Two New Poem Drafts and a Poem Re-Draft

Falling

Sometimes we sit in quiet rooms,
the music playing in our heads,
as night is falling moonless
on the windowpane.

Sometimes we are desertlands inside
until the rains comes softly falling
and grace comes tumbling down
like a tress of woman's hair.

How can I be so stuck inside my head
when I would surely rather be with you?
And why do I waste my time each day
when I would rather be with you?


Death

Like paper in the windy gust, our moments flutter by;
we never know when nornish hands have set our fates to die.
It matters not one whit at all if you should rage or cry.
It comes for all, without a fail, that final shuddered sigh.

Like paper that is burning, all our moments waste away;
no matter what you do or hope, there is a final day,
and try to hold it tightly or ignore it as you may,
the strands of every thread of life will one day start to fray.

Or catch the planet in your hand and stop its onward roll,
or capture death and hold it fast in dungeon black as coal,
or swallow all the gods alive, devour titans whole,
or hold in caterpillar-form the splendor of your soul.


Du Fu's Spring View

empire is fallen
mountains and rivers stand

city is in spring
thick with grass and tree

one feels the time
flowers drop tears

distressed by distance
birds alarm the heart

beacons are aflame
nonstop for three months

letter from home
costs ten thousand gold

my hair is age-white
scratched ever shorter

the whole thing soon
will not hold a hairpin

Rituo-Political Choreography

Charlotte Allen discusses Jessica Krug, the history professor who recently confessed to faking being a black Puerto Rican from the Bronx when she was in reality a white girl from a Jewish family in Kansas:

So Krug pads her book: chapters are given murky but fashionably prolix titles such as “Social Dismemberment, Social (Re)membering: Obeah Idioms, Kromanti Identities, and the Trans-Atlantic Politics of Memory, c. 1675-Present.” Postmodernist buzzwords and buzz-phrases abound: “praxis,” “bodies,” “imbrication,” “subjectivities,” “masculinities,” “reputational geographies,” “subaltern,” “interrogation,” “coloniality,” “discursive mobilization,” “gendered topographies of labor.” In order to make sense out of the book’s maps, you have to turn them upside-down or sideways, because Krug believes that conventional north-oriented cartography is unacceptably Eurocentric, reinforcing “the relationships of power that brought millions of Africans across the ocean in chains.” Sentences go on and on. A sample: “If the fundamental unit of being is not the liberal subject—the atomic individual with rights and obligations ensured by the legal apparatus of state—but rather a collective self, fashioned through the instrumental deployment of historical memory and rituo-political choreography, then, unsurprisingly, biography must function differently.”

Allen makes the point that Krug's deception was enabled by academic fashions, but it's also probably true that academics are particularly susceptible to confusing stereotypes -- which Krug exploited on a massive scale -- with communities. And in such an atmosphere, you can indeed pass off as yourself what is in fact just an "instrumental deployment" of "rituo-political choreography".

Shadows of Shadows of Possibilities

Barton Gellman has a completely lunatic article at The Atlantic. Pretty much the entire article is irrational and absurd, but the worst is this:

The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress.

The Electoral College system doesn't have ambiguities in the way this requires; unlike, say, a popular vote system, it's specifically designed to eliminate ambiguities. For the President, the process is like this. The states certify their election votes. The Electors are chosen in accordance with state law. They vote on the day decided by Congress, currently the Monday after the second Wednesday in December. Under the Electoral Count Act, they have to complete six Certificates of Vote, signed by all Electors; one of those six goes to the office of the President of the Senate. Much of Gellman's looney-tunes scenario requires there to be rival Electoral College ballots (for multiple states!); of course, the only actual Electoral College votes are those which are consistent with state law. Klain's action of booking a rival room in 2000 was purely a just-in-case move; litigation over whether the votes had been properly accounted was still going on, the Republicans booked a room in case the litigation favored them, the Democrats responded by booking a room as well, in case it favored them. The only way this could have become an issue is if (1) the litigation did not end by the day the Electoral College was supposed to meet despite everyone having an incentive to make sure it did; (2) the litigation did not settle who had the legal claim to the Electoral College votes by the time the vote was counted, despite everyone having an incentive to make sure it did; (3) Congress could not come to an agreement about which to reject.

