker: erant agenda is a construction made up of an imperfect verb and a participle. Verbs are awesome little things that tell you when things are happening, which tend to be useful – usually. In English, because we conjugate little, we need aiding verbs to tell us time. ‘I eat’ is a present, ‘I was eating’ is a past, ‘I will eat’ is a future. Caesar’s Latin modifies the verb proper to give us meaning. The verb mutates something like this:

I eat – eato
I will eat – eatebo
I was eating – eatebam

I have left the verb roots in English to give you an idea of what is added. You may say, ‘aha, there are too words there!’ And you would be right. Because prepositions can act as nouns, the verb is complimented by one. Erant literally means ‘they were being’ in the imperfect past. Here is Caesar being a Sith again. The imperfect past denotes an action that begun in the past and is still taking place. Thus, he is saying that since he begun to do things this way, he has always done things this way. ‘Things never change.’ Conservative much? Just in case you think I’m going crazy, take a look at agenda. Yes, we get our word agenda from this. The participle literally means ‘to be done’ or ‘about to be done.’ Future participles, such as this one, also carry a sense of duty (ought to be done) with them. The more accurate translation would be ‘ought to be done’ or ‘has to be done.’ Remember that famous phrase from Cato: “Carthago delenda est”? Same thing. Carthage ought to be destroyed, and Caesar’s being ‘ought to be done.’ Literally, the Roman Imperator (general, here, not Emperor) was saying that ‘to Caesar, all things ought to be done that were [being done] at a single moment.’

I just love that. To do things at that level of preparation, considering how massive Caesar’s army was, is impressive enough. To picture conservative Caesar writing to the senate of Rome telling them their indecision was shameful and that, in order to save the city, they too ought to do things within a single moment, is just impressive. But to understand that to Caesar life was but a moment in which all that could be done should be done in order to leave behind the greatest memory possible of oneself, giving meaning to the phrase alea iacta est, is just mind-blowing. Caesar stopped for no one (not just a phrase in Spaceballs, apparently), rather he understood the importance of carpe diem, and seized indeed. Maybe the Romans got tired of the guy because he didn’t give them a moment’s respite. Yet again, who does business on March 15th anyway?

Valete amicos!

Disclaimer: as much fun as it is to judge Caesar’s character on a single phrase, you probably shouldn’t compare him to a Sith Lord Conservative whilst amongst friends. Actually, don’t compare your conservative friends to the Sith either… come to think of it, don’t compare anyone to siths, they may think you are being mean.

Thinking of G. Julius Caesar, the Race, and the End of Life

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Crassus, G. Julius Caesar, latin, philosophy, Pompey, rome, Socrates

Gaius Julius Caesar. Master of war. His original name probably looked something like Caius Iulius Caesares – interesting if you are into Roman Gentes. The man was assassinated in 44 BCE by members of the Roman Senate. Before that, he had become the foremost ruler of Rome, and participated in a triumvirate with none other than Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey – probably the first true Roman dictator for life) and Marcus Licinius Crassus (more than likely the richest man in history – yes, of all time). Pompey was killed in Egypt ca. 47 BCE, as Caesar pursued him, by a pharaoh no more than twelve – later, Cleopatra would have her brother and husband murdered. Crassus died in combat in the East, far from Rome. To many, their deaths are not only ironic, but also expected. Perhaps, in these words from Caesar we may find an explanation as to why:

Sed fortuna, quae plurimum potest… parvis momentis magnas rerum commutationes efficit.But Fortune, who is able to do many things… by means of small momentum it is able to effect great changes.
Pero Fortuna, la cual puede hacer muchas cosas por medio de un pequeño impulso puede entonces crear grandes cambios.

Fortune, once more, assails us. Caesar, in his De Bello Gallico, emphasizes the power of Fortune, but he also emphasizes what makes luck so powerful. It is parvus momentum (if you are wondering why it looks different it is due to the fact that in the quotation the phrase in is an Ablative form, while I repeat it in the Nominative) or, in translation, little moments. We speak of momentum as as the build-up of velocity in relation to mass. That pesky physic’s class will never go away. The bigger the mass of an object and the greater momentum it gathers, the harder it is to stop. Multiply mass (m) and velocity (v), and you end up with basic momentum. Fortuna makes use of this mathematical equation. The more popular the man is, multiplied by the speed at which he moves, is his overall speed towards the end of his life. Socrates agreed when he said “If I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago.” In other words, the more mass and gravity, the more things are attracted to you, such as danger, fortune, and enemies. Socrates thought people should simply walk through life, seeking to aid fellow citizens but not tempting fortune by overexerting. Caesar was of a different stock, so were Pompey and Crassus. They thought the duty of man was to become as massive and quick as possible, without care for overall velocity.

Consider the metaphor of the race. Every man starts at the same place, not moving. The fastest man wins, of course, but he also gets to the end faster than the others. A man who wishes to live long (enjoy the race) should not run, but walk, even slow down and stop here and there to enjoy the sights. However, both Socrates and Caesar would agree that an individual not moving along in the race is far worse than another who struggles to race to the end as quickly as possible. Life is the same. We run our race, some quickly, some slowly. Many enjoy the walking while looking around, others just cannot help it but run as fast as possible. Many people notice they are arriving to the end of the line and try to stop before it comes; however, fortune has already dictated their fate, momentum is too great, and they end the race, inevitably, amongst wailing and gnashing of teeth – and death.

