ESSAY QUESTION: Construct a conversation, dialogue or
argument focusing on the central
crisis in the life of 2 of the following:
Jason, Arjuna, Marcus Aurelius, Creon
A
dark cavern, the air damp and chill. In
the distance the relentless plunk of water, dripping onto a deep pool. Two men are there: both noble, both battered
by many years of battle. One man is
tortured by the memory of the heedlessness that brought a plague upon his
family. He stands, resigned and waiting,
his eyes shadowed in the gloom. Tall
with something of arrogance apparent in the erectness of his bearing, he looks
down at the prone figure at his feet.
The second man is barely visible below the creeping mist, as he lies
sprawled on the ground. His burden: the
daily torment of a life spent in royal bondage.
AURELIUS: (Groaning and
slowly sitting up.)
What’s
this? Have I been trapped by vengeful Samartians,
held fast in some mountain cave? Let me
take a reckoning: “blood and bones and a mesh of interwoven nerves, veins, and
arteries.”[1]
No – I am whole.
I took no hurt in battle.
(Looking around and seeing his quiet observer.)
All is gloom and obscuring mist - what
manner of place have I been brought to?
CREON:
You are deep
below the world you knew, blown across the oceans by Boreas, to “the brink of
Acheron, where He gives rest to all.”[2]
You may look untouched but you have left
behind the world of the living and dwell here suspended, awaiting final
judgment deep in Hades’ realm. How did
they call you, up where once you enjoyed the warmth of the sun?
AURELIUS: I am Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome. And you?
CREON:
I am Creon, ruler in Thebes but that was many centuries ago. Here I am just a weary shadow of myself,
trapped this side of Acheron to forever repent of my actions.
AURELIUS : (To himself.)
How can this
be? I thought I was prepared for this
moment, the nights I spent in meditation on the inevitable bodily corruption. I contemplated three possible, final fates:
“either dispersal, if we are merely atoms; or if we form a unity, extinction,
or passage to another place.”[3]
And I chose Epictetus’ path, expecting
dissolution, transformation - yet here I am, awaiting Charon and without a coin
to pay my passage. I do “not despise
death, but welcome it gladly, for this too is among the things that nature
wishes”[4]
as is the decay of figs, the wrinkles of age or the death of a child. And yet … and yet, eternity in this dark
cavern is not what I foresaw.
(To Creon) You say
many centuries – how is it that you remain this side, un-judged?
CREON:
“My fate [stood] on a knife edge.”[5]
I was slow to change and paid the
price. Wise Tiresias warned me:
Any human being
can go wrong, but even when he does, a man may still succeed. He may have his share of luck and good advice
but only if he’s willing to bend and find a cure for the trouble he’s
caused. It’s only being stubborn proves
you’re a fool.”[6]
AURELIUS:
Wise words indeed. I’ve often
said, “If anyone can give me good reason to think I am going astray in my
thoughts or in my actions, I will gladly change my ways. For I seek the truth, which has never caused
harm to anyone; no, the person who is harmed is one who persists in his
self-deception and ignorance.”[7]
CREON:
I was more than ignorant,
but it was not only Creon the Furies wreaked their vengeance upon. All around me - niece, son, wife - paid my fatal
fee; and even Thebes, my city, my seven-gated wonder, suffered for my arrogance. Everything I touched turned to dust. Thebes, saved by Zeus the protector with his
missile of fire, only to be ravaged by the plague I launched when I dishonoured
the rites of his dark brother. My
reverence to Zeus was irreverence to Hades.
I thought to honour Thebes, to be a worthy ruler and often proclaimed to any who cared to hear:
I thought to honour Thebes, to be a worthy ruler and often proclaimed to any who cared to hear:
I will never
hold my tongue about what I see when ruin is afoot or the city is not
safe. I will never call a man my friend
if he is hostile to this land. […] The
city is our lifeboat: we have no friends at all unless we keep her sailing
right side up. Such are my laws. By them I’ll raise this city high.[8]
I thought it bad
policy when a ruler plays favourites, “puts family or friends ahead of
fatherland.”[9] Because of this and because of my arrogance I
made my fateful decision: entombed a faithful sister and dishonoured the body
of my nephew, leaving his funeral rites to be performed by vultures and dogs[10]-
and all because of stubborn pride. Such
was “the character of my mind.”[11]
I did not heed blind
Tiresias when he told me, “The dead are no business of yours; not even the gods
above own any part of them. You’ve
committed violence against them.”[12] And because of this heedlessness, I was the
helmsman of “the worst disaster of my life.”[13]
(Creon, who has been standing erect, his voice emotionless, staggers
back against the rock wall and buries his face in his hands. AURELIUS walks over to him. After a period of time, he speaks quietly.)
