Category: History

The Tragic Lesson of Verginia: Power and Tyranny

Guillaume Guillon Lethière (French, 1760 – 1832) The Death of Virginia, about 1825–1828, Oil on paper, mounted on canvas. Unframed: 73.5 × 117 cm (28 15/16 × 46 1/16 in.).
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2023.7

Livy’s History of Early Rome offers a timeless case study in the corruption of power through the story of Verginia. In Book 3, Appius Claudius – a member of the decemviri tasked with codifying Roman law – becomes consumed by lustful desire for Verginia, a young woman of plebeian birth. Unable to win her through legitimate means, he orchestrates a fraudulent court case to claim her as a slave, abusing his authority to ensure the verdict.

When her father Verginius, a soldier, arrives to defend his daughter, he finds the machinery of justice has been wholly perverted to serve Appius’s desires. Faced with no recourse against this tyranny, Verginius takes his daughter’s life in the forum rather than see her enslaved and defiled. His tragic act galvanizes both the people and army, leading to the overthrow of the decemviri and restoration of constitutional government.

The story has relevance today as we witness how unchecked power still corrupts, with modern figures who – like Appius – seduce both masses and elites with promises of reform while pursuing personal gain and dismantling democratic safeguards. The allusive poem I drafted below below explores this persistent danger, using Verginia’s sacrifice to illuminate the cost of our collective failure to recognize and resist tyranny in its early stages.

The Wages of Compromise: The Blood of Verginia

Beneath the rostra’s shadowed height, he stood,
The man whose gilded words had bought the crowd.
Their cheer, a wreath for virtue misconstrued,
Their gaze averted, though his deeds grew loud.
What harm, they thought, if petty sins abound?
A jest, a taunt, though brazen, met no plea;
The slights were not whispered, though unjust,
Personal gain o’er public trust was clear to see.

Yet they excused what honesty would shun,
For promised change, for vengeance lightly jested.
The wrongs of old made present wrongs seem none;
A brighter future claimed, though untested.
And so, unchecked, his shadow stretched and grew,
Till justice bowed before his grim designs.
A father’s hand, with love and fury true,
Struck down the bonds of tyranny’s confines.

Her blood, a warning, sanctified the square,
The people’s slumber shattered by her cry.
The forum rang with shouts that pierced the air,
The dream of freedom breathed, though she must die.
No longer could they feign or look away—
Their wish for ease had birthed a tyrant’s reign.
The jest of vengeance turned to ash that day,
And Appius fled, undone by grief and shame.

Let not the lesson fade within our time:
That deeds unchallenged fester into might.
To mock the law, to cloak a crime sublime
In promised gold, ensures the coming blight.
The people’s trust, the lords’ approving nod,
May crown a man or break his staff and rod.

Exploring Paul Klee’s Rosengarten and Emerson’s Philosophy

Paul Klee, Rose Garden (1920, 44, oil and pen on paper on cardboard, 49 cm x 42.5 cm), Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, on permanent loan from the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich, CC BY-NC-SA.

Periodically, I revisit the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His writing style is sometimes jarring but just as often sublime (Henry James, in Partial Portraits (1888), observed that Emerson “never really mastered the art of composition” (p. 20) while also acknowledging that “he had frequently an exquisite eloquence” (p. 32)). The visit is always profitable.

While rereading Emerson’s perhaps most famous essay, Self-Reliance (1847), I found that after much of my recent reading focusing so heavily on things temporal, especially in the past month (e.g., Carlo Rovelli’s masterful works The Order of Time, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, and Reality is Not What it Seems and Tom Siegfried’s lyrical The Number of the Heavens: A History of the Multiverse and the Quest to Understand the Cosmos), the following passage resonated in a manner it had not on previous readings of the essay:

“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

Such an extraordinary observation and lesson—that there is no lamentation of the past, or anticipation of the future, only presence for the rose.

Lamentation, or regret more precisely, I have long regarded as the most useless of human endeavors, if it is more than rectification of error, amends to others, and lessons learned. Anticipation, or anxiety about the future, is also too often misplaced and misdirected energy. Yes, we can and should make plans, but when the energy and effort extend beyond the necessary such that the future becomes a thief of reason, serenity, and equanimity, we are perilously close to toppling over.

The image of the rose in the above essay also brought to mind, fortuitously or not, a wonderful piece of art, Rosengarten (1920) by Paul Klee, ensconced in Lenbachhaus, an art museum in Munich.

