The Story of Marcus Postumius Regilensis

The story of Marcus Postumius Regilensis (which is probably untrue: Livy says that he was a military tribune whereas other writers mention him as a censor) is important in assessing Livy's understanding of the dynamics of popular politics. Postumius was, according to Livy, a commander in a further war against the Aequians. Postumius for Livy was an example not of great military leadership or poor leadership, but of domestic political folly. Postumius was, according to Livy, soon after his victory over the Aequi, stoned to death by his own troops. It is worth pausing over this event- disregarding whether it actually happened or not- and analysing for a moment why Livy believed that a Roman commander might be killed, in such a bloodthirsty way by his own troops. What according to Livy were the principles of the management of politics that Postumius had disregarded which led to his dreadful death?

When Livy introduces Postumius, he tells us that he was 'in some respects a bad man, though the defects in his character did not become apparent until the campaign had been brought to a successful end'. (IV 49). As is typical with Livy's technique- he introduces a character by giving us in parenthesis the indication of their later fate- it is a way of preparing us to read even his praise in a double edged way in order to spot this flaw. Thus for instance when he commends Postumius's 'great energy' in raising troops (IV 49) the reader is automatically drawn to consider what the inverse quality of great energy might be- these subtle strokes of Livy's brush have already painted for us a character, whose details we are searching for. What Livy establishes quickly though is the reasons for Postumius's instant unpopularity with the troops- he promised them the spoils of the town, Bolae, that they had captured, but refused to give them them (IV 49).

However upsetting your troops was a fairly regular occurrence according to Livy- what turned Postumius from an unpopular to a murdered commander was not necessarily his eagerness in offering his troops plunder and then refusing it to them, as his rashness when he returned to Rome. In the forum he announced that 'Unless my men keep their mouths shut on that matter, they had better look out' (IV 49)- Livy prefaces this comment by telling us that it was 'surely unworthy of any reasonable or intelligent person' (IV 49) and after it tells us that the senate and everyone in the assembly were 'shocked' (IV 49). The reason for their shock is presented to us by Livy through the words of the tribune Sextius, he responded to the 'heartless and brutal comment' (IV 49) by shouting 'Men of Rome... do you hear how he threatens his soldiers as if they were slaves.' and Sextius makes much of the 'gasp of horror' that the speech drew forth and then tells his audience that this is how the patricians think of them. (IV 49)

So we have the character sketch provided to us- the indications of great energy, the rash promise followed by the failure to fulfill, the rash statement in the forum- but Livy adds a last touch. When Postumius arrived back at his army, he was hated (IV 50). But again Livy presents us with an account of why he worsened the situation- a quaestor Sestius attempted to punish the troops and was unable to- Postumius

was sent for and made everything worse by his remorseless inquiries and savage punishments and at last, when the crowd had gathered at the cries of some wretched victims whom he had ordered to be crushed to death under a hurdle, he lost control of himself altogether, left the tribunal and ran like a madman to where the attempt was being made to stop the executions. The lictors and centurions were doing what they could to disperse the mob of enraged soldiery, but to no effect: such was the fury of the troops that Postumius was stoned to death- a commander-in-chief murdered by his own men.

I quoted the whole passage because I think it is important to realise how Livy's entire account has been building to this moment- from the moment that he tells us that Postumius had great energy, to the rash sayings in the forum, he wants us to get an impression. We have a steady build up or revelation of character- and from the first we know that the effect will be that Postumius will be revealed to be 'bad'. Livy's art here is of taking this single incident and unfolding to us the cause- or rather letting us discover the cause.

The art though serves a purpose. What Livy wants us to do is to see Postumius as a dangerous politician. Not because he is unable to command men or because he is cowardly but because he is unwise- and rash. We are shown that Postumius throughout lacks the ability to understand the consequences of what he is saying and evaluate those consequences- that Livy is telling us is fatal in a man in a political community consumed by conflict (any political community worth the name one might rightly think). The artistry reinforces the point- because Livy makes an argument through the unfolding events- seeking to display the connection between the 'great energy' of raising troops, all the way to rash promises, speeches and eventually actions and death. Postumius may not have existed- but he does offer us an example both of Livy's style and of a lesson Livy wants to teach about politics. The legacy of Postumius was one of division and suspicion (IV 50): this is important because it reminds us that these kind of actions (and not merely Postumius's hot blooded wrath but his soldiers' hot blooded response) kept the poison of faction from being dissipated.

Livy therefore uses this historical episode to show us something- that temperament in a politician is a key indicy of success. Postumius could have survived had he been a sober patrician- his death was attributable to his rash thoughtless actions and those rash thoughtless actions had an after effect that poisoned Roman politics.

Labici

Throughout the period that we are analysing within Livy's history, Rome was fighting several Italian cities and tribes. We shall turn to its successes and failures in a future post- though your blogger confesses that his interest does not lie as much in military history as in its constitutional consequences. But military victories led to results outside of Rome, that early on confronted the nascent Republic with a challenge of both government and of political strategy. What was the attitude of Rome to conquered peoples and even more importantly to conquered territories? The problem that Rome confronted was dual- firstly that Rome was 'originally founded upon alien soil' and 'had hardly any territory but what had been acquired in war' (IV 48) and the second being the more central and perplexing issue of maintaining control over these areas.

The first issue gave rise to great political quarrels- which for the moment we shall leave. The second though ran alongside it. Often Rome conquered territories that were not close to the city itself- were beyond the territories of Rome's allies and were in parts of Italy that would not enable people to return to Rome easily. The standard ancient way of dealing with this problem was to found a colony- a city made up of citizens from another city which would ally itself with the other city. Famous examples of colonies included places like Massilia and Syracuse in the Greek world- and one is tempted to think that the practise spread (like so much else from southern Italy). Of course not every city stayed allied to its mother city- Corcyra fought in the opposite side to Corinth in the Peloponesian war for example- and mostly they were very independent of their mother city.

Romans though saw the use of following this method- founding strategic colonies in the north of Latium to resist the Etruscans. They also reoccupied old city sites and fortified them after victories in war. Labici went to war with Rome alongside the Aequians in the 5th Century. Roman armies victored over the Labician armies and the senate 'passed a resolution to send settlers to Labici and 1500 people left Rome to settle there, with a grant of about one and a half acres each' (IV 48). One can see the attraction of leaving immediatly- the grant of land to the settlers was enough to make it a worthwhile cause for the poor- one can also see the dangers, the settlers in Labici were swiftly attacked by the Bolae and Aequians (IV 49) no doubt a testiment to the wisdom of their arrival. The Aequians interestingly enough did the same thing in Bolae (IV 49). We often think of the Roman empire as a provincial institution- but actually in the early days, Rome extended its territory by founding colonies which guarded hinterlands and positions.

In a sense this throws into relief an important thing to remember about early Rome- she was neither an empire nor a world power- but a central Italian city state, struggling with others. One of the ways that she did this was sending out excess population- that she could not provide for- to colonise places that her armies had conquered and driven the previous inhabitants from. In a sense, the impression Livy gives- and I think there are good reasons based partly on the availability of records and stories about the foundations of towns to beleive him- is of a great chess game across Latium being played by various powers sending out colonists. The relationship between these colonists and the mother city is not something Livy discusses much at this point- if there is a point at which I believe he is being coy, it is here, there is enough evidence from Greece to suggest that colonies took an independent trajectory at times.

The point I am making here is not that stunning- but it is important. We cannot think of the early Roman environs of being like the later ones- we have to think of Rome as a city state with allies and colonies rather than an empire with provinces and territories. Once we see that, we begin to understand the kind of political environment in which early Roman foreign policy operated- and also that one of the causes of the Republic's early social problems was (if we are to beleive Livy) the question of the distribution of land within these new colonies.

