by Ken Parejko
I have a little exercise for you. Set up a line of sticks on the floor, as though they were to be the columns supporting the roof of a temple. Do this in a semi-darkened room -- perhaps your bedroom -- and do it in the evening. Now use a candle to represent the sun. Place the candle close to the line of sticks, at the middle of the line. Note the shadows formed by the light from the candle. Now move the candle further away from the sticks and watch the shadows. Move the candle as far as you can from the sticks, and continue to note the shadows.
Now go outside at sunrise or sunset and find a row of trees -- there is a perfect row beside the Circus Maximus. Observing from a distance and some height, note the relationship of the shadows of the trees to one another.
What does this tell you -- and should have told the poor Epicureans -- about the distance of the sun from us?
Vale,
Uncle Gaius
9 September, 826
Very good, dear Caecilius! And to use the rising columns in Vespasian’s new forum, all in a nice row, as seen from the Esquiline, that was very clever. And, yes, the fact that the shadows are parallel to each other is evidence that the sun is indeed very far away.
But how far, well, that is another question, isn’t it?
Did you know that sometimes men have seen more than one sun, next to one another? I myself, when Claudius was emperor and in the consulship of Cornelius Orfitus, have seen three, our usual sun and one on each side. It is quite a sight! As for eclipses, and the portents they bring, