When Fools Reign
mohammad
And where are the clowns
Quick send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here.
~ Barbra Streisand lyrics to "Send in the Clowns"
President Bush s June 29th speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina
reminded me of how the general population of Rome suffered through
thirteen years of Caesar Claudius reign; a reign which amounted to
nothing less than a traveling freak show.
Every speech from President Bush seems to confirm his relationship to
Claudius by means of Empirical Roman atavism.
Claudius was not only thought a fool but "instead of keeping quiet
about his stupidity, Claudius explained in a number of short speeches,
that it had been a mere mask assumed for the benefit of Gaius
(Caligula), and that he owed both life and throne to it."[1] No one,
however, believed him and soon a book was published entitled Fools
Rise to Power; the thesis being that no one would act the fool unless
he was a fool already.
Claudius had ascended the Roman throne following one of history s
greatest maniacs. Officially, Caligula s name was Gaius and he reigned
from 37 AD until 41 AD. Reading the adventures of Caligula is quite
accurately a trip into depths of megalomania. Among the titles he
bestowed upon himself were "Pious," "Son of the Camp," "Father of the
Army," along with "Best and Greatest of Caesars."[2] He also "insisted
on being treated as a god sending for the most revered or
artistically famous statues of the Greek deities (including that of
Jupiter at Olympia), and having their heads replaced by his own."[3]
Caligula also seemed to have a royal complex towards the Roman gods and
goddesses. "When the moon shone full and bright he always invited the
Moon-goddess to &his bed; and during the day would indulge in whispered
conversations with Capitoline[4] Jupiter, pressing his ear to the god s
mouth, and sometimes raising his voice in anger. Once he was overheard
threatening the god; If you do not raise me up to Heaven I will cast
you down to Hell. "[5]
The question of Caligula s sanity then becomes rhetorical; did he make
this statement because his insanity forced him to believe in a figment
of his imagination or was he perfectly sane threatening what he knew
was the figment of his imagination?
Caligula was so mentally unstable that he often complained; "That there
had been no public disaster like the Varus massacre under Augustus, or
the collapse of the amphitheater at Fidenae[6] under Tiberius. The
prosperity of his own reign, he said, would lead to its being wholly
forgotten, and he often prayed for a great military catastrophe, or for
some famine, plague, fire, or earthquake.
The problem was that Caligula never realized he was disaster enough!
Caligula epitomized the religious conflict between the Greek
philosophies and the ancient state religions. The resulting battle,
within the minds of man, brought about the slow decay of the ancient
priesthoods along with many of the old gods falling into disfavor.
Above everything else, when considering the ancient religions, we must
realize that these religions were emphatically mythical, not
historical; all these gods had no real existence. They were and are the
product of man s mind and without any divine inspiration of any kind.
A nation s rulers are a direct extension of the beliefs, attitudes and
morals of its people. The reigns of these two maniacal Roman Emperors
stand as a direct result of the Greek philosophies and the morals
brought by them into the Roman Empire.
The time from Alexander the Great (323 BC) until the Roman Emperor
Constantine (AD 325), is the time in which mankind conducted a unique
experiment in the annals of history. This 700-year period would have a
profound effect on the lives of mankind resulting in the most intensive
search for the meaning of life which the human mind is likely to
undertake.
This search took place not only in Greece, but was transmitted to Rome
and is also found in the East, and in particular in India. The results
being that mankind was (and still is) endeavoring to subjugate the
meaning of his life to his own will by trying to dignify his ideals of
justice and morality in values which are not absolute but are relative
to the persons or groups holding them. This state of relativism then,
just as now, brings results which are horrific.
For the moment, I will concede that the period from Pericles[7] to
Aristotle[8] was the high point in ancient human history in terms of
pure intellectual achievement. Yet by the time of the birth of Christ
these intellectual achievements had deteriorated into the darkest and
most appalling periods of history for free man, and slave alike. It
ended in a situation, during the Roman Empire, in which the elite
society came to look upon suicide as a logical escape from life and
insanity among the ruling classes. The classes of non-freemen and
slaves didn t even have this privilege, because of the lack of control
they were capable of exerting over their own lives.
Frederick W. Farrar[9] writes of the Roman condition:
Its marked characteristic was despairing sadness, which became
especially prominent in its most sincere adherents. Its favorite theme
was the glorification of suicide, which wiser moralists had severely
reprobated, but which many Stoics praised as the one sane refuge
against oppression and outrage.