Roman religion

Men's minds fell sick as well as their bodies; they became possessed by all sorts of superstitions, mostly of foreign origin, and the sort of people who can turn other men's superstitious terrors to their own advantage set up as seers and introduced strange rites and ceremonies into private houses, until the debased state of the national conscience came to the notice of the leaders of soicety who could not but be aware in every street and chapel of the weird and outlandish forms of new prayer by which their hag-ridden compatriots sought to appease the wrath of heaven. Then the government stepped in, and the aediles were instructed to see that only Roman gods were worshipped and only in the traditional way. (IV 30)

This passage within Livy's history demonstrates two central truths which dominated the history of Roman religion. The first is that Roman religion was influenced from abroad- who knows what 'foreign' customs Livy is talking about here. Influences came to Rome from Etrusca- where for instance the custom of lictors proceeding before Kings came in and some of the other 'Roman' customs arrived from. Many religious customs in Rome- the Sibylene prophesies for example- have even their professed origins as coming from abroad. It does not seem extraordinary to me to see that Rome borrowed and was borrowed from in a commerce of religious ideas that went throughout the Italian peninsular following the paths of trade and war. Of course the paths led south as well as north- we find the Romans borrowing Greek customs too. The story of Romulus and Remus has its antecedents in Greek myth- and even the entire idea of various Roman Gods- Apollo most importantly- came early and from Greece (according to Professor Burket at least.) This trend carried on through Roman history- the cults of Isis (Egyptian), Mithras (Syrian), Christ (Palestinian) and many others remain visible in the historical record to demonstrate to us the cosmopolitan nature of Roman religion: it is even visible in the worship of the Emperors themselves- a process that Tacitus tells us started in the Eastern Provinces and then came to the Imperial city.

Alongside this continuous process of religious adoptation of the ideas of others- and the adoptation might be philosophical too witness the Stoics- the Romans felt a deep anxiety about the corruption that these cults introduced. This passage reflects that anxiety. In particular Romans suggested that adopting the new Gods might lead the citizens to abandon the old ones who had served Rome well. Such new rites could often have a distabilising effect on individual lives- akin say to the fear about scientology today- an ancient Roman might see the Orphic cults of Greece as promoting sin, moral decay and leading young men and women astray. Livy's language with its warnings about the exploitation of the superstitious by those who set themselves up as 'seers' comes from that tradition. But the broader anxiety was focussed upon the very nature of the Roman republic- when Rome absorbed all these customs and ideas from abroad, how Roman did Rome remain? But this cultural mix flowed from Rome's engagement with and importance in patterns of trade and warfare that it wished to dominate- in which case without this fertilisation from abroad, the Republic risked becoming static and ultimately declining.

This tension at the heart of Roman history lies at the heart of Livy's history, it is a tension familiar to all imperial states. The tension lies between the idea of the imperial heartland and its importance as a centre- and the fact that in order to continue to govern its territories successfully, it has to absorb, observe and ultimately sympathise with them. Rome's destiny as an imperial state was eventually to sublimate the history of the city within the history of the empire- that is the heart of the revolution that Livy did not see- wherein the principate changed to an imperium- but Livy was already aware that Rome itself was becoming less Roman in his own day and that it had made its way in the world through adoptation and expropriation rather than purity. The Aediles stepped in to make sure Roman gods were worshipped alone- but how did they tell which were the Roman Gods (afterall almost all would have been influenced by foreign customs) and furthermore they were evidently not successful, as Rome was.

Machiavelli once said, commenting on Livy, that Rome as a republic forsook stability for expansion- the passage aboves testifies that this was a conflict that was alive in the minds of Romans like Livy- even if it was resolved in favour of expansion eventually.

Burn after Reading

The future of Hollywood comedy has sometimes seemed unsafe: the terrible teens (American Pie et al.) or Eddie Murphy's latest atrocities seemed to reduce comedy on the silver screen to a matter of masturbation and massicating. But as C.S. Lewis once said, to every Sophist a Socrates is raised, or words to the same effect- and if the last years of the 20th and first years of the 21st century showed us plenty of examples of how comedy should not be done: then the Coen Brothers have provided us with a couple of examples of how comedy should be done- including their latest film, Burn after Reading.

Burn after Reading is about a CIA agent, who gets sacked, whose wife is in bed with a friend that he doesn't like. His wife steals his financial records to get an advantage in the divorce she is planning- but the lawyer's secretary manages to leave the CD containing them and other semi classified material in a gym- where they are picked up by an instructor who is dating the wife's boyfriend, and who with the help of another instructor goes down to attempt to sell these records to the sacked CIA agent and the Russian embassy. Got that? Or rather don't worry if you didn't- this has a plot that goes round in circles, up and down, and always provides another surprise. Quite simply it is in the best tradition of absurdist Hollywood comedy- sitting alongside His Girl Friday for example- both for the complexity of its plot and the intelligence of its dialogue.

Ultimately its the characters that mean you don't care that you lose the thread of Burn after Reading. They are brilliantly realised- and brilliantly absurd. Whether its John Malkovich attempting to get his revenge on his wife, dressed in a dressing gown, or Brad Pitt dancing to his stereo in a car in his suit- the characters, their actions and the actors are all perfectly aligned. If anyone has seen Pitt make a better movie then I'd like to see it- this is the kind of performance that gets Oscars. These characters are completely mad- but also completely beleivable. Another Oscar winning performance potentially, in my view, comes from Frances McDormand (amongst the best actresses in Hollywood), playing a thick gym owner who thinks she is on to the Da Vinci Code and can finally sell it to get a breast implant. Tilda Swinton is cold as a knife, George Clooney can't resist agreeing with anything in a skirt to get them into bed, and as for J.K. Simmons's part as the head of the CIA- I'm not sure there are many parts with so few lines and so many laughs in the history of cinema.

There is not a great message here- but it is wholesome comedy. Unlike Norbit say, the jokes actually run on a great truth about the human condition- we are a bit lost. We don't know what we are doing- as the CIA chief says at the end of the movie, lets not do that again, fuck knows what we did. He gets something pretty true though- the point about this film is that noone is particularly guilty- noone is particularly innocent. Everyone is muddling through and end up where they end up, thanks not to some supernatural evil plan, some genius of mendacity or even moral failure- but because they are idiots, like we all are. We can laugh at them- but we also or I also could see myself in them. I think that's what made it so funny- yes its amusing but despite the absurdity, it is also true that human beings muddle rather than plan through life.

As you would expect this is dark humour- you listen to the lines and think as the actors say them, this must make sense and realise quickly that it doesn't. There are some fine satirical touches- a wonderful plastic surgeon for example and an amazing dismissal introduce McDormand and Malkovich's characters. Partisans for divorce lawyers will not be happy and there is a scene in which Swinton confronts a difficult child with all the impatience of a busy doctor at work. But it is the absurdity that keeps the film going and the tremendous energy- this is not one of the Coens' best films by a long shot- but it beats most of the competition hands down and is well worth seeing. There isn't much to analyse- but there is a great deal to enjoy and if you have an empty evening- I'd fill it with this.

A Hint of Sicily

One other thing happened during the course of this eventful year: the Carthaginians- destined one day to be our bitterest enemies- crossed for the first time into Sicily to take sides in a local dispute. (IV 30)

It is pretty easy to guess why this isolated sentence comes into Book Four of Livy's history. He wants to indicate what is about to happen- and what several books later will become a theme of his history- the conflict for dominance in the Western Meditereanean between Rome and Carthage- a conflict that we shall obviously consider later. But for now, I think its more interesting to wonder about why Livy writes this- we know why he wrote it, but where did he come across the fact that Carthage was intervening in Sicily (a fact he tells us has nothing to do with Rome at this point) and decide to include it in his history. We know that Livy was interested in Roman historians and in senatorial records- but I would conjecture that what this extract reveals is that Livy was interested in another kind of history, which threw a light on what happened in Rome.

In the south of Italy and in Sicily for years a thriving Greek culture had developed. The earliest Greek colonies were founded at some point in the 8th Century BC. They had become important centres within the Greek world. The playwright Aeschylus spent some of his declining years in Syracuse and may well have died in Sicily and Sappho the poet may well have been exiled there from Mytilene a century before. By the 410s Syracuse was a major Greek power- and amongst the most important actions of the Peloponesian war was the invasion of Sicily by Athens- an invasion successfully resisted. So Sicily was important and was part of the civilised Greek world- which meant it was probably literate and probably had its own- now lost- histories. That would suggest that Sicilians recorded the event described in Livy- there is no reason for a Roman chronicler to have recorded it as according to the historian this event did not effect the Romans. So it would seem a fair assumption- that Livy took it from a Sicilian chronicler- but why was Livy reading things in Sicily?

Here I think we have something more important than Livy's warning to his readers- we have an indication of how he worked at early Roman history and about one of the non-Roman sources that Livy used. This argument is not conclusive- though it is backed by the scholarly introduction of the edition I'm using- but it would seem likely that Livy was reading Sicilian chronicles and probably southern Italian chronicles (where there was also a Greek culture) to learn about events further north in the peninsular. He must have grabbed this particular incident- the first mention of Carthage and decided to put it in his history. That would indicate that behind some of Livy's history lies the sources he mentions- the Roman historians, the records in the temples that we have discussed and of course his own intelligence as a historian- and behind other parts lies a hidden Greek influence from the lands Magna Graeca (southern Italy and Sicily). I say influence because it may have been refracted through other historians- that we do not know about- but somewhere at the source of some of Livy's history of Rome are accounts of the history of Sicily and southern Greece which mention, occasionally, events to the north and allowed Livy to realise the date of the first Carthaginian involvement in Sicily.

