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Sunday September 16th 2018Tim
Candler9
On
pontificating Sunday always worth thanking the Almighty
for the Gutter Press and bringing in the
Romans. One of whom, an Historian called Titus Livy,
made the suggestion that his people were so gone to the
dogs they could no longer live with their sins nor could
they live with the
cure to their sins. During his time upon earth Roman
Senators finally lost their Republic, their passionate
dialogues, their dutifully elected Tribunes were all
replaced by a series of often very ruthless and usually
totally uncouth Emperors who claimed to be related to
God or at least on God's guest list. Happy days for Rome were gone, replaced by smash
and grab, endless hunts for personal glory, and here
we're talking the early September of the year 36 BC, a sea
battle that determined the end of an intermittent
hundred year long civil war between the idea of a Roman
Republic and the impulse toward Roman Tyranny. Depressing I know, it really
sucks, and even back then there was money in politics.
Past
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My own advice to
anyone who might be interested in Roman history is to
start around 700BC, fun with wolves, the seven hills
city, the ridiculous quarrel
between Romulus and Remus. Then enjoy the process that
slowly produced the Roman Republic until you come across
the name Tiberius Gracchus, it's around 150BC. At that
moment you stop your exploration and instead of
troubling with the next 2100 odd years you go directly
to around the September of 2016AD, where yet again we might begin to find an understanding of what
Livy meant with his suggestion that his people could no
longer live with their sins nor the cure to their sins.
Mind you, not sure that Livy used the word sin, he
probably used the word vice, which back then had more
to do with things like greed, selfishness, dumb
ignorance than anything to do with achieving some kind
of pleasant or unpleasant endlessness after death.
Nonetheless we remember Livy and we forget Gracchus at
our peril.
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