It was a philosophy which was indeed able to lacerate the heart with
righteous indignation against the crimes and follies of mankind, but
which vainly strove to resist and which scarcely even hoped to stem,
the ever swelling tide of vice and misery. For wretchedness it had no
pity; on vice it looked with impotent disdain&
Even for those who had every advantage of rank and wealth, nothing was
possible but a life of crushing sorrow ended by a death of complete
despair.
Zeno[10] and Cleanthes (Zeno s successor in the school of Stoics[11])
both committed suicide. Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, and Seneca, along
with many other historians and writers of antiquity, fully document the
frequency of suicide under the Greek and Roman Empires. During
Trajan s[12] reign suicide almost became a national pastime;
accordingly the Latin phrases to describe it multiplied to such a
degree that there were more descriptive phrases for suicide than for
any other act in life, including deviate sexual behavior.
Socrates had sought to change the sophism of philosophy into a logical
conclusion by asking questions. He did this by challenging every
logical conclusion with another set of questions. He did not ridicule
religion, but sought purity of thought rather than ridicule and
confrontation. But in spite of his intentions, he succeeded in only
shifting the direction of the argument from man s relationship to the
gods and his destiny, to "What is man?" Socrates had converted the
discussion of the corrupt pagan religions into an exhilarating
humanism. He converted sin into simple ignorance, which with ample
education, could be corrected. He made the search for truth of greater
importance than the search for righteousness. In short Socrates had
moved philosophy from sophism to sophistry; from a plausible but
fallacious conclusion to a plausible but equally fallacious conclusion.
This had allowed the philosophy of man to achieve the end it sought.
Man had slid into a hopeless state of either seeking escape from the
hurt and cruelties of fate and the boredom of life by allowing
themselves no feeling at all (Stoicism[13]), or by completely
abandoning all restraint and adopting a policy of eating and drinking
and being merry while living only for the pleasure of the moment
(Epicureanism[14]).
Not only was there decay in purity of thought, Justin Martyr gives us a
further sense of the "evil" inherent in these philosophies. Writing in
around 155 AD, Justin Martyr sends his First Apology (in the sense of
"defense" or "vindication") to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius and his
adopted sons. In chapter XXVII Justin Martyr, states what is well known
to the Emperor Pius concerning the "guilt of exposing (making
available) children" for the sexually deviant desires of the Rome s
wealthy and elite. Even though his Apology was written 100 plus years
after the death of Christ, the acts of the Romans are still revealing
because they are the result of the Greek philosophies.
Man s philosophy standing uncorrected, and unfettered by moral
absolutes of right and wrong, had resulted in a dismal failure. The
search for the "meaning of life" had only found pessimism, suicide,
abandonment of all self-restraint, drunkenness and the contradiction of
all human logic with the accompanying degeneration of moral standards.
The sinister evil that ruled the minds of men also completely
impregnated the halls of power in the Roman Empire. All levels of
authority were affected with the same blight. Right and wrong were
subject to relativism, and with no absolutes to guide authorities, it
fell to Rome to define what was right.
In so doing they lost their sense of honor. Rulers didn t have to
behave honorably so they masked their behavior with fine flowery words
or blatant lies. Any former love of serious discussion concerning law
and morality was debased to creative nonsense, so that the most
despicable actions and laws could be made to appear noble.
It became more important to win the discussion or point than to learn
the truth. It became more important to pass a law for one s own
self-interest than for the welfare of the Empire. The good of the Roman
Empire thus had decayed into the sick, perverted will of the emperor,
and all authorities followed his lead. Is it any wonder that when the
law became the will of Rome that the will of Rome decayed into the
murder of any who disagreed with, questioned, or spoke against the
edicts of Caesar, or anyone that Caesar thought might be capable of
such seditious acts?
As if to emphasize the point, Rome lined thoroughfares into and out of
the major cities of rebellious provinces, with the crucified victims as
a warning to others that the relativism of Rome was the only law. Is
there any question then that the logical result of such debauchery
would be the wholesale slaughter of life as a sport in the Roman
arenas?
So totally devoid of any moral sense were the religions and
philosophies of these centuries, that there was nearly perpetual war
which only added to the great massacres of human life being performed
in the arenas of Rome during religious holidays.
The gladiatorial games were introduced to the Romans in 264 BC under
the pretext of religion; they were defended as a means of sustaining
the military spirit, like duels in Germany. Gladiatorial shows were
given at the public games and at the banquets of the rich. The
combatants were slaves, criminals or captives; later even freemen
entered the arena, so great was the glory of successful combat.
Exhibitors vied with each other in the number exposed to slaughter.