Congress presided over by the President of the Senate counts the votes; if members of Congress question the legitimacy of any vote, there is a legal process for doing so; no state's Certificate of Vote can be rejected without a vote of both chambers of Congress (such a rejection has happened in only two elections). If a candidate gets sufficient Electoral College votes, he wins, unambiguously. If no candidate gets sufficient Electoral College votes (which, despite Gellman's imaginative attempt to suggest otherwise, logically includes the case where it is close but Congress does not know what enough of the Electoral College votes are, like the rival ballot case), the House voting by state delegation chooses one of the three candidates with the most Electoral College votes. They can choose any of the three they want; all it takes is 26 state-delegation votes. (Currently Republicans hold more state delegations in the House, but it would be the new Congress that mattered.) Whoever gets those wins, unambiguously. If nobody gets enough, they keep balloting until someone does. Much the same process is done for the vice president, except it is the Senate, not the House, that decides the matter in case no vice-presidential candidate gets enough Electoral College votes. If the House can't pick a president by Inauguration, whoever is elected vice president becomes the president. If the House can't pick a president and there is no vice president by Inauguration, the line of succession kicks in and the Speaker of the House becomes president. There is only a limited set of options for President -- Trump, Biden, Pence, Harris, and Pelosi, very roughly in that order of likelihood. No matter what happens, it will be unambiguous. Even in the worst case scenario, with both the College and Congress deadlocked, we would still have an unambiguous winner as Nancy Pelosi is sworn in as president.

I don't say that it's absolutely foolproof; I mean, politicians can be such fools that there is no such thing as foolproof when they are involved. But the process is, again, specifically designed to cut out any potential for ambiguity at each stage.

And this is all, of course, without even considering the fact that Gellman's scenarios require obviously implausible events like Pence deliberately burning his political career by going rogue in order to guarantee that Trump is president (and what is more, that Trump rather than himself becomes president) and Congress doing nothing to stop it.

It would be foolish to deny that history can throw a curveball on occasion for which no one can adequately plan, but throughout Gellman's article we are not so much dealing with possibilities as with shadows of shadows of possibilities. Yes, it is true that if the entire world inexplicably goes mad all at once, the Constitution has no mechanism that can stop it; but that is not only not surprising, it is not the kind of possibility worth worrying about. It would be like planning your vacation while worrying about the fact that you haven't figured out what to do if you get hit by an asteroid while on the beach.

Fortnightly Book, September 27

We finally come to the last, and generally least known, Holmes short story collections: His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

His Last Bow contains various miscellaneous stories from different years, combined with a preface from Dr. Watson:

Preface by John H. Watson
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
The Adventure of the Red Circle
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes

"The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was originally published in 1892 and also in The Memoirs (1894), but in later editions of the latter was taken out, with part of its story recycled for "The Adventure of the Resident Patient". It was then published in His Last Bow. British editions have often reverted to the original apportionment, while American editions have usually followed the later practice of giving the story to His Last Bow. Other stories were originally published later, with "His Last Bow" receiving its first publication very shortly before the collection itself was published.

The last collection, published in 1927, has some variation in its title. It was originally published as The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes in the British edition and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, no hyphen, in the American edition; later publishers often published it as The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, one word, which is how my Wordsworth Edition omnibus has it. All of its stories are from the 1920s.

The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone
The Adventure of the Three Gables
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
The Problem of Thor Bridge
The Adventure of the Creeping Man
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman

These are the least-read Holmes stories, in part because they are so late, and in part becase six of them are still in copyright -- until 2022 for "Three Gables", "Blanched Soldier", "Lion's Mane", and "Retired Colourman", and until 2023 for "Veiled Lodger" and "Shoscombe Old Place".

