Finneran's Wake

"He had a desire to secure eternal and perpetual fame, but his method was ill-advised. For he abolished the old names of many things and places and gave them new ones based on his own, so that he termed the month of April, 'Neroneus' and he had a plan to give Rome the name of 'Neropolis'". Can you guess the emperor about whom Suetonius is speaking? Matricide, fratricide, the attempted genocide of the Christians, the burning of his own imperial city--only one figure in history has such a lengthy laundry list of crimes. In this episode, we'll cover the Roman historian, Suetonius and that foul emperor, Nero, of whom he gave us such a daunting account.

"This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the neighboring villages and country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress..." Emphasis on the word "seems", for, as we know, this virulent superstition of which Pliny the Younger speaks, to which we now attach the innocent name of "Christianity", would not be stymied. Pliny, disquieted by the rapid spread of this zealous and alien creed, sought the advice of his regal employer, Emperor Trajan, who, back at Rome, grappled with the news of this movement's waxing popularity and unanticipated growth. The correspondence between the two gives the reader an unparalleled intimacy with the difficult conversations in which these two statesmen were engaged, as they deliberated just how they'd treat this new, upstart, irreverent, Semitic faith.

"War is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means". Those last two words, "other means", have always left me feeling somewhat uneasy. Is it not, after all, a kind of euphemism, a gentle phrase more agreeable to sensitive ears, behind which all the horrors of war--all the carnage, bloodshed, conquest, death, and loss--are too neatly concealed? Perhaps. But we mustn't forget, war is nothing more than a instrument of policy. An especially lethal one, it may well be, but it's an instrument nonetheless.

“The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.”

“Every individual is seen to be strongly actuated by a desire to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected, by the people about him, and within his knowledge”. This is the fundamental, universal impulse by which every single person is animated—a passion for distinction, and a desire to be loved. We all feel it—from our life’s beginning, till its end—and to its satisfaction, we apply ourselves incessantly. It’s the government’s role, then, to check this mighty passion, and to restrain our ambition before it gets out of hand.

“Me miserable! Which way shall I fly—Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems a heaven”. The question, then, fiend Satan, is wither goest thou? Quo vadis, king of the infernal depth? Directionless and vanquished, fallen and condemned, what home remains to you, arch apostate, that is not also hell? As you admit, yours is a mind “not to be changed by place or time”. What matter where, then, if thou be still the same?

“Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness”. The Nativity of Christ, then, is observed not at some divinely-sanctioned date, an hour of which the singing angels in heaven alone foreknew, but at a time of the year in strict conformity with the rather mundane renewal of the sun. The Winter Solstice was simply appropriated for the Christian doctors’ use.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing”. Indeed, forever joyous is that beautiful thing—its fair image upon the Grecian urn so fitly stamped. For beauty knows not death, nor feels the whips and scorns of time. It fears not the slings and shocks to which flesh is heir, nor the pangs of love denied. It cannot fade; it cannot be but young, for “beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”.

“Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung.” And thus, in death, the image of the bird was born. Had the trigger-happy Mariner not shot this helpful fowl, this airy guide upon whom the wayward crew was dependent, we’d not have the great expression—an “Albatross to bear”. Pinions of ebony, body of creamy white, this guileless bird was killed in mid-flight. The neck of its assassin bore the corpse’s heavy weight, endured the frigid Antarctic, and his colleagues’ cooler hate.

“You see, I wanted to become a Napoleon…that’s why I killed. Well, is it clear now? Would Napoleon have gone ahead or not?” Doubtless, he would have. The Corsican artilleryman, that great general upon whom, in the rubble of the Revolution, the dazzling title of “First Consul” was bestowed, was little encumbered by his conscience, and seldom dissuaded by the scruples of his Christian faith. Indeed, he was subject to no higher moral law, no Decalogue issued at Sinai’s misty peak. He cast himself, instead, quite beyond the realm of good and evil--that same meek, pallid, wretched world from which our young Raskolnikov sought his escape. In his murder of a louse, and her innocent sister as well, perhaps he found it. We hesitate, though, to proclaim him a Napoleon reincarnate. Such an epithet is for others to apply.