Caesar put 320 pairs up at once. Agrippa caused 700 pairs to fight in
one day at Berytus. Under Augustus 10,000 fought. Titus, "the darling
of the human race," put up 3000. Trajan amused Rome for 123 days by
exhibiting 10,000 captives in mutual slaughter. Rome s holiest vestals
had seats of honor in the arena while Claudius liked to witness the
contortions of the dying gladiators.
It has been estimated that in the years from Augustus Caesar until the
fall of Rome more than 1,000,000 people were killed in the gladiatorial
shows. There is no accounting for the total number of murdered, since
the gladiatorial events were always preceded by a pre-game show where
hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed men, women and children were
torn asunder by wild beasts, for the sole purpose of whipping the
gathered crowd into frenzy of bloody lust.
Probably the salient point to President Bush s recent pestiferous
panegyrizing debacle is the silence and lack of applause of those
troops who were present. Maybe, just maybe, we have some who are not
enamored with being the sacrificial lambs of a maniacal administration.
However, until we, as a nation, return to social principles of right
and wrong, grounded in absolutes, we can look forward to a continuing
parade of stuttering, nonsensical, egomaniacs that will slither into
and out of the White House, leaving behind legacies of staggering debt,
lies, murder, wars, nefarious laws, unnatural uses for cigars and
stained blue dresses. If so, we would be wise to change our national
anthem to "Send in the Clowns."
Notes
[1] Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Life of Claudius. [38]
[2] Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Life of Gaius [22], translated by
Robert Graves, Penguin Books, N.Y., New York 1976
[3] Ibid.
[4] Capitoline, one of the Seven Hills of Rome, there was a temple here
dedicated to the god Jupiter.
[5] Suetonius, Ibid, Life of Gaius. [22]
[6] Fidenae An Italian tribe and town just up the Tiber River from
Rome. The Romans fought with these neighbors very early in their
history, around 725 BC.
[7] (495 429 BC) General and statesman, of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid
family, who presided over the "Golden Age" of Athens, and was virtually
its uncrowned king (443 429 BC). Politically a radical, he helped push
through the constitutional reforms that brought about full Athenian
democracy (462 461 BC). A staunch opponent of Sparta, it was his
unremitting hostility to her and her allies that brought about the
Peloponnesian War (431 404 BC). Renowned for his oratory, his "Funeral
Speech" (431/430 BC), as recorded by Thucydides, is an impassioned
apologia for Athens' democratic principles and system of government.
[8] (384 322 BC) Aristotle is one of the "big three" in ancient Greek
philosophy, along with Plato and Socrates. (Socrates taught Plato, who
in turn instructed Aristotle.) Aristotle spent nearly 20 years at
Plato's Academy, first as a student and then as a teacher. After
Plato's death he traveled widely and educated a famous pupil, Alexander
the Great, the Macedonian who nearly conquered the world. Later
Aristotle began his own school in Athens, known as the Lyceum.
Aristotle is known for his carefully detailed observations about nature
and the physical world, which laid the groundwork for the modern study
of biology. Among his works are the texts Physics, Metaphysics,
Rhetoric and Ethics.
[9] Farrar, Frederick W., The Early Days of Christianity, Burt, New
York, 1882, p.10 and footnote.
[10] Founder of the Stoic philosophy, 308 BC.
[11] One who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief,
pleasure, or pain. A member of an originally Greek school of
philosophy, founded by Zeno about 308 B.C., believing that God
determined everything for the best and that virtue is sufficient for
happiness. Its later Roman form advocated the calm acceptance of all
occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will or of the natural
order.
[12] (53 117 AD) Roman emperor (98 117), selected as successor by the
aged Nerva for his military skills. He was the first emperor after
Augustus to expand the Roman Empire significantly, adding Dacia and
Arabia (AD 106). The wealth from Dacia's gold mines enabled him to
launch an ambitious building program, especially in Rome, where he
constructed a new forum, library, and aqueduct. A sensitive but firm
ruler, he was one of Rome's most popular emperors.
[13] Indifference to pleasure or pain; impassiveness. Stoicism. The
doctrines or philosophy of the Stoics.
[14] A philosophy advanced by Epicurus that considered happiness, or
the avoidance of pain and emotional disturbance, to be the highest good
and that advocated the pursuit of pleasures that can be enjoyed in
moderation. Also Epicureanism Devotion to a life of pleasure and
luxury.
July 6, 2005
Tim Case is a 30-year student of the ancient histories who agrees with
the first century stoic Epictetus on this one point: "Only the educated
are free."