AURELIUS:
“Be untroubled
in your mind; for all things come about as universal nature would have them.”[14] I was helped throughout my life by the wisdom
of great teachers. I truly believe that
“nothing happens to anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear.”[15] “To set your mind against anything that
happens is to set yourself apart from nature.”[16] Come now, stop tormenting yourself. Do not do violence to the single harmony of
nature.[17] Do you really think that your small speck of
time on earth has any great significance to any being “who has embraced the
whole of time and the whole of reality in his thoughts?”[18] “It’s a king’s part to do good and be ill
spoken of.”[19] What did you wreak that was so disastrous?
CREON:
I’m not mewling
about fame or the legacy of my name.
“Childkiller!!” she called me. “These
are your crimes, Childkiller!”[20],
then she plunged the sword deep in her own belly, my sweet Eurydice. That brought my fatal count to four: Eurydice
my wife, my son Megareus, and wise Haemon,
clasped in eternal bloody matrimony with Oedipus’ daughter, Antigone. Ah Antigone… Brave and resolute sister. I censured you thus, “The mind that is most
rigid stumbles soonest,”[21]
crying arrogance yet the arrogance was mine.
I now know that “great words sprung from arrogance, are punished by
great blows.”[22] Great blows indeed. (sighs, then almost to himself)
“I have learned,
and it is misery. Some god leapt full
force onto my head and steered me onto a wild path, shaking my reins, and I
have trampled joy with sharp hooves.”[23] Now
here I wait eternally, no ferryman willing to carry me to judgment, just a dark
infinity of time to weep for the pain of humanity.[24]
AURELIUS:
“In human life,
the time of our existence is a point, […] our soul ever restless, our destiny
beyond divining, and our fame precarious.
In a word, all that belongs to the body is a stream in flow, all that
belongs to the soul, mere dream and delusion, and our life is a war, a brief
stay in a foreign land, and our fame thereafter, oblivion. So what can serve as our escort and guide? One thing and one alone, philosophy.”[25]
CREON:
Philosophy? How so? I thought you a man of action: a warrior, an
emperor, a ruler. How do these diverging
paths accord? Do you treat in
prophecies, bird calls, omens or such-like?
You call yourself Emperor, yet seem a humble man torn by inner doubts
and conflicts. I’ve long felt that “no
man has a mind that can be fully known, in character or judgment, till he rules
and makes law; only then can he be tested.”[26]
You seem a good man - how went your
reign?
AURELIUS:
My life was an eternal struggle between the trappings of the court and
the path of philosophy. By birth and
upbringing I was fitted for Caesar’s purple.
Trained for the protection of the empire, “I conceived a passion for
philosophy.”[27] After
hard days campaigning, and even when
those around me were “crying out against [me] with whatever charges they
please,”[28]
I found solace in the words of the
philosophers and in my belief in universal nature and providence. Many times I had to counsel myself to let no
one hear me disparaging life at court.[29] My rule was beset by those seeking to bring
the empire down, the foreign hordes gnawing at my borders like vermin and the
court intriguers - and I would remind myself: “Return to philosophy as often as
you can, and take your rest in her; for it is through her that life at court
seems bearable.”[30]
CREON:
This sounds a
worthy life: a strong body serving your empire and a thoughtful mind to reflect
on the rightness of your actions, the justice of your judgments. I don’t understand your dilemma.