Cossus

Livy is not renowned for his irony or for his wit. But he has both- and he can use both destructively- both to write about and to write around tyranny. There is a wonderful example in the fourth book of his history, concerning a minor Roman hero Cossus. Cossus was a hero in a battle against other Italians- seizing their general's arms and striking down their leader. He was awarded the right of putting the arms of that vanquished general inside the temple of Jupiter. But Livy faced a real problem- a problem to do with the definition of the arms that might be placed in the temple- traditionally in his own day that was the consul's prerogative. Fair enough, you might say things had changed: but Livy faces another problem on the one side we have the ancient chroniclers and on the other the temple records, from the temple of Jupiter. But examine closer what Livy says about those records in the temple and we notice this important line- put in I'm sure by accident- that it was Augustus Caesar himself who found the name of Cossus with the inscription consul beside it, after he had renovated it, surely Livy says it would be 'sacrilege to deprive Cossus of so great a witness to his spoils as Caesar, the restorer of that very shrine'. (4.20)

What Livy then does is unfold every reason why Cossus could not have been consul in that year. Other records in Rome, held in the temple of Moneta, do not show him holding the consulship in that year. Great historians like Licinius Macer have followed them and how they got it wrong is, a lovely touch, 'anybody's guess'. We can't shift the date of the battle- as we know that Cossus's actual later consulship was many years later 'within a three year period in which there were no wars at all' (4.20). Three years later he did fight another notable cavalry action as a military tribune but that is an independent story- and then Livy finishes his account by noting that

In all this there is room for conjecture, though in my own view it is unneccessary; for one need hardly attend to other people's guesses when the man himself who fought the battle having laid his new won spoils in their sacred resting place, in the visible presence of Romulus and Jupiter to whom he dedicated them- awful witnesses whom no forger would take lightly- inscribed his name as Aulus Cornelius Cossus, consul.

Of course Livy wants us to conjecture- that's why he has included all the other evidence above- and he wants us to link Augustus's restoration of the temple to Cossus's distinction. All the sources point one way and a newly restored temple points the other way- faith in Caesar means that we must beleive the temple mustn't we.

I don't think for a moment that Livy believed that Augustus faked this inscription deliberately- there isn't much I can imagine Caesar gaining from such a forgery about a battle long gone. But I do think that Livy is making a point about tyranny. Augustus made a mistake- but because he made a mistake- presuming that the ancient writing must have referred to Cossus consul- everyone else in Rome must believe that Cossus was the consul when all the evidence and an earlier meticulous account from Livy suggests that he wasn't. We have everything on one side and the word of Augustus on the other- but it is impossible now in Rome to not take the word of Augustus seriously- even when it commits a forgery (perhaps an honest one) in the temple of Jupiter with Romulus watching on. Both religion and truth are here the servants of tyranny- history or our perception of it twists around the finger of the emperor and ultimately we must believe, because he has said so, that Cossus was a consul- even though we know he is not.

That little anecdote I think captures perfectly the dilemmas that Livy and later historians faced- and the mode that they confronted them with. For resistance to tyranny was accomplished both by Livy, and his later successor Tacitus, using irony. For Tacitus this became the chief tool of history- because he wrote about the imperium- Livy was writing about the republic so his tone was more celebratory but I think in this piece of writing we see what a Livyan history of the Principate might have looked like. It would have been ironic- it would have been aware of the way truth vanishes at the tyrant's throne and it would have been, in that sense Tacitean.

Farewell Topsails

Part of the BFI's great set of DVDs which hold British documentaries from the 1930s, Farewell Topsails is one of the shortest and one of the most impressive documentaries that I have ever seen. Humphrey Jennings makes a documentary filled with the haunting melancholy notes of the accordion which is itself haunting. In Jennings' own day the trade which ran out of the southwest was dying- the sail ships were being abandoned for motorised industry and steam (this was the world before Beeching when Britain's railways spanned the country in triumph). "Once there were hundreds" he tells us "but now there are only half a dozen left. The children have even commemorated some of them stone, in the nearby harbour... others are rotting away finished, they are gone and their crews with them." The sadness and gentleness of those lines represents the tenor of the entire piece- it may be short but it is poignant- and throughout it runs this line of accordion music, a thread which connects the ships to the sailors and to sentiment.

Sentiment may not be important- who am I to say. But this is a world that we have lost- a world that was passing as this film was being made- a world that cinema came just in time to capture- ten more years and the ships would have sailed for a last time and we would not have this monument to a type of life that endured for hundreds of years. Watching it inspired me with admiration for the skill that sailing required- the number of ropes and knots, the strength of the sailors and the majesty of the ship gliding upon the still waters of the Eastern Atlantic. Obviously there are reasons that this kind of life died- but that is no reason not to admire and appreciate its beauty. Amongst the saddest sights of Jennings' film is the sight of ships rotting in harbours, sailors standing by docks in hope that the age of Drake and Hawkins will return. Captain Dudley running the Alert is filled so Jennings tells us with the poetry of the sea in his soul- for him the ship is alive- a beast for whom he feels affection. It is a nostalgic film- but it portrays something that we will never see again that cinema arrived just in time to capture and that we need to see to understand something of the experience of those who came before us.

This film raises for me one of the strengths of cinema- I'm minded of it when I read James's excellent commentaries on early football- we are incredibly lucky to have these early documentary films- they are amongst the jewels of world cinema. We are incredibly lucky to have early films at all- we can see through them a little of the world that we have lost. Seeing is important because it can tell us things that the greatest book or fullest record cannot- it can bring us face to face with the faces of the past. When I see something like 'Farewell Topsails' I am catapulted into another era in all its immediacy- of course it was authored but it is still authentically from the thirties in a way that the best modern historical drama cannot be- and that gives me a sense of how close the thirties are to us and how strange they are. But it also gives me another sense which is a sadder one- because we stand in the first eddy of the cinematic and televisual age- our great grandchildren will see centuries back. Think of what we have lost- imagine what James could do with a film of football as played before the Association drew up rules in the 1870s, think of what it would be like to see rugby as played before Rugby. Watching 'Farewell Topsails' made me aware of something- this is a film about the decline of the sail but we have nothing from the time that sail was triumphant and dominated shipping- our vision of the past is limited.

I think part of that sense is amongst the reasons Jennings made this film- the commentary definitely suggests it. There is an attempt here to capture something before it dies- so that we can remember it. And I think it succeeds- eight minutes is too short- but this is a visual poem, composed of commentary, shot and music- the accordion plays us in and plays us out, giving it a musical rhyme. The poem though tells a story of how clay made in St Austell is shipped out to Glasgow and London- and how the means of its shipping is the sail boat for now- but how that industry is dying. The story is not the point- the point is the pictures of the sailors waiting on the docks, pulling down the sails and of the proud ships making their way into the night- both metaphorically and literally.

Lift to the Scaffold

The point about Lift to the Scaffold is that it is a film that could only be made in its precise time- it is a postwar film- made about the conflict between the old and the young and even more so between memory and forgetfulness. We open in one of the great scenes of French cinema- an industrialist sits at his desk, and is murdered by one of his employees- a paratrooper- who fought in IndoChina and Algeria. As the paratrooper- Julien- attempts to cover up for this murder, his mistress roams the streets of Paris trying to find him and two youngsters, having stolen his car, set off in it towards a motel at which they will eventually kill two Germans. The story may seem implausible at times- it all hinges on two elementary mistakes by the murderers- a rope left on a balcony and a set of photos forgotten at a shop- but it encapsulates important statements about postwar France and the relationships between youth and age, war and peace.

We have here a quartet of lovers- two in what must be their late twenties, two in what must be their late teens. Malle's observation of the difference between the two couples is acute- the teenage girl and guy are obviously worse matched than their older comrades. The younger woman is actually the most pleasant character in the drama- her boyfriend is a scoundrel without redeeming features. The two older characters are fatally damaged. She has married the industrialist Carala- an amalgam of establishment vices- who profits from war and devastation. He works for Carala- but was formerly a soldier. Carala's contempt for Julien is quite devastating- he calls him an 'angel'- he tells him that paratroopers are angels and mocks his virtues. Julien though has his darker sides- he is a ruthlessly efficient killer, quiet and effective. As for Moreau's character- she is single minded and possessive. Here we have a commentary on youth and age- but more importantly a commentary on the division between the twenty year olds who have been to fight and the teenagers who haven't. You saw it in the 1920s (something C.S. Lewis remorselessly mocks in the Pilgrim's Regress) that men who had not been to war felt that they needed to complain about it more, because they had not fought. Likewise the younger guy in this film seems to need to act the soldier, the brutal murderer, the protester against Algiers and Vietnam, because he was not there. The true face of the war is psychopathic, silent and efficient.

I think this film represents one of the many highs of Jeanne Moreau's career- as an actress she is perfect here. She holds the camera from start to finish with a fine expression of fatalism- but what really captured me was less her interventions in the actual action- she doesn't do that much in the film- than in her soliloquies. Moreau's character is lost for the majority of the film- lost in a labyrinth and attempting to find her lover- either to find him within the walls of mistrust that are built up after their plan goes awry or to find him once the law is closing in around him- once he is taking the lift right to the scaffold. Sherlock Holmes described Irene Adler as 'the woman' and there is a quality of that about Moreau in this film- she is incredibly able, able to disarm the teenagers and deal with the police. But what she is unable to do is to deal with the exigencies of fate- there she is lost within the labyrinth that her love has taken her into. Her love here is an animating force that dominates her- destroys her- it renders her mad, as ignorant to the realities of life as she is to the realities of the cars that race past her on the street as she wonders it searching for Julien.

Over the top of this film is the haunting music of Miles Davis- the music is perhaps itself a character within the movie and ties together the strands into a coherent whole. Moreau's character and the issues of war torn France become a unity which moves irreconcilably towards a close. What Davis's music symbolises is the innate corruption of French society- the society over which Carala presides. Even the police are here seen as corrupt or at least brutal- one of the most effective scenes in the film is a police interview with Julien which displays as well as any scene on film the terror of the tyranny of the state. Julien is surrounded by policemen, whirling around him in the dark, the light is focused on him and they keep on asking the same questions- again and again and again- not letting him relax. Superb cinematography, superb score and the image of encroaching doom combine to make that scene effective: but all of those also place it in the context of a plot where the war has moved from the foreign world of colonial territories, back to the home front where techniques learnt in Algiers, and practiced by the Caralas of the world to make money on the back of broken bones, become the normal instruments of justice.

This is a film with a political message- but its a message for its own times. We may forget how close Europe was to war in the fifties and sixties- watching a film like Lift to the Scaffold reminds us how close it- especially France- was. At the end of the film, the heroine proclaims that her pathological love for Julien will survive her old age- it is entirely true- she thinks she is proclaiming the endless nature of love, in reality she proclaims that the wounds of war and the pathology of the bloodiest century of the human era will be with us for a long time to come.

Livy's view of the death of Maelius

Spurius Maelius had, according to Livy, attempted to use food as a weapon to bring down the Roman Republic. The Senate appointed a dictator to bring him to justice- a dictator who happened to be Lucius Cincinnatus- and Cincinnatus managed to solve the food crisis, confiscate the grain that Maelius had stockpiled, and then he sent for Maelius. Maelius refused to come and was summarily executed by Servilius, who Cincinnatus had sent to take him to the dictator. Cincinnatus then addressed the people of Rome, who had supported Maelius. This speech is interesting- because what Cincinnatus was doing was describing the reason for an illegal act- the murder of Maelius- an act that Livy tells us that some tribunes had attempted to prosecute the perpetrator. (IV 16)

Cincinnatus makes an argument in the forum- that has a contemporary relevance for Livy (something we shall pass onto)- which justifies the action of Servilius. Cincinnatus tells the forum that that Maelius had not been killed for his treachery, for that he would have been tried, but for having 'used force in an attempt to avoid a trial' (IV 14). Cincinnatus goes further and attacks Spurius Maelius's character. He argues that Maelius was not merely a parvenu- but also inexperienced. Whereas Appius Claudius and others might have been rightly killed for their tyrannical ambitions- at least there was some justification in their lineage and acheivements for their high ambition. As Cincinnatus argues that 'He fondly imagined that we, who could hardly think of him as a senator without a pain in the belly, would endure him as a King... why the thing is not merely a crime it is a monstrosity' (IV 15). Cincinnatus's contempt for Maelius's ambition is partly based on aristocratic hauteur and partly upon the basis that Maelius had no desert for it. But the core of the argument lies in the suggestion that the system must be protected against the individual. Maelius's death fits into this ideology wonderfully, as his death was met in opposing the process of judicial inquiry, just as his own political career was devised to destroy judicial inquiry and replace it with tyranny.

Livy's view of this has a contemporary resonance- much of the argument that Cincinnatus makes against Maelius ressembles the arguments that Cicero had put against Catilina. The issues of the late Republic- ambition and its opposition to law- are the issues that Livy wants us to place in the forefront of our mind. Yet again Cincinnatus is here an image of the virtues of the old republic- respect for law, lineage and experience- as opposed to Maelius and possibly others in the more recent past. The 'Maelius' incident substantiates the thesis that there is a connection between tyranny and democracy- but it does something else- Cincinnatus's speech associates (what for Romans was a powerful association) the lineage and experience of the senate with the majesty of the law. In that sense- his speech both defines a kind of republicanism and defines it within a culture that is aristocratic and unequal. What Cincinnatus does here is define a aristocratic republicanism which runs through Livy's history. Because of the connection between the events of the past and present, we could guess that Livy perceived that strand running down even to the Principate itself.

Famine

Modern Industrial society seems impervious to the threat of food shortages: Amartya Sen argued in a famous paper that democracies in particular avoided famine much better than any other regime in the past. Because of this, we forget I think how important the supply of food was to states in the ancient and medieval world. The political system of a state in the ancient world could be grievously affected by issues surrounding the supply of food. Livy chronicles in his fourth book just such a moment in the history of Rome- and it does not take more than a shrewd guess (particularly given the unusual number of temples built at this time) to suggest that Rome during its social conflicts suffered from frequent problems with food supply. The Livyan example is interesting though in its own right.

In the consulship of Proculus Geganius Macerinus and Lucius Menenius Lanatus Livy tells us that Rome suffered a 'black' year 'in almost every respect'. As he suggests 'had war been added to the list of miseries scarcely by all the help of the Gods in heaven could the country have survived' (IV 11). Livy tells us that in this year a famine began- the first thing that is interesting about his statement is that he also tells us what he thinks its causes might have been, either a 'bad season' or that 'the pleasures of city life and the excitement of politics which had kept people from attending to their farms'. (IV 11) It is worth noting this in two ways: firstly because it demonstrates descriptively how Livy thought about famine- it could be the product of a moral judgement upon those that suffered it- hence in the end it could bring into question the actual basis of the city. Furthermore the idea that Romans faced famine because they spent their time arguing about politics- brings up in an ancient context a very real problem with democracy- it is, unlike most other activities, something in which the division of labour does not function and consequently it creates an issue with people's attention either being diverted from their job to be a citizen, or sleepwalking into disaster, whilst doing their job professionally.

Livy's discussion of the famine though goes further- and what he describes are the limitations of an ancient world state in confronting a terrible moment in its history. He describes the poor flinging themselves into the Tiber to avoid starvation by drowning. The problem for an ancient state in confronting this famine was two fold. Firstly as we learn from Livy, the methods they had of dealing with it were not really adequate. Lucius Minucius (appointed Controller of Supplies) went round neighbouring states attempting to get corn, he forced people to declare their stocks, diminished the rations for slaves and roused popular feeling against speculators (IV 12). But as Livy declares 'these inquisitorial methods did less to relieve the scarcity than to reveal its extent'.

There was a second kind of response to the famine- which brought into question the stability of the Roman state. Spurius Maelius, a knight, bought up stocks of corn in Etruria (which as Livy says stopped the government buying the corn) and used it to obtain a following in order to mount an attempt upon the crown. His 'generosity won their [the poor's] hearts and crowds of them followed him wherever he went' (IV 13). Livy tells us through the mouth of Minucius that Maelius had bribed the tribunes and assigned the mob leaders tasks (IV 13)- this comes from a senatorial source, and rather than accepting it, it is worth remembering what Livy said earlier about the poor and their food supply. Essentially Maelius got their support through distributing grain- and his political following was a consequence of his wealth and potentially his support in Etruria (Livy just a page before gave us an example of Rome supporting a faction in a town for its own political ends (IV 9-9), I do not think it implausible that Etruria was returning the favour by using famine as a weapon against Rome). Maelius's rebellion failed because a dictator- Cincinnatus making his return- was appointed and arrested and executed Maelius before he could gather his forces. But it is an interesting incident that reveals how vulnerable the Roman state was to its food supply.

