Philosophically Yours

 

What a day for blogging ! A wild noreaster has been swirling and dumping its fair share of snow our way  since early morning..... creating almost white-out conditions, Great moment to curl up with a good book and get that warm and fuzzy feeling back. The book I'm reading is  entitled Caesar and Christ by Will Durant , one of eleven volumes in the collection The Story of Civilization ...... the monumental work I hope to finish sometime before the hearse pulls up at the front door ,  a pleasureful exercise which for me not only entails reading the tomes as such but also delving into every nook and cranny of the footnotes and cross references given within.

A while ago I came upon the following passage on page 385 as I browsed through  a subsection dealing with " games " and punishments for thieves and other common criminels which normally took place in the huge amphitheatres of Rome........ and my warm and fuzzy  feeling went cold ! .... my blood too !!

" Laureolus , a robber , was crucified in the arena for the amusement of the populace; but as he took too long in dying , a bear was brought in and was persuaded to eat him , piece by piece , as he hung upon the cross.Martial describes the spectacle with fascination and approval. Martial , De Spectaculis , VII "

I was struck by Durant's use of the words " fascination and approval " in Martial's treatment of the terrible punishment so I went to the source itself. From my classical Latin days I remembered Marcus Valerius Martialis ( Martial ) as the master of the epigram... a clever quip or short , witty statement.... after so many years away from " things Latin ". He was a satirist and a poet but I could not imagine him as being cruel as such. So here is what he wrote back in the 1st century AD with  scholarly translation by experts. You be the judge ... 

Qualiter in Scythica religatus rupe Prometheus
     adsiduam nimio pectore pauit auem,
nuda Caledonia sic uiscera praebuit urso
     non falsa pendens in cruce Laureolus.
Viuebant laceri membris stillantibus artus               5
     inque omni nusquam corpore corpus erat.
Denique supplicium dignum tulit: ille parentis
     uel domini iugulum foderat ense nocens,
templa uel arcano demens spoliauerat auro,
     subdiderat saeuas uel tibi, Roma, faces.               10
Vicerat antiquae sceleratus crimina famae,
     in quo, quae fuerat fabula, poena fuit.

VII. ON LAUREOLUS.1

As first, bound down upon the Scythian rock, Prometheus with ever-renewed vitals feasted the untiring vulture, so has Laureolus, suspended on no feigned cross, offered his defenceless entrails to a Caledonian bear. His mangled limbs quivered, every part dripping with gore, and in his whole body no shape was to be round. In short, he suffered such punishment as one who had been guilty of parricide, or who had cut his master's throat, or had insanely despoiled the temples of their hidden gold,2 or had applied the incendiary torch to thee, O Rome. This criminal had surpassed the crimes of ancient story, and what had been fabulous, was in his case a real punishment.

Martial compares Laureolus' fate to that of Prometheus whom the Greek god Zeus punished for stealing fire and giving it to humans by tying him to a rock and letting an eagle eat out his liver..... the liver , however , growing back in day after day , etc.  In readng through the Latin text and its excellent translation I personally see nowhere any signs of approval on Martial's part. On the contrary , he even seems to indicate that the punishment far outweighs the gravity of the crime..... one would think Laureolus had slit his boss's gizzard , blown up Fort Knox or torched the White House !! And while Prometheus got off Scot free with only mythical punishment ... poor Laureolus underwent the REAL McCoy !! I do NOT read approval in these lines !

P.S. Sorry about this , folks ... as this was supposed to be a short reflexion on crime and punishment.It simply got out of hand as I went along. One bit of advice I might forward here though is to check the sources before jumping to conclusions .....accepting " whollis - bollis " what you hear or read !!