These last collections have short stories that tend to be much more experimental than prior short stories, with deliberate deviations from expected formulas (e.g., "Wisteria Lodge" gives us a police inspector who independently manages to keep up with Holmes, and three of the Case-Book stories are not narrated by Watson), bolder mixing of genres (e.g., "His Last Bow" is an espionage tale, and "Creeping Man" has science fiction elements), and different origins (e.g., "Mazarin Stone" was originally a play that Doyle then turned into a short story).

It's fairly difficult to find easily accessible adaptations of Case-Book stories, but you do occasionally find a few from His Last Bow, so I'll keep an eye out for some of those, if I have the time for them.

Patrick Rambaud, The Battle

Introduction

Timeline of the Age of Napoleon

Opening Passage:

In the morning of Tuesday 16 May 1809, a Berline flanked by horsemen pulled out of Schönbrunn and drove at a leisurely pace along the right bank of the Danube. It was an unremarkable carriage, olive coloured, without coats of arms on its panels. As it passed, the Austrian peasants raised their black, broad-brimmed hats, out of caution, rather than respect, because they recognized the officers riding their long-maned Arabs at a trot, a panther skin under their seats, uniforms in the Hungarian style -- white, scarlet, heavy with gold -- a heron's feather in their shakos: these young gentlemen were the permanent escort of Berthier, Major-General of the occupying army. (p. 3)

Summary: While The Battle follows a number of people, the primary protagonist is Louis-François Lejeune:


(Constantin Jean Marie Prevost, Portrait de Louis-François Lejeune)

Lejeune is an artist who, after having volunteered for the army in the French Revolutionary War, had a brilliant military career. At the time of the Battle of Essling, he is an officer of the General Staff. The story picks up in Vienna, where Lejeune has become friends with Henri Beyle; both Beyle and Lejeune have fallen in love with the same (fictional) Austrian woman, Anna Krauss. It is, of course, a doomed love affair, for both; Anna cannot simply stop being an Austrian whose country is at war with the French. And it is, in any case, difficult to carry on a love affair when you are going into a huge mess of a battle.

Despite being our primary character, however, Lejeune is hardly the only character; Rambaud puts a great deal of effort into covering the diversity of temperaments at the battle. Some are gentle, others calculating. Some are in the military from half-literary ideas of army, some just fell into it, some are sociopaths in it for the butchering and raping. Almost all of the major figures are half-distracted by things that have nothing to do with the battle at all. And, of course, there is Napoleon himself who, in the middle of an army, is clearly very, very alone; he has a good head for a battlefield, but he is very unsure of himself, with all the insecurity of a vain man who knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that everyone around him is only telling him what he wants to hear.

Napoleon attempts a forced crossing of the Danube at the island of Lobau, near the villages of Aspern and Essling, but despite the skill of his military engineers, it turns into something of a disaster. The Austrians, under the highly competent but also overly cautious and hesitant Archduke Charles, are upstream, and the first attempts to build a bridge are plagued by the Austrians sending an endless supply of trees and boats filled with rocks downriver to tear it down. But the Archduke is not primarily concerned with preventing the crossing; his actual plan is to attack the French army soon after they cross, before they can receive reinforcements from the Army of Italy. Napoleon, no fool in matters of war, recognizes this and is attempting to compensate by bringing all the battalions he can across the river. Fighting begins at Aspern, where the Austrians hit the French much harder than expected and seize the village; Masséna is able to recapture it, although at high cost. Fighting at Essling, which Lannes is attempting to hold, is scarcely less fierce. Meanwhile, Napoleon is bringing more and more of his troops across the bridge.