Ultimately Rome was a society of a number of wealthy people surrounded by the poor- who were dependent on the harvest. We do not understand the dynamics of its politics unless we understand the problems that a bad harvest presented. As we have noted, the poor were the military strength of Rome's armies- numerically more various than the patricians. Of course the principle danger to the patricians lay in a strike from the poor when another state's army attacked Rome. But there was another danger- in a famine food became a means to control the populace- and as in the case of this famine if the patricians lost control of the food supply, they ceded the loyalty of the plebeians to the controller of that supply. Livy understood this which is why he believed that the revolt of Maelius was so severe- it also points out to me the advantages of empire- we see it so often as a negative, but the scale of empire permitted a politics which was not driven by the harvests in particular small areas. In the days of empire, Rome was supplied by the grain fields of Africa and Egypt- in the days that we are discussing here Rome's stability rested upon whether a harvest succeeded or failed- failure could lead to revolution and civil war- empire addressed that weakness.

Ethical Encounters: Brief Encounter

"Nothing lasts" says Laura Jesson to herself, "this misery can't last". Brief Encounter is a film about time and feeling- the encounter between Laura and Alec is brief but briefness shoots through the entire film. Even as viewers we can feel this hour and a half like an interlude of dreams, punctuated by the sweeping music of Rachmaninov and the voice of Celia Johnston, clipped, English and very emotional. As a movie it does not seem to move so much as to exist- to exist like a dream exists as an alternative but temporary state. After the film, you and the characters are in exactly the same position- as Fred says to Laura at the end 'you have been a long way away, thank you for coming back to me'. We have all been a long way away watching Brief Encounter- and as I will discuss later in this article that distance that we've been is important.

Brief Encounter is about the meeting between a woman and a man. They are both married and after a small set of meetings- five in all- they decide never to meet again. To give away the story is really to give away nothing- because this is a film about an issue and an atmosphere. The atmosphere is created by incredible acting and direction. Let us start with the acting- both Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson have been praised endlessly for this film- that praise is well deserved. Johnson in particular scarcely has the camera off her- much of the film is spent with the director staring straight into her eyes as they flicker round a train carriage, or sink to the floor in despair or light up with the excitement of dreams of love. Howard too does well- he is suave and smooth as he needs to be. It is the direction though which is often less praised but deserves more- one impeccable shot which I've used as an illustration above demonstrates in my view the perfection of Lean's work. Laura is at home feeling guilty about deceiving her husband about where she was that afternoon- she stares in the mirror and what we look with her into the mirror and see what she sees, a woman wracked by guilt. It is a very subtle way of literally getting you to see Laura's position from her point of view but it is incredibly effective.

If that was all, perfect technical ability made manifest on the screen then the film would sit in the category of well made but insignificant but this is not such a simple or irrelevant film. I have told the basics of the story already but there are a couple of issues opened up within the film that need more analysis to elucidate the issues involved. The film pivots around Laura and her relationship with her husband and with Alec her possible lover (I will use the word 'lover' from now on despite the fact that they go no further than a quick kiss). Laura trusts her husband- she wishes she could tell him everything as he is so kind and gentle. She comes across Alec in a cafe and then in the street and she finds him exciting, kind and intelligent- she finds him the epitome of the kind of man that she would have loved to marry as a girl. She describes her feelings towards him as a girlish fantasy- to marry the idealistic doctor- in a sense he ressembles the hero of Agnes Grey, Mr Weston, but modernised. The film is about whether she should leave her husband or not- she does not in the end and it is evident by the end of the movie that here we have an argument for her decision. Throughout the film we are reminded that Laura has people she must look after- her children- and right at the end, Lean makes sure that we see that her husband, though unromantic, does care deeply for her. We never see as much of Alec- though we are invited to remember his two sons and delicate wife (it is significant that we are told about both of them) and invited to see his life as a mirror to Laura's.

The second question is about the morality of Laura and Alec. How should we see them? The fact they have sex has nothing to do with the question of their morality- the interchange of bodily fluids is the culmination of a process at whose heart is emotional infidelity. That is why Laura cannot tell her husband about what has happened- because it would hurt him to know that she desired and felt happy in the company of another man. From Laura's account Alec comes off as the instigator- but that is afterall her perception of events and we do not have his. Around these two figures are gathered other figures within society- Alec's friend who despises Alec when he finds the two of them in his flat, Laura's friends who gossip about her or who annoy her. Alec's friend, Stephen, is the least morally repugnant- expressing disappointment with Alec's behaviour. Laura's friend Mary Norton seems though to revel in sin as an opportunity to gossip nastily. Stephen and Mary embody different responses- to publicly tell the person of your displeasure and then remain silent in the interests of the family unit (Stephen) or to avoid confrontation, enjoy the titillating spectacle of sin and gossip about it maliciously (Mary). Lean wants us to see how unsympathetic society can be to these lovers: but also in Stephen's dialogue with Alec he wants us to see the love affair from the outside- he wants us to see the sordid nature of this magic.

Our focus though must remain on the central pair- they are constrained by their society in the sense that they cannot abandon their spouses- but as we see with Laura abandoning her spouse would be an act of selfishness. What this film gets at, what I think that Lean gets, is that life is made of patterns- strings between individuals- and that when we snap those strings or rearrange those passions we can bring great suffering to everyone involved. We can break hearts and worse. Human beings are fragile and human life is fragile- we have a brief encounter with the world- what Laura comes to realise is that had she world enough and time, she would end up with Alec. As we shall discuss in my next post there are good reasons for Laura to be disappointed with life- one of the reasons I'd guess that Alec is not the focus of the film is that Laura's life is drab and boring, a round of visits to the local county town and lunches with Mary Norton. But Lean's argument is that even despite that, she has things to lose by leaving- the tragedy is greater because these two people cannot be together.

I do not think he makes this argument easily. This film is sad for a reason- and its quite possible to come out of it thinking that the lovers have lost too much by abandoning each other. As Isaiah Berlin argued every choice can be a tragedy. "Nothing lasts" can seem like a reinforcement of the idea that Laura thinks everything will last- and that the love affair will colour the rest of her life as the film colours the rest of ours. I think the moment in which her husband wakes her from the dream is crucial though- because when he wakes her and thanks her for coming back, I think that is symbolic both of the end of the dream of the film but also of the end of the dream of her love. She has woken up, as has Alec, and that must be good, mustn't it?

Workers and Jobs (1935)

Arthur Elton's Workers and Jobs was made at the height of the Great Depression in 1935. The then unemployment rate in the UK was incredibly high. Elton's film was made with the cooperation of Poplar Employment Exchange- it was made to illustrate the virtues of the employment exchange both to employees and principally to employers. The working men are shown in the film to be trained, good workers, quiet and disciplined. They queu towards the desk in the exchange without mumbling or grumbling as others are sent to the jobs that they might want. Furthermore the exchange is shown to be an efficient way of acquiring labour for businesses. I want to highlight two things about the way that the Labour Exchange worked that give us an insight into the economies of the 1930s.

Firstly it is noticable that as the introduction to the film states there are at least 15,000 types of work- domestic, industrial and clerical- that men and women can do. We see the employment exchanges taking notes on the applicants- their experience, their competence- what say a machine tool repairer has experience repairing or what kind of tailor this person is. Then they match them to employers. Its a fascinating lesson in the variety and division of labour within the economy- and the difficulty of matching workers to jobs. I suspect of course that the labour exchanges were not this efficient- Arthur Elton was making an advertisment for them- but what he demonstrates is rather that the economy by the 1930s was already highly specialised- as the introductory voice over says the costs of hiring the wrong person for a job were high.

My second point is that the Labour exchange of the thirties looks completely inefficient compared to a modern operation. As you can see in the still above, the model was based on telephoning other labour exchanges to check their vacancies. All the exchange functions on the back of card files- and remember this is an efficient exchange on show in a film whose purpose is advertising- one wonders about the status of those card files and how many records got lost. Furthermore printed sheets are sent out to other exchanges at the end of the day with unfilled vacancies on them- again the potential for misplacing, misrecording and simply destroying accidentally records must have been high. An organisation in the thirties could not afford anything better- but it is interesting to imagine how different a similar organisation would be today.

