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