After reading Helmut Friedel and Annegret Hoberg’s words about Klee from Der Blaue Reiter im Lenbachhaus München (2007) at the Lenbachhaus website, I readily envision Rosengarten as exemplifying the same harmonious integration of presence and timelessness that Emerson attributes to the rose. Created in 1920, the painting merges organic and constructed forms into a rhythmic whole. Klee’s garden unfolds as a grid of irregular, red-tinged rectangles, delicately framed by black lines, with roses—symbols of growth and vitality—scattered like musical notes across the composition. These roses, like Emerson’s, embody the eternal present; their rounded, spiral blooms suggest continuous life and creation. For Klee, as for Emerson, nature’s rhythms transcend human constructs of time.

Interestingly, Klee drew inspiration from music, speaking of “cultural rhythms” in his Bauhaus writings and comparing his visual compositions to musical structures. In Rosengarten, he achieves a polyphony of visual forms, where the temporal becomes spatial, and each element contributes equally to the whole. Just as Emerson’s rose is “perfect in every moment of its existence,” Klee’s garden suggests an infinite unfolding—a melody extending endlessly beyond the canvas.

Both Emerson and Klee challenge us to inhabit the present, to find harmony in life’s rhythms, and to appreciate the completeness inherent in each moment. The rose, whether in prose or paint, invites us to rise above time.

Zbigniew Herbert’s Poem on Caligula’s Contempt: The Appointment of the Horse Incitatus

Gaius (Caligula). AD 37-41. Æ Sestertius. Photograph from CNG, Triton XXVII Auction, Lot 675.

The Roman Emperor Caligula, to demonstrate his contempt for the Roman Senate, appointed, by some accounts, his horse, Incitatus, to the Senate so that the horse could be made a consul of Rome. This ancient tale is called to mind by events of recent days, but not for reasons many may suspect. The following poem of Zbigniew Herbert (translated by Oriana Ivy) suggests that the horse had merits as an appointee which many of the recent suggested appointees do not.

***

Caligula Speaks

Among all the citizens of Rome

I loved only one

Incitatus–a horse

when he entered the Senate

the unstainable toga of his coat

gleamed in the midst

of purple-lined assassins

Incitatus possessed many merits

he never made speeches

had a stoic temperament

I think at night in the stable he read the philosophers

I loved him so much that one day I decided to crucify him

but his noble anatomy made it impossible

he accepted the honor of consulship with indifference

exercised authority in the best manner

that is not at all

he would not be persuaded toward a lasting liason

with my second wife Caesonia

thus unfortunately the lineage of centaur caesars

was not engendered

that’s why Rome fell

I determined to have him declared a god

but on the ninth day before the February calends

Cherea Cornelius Sabinus and the other fools

interfered with my pious plans

he accepted the news of my death with calm

was thrown out of the palace and condemned to exile

he bore this blow with dignity

he died without descendants

slaughtered by a thick-skinned butcher from Ancium

Tacitus is silent

about the posthumous fate of his meat

A Reflective Meditation on Illuminated Shadows

Photograph from Cleveland Public Power, demonstrating the illuminating power of its new LED technology streetlights. Over 61,000 streetlights will soon have the energy saving bulbs in Cleveland, Ohio.

Contemplate the glow of the streetlight, artificially illuminating the shadows.

The glow of the streetlight, casting its harsh, artificial light against the natural darkness, creates a curious interplay between illumination and shadow. It’s a modern torch, piercing through the obscurity with a steady, almost indifferent beam, not a light of the sun or stars but a product of human hands. Its glow is sterile, pale compared to the warm light of day, yet it transforms the night in ways that natural light cannot.

The streetlight becomes a kind of overseer, dictating where shadows may fall, altering the natural order of things. Instead of the fluid, ever-changing dance of sunlight, this light is fixed, harshly delineating the boundaries between what is seen and what is hidden. The shadows it creates are sharper, more angular, as though the streetlight has imposed a new geometry upon the world.

Beneath this glow, the familiar takes on a different character—edges that fade into indistinct darkness during the day now stand out in sharp relief. The street, the buildings, the trees, all are transformed into figures on a stage, the artificial light giving them a sense of isolation, as if they exist alone in a frozen moment. Yet, despite its clarity, the light itself is never quite enough to banish the shadows. It merely pushes them into different corners, leaving a quiet, lurking presence at the edge of perception.

In this artificial illumination, there is a tension: the light reveals, but incompletely, allowing shadow and light to entwine in an unresolved embrace. The streetlight does not offer the warmth or guidance of natural light, but rather a cold certainty, making the shadows seem more distant, more impenetrable, perhaps even more alive. It’s a glow that brings clarity to what is immediate but deepens the mystery of what lies beyond.