This kind of documentary is fascinating- just looking at the faces of these long dead normal people doing their business gives me a thrill. But I think it is also useful for seeing both how similar and how different the experience of the thirties is from today's. President Bush and others have said that our economy is teetering on the edge of another Great Depression- it is beyond my competence to say whether that is true or not- but if it is true, I suspect that the way that our society goes through that experience will be very different to the way that our grandparents and their parents did in the thirties. Not least because though they lived in a complex economy, they lived in a much more local and much less computerised one.

A disgraceful incident

Those are Livy's words about an event that happened soon after the Decemvirs fell, in the consulship of Titus Quinctius Capitolinus and Furius Agrippa. Rome was asked to arbitrate between two cities within Latium, Ardea and Aricia, about a piece of land that both cities claimed to be theirs, and 'for which the two towns had fought so often they were exhausted' (III 70). In the midst of the discussions in the forum, conducted it seems by the people under the tribunes, an aged Roman Publius Scapita, rose to his feet and began speaking. Scapita told the assembly that the land that Ardea and Aricia were claiming was originally the property of another town- Corioli- and as Corioli had been conquered by Rome, that territory ought to have gone with the city that had been conquered. This speech was listened to by the crowd with a 'high measure of approval' and despite the arguments of the consuls, 'cupidity prevailed' and Rome claimed the land. (III 72)

This 'disgraceful incident' is interesting- because of two things. Firstly it exposes how the Roman Constitution may have worked- and secondly it exposes what Livy thought of justice. Let us begin with the first consideration. I have mentioned before that we seem in the Roman world to be in a situation where the judiciary and the executive are separated- the judiciary rests in the people, the executive and legislature in the senate and consuls. That's a broad generalisation and does not fully work- but what we can establish in this case is that quite complicated questions of international law were resolved by the assembly of the people, in great contrast to what is done today in most if not all democracies. The people were the court. The reasons for this are not difficult to work out- many of those within the assembly would have had knowledge of other parts of Latium and possibly Italy- Scapita would not have been alone in having visited in the army the places that they talked about in the assembly. Scapita's evidence is interesting- obviously (and Livy agrees with this) there was an accepted right of conquest that allowed a city to claim a territory that had belonged to a vanquished enemy. (III 72)

Livy though thinks that the case that Scapita outlines was an unjust one. The reason that Livy gives for the decision to be regarded as unjust was a simple one. He argued that 'for an arbitrator to convert disputed land to his own use was a crime revolting in itself, and would set a precedent even worse' (III 72). Livy cites the senators arguing that Rome would lose Ardea and Aricia's friendship and lose its reputation not to mention its honour through these proceedings. (III 72) Livy, we have seen, opposed the idea of judging one's own cause- and in a sense this is the beginning of a critique of empire- as soon as the Roman populace become sovereign over territories which are not free or seek their arbitration, the temptation to judge in their own interest as they have the power becomes tyrannical. Livy here may be indicating some of the dangers to the Republic that will flow from its expansion- dangers to the very conception of a just and honourable republic. In that sense the incident fits into a narrative which sees the empire as the product of virtue (ie rising military strength) and the incubator of the decline both of virtue and ultimately of the city.

These arguments lead I think to an account of Rome which emphasizes the dynamic between expansion and democracy- and the ways in which Rome's character as a republic changes as the empire advances. One could even make the argument based on this case that Rome's transition from a Republic to an Empire is a transition from a Republic to a Tyranny of the citizen over the subject- an arrangement which might naturally lead to a habit of subjection and eventually to the Imperium. It is a speculation but in this case, I think we have an indication of one of the pattern that Livy sees underlying the last years of the Republic and first of the Principate.

The Means of Escape

Penelope Fitzgerald's perfect short story is about imagination. The setting is mid-19th Century Hobart, the scenery is dominated by the church, the rectory and the convict prison house, the story by the encounters between the local community of dignataries led by Alice, the clergyman's daughter, and an escaped convict. In that sense it represents a distillation of the early history of Australia: this is the world that Mr Micawber goes to at the end of the David Copperfield and there his daughter meets Magwitch. The isolation is there- you get the real sense that Alice and her family live at the ends of the earth. I love how Fitzgerald brings this out in the first paragraph- giving you a distilled history of Hobart's church- as if to imply that this is a hamlet isolated from the history of the world. To understand mid-century Hobart, you do not need to know about Peel's repeal of the corn laws, the demise of the slave trade, the American war, the revolution in Belgium or the industrial revolution- but you do need to know about the construction of the local church.

Loneliness breeds the imagination- as does youth. Alice is an intelligent young girl- very conventional as we learn throughout the story. Her world is a lonely one, formed by conversations with her friend Aggie. I found this little paragraph so perfectly apt as a description of Alice that I think I need waste no more words:

They had settled on the age of forty five to go irredeemably cranky. They might start imagining anything they liked then. The whole parish, indeed the whole neighbourhood, thought they were cranky already in any case, not to get settled. Aggie in particular with all the opportunities that came her way in the hotel trade.

The community of course are as Fitzgerald's story points out entirely wrong. But there is something about that paragraph that stands out- it expresses the tragedy of these two young women's lives perfectly but also with its first sentence captures a witty and affectionate attitude to the solitude of their inner worlds which Fitzgerald invites us to share.

Of course imagination leads on to romanticism. When Alice meets the convict in the church late at night- she imagines that she has fallen in love. The twist at the end of the story reveals that Alice's idea of love and what love is are different things- I do not mean to give away here what that twist is- but it reveals Alice's fantasy to be a fantasy. The interesting question about Fitzgerald is whether the revelation hurts Alice: she leaves the question open. But I think if you follow the lineaments of the story, you can see an answer. Fitzgerald is like Austen in that she can describe illusion whilst alluding to reality. Alice's life is dominated by fantasy- but the fantasy has no reality- the question for the reader is what kind of disappointment is worse, the disappointment of the door not opened or the dissapointment of the reality falling short.

This is a fine short story- more happens in it than happens in most novels. What is so amazing about it is the way that it captures the world of early colonisation- the isolation and the way that fuses with teenage girlishness to endow every moment with romantic possibility (and the way that the community, as ever, fails to understand that a longing for romance is not a refusal of life). We are left on the brink of something that happens- again I will not break the suspense- but this is a writer at the peak of her art and what she expresses is timeless.

Freedom and fighting

As the decemvirs fell, we see the constitution of the republic and social strife within Rome resumed. The moment allows Livy to describe something crucial to both his and later thinking about the link between armies and the state- the constitution of the state in particular. Whereas we might presume the virtue of a liberal democracy to rest in promoting economic security, Livy argued that the opposite was true. Tyranny guarenteed wealth and luxury- what democracy or republicanism did was guarentee armies and military might- that might lead to wealth but ultimately like many Roman historians Livy looked on that with great suspision.

Why might it be true that Republicanism created and perpetuated military virtue? Livy offers few direct answers- he wrote after a man, Polybius, who had sought to write a schematic answer to that question based around Roman history. But what he did provide was moments- as ever Livy instructs through incident. Amongst those incidents is yet another raid by the Volscians- what is interesting about this raid that it succeeded- the Decemvirs who had fought against it were vanquished and had, like Servius Tullius, to call representative institutions in in order to cope. Livy is not hesitant in putting the reason for this failure forwards, he tells us 'the commanders in the field were not incompetent btu they had made themselves universally hated' (III 47). Things would change under a Republic.

Rome decided as soon as she had dismissed the Decemvirs to march against the Volscians again. Livy gives us the speech of Valerius one of the consuls- a speech which successfully rallied the troops and led them to conquer the tribesmen: Valerius said

For none but yourself... the victory shall be- not this time will it fill the pockets or swell the pride [crucial word there] of the decemvirs... Show by your deeds that in former fights it was your commanders who failed, not the men' (III 60)

We have noted the fact that Livy and his Republican orators argued that war and tyranny were similar states- Valerius agrees, arguing that Rome's struggles for freedom should be conducted in the same spirit as those on the field. (III 60) Valerius's speech is important because it is so conventional- Livy like Machiavelli after him beleives that equality inspires and makes men willing to fight. This observation should remind us about how different Livy's idea of a republic is from ours- we aspire to a kind of peace, Livy saw the merit of republic being its prowess in war.