(Fernand Cormon, The Battle of Essling, May 1809)

The second day of fighting is even more fierce and muddled than the first. Lannes manages to hold Essling, but Masséna is pushed out of Aspern; the French almost win when they temporarily break through Austrian lines, but Archduke Charles, his caution serving him well on this occasion, had an extra reserve he is able to bring up. The French will almost be driven into the Danube, but the battle will end in total exhaustion on both sides. The cost is high, over forty thousand dead on the field, twenty thousand on the French side in what was for the French a complete failure, and Marshal Lannes wounded in a way that will require amputation, an amputation he will not ultimately survive.


(Paul-Émile Boutigny, Lannes Mortally Wounded at Essling)

Lejeune will continue with his army career, an illustrious one except for a period of disgrace when he left his post in the terrible march on Moscow, and will eventually paint a famous series of paintings of battles of the Napoleonic Wars. Beyle will eventually publish a number of books, including Vie de Napoléon and Le Rouge et le Noir, under his pen name, Stendhal. And Napoleon, of course, will face ever more serious difficulties until his final end.

Balzac, who originally had the idea for a book on the Battle of Aspern-Essling, had intended not to include Napoleon, or at most to have him show up briefly, and to have no women at all, the point being to show someone in an armchair what battle is like. Rambaud deviates from both of these. Adding the fictional affair with Anna enlivens the story quite a bit, I think, but I go back and forth on whether making Napoleon himself a major character was a worthwhile move. Rambaud's depiction of Napoleon is interesting, but there are already so many characters involved in the story -- it has an epic's cast despite not being epic-length.


Der Löwe von Aspern, which commemorates the battle

Favorite Passage:

A grenadier with shrapnel in his leg dragged himself out of the line of fire. When he fell to the ground, he had snatched up some of the coins the standard bearer, his former neighbour in the line, had hidden in the folds of his stock. He surreptitiously opened his hand, took a close look at his treasure and muttered bitterly that it wasn't worth anything any more. On 1 Janueary 1809, the Emperor had removed from all coinage the motto which still figured on the coins he had picked up:

UNITY, INDIVISIBILITY OF THE REPUBLIC. (p. 237)

Recommendation: Recommended, if you like war novels. It's an easy and vivid read, and makes a considerable attempt at accuracy, although for the same reason parts of it are quite brutal.

****

Patrick Rambaud, The Battle, Will Hobson, tr. Grove Press (New York: 2000).

Mayhap Thou Canst Not Ripen Without Frost

September
by Helen Hunt Jackson

O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung
On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue
To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped
In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;
And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among
The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung
Her utmost gold. To highest boughs have leaped
The purple grape,--the last thing to ripen, late
By very reason of its precious cost.
O Heart, remember, vintages are lost
If grapes do not for freezing night-dews wait.
Think, while thou sunnest thyself in Joy's estate,
Mayhap thou canst not ripen without frost!

Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius

We know very little about Minucius Felix. He was a lawyer, almost certainly from North Africa although practicing in Rome, who converted to Christianity; he lived in the late second century or early third century (he is mentioned by Lactantius and seems to be alluded to by Cyprian, so he is no later than the middle of the third century). The Octavius is his only known work, although Jerome seems to say that he also had another work, Of Fate, which is not extant and is mentioned by no one else. That's about all the reasonably direct information we have.

The Octavius only survives in one manuscript tradition (based on a ninth-century manuscript in Paris); it was overlooked for a long time because it is bundled with Arnobius's Against the Nations and was only discovered not to be part of that work in the sixteenth century. It has a number of obvious links to Tertullian's Apologeticus, so there would be room for extrapolating more if it can be determined which of the two has priority; that would, for instance, give us a better sense of dates for the work. If Octavius is prior to Apologeticus, this would put it prior to the third century, if it is posterior, this would put it after the second. The scholarship has gone back and forth on this. It was originally thought that Octavius was influenced by Apologeticus; then beginning in the seventeenth century, the priority of the Octavius seems to have become dominant, in part because Minucius's handling of classical authorities is more precise than Tertullian's and because Minucius seems to be describing, even if we assume he is embellishing, a real event. No arguments on either side are really definitive.

Besides (possibly) Tertullian, Minucius is quite clearly heavily influenced by Cicero, in structure and in style as well as in some of his more general themes.

You can read the Octavius at Tertullian.org or Early Christian Writings. C. Francis Higgins has a nice article on Minucius Felix and the Octavius at the IEP. Paul Lejay also has a nice, if now somewhat dated, article in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia.

The Characters

The dialogue is a discussion involving three friends:

Marcus Minucius Felix: The narrator, he acts as the 'judge' in the debate between Caecilius and Octavius. His name is on monuments in Tebessa and Carthage, although it's unclear whether these refer to the same Minucius. At the beginning of the dialogue, he is practicing law in Rome.

Caecilius Natalis: A pagan. There is a monument with his name on it at Cirta, in North Africa, where the dialogue claims he is from; whether this is the dialogue's Caecilius or a family member, the Caecilius mentioned on the monuments was an active participant in the pagan life of Cirta.

Octavius Januarius: A Christian. His name is on a monument in Saldae, although, as with the other two, it's unknown whether this is the same Octavius or simply related to him.

The Plot

The dialogue is nostalgic in tone (influenced by Cicero's De Oratore). Minucius, reflecting on his friendship with Octavius, who has died, is brought back to the time when Octavius converted their friend Caecilius to Christianity. Octavius came to visit Minucius in Rome, and as the courts were on hiatus, they went down to Ostia for bathing and relaxation. They are walking to the beach with Caecilius, when Caecilius sees an idol of Serapis, and salutes it with a kiss. Octavius makes a mocking comment on the gesture, scolding Minucius for letting his friend remain in ignorant superstition. They spend some time enjoying themselves at the beach, with Octavius telling various stories about the sea. As they are returning along the shore, they come to the docks and see the boys skipping shells on the waves, each one trying to outdo the others. At this point Minucius notices that Caecilius is a bit too quiet, and asks him what is wrong. Caecilius says he is bothered by Octavius's comment, less atbeing called ignorant than at the the fact that Minucius had been rebuked for it, and he proposes, if Octavius is willing, that they sit down and argue it out. (There is undoubtedly a narrative parallel between the boys and the men here. The men are adult lawyers, so their form of skipping stones in friendly competition is to argue.) Minucius will be the judge; Minucius is a Christian convert, but Caecilius asks him to be as completely impartial as he can. Caecilius gives his arguments against Christianity; he's put in a much better mood by it, likely by the opportunity to show off his oratorical skills. Minucius scolds him for thinking so highly of himself when Octavius hasn't even spoken yet; Caecilius rebukes him lightly for not maintaining his impartiality, but Minucius responds that they should be concerned less with the eloquence than with the truth of the discourses. Then Octavius gives his defense of Christianity. After he finishes, they are silent a bit. Minucius is impressed by Octavius's ability to express what is easier to feel than express. Caecilius admits himself outmatched, but declares himself a victor of the sort, in that Octavius has led him to understand the matter better. As the sun is setting, Caecilius proposes that they discuss the matter more deeply the next day, and they head home.

The story that frames the debate is an extraordinary literary capturing of the kind of nostalgia that is associated with close friendship, and in and of itself gives the dialogue a charm and interest that accentuates the actual debate.

The Thought

The apologetics of the work is primarily sociological, not theological. Certain broader philosophical issues, particularly knowledge of the goods and the existence and nature of providence, play a significant role (and connect the dialogue to its Ciceronian forebears), but for the purposes of the argument, they are primarily there to assist in determining whether Christian life is reasonable.

Caecilius argues a version of the Academic position that we only know the probable, not the true, due to the uncertainty of human life, and criticizes Christians (often uneducated) for being overly dogmatic on matters beyond human ken. Either human life is governed by chance or, if it is governed by nature, we do not have certain knowledge of it; because of this, the safest course is to stick with the customs of your forefathers. This is all the more the case in that the Romans had risen to greatness in preserving the religion of their fathers, and failures to respect the auspices had often led to disaster.

Thus the presumption should be for the pagan religion, which has the consent of nations. Christians, however, reject this and do so not by argument but by conspiracy. And in their secret societies, they are rumored to do horrible things: worship the head of ass, engage in incest, worshiping the genitals of their priests, having orgies, drinking the blood and eating the flesh of babies, and (even worse) worshiping a criminal and the cross on which he was executed. If such rumors are not true, why do Christians go around in such secrecy? What is more, their God is a strange God nobody has ever heard of before, yet they think He is a busybody who is nosing about even in peoples thoughts, all over the earth, and they threaten people by saying that He is destroying the world, which everyone knows to be sempiternal, with fire. On top of that, they claim that bodies will be resurrected after the destruction, and promise themselves blessed perpetual life after death while condemning everyone else to everlasting punishment, not because of what they deserve but because of what the wicked judge they pretend to be God decides beforehand. Nor does their account of resurrection even make sense -- the body was already destroyed, so it can't be resurrected, and if it's a new body, then you are not same person.

All of this seems clearly to be made up so as to help them veil to themselves what seems to be the real situation: they are often wretched, destitute, and homeless -- apparently with their God not much caring -- whereas the supposedly inferior pagan Romans live lives of enjoyment and happiness in comparison. Christians are thus acting neither modestly nor wisely, nor with proper regard for the limitations of the human mind. Christians would be better off imitating Socrates, who refused to speculate about divine matters, and who showed (confirmed by the Oracle at Delphi) that confession of one's own ignorance is wisdom -- the foundation of the Academic approach to philosophy.

Octavius responds by saying that Caecilius's argument is inconsistent and erratic. Parts of his arguments depend on a deep skepticism about divine things and parts only have real force against Christians if we know divine things fairly well. He can, however, respond to all of it from a single and consistent position. Caecilius complains about the Christian lack of education and wealth, but fails to grasp one important thing: "all men are begotten alike, with a capacity and ability of reasoning and feeling, without preference of age, sex, or dignity." The capacity to be wise is not a matter that is hostage to fortune, and you do not become wise by being rich, nor even by mere study. Though poor and uneducated, they may still be wise. Their position should be judged not on their circumstances but on its truth.

Caecilius is right that we should know ourselves and be aware of our limitations, but he draws the wrong conclusions from this, because he should instead recognize that things in this world are so interconnected that we need to know divinity in order to know humanity. It is absurd to exaggerate the extent to which the world is governed by chance; we see quite clearly that the world is very orderly, in a way that suggests divine reason. There is a divine providence. What is more, this is not just a generic providence but one that extends to the parts of the world, because you still see the orderliness when you focus on the details. Our real limitation is that the God who must exist to do this is too much to know. We should not, like the pagans, diversify this by many names; we should simply recognize that any names we give will be inadequate. And this, Octavius says, is the common consent of nations: people spontaneously address God just as God. "And they who speak of Jupiter as the chief, are mistaken in the name indeed, but they are in agreement about the unity of the power." The poets and the Stoic philosophers, too, often talk in this way, and many of them agree with the Christians that this divine power pervades all. What is more, Plato's doctrine in the Timaeus is very similar to what Christians say of God. So in fact there is plenty of philosophical authority in support of something broadly like the Christian position, and we should take this to be more seriously than just the traditional opinion, because know that people have often fallen easily into false beliefs. And if we're talking about absurdities and inconsistencies, it's not as if you can't come up with a long list of traditional pagan beliefs that propose bizarre things or are connected to strange or inconsistent stories. And the real shame is worshiping idols, stone or wood, that are made by human hands, and making them the center of pagan rites.

Caecilius had attributed the greatness of the Romans and the value of their auspices to their religion. Octavius replies that the Romans have a long history of impiety, and a simpler explanation is that they were so successful because they were violent and terrifying. Likewise, Caecilius's appeal to auspices is highly selective; there are many cases of people taking auspices and meeting a bad end. This is not to say that the argument has no force: auspices do sometimes seem to have touched on the truth, impressively even. But this is because there are spirits who know more than we do and meddle with human matters, like Socrates's numen. If there are angels and demons, then the occasional impressive successes of the auspices can be explained; but these spirits are everywhere recognized as intermediaries, not gods. And these demons are themselves what stirs up the prejudice against Christians, so that people hate them before they even know them.

This brings us then to the claims that Christians engage in horrid crimes in secret. Octavius notes that he himself (and perhaps he's including Minucius, as well) had once believed such things. Even as he would defend people from charges of crimes like these in court, he did not even bother to think that Christians might have something to say in their defense. Many of them are not even very plausible, like the oncephalic calumny, that Christians secretly worship the head of an ass, but even if it were true is not so very from Egyptian paganism. Christians do not worship a criminal; they believe the man on the cross was unjustly killed, and, moreover, was God; but, again, pagans cannot attack Christians for these things without answering for the fact that their are pagans who do analogous things. Similar things can be said of drinking the blood of infants: this is not right, but even if it were true, pagans have a long history of exposure of infants and of abortion. Similar things go for the charge of incest;Christians have strict standards in favor of marriage, and call each other brother and sister not out of incest but out of recognition of God their Father, and out of mutual love for each other. In every case, the pagans charge is that Christians do things, leaving no evidence, when there is plenty of evidence that pagans do things analogous to what they are attacking. Nor is it even true that Christians are engaged in secret conspiracy. They don't blabber about everything, to be sure, but they don't think God can be confined to a building, and they think the proper sacrifices to God are not showy animal sacrifices but virtue, innocence, justice.

As to the conflagration and the resurrection, the idea that the world will perish in fire is entirely consistent with the common recognition that all things that begin also perish, and the Stoics too hold that this world-order will perish in fire. Nor is it absurd to think that man, who has been formed by God, can be re-formed by Him. We are still in the winter of the body; there will be a spring. And it is not difficult to find pagan poets and philosophers peaking of reward and punishment in the afterlife, as well. To ignore God is sufficient for punishment, to know Him is sufficient for pardon; but even if that weren't so, Christian standards of morality are higher than pagan standards. The reward and punishment is not a matter of fate; men are free; it is our doing that is judged, not our being. And the adversities of this life increase us in virtue, especially martyrdom. Christians set aside the pagan customs not out of fear and a desperate attempt to comfort themselves, but for something better. If the Academic philosophers think otherwise, let them be pitied for it; Christians have obtained the truth that the Academics sought badly.

Caecilius concedes the argument; Octavius has given a reasonable answer to all of his objections. He accepts that it is reasonable to believe in providence and that the Christian way of life is sincere.

Additional Notes

* Part of the dialogue is an argument over the nature of providence, with Caecilius suggesting as possible an Epicurean view and Octavius, without getting too technical, drawing on Stoic arguments for divine providence. Octavius's argument seems heavily influenced by Cicero's presentation of the Stoic argument in De natura deorum.

* All of the anti-Christian calumnies Caecilius notes are calumnies for which we find independent evidence elsewhere, sometimes in slightly variant forms. Some of them, like the onocephalic calumny, were Roman calumnies against the Jews that the Christians inherited. Others, like the cannibal feasts, the incestuous orgies, and the worshiping of a criminal are obviously garbled versions of Christian doctrines.

* One of the things that is important to the dialogue, and emphasized by Minucius's intervention between Caecilius's and Octavius's speeches, is that friendship competes for truth (veritas) and not praise (laus). Caecilius, despite his immediate objection, affirms much the same by the end of the dialogue: they are not in a competition with a mutually exclusive victory, but Octavius can conquer by showing forth the truth, yet Caecilius can still be a victor by coming to see it. The only victory that matters when friends are involved is truth.