Ides
 
Lead pipes poisoned Rome.
Slow death beneath the streets
stole a march on pushy Goths.
 
*
 
Cicero, sixty-three, divorced
his wife, by law her dowry repaid —
his new wife seventeen, rich and bendy.
 
*
 
The army no life for posh boys now:
they prefer buttery bottoms
to mountain treks with legionnaires.
 
*
 
Claudius ate a mushroom, turned black
and died, the kitchen girls pleading
ignorance — one, daughter of a poisoner.
 
*
 
Severus read the future
in sprays of chicken blood, but never
saw the dagger coming.
 
*
 
The Tiber, levels low in drought,
revealed a thousand skulls — a thousand
scores, settled upstream.
 
*
 
Commodus the tyrant, drugged by
his favourite concubine, then strangled
and good riddance.
 
*
 
Beyond the Danube — Dacians, five years
toe-to-toe with Trajan, their lives
a bloody indifference to death.
 
*
 
Lucian’s satires ridiculed the pomp
of polished order — more circumspect at
the altar of the Capitoline Jupiter.
 
*
 
The solemn embassies of Serapis and Isis
suppressed, the people attended
anyway, especially in besieged cities.
 
*
 
Sparta’s policy of pure-blood citizenry
drifted off in battle smoke — Rome less fussy,
knowing wild horses can be broken.
 
*
 
In Gaul, the Druids and their penchant
for human sacrifice never quite quashed —
in remote places, quietly about their business.
 
*
 
Roman roads, not about distances
but ideas — safe harbours, industry and law,
from Antioch to the Pillars of Hercules.

*
 
Against a pack of wily proconsuls,
Augustus countered with his Praetorians
and their habit of slaughter.
 
*
 
Rituals of betrothal aping older ways —
play-fighting with wooden swords, virgins
kidnapped laughing, demands for ransom.
 
*
 
Pertinax, now Emperor, to replenish
State coffers, auctioned gold plate, silks
and slaves of both sexes.
 
*
 
Caligula’s sister-wife Drusilla dies:
elevated to goddess, her temple built
for twenty priests — her likeness, Venus.
 
*
 
The murder of his mother arranged,
the assassin reported to Nero later, she had said
to drive the sword through her womb.
 
*
 
Tiberius at Capri raped an altar boy —
finding later that onlookers objected,
he had their legs broken.
 
*
 
Caesar at the Forum, casually
to Brutus, ‘beautiful weather for the Ides.’
Brutus to himself — Unlucky for some.

Estill Pollock


If you have any thoughts about these reflections,  Estill Pollock   would be pleased to hear them