Wednesday
Yesterday, after getting our stove pipe cleaned (note to self: write blog post about Blake’s chimney sweep), I lit a fire, watched snow flurries through the window, made myself a hot buttered rum, and opened The Aeneid. Next semester I’ll be teaching Virgil’s epic in Sewanee’s “Representative Masterpieces” class (fondly known as RepMas), and I have to get ready.
As I read, I came across a passage that speaks to the difference between following the mob and being a statesperson. It’s an epic simile describing how Poseidon commands the winds that have been battering Aeneas’s ships to cease. These winds, incidentally, are the work of the vengeful Juno, who has bribed the guardian of the winds to unleash them. Juno’s desire to sabotage Aeneas’s great mission is not unlike Trump desire to disrupt a fair and free election.
The difference between those throwing rocks and the he who stops them is the difference between those standing up for the Constitution and those capitulating to a fear of Trump tweets and Facebook denunciations. Various Democrats in Trump-leaning districts have decided that Trump’s extortion efforts outweigh concerns about their political futures and will be voting to hold him accountable. Now we need Republicans to do the same:
Just as, all too often,
some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising
the rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion,
rocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms
but then, if they chance to see a man among them,
one whose devotion and public service
lend him weight [pietate gravem],
they stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as
he rules their furor with his words and calms
their passion. (Trans. Robert Fagles)
In the House impeachment hearings, we saw pietate gravem demonstrated by ambassadors and State Department officials. Virgil may be overly optimistic, however, in his belief that a devout public servant can get the Jim Jordans of the world to stand stock-still with their ears alert and their passions calmed.
We are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history. Regardless of how the firebrands behave, we must stand strong.
