Before the next election cycle, while there is a relative calm in political campaigning, I recommend that readers pick up a translation of Lucan's "Civil War." Lucan, a young poet living under the Roman Emperor Nero in the first century A.D., wrote about the epic clash between Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus. It is true that the United States has already seen a civil war with as much fury and madness as the one in Rome, however, Americans today have more in common with Romans of Caesar's time in terms of their wealth, their society and their political status in the world.
One major theme of this story is the loss of political dialogue and its replacement by senseless violence. A sense of fear and chaos dominate most Romans at this point, and everyone feels the pressure to pick one of the two sides. Brutus and Cato are the only Romans who see that both sides are in the wrong, that both Caesar and Pompey desire mastery of the world for themselves; nevertheless, even these two yield and join Pompey — the lesser of two evils in their eyes.
This is where I criticize both Roman and modern American voters: picking a side only because it seems the lesser of two evils. If you feel that you are forced to pick one of two sides in politics, then you prove yourself to be a mere pawn in a manufactured chess game, [not] as free as you like to think you are.
Another major theme of Lucan's is the loss of faith in Rome: faith in the gods, as well as in their fellow human beings. The gods are barely present in this story, whereas fortune and fate are on the lips of most Romans. Everyone is familiar with Caesar's famous line, "The die is cast." He said this upon crossing the Rubicon, referring to the civil war as a risky bet.
I am not making a theological argument, nor am I telling anyone what religion to believe in; I am simply pointing out that faith and trust are crucial to keeping a civilized society glued together. You do not even have to have faith in most people, but it is important to seek out at least a few people in whom you can have faith. When voting, I am not suggesting anyone be naive enough to vote for every person who says you can trust them — that's every candidate; still, if you cannot find a candidate that you have faith in at first glance, I encourage you to not stop looking until you have done so.
We are not Rome; our fate is not necessarily theirs. Still, the lessons of the past should not go ignored. Lucan did not get a say in what type of Rome he got to live in, so he wrote his "Civil War" to point out how one generation of Romans ruined their country for future generations. And rather than people taking responsibility for their actions, Romans gave up their future to an unseen, unseeing fortune. Let's hope there will be no one like that writing about us in the future.
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Derek Haddad is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Classics.