AURELIUS:
“Providence
permeates the works of the gods; and the works of fortune are not dissociated
from nature, but intertwined and interwoven by all that is ordered by
providence.”[31] I believe this with all my being and lived my
life trusting that “the special characteristic of a good person [is] to love
and welcome all that happens to him and is spun for him as his fate, and not to
defile [his] guardian spirit […] but to preserve it in cheerful serenity.”[32] When I would suffer, parched by my thirst for
books or goaded by my royal duties, I scolded myself, “Be done with it, so that
you may not die with complaints on your lips, but with a truly cheerful mind
and grateful to the gods with all your heart.”[33] I fought many a campaign against the invading
hordes but my biggest battle was between my duty and my passion. I finally took ease in the realization that
it was beyond my power to have lived my whole life as a philosopher.[34] Epicurus wrote that “pain is neither unendurable
nor everlasting, if you keep its limits in mind and do not add to it through
your own imagination.”[35] These are words I strove to take into my heart
and words that may provide you some comfort in your eternal torment.
CREON:
Are you suggesting
your conflict, pitched between a royal life golden with court honours and a
contemplative life of books, can compare with my sacrilege and suffering? If I should stay marooned here on these dark
shores for limitless years, I will never appease the Furies that cry vengeance
nor weather the storm in my soul.
AURELIUS:
Universal nature
would “never […] have committed such a grave fault as to allow good and evil to
happen to good people and bad alike without distinction.”[36] I lived by two rules of action: First, “to do
nothing other than what the kingly and law-making art ordains for the benefit
of humankind, and the second, to be prepared to change your mind if someone is
at hand to put you right and guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion.”[37] I benefited greatly from the wise words of
teachers who had come before me. Let us
strip your offence down to its essentials.
Perhaps your court lacked wise counsel?
CREON:
I was sure in my
judgments and thought “an enemy is always an enemy even in death”[38]
and I held to that thought against all warnings. “Stop stabbing at a corpse,”[39]
the soothsayer bade me. And eventually I
did listen … but too late. And now I’m
left alone to mourn my fatal delay.
AURELIUS:
Nothing that is of value can be accomplished without change. “And do you not see, then, that change in
yourself is of a similar nature, and similarly necessary to universal nature?”[40] Can’t you see that you are not the rigid
tyrant who closed his mind to all around him?
Just as you changed your decisions and so were changed, so your actions
changed Thebes and this too is part of the universal plan. Accept divine destiny and your place in it,
“for universal nature never brings you anything which you are unfitted to
bear.”[41]
CREON:
You speak wisely
and bring me comfort. Your tales of campaigns
and battles bring a quickening to this broken warrior’s heart but your true
worth lies in the radiance of your wisdom.
It’s there your place in history truly lies – to let the light of your wisdom
illuminate the way for the generations who come after.
Then
both men were quiet, standing eased and at peace. And
eventually, they turned together and “stood ready and firm to meet whatever
happen[ed].”[42] In the distance, the sound of an oar cleaving
the still waters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011.
Sophocles. Antigone.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001.
[1] Meditations, 2.2
[2] Antigone, 811-812
[3] Meditations, 7.32
[4] Meditations, 9.3
[5] Antigone, 996
[6] Antigone, 1024-1029
[7] Meditations, 6.21
[8] Antigone, 185-191
[9] Antigone, 182-183
[10] Antigone, 1081-1082
[11] Antigone, 207
[12] Antigone, 1072-1073
[13] Antigone, 1213
[14] Meditations, 8.5
[15] Meditations, 5.18
[16] Meditations, 2.16
[17]
from Meditations, 2.16 and 5.8
[18] Meditations, 7.35
[19] Meditations, 7.36
[20] Antigone, 1305
[21] Antigone, 473
[22] Antigone, 1351-1352
[23] Antigone, 1272-1275
[24] Antigone, 1276
[25] Meditations, 2.17
[26]
Antigone, 175-178
[27] Meditations, 1.17
[28] Meditations, 7.68
[29] Meditations, 8.9
[30] Meditations, 6.12
[31] Meditations, 2.3
[32] Meditations, 3.16
[33] Meditations, 2.3
[34] Meditations, 8.1
[35] Meditations, 7.64
[36] Meditations, 2.11
[37] Meditations, 4.12
[38] Antigone, 522
[39] Antigone, 1030
[40] Meditations, 7.18
[41] Meditations, 8.46
[42] Meditations, 7.61
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