What are we to do, then, to become great. Change little. It is an interesting idea, in this world of progress, that to change little may mean both success and a longer-lasting life. I am not saying not to change, nor am I promoting a utopian world in which little things happen. Rather, we must think of changing step by step, gradually, as things come in life. Caesar is not saying that change is bad, he is saying that little change can make big changes down the road. In a world like the Roman, in which there was such a thing as a cursus honorum (a list of political key-points everyone had to hit in order to become a man of honor), to skip a step by running too fast was indeed seen as over-zealousness, what the Romans called superstitio. If the word looks familiar it is because we make up our modern ‘superstition’ from it, which is nothing more than over-stating religion.

In summary, should never run faster than one can afford. To do so may grant us immediate pleasure, even higher office, but it also builds our momentum, the speed at which we race towards our own end. We may find, at the end of our lives, that we have over-stated our beliefs, over-run the race, over-acted our role but, then, as we are to heavy with position and to quick by virtue of our advancement, there will be no stopping to see the world around us. Fortune will drag us, inexorably, to our demise. All pay the debt of death, eventually; how happy we are at the end, is completely up to the way we run the race. I don’t know if Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus died with smiles on their faces, but I do know many regretted they did not get to live longer lives. They could have slowed down, but it wasn’t in them. Maybe it is not in you either, reader, what you do in life is up to you, but keep in mind the inexorable fate that awaits us all and, perhaps, while still attaining your goals, you can also slow down to gaze at the wonders around you.

Valete!

Thinking on G. Julius Caesar, his Final Words, and Relationships of Love

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ancient greek, Brutus, Cato the Elder, Claudius, emperors, English, French, G. Julius Caesar, Julio-Claudians, latin, Roman Empire, Roman Republic, rome, spanish

Ancient Greek Wednesday and a the phrase has been gnawing at me for some time now, so it is time to release it and have it chew on someone else.

Καὶ σύ, τέκνον;
Even you, child?
¿Incluso tu, hijo?

Ah, I know what you must be thinking: ‘Caesar’s famous last words in Greek?’ But alas, Caesar did utter them in Ancient Greek, the language of the court in Rome. There had been multiple debates in the Roman Senate about this very fact, whether it was proper to speak Greek in a house whose language was Latin. Cato the Elder, as a populist, was a huge defender of Latin becoming the de facto language of the Roman Senate. He, reputedly, hated the Greeks and anything Greek, and said that he would learn the language solely for the purpose of having it taught to his kids by a Roman, himself. Although Cato lived in the 3rd and 2nd centuries, by the time Caesar was murdered (44 BCE) the practice of speaking Greek in court had decreased significantly, if not stopped altogether – many writers express surprise at how well Caesar could read and write Greek.

Part of the reason for that was the influx of provincials from Italy unto the ranks of the senate and the general populace of Rome. These provincials, conservative as they were, and non-members of the elite, sought to nationalize the language of Rome and decrease the importance of Greece and its teachers amongst the patrician elite. A curious byproduct of the non-Greek movement was the reduction of historical works on Greece towards the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, something quite regrettable when Roman history proper had been initiated by Greek-speaking historians. By the time the last true Caesar (last true descendant anyway), T. Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus rolled around, his speaking of Greek in court was seen by the senate as a mark of madness; only 100 years after G. Julius Caesar! Thus, Ancient Greek was spoken in Rome and in its senate during the Republic, but by the time the Caesares were dead (Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors) the language had been lost. There was a revival, however, during the Pax Romana, amongst the elite – again. If you have ever read Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, you have read a text translated from Ancient Greek, not Latin. The title of the text in Greek is Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν (things to himself); also latinized, as Caesar’s phrase, on the presumption that Romans speaking Ancient Greek was weird.

This is why a love Shakespeare rendering of Caesar’s phrase in French (“Et tu, Brute?”) in his Play Julius Caesar. If you had to tell an English-speaking audience not familiar with Greek or Latin that Caesar spoke in a different language when he uttered his famous phrase, how would you do it? Voila! French! It is a fantastic historical tidbit from the greatest historical playwright. I hope you have taken a look at some of Shakespeare’s Greek plays, they are fascinating. Sometimes, in recondite corners, I argue that Shakespeare was the first Classicist. It is something I can only say in whispers (or in writing), many people get upset; Classicists and Shakespearean Historians alike.

Interpretations of the phrase by G. Julius Caesar are varied and convoluted. Suffice it so say, as I have mentioned in the past, that τἐκνον was a term used in Ancient Greek to refer to a child not grown. Was Caesar insulting Brutus in this last statement by calling him a child? Probably not. Caesar was thinking with this Latin mind, of course, and putting into Greek the literal meaning of the Latin ‘filius.’ To a Roman, children were more cognizant than to the Greeks. Roman babies were named much more quickly because they had patronymics from the mother and father lines. They were also given generic names like Gaius, Secundus, Sextus, Maximus, Decimus, etc. Thus, Caesar was not thinking of the Greek meaning, but of the Roman one. Brutus was adopted, and thus considered a biological son to Caesar, thus the dying man was free to use the word which literally meant ‘that which I have made.’ Even in death, even after Brutus had plunged a knife in him, Caesar called him son, and meant it.

So next time you think of Caesar, think of Ancient Greek, of Latin, of Shakespeare, of English and French; think of parents and sons, of relationships of love and trust, and of betrayal and misfortune. Think like the Ancients, reader; and discover a whole new meaning to their words.

Χαίρετε!