Education and Custom

Francis Bacon's essay on Custom and Education is worth examining at length- particularly when education is so important, as Ashok argues, to politics and the formation of the statesman. Bacon's essay emphasizes the non-institutional factors which lead to the creation of a person. Bacon was himself a politician of some distinction- Lord Chancellor under James I and VI- and an exceptionally learned man, not to mention one of the greatest essayists in English and an inspiration to amongst others, Thomas Hobbes. Bacon's thoughts therefore form part of the context in which we all live, and are worth listening to on their own.

Bacon's argument is that our education develops our facilities in different ways. He opens his essay by stating that

Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination: their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed.

The interesting thing about this statement is the way that Bacon divides the aptitudes of man and the impact of education. Though we may think in terms of our lusts and desires and the language of biologically inspired thought may be universal, our words are conditioned by what we know- and our deeds by what we are expected to do. One could argue that learning is a special kind of custom itself- or that custom is a kind of language in which we phrase our actions. Bacon's argument is fascinating- and has an obvious implication- that we cannot rely on institutional education to change the way that men act- we have to rely upon customs.

Bacon suggests therefore that if you really want a good society, you cannot do anything through politics. In modern times we overrate the power of politics, and yet as Bacon argues

commonwealths and good governments, do nourish virtue grown, but do not much mend the seeds.

Custom as Bacon argues impels men to act contrary to their reason- he cites Indians burning themselves to death, Spartans scourging themselves on the altar of Diana and not crying out in pain and Elizabethan Irishmen preferring a method of hanging. In all those three cases, we might suggest that convention impels men to take a foolish or a neutral choice. In a sense the choice to be educated is something that may not be maintained institutionally directly- it may be something that requires cultivating through convention and its generation.

This does not imply quietism- Bacon also cites Machiavelli in his essay and I think this is deliberate because it links to Machiavelli's analysis of the creation of virtu through good institutions. Essentially what Machiavelli implies is that structure can create a population who behaves in a certain way- the point that Bacon is making is that our direct inputs may not have hte effect that we want them to have. Man's magistrate is convention he tells us- it is worth thinking about how those conventions are formed, how they change and die.

Tyranny and War

You talk of the Sabine invasion- that paltry affair. The real war which the people of Rome must fight is of a very different kind, if only you knew it: it is a war against those who, appointed to office in order to give us laws, have left our country at the mercy of their own caprice; it is against those who have abolished free elections, annual magistracies, which by ensuring the regular transfer of power are the sole guarantee of liberty for all, and without any mandate from the people flaunt the insignia and exercise the power of Kings. (III 39)

Marcus Horatius Barbatus said this to the face of the decemvirs in the senate at the height of their power- and the beginning of their ruin. As ever we need to be cautious- Livy may be inferring what he probably did not know- I find it hard to believe that a record of this speech survived. But this does not negate the speech's importance as a manifesto of resistance to the Decemvirs- in many ways the position that Horatius argues here- coming out of a populist aristocratic pride (he suggests that the Horatii and Valerii have always protected Rome (III 39))- is one that contains an important critique of tyranny. Notice already we have the emphasis upon the partiality or 'caprice' of the tyrant- something that we observed in the last piece of analysis that we did on the decemvirs.

But let us dig a little deeper into Horatius's speech. Firstly there is an important fact to notice about the way that Horatius describes tyrants. Tyrants are at war with their own country- a greater threat than an army of foreigners, of 'Sabines' in this case. Tyrants are at war with their own country because ultimately war is about volition- if I conquer you I force you to do what I want you to do. The brute fact behind a victorious triumph is the brute power that a tyrant seeks. The point Horatius is making here is that a tyrant is the enemy of the people. What he also suggests is that a tyrannical rule can never be a legal rule- notice again the way that he describes the decemvirs, they had an 'office' but now they do not hold a position superior to any private citizen (III 39). His argument is based upon the sense that an office of the government operates in the people's good- as a tyrant cannot operate in a people's good but is their enemy, he cannot govern a free people and consequently must be at war with them.

That is a first important point. Secondly we have an argument that extends something we have already seen in Livy. Livy originally told us that Brutus had made Romans swear never to obey another King- such was the reason that Octavian later refused the office of Rex itself. But Livy here is warning directly to Octavian and his successors that the name is insubstantial- the decemvirs arrogance is demonstrated when they take on the insignia of Kings, but the key objection to them is that they 'exercise the power of Kings'. Horatius states that 'what men hated was not the name of king but his pride and his violence'- we are back to the private will of the tyrant placing itself over and above the will or good of the people (III 39). The King or tyrant is not defined by a name but by a nature. This politically creates a resistance theory for Rome directed against those who behave like Kings- a tyrant (defined by his behaviour) is at war with his populace and any action by them, as in war, is justified. A point that later is made when one of the decemvirs appeals to the law of Rome, Verginius, one of the tribunes tells the crowd that a tyrant 'alone can claim no share in the beneficence of war' (III 57)- that claim fits with the suggestion that tyrants are beyond the law and its protections.

Resistance theory binds a person to resist a tyrant. This is perhaps an elementary and historically based resistance theory- but no less powerful for that- and its importance is derived from its context. Livy wrote in the reign of Augustus- when the power of a tyrant, one might argued, was cloaked in the Principate's velvet gowns. His argument is a warning to Augustus- that no matter what the legal situation was, if he or his successors ceased to act in the interests of Rome, then they placed themselves at war with their own people.

Sovereignty, Law and Election

When we elect politicians we have an idea of what they ought to do. We have an idea of what politicians are- normally ambitious people with a demand to govern- but the substance of governing is something that has changed down the ages. Furthermore the things we might believe that people should have an input in in order to stabilise and secure government have changed down the ages. The story of the decemvirs in Livy is interesting in this regard because it demonstrates the way that we have a different conception of what election does than the ancient Romans- I will demonstrate later that institutionally we actually have much more in common with Livy than we might think- but the difference in outlook is interesting. We think of election as something that legitimates leglislation- that is not the way that Livy thinks about it.

Livy talks a lot about legislation in the period of the decemvirs. We have already seen that he thinks of the decemvirs as exploiting the knowledge and resources of other ancient civilisations- deferring to the wisdom of great legislators in the past and in Greece, bringing the law crafted by old wise men to Rome. Livy beleives that law is handed down to the masses: when he speaks of the formation of Roman law, through the adoption of a set of principles and their digestion by the population, he is speaking of a flow from the ruler to the ruled, from the wise to the generality of people. Livy in this sense adopts an argument about politics which is not ministerial- the population have the right of veto but not the right of disposition. And it is this process that for Livy creates 'the fountainhead of public and private law, running clear under the immense structure of modern legislation' (III 34)- notice the image there of the flow of wisdom through the intentions of the population, starting at a fixed point in time, at an undemocratic and exalted moment and continuing through the virtu of the people.

Livy's view of legislation therefore is entirely based upon the formation of justice and then its adjustment to the character of the people who live under it.His view of judging is rather interestingly distinct from that. Livy has no problem with good judges- the first decemvirs ruled, he reminds us, tyrannically but they were good men and so provided 'prompt justice, of an almost superhuman purity' (III 33). We are here in the world of Gods- of Kings as the supreme and semi divine law givers. But of course Livy provides another example as the counter to that- the supreme and tyrannical judge can be overwhelmingly virtuous but he is more likely to be overwhelmingly vicious- he is more likely to be the second set of decemvirs, against whom there is no appeal and whose appeal is not to reason but to violence.

Ultimately this is where Livy is most distinct from a modern outlook on justice. Livy regards the original principles of justice as hard- and hence his population have no creative role in the manufacture of the ideal law code. But he regards the following discussion of justice to be simple: once you have set down the principles, any fool can know what they are doing. Hence his ideal decemvirs proceed secretly with the tables, but openly with the cases that they transact. It is a mark of the second set of decemvirs' ignominy that they have to cloak their justice in the mask of ceremonial violence and draw out military forces onto the streets (III 36). An appeal to unreason in judgement proceeds from the fact that for the second decemvirs, the 'man was everything, the cause nothing' (III 37). It is a parlous state of affairs- but one that Livy believes is an indication of something deeper and truer, that the will of the people gives you a sense of the communal intention. That can be swayed by violence, it can be swayed by the mob rule of an inspired orator- but it is unlikely to be swayed by personal knowledge- Rome afterall like Britain or America is too big for that.

The case of Verginia gives us an indication of what Livy means in this sense. Verginia was falsely appropriated by one of the decemvirs, Appius Claudius, because of her outstanding beauty as a slave. Her father as a consequence stabbed her and then revolted, destroying the decemvirate in the process. (III 43-8) The story though gives us an indication which I think is interesting- the issue at which both Appius Claudius and Tarquin fall is about a person, a single woman in both cases to whom a member of the royal family (Claudius or Sextus Tarquin) feels a violent and personal passion. This undermines their ability to give justice. The ordinary people therefore reclaim the state because ultimately their ability to give justice is more profound than that of the individual. The individual can provide wisdom but he cannot provide impartiality- at least that is Livy's view- and to some extent the frame of a republican representative government and a jury system with which we live suggests that though we do not recognise the argument, we live with its legacy.

Lars and the Real Girl

Lars is a loner. He spends his time living in his brother's garage, somewhere in the mid-West of the United States- somewhere no doubt with a Scandinavian heritage. He is encouraged by his brother and his sister in law to engage socially- but Lars refuses to. In the end, in a moment of desperation Lars orders a sex doll off the internet, called Bianca, and tells everyone that she is his girlfriend, come from abroad (she is half Brazilian, half Danish). His family, worried about him, take Bianca and him to the doctors (supposedly to make sure that Bianca has settled in alright but really to find out about Lars) the doctor tells them to go along with Lars's delusion as there is something that through it he needs to conquer. They do and the story of the film revolves around the way that Lars's delusory girlfriend is accepted by the local town and also with the growth of Lars himself through the experience of having this doll around.

There is something deeply perverse about this. It is like something out of Edgar Allan Poe in the sense that we are seeing a human being express strong physical attachment to a plastic sex doll. The film tries to cloak this in a sentimental small town piety- 'she was a teacher, she was a lesson in courage and Bianca loved us all especially Lars': well its true, until you recognise that she was a plastic doll and not a real human being. Twist and turn the tale it gets more complicated- we never quite see inside of Lars, we never see inside his head to what is driving him into his relationship with Bianca. He cannot cope with a normal woman of flesh and blood for some reason which is never explained- and the story takes as its focus the externality of Lars's character. Ryan Gosling plays him with a faint amused smile but without any introspection and this lack of psychological depth creates the atmosphere of the film: it makes the dark places of Lars's mind light.

If the film is not about psychology, what is it about? In part it is about community and compassion- it has a Capraesque tone running through it. This small town come together to enable one of them to live with his delusion and enable him to grow through it. In a sense that has to be lauded- but in a sense the tale is too optimistic. Because we never get inside Lars's head we never really understand what the nature of the illness that he suffers from is and so whether to see this town's actions as the kindness of friends to someone who cannot face, for a moment, real life or an abdication of responsibility. Are they aiding someone or are they in going along with the delusion merely helping a madman to make a fool of himself? I'm not sure that despite the happy ending and the medical piety of the local doctor, that question can ever be answered without a much more thorough examination of what and who Lars is.

What sustains the film are the performances. Emily Mortimer does brilliantly at playing the sister in law- she has just the right amount of weak and perhaps even vain strength. Gosling does a reasonable job- though the problems with Lars's character- in a sense he is a doll as much as Bianca is create problems that the actor cannot get over. Both Paul Schneider playing Lars's brother and Kelli Garner his love interest, Margo, do well: I liked Mr Schneider's ability to get the emotionless man who almost breaks down with the force of what is happening around him. The film is in reality divided into three parts- the first of which is the most satisfying and looks at the way that Mortimer and Schneider's characters react to Lars's new girlfriend and partly because of both of their performances and partly because the material is much more realistic that is the most successful part of the film.

The point on which the film stands or falls though is whether you believe in Lars. I've said that Lars is effectively a blank- we are given no kind of insight into what kind of condition he has- apart from some general guilt about pregnancy and a fear of being touched. I was left with questions about Lars rather than answers and questions about the nature of male relationships with women. Perhaps this is naive of me but I don't see a sex doll as a progression between loneliness and a relationship- rather I see it as a diversion because the hard thing in the relationship is coping with another person. Perhaps the film makers are right and imagine Lars taking Bianca's reality seriously and that realisation pushing him towards a relationship but I struggled with it as a concept. I also struggled with the idea that Margo would wait so long for Lars to fall out of love with a sex doll; it just seemed implausible to me.

I'm sure that there are lots of people who see this movie as a sweet reaffirmation of the value of community and the way that love is something that you have to learn to be an adult, and maybe its a reflection on me rather than the film that I couldn't. But I couldn't see it like that- I thought it was implausible. The last reason I think that the film is implausible is because it doesn't recognise that much of the problem of loneliness is not self inflicted or self induced. It dodges the question about loneliness- which is not so much that people do not desire love- but that others do not love them (perhaps that reveals a personal fear or perception of life). Lars ends the story walking into the distance with Margo- that is the most implausible cut of all.

Blogpower- the pious roundup

A couple of years ago I joined a group of small bloggers called blogpower. What is Blogpower? When it was started I remember that it was about the smaller blogger and attempting to get him or her a bit of the limelight and to be supportive of each other. Going round Blogpower this evening I learnt a hell of a lot- and perhaps the most important lesson I learnt was how good the blogs in Blogpower are. This roundup was pretty easy- and if I missed you off it was because I didn't have to look hard for posts at all and so being a lazy blogger, didn't. Anyway to business.

When thinking about the high profile bloggers- lots of them from Iain Dale to Andrew Sullivan have become minor celebrities- as David Hadley writesthis concept of the celebrity is something that we all should be thinking about, it dominates our landscape (and renders me suspicious that larger bloggers can ever provide the change in perspective that the Tin Drummer wants to see). The thing you miss with celebrity bloggers though is that they only take on celebrated issues- smaller bloggers are often more interesting- just take a look for example at the Fake Consultant's post on Egyptian elections- its an issue which will never make the tabloids but which we need to understand. On a similar theme, the Cornish Democrat posts a fascinating essay from Tom Nairn on the concept of nationalism- this is exactly the kind of thing that small blogs do well, disseminate academic work which often gets lost. If you stray from the mainstream, you also think about new and interesting issues- like why for example there are so few famous female artists, whether a sexual orientation really can have a duty to vote one way or another, why national symbols can be counter-productive (this is a long and exceptionally interesting article), whether assisted suicide should be made legal, whether cricket can conquer America- small bloggers do this whilst also providing concise and thoughtful reformations of current issues (like this summary of the arguments against the bailout and David Keen's guide to the British conferences is essential reading for those who weren't there). Coming out of the party conferences- Louis shows the Tories the way forward, Bob marvels at Gordon's gamble of a reshuffle, Mike questions Cameron's links to the hedge funds and Andrew praises the Libdems.

Away from such stuff- politics is not life and bloggers do not just blog about politics. Tom puts politics in perspective this week. My own recent post on Cincinnatus attempts to go back into Roman history and reinterpret this figure's place within that history. Others are also in the business of reading stuff, so you don't have to- Heather has been reading Esure press releases about cars and comes to some interesting conclusions. I like Crushed's unconstrained enthusiasm for the film, the Libertine, he also compliments one of my favourite actresses Samantha Morton which is a mark of good taste, and prompts me to want to see the film. If Crushed is ecstatic, perhaps he needs to listen to this piece of music whose sad movement is the perfect audio post. JMB doesn't need sad music, she has computer shops to contend with. But at least she doesn't live in Rabat, where sexism in Ramadan seems to thrive nor face the gloom of British adverts- bah humbug. Morning star just keeps the gloom going by discussing pain during diabetic eye tests. But even in dark times, we need humour- I loved this post of bad spellings and misplaced sentences. Jams helps by bringing us news of British triumphs at the IG Nobels. Just to surprise everyone Welshcakes has yet again posted some pictures of a pure cullinary delight (he says feeling his stomach rumbling). On a serious note, Liz posts about support in the blogosphere and how important it can be: Callum suggests the very act of blogging can be helpful in bad times. We should never lose sight of the fact that its humans writing blogs- and humans get ill, have bad times and good times: one who hasn't been having it so well recently is Mutley who's been to hospital- here's to him getting well again.

This may seem all a bit ideological but I think there is a point here- whether you agree or disagree with the posts above (and I agree with some and disagree with others) you can find a lot there to make you think. As the Pub Philosopher notes, we face at the moment a gap in information about things that are important to our live- he is talking about politics but could be talking about any number of things- I beleive that good blogs can help shrink that gap. I'm sure I've missed good posts- but this is what I saw this week and this reassures me that there is a hell of a lot of good thinking and writing going on- and that's without even including some of my favourite blogpower blogs that didn't post over the last couple of days.

And with that pious paean to the small blogger, that's all folks till next week's roundup!