Apart from the fact that I woke up late and have been on the wagon, the whole day, on my one day off this week, it has been a relatively productive day. I have not added much to my play Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni (which stands at 933 lines so far) but I did integrate all of the copious footnotes (which number 150: all citing primary sources) into the main body of the text, which meant checking them all and occasionally making corrections. I also refined the text in places, making it conform to the metre, and refining its elegance in terms of sibillance, assonance and alliteration. It is nearly ready for print, and will need a second draft doing (of course), but all in all it's coming along nicely. (And when I say nicely, I mean "the best goddamn piece I have ever written, by a long way" which is saying something, believe me).
Yet this evening I read a little John Aubrey (who, apparently, lived in the exact same place which I live currently), but that didn't help much. It is not Wiltshire's folklore I need to get read up on, but Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, even London. Fortunately, I lived in that neck of the woods for few years, and have a 'a few' books on British folklore.
I spent the last hour or so trawling through Ammianus Marcellinus, trying to find a section which may have come in useful for my next degree (yes, my third degree, spanning twelve years so far, yet I am still doing precisely the same job, now, at 43, as I was when I was 14: unskilled labour for bare minimum wage - so much for university in Dark Age Britain!). I am certainly not going to wait for the British academic community to offer me any work! (One may as well wait for the firey Phelgethon to freeze over! I can't even give my services away as an expert classicist and antiquarian in this country [as a volunteer at the local museum], much less scrape a living from them!). The British, are not to be trusted. The French? When they say they'll offer you a good job, actually put their money where their mouth is! (And you don't need some meaningless piece of paper from some university - or even two, as a Magister Artium in litteris humanioribus cum honoribus, which I am).
Anyway, I've decided to do a third degree, and this one is in law. I have a stack of books which almost dwarf all of the others on my shelf (the 'Great Scott' as its known - the Liddell and Scott Ancient Greek Lexicon notwithstanding, nor indeed the Lewis and Short, nor even the whopping two volume Bailey's advanced Latin dictionaries). They're big, but they're not that big (compared to the kinds of books a hardcore classicist is accustomed to reading). Most of their content is so f-ing boring compared to classical studies (like you would not believe). 3/4 of them are just statutes and statutes and torts and amendments to statutes. It is a wonder anyone even obeys the law in Britain, it is so excessively bureaucratic. So, anyway, I picked up some former law student's books on a second hand stall a couple of months ago, so I'm researching the history of law, for my TMA 0 (mock essay) for my first module. I was toying with Cicero, but now I am erring on translating some sections of Ammianus Marcellinus instead (because he often discusses law). There is a particularly fine section I stumbled upon (Ammianus 22.10.1-7) which discusses religious tolerance and equality in the eyes of the law (and also a blemish of that particular fourth century Roman emperor - Julian). Elsewhere (22.9.9) he is described as being overly severe as a judge.
There are also some excellent works on law in Latin (Justinian, of course), such as Cicero's Academy, but especially his trials, and indeed an extremely beautiful passage in Plautus. Check it out:
Who set in motion all kinds of men, and the seas and lands,
I’m his citizen in the city of the gods.
So I am, when you see the bright shining constellation,
a sign which had always appeared at just the right time,
this god in heaven, and the name for me is Arcturus.
I am clear in the heavens at night and among the gods,
but I walk among mortals during the daytime.
Yet other signs fall to earth from heaven. It’s Jupiter who’s
the emperor of the gods and men. Him, he separates
one from another, through our ancestries. He who made men.
We should know the old ways, piety and faith, as he assists
any man by opulence. Those who sue for false law-suits,
with false testimonies, whoever commits
perjury in a court of law for monetary reward,
we refer their names to Jupiter in a register.
Jupiter knows which man might seek to do wrong every day,
which man that got a law-suit: they’re indicted for perjury,
men of mischief who bring about false law-suits beside a judge,
again Jupiter adjudicates the matter being decided.
He punishes many more than get away with it.
He has good men noted on other writing tablets.
Here scoundrels bring themselves to mind and that Jupiter himself
is able to be placated by offerings, by gifts.
They waste both their toil and expense; it happens because from he,
nothing is accepted for one who’s pleading from perjury.
A man who’s pious, praying, will find grace from the gods,
for him, more easily than a man who’s a miscreant.
For this reason I warn you about this, you who are good men,
any men who lead their lives with piety and with faith,
act with restraint beforehand, so that after the event,
you may be glad.
Plautus, The Rope lines 1-30 (perhaps first staged between roughly 200-190 B.C.E.) translated by Maxwell Lewis Latham M.A. (Hons.) Classical Studies (2020).
Yet I have read enough about the law, litigation and crimonology in context now to understand that there is a complete separation between the concordat (church and state). (That is, on the surface, at least, some more... esoteric books contain some hints to the contrary...). Seemingly, on the face of it, all trials are determined due to the facts of a particular case, scientifically, often citing forensic or sometimes digital evidence (a data trail). Yet at heart, I am with Plautus, 100%. In the hermetic tradition, we are watched over by guardian angels and genii. I suppose that what with the Big Brother state in Britain (there are more cameras in London alone than any other country in the entire world), that is not much different to what Plautus wrote, if nothing more than a mirror of the gods.
Max.
No comments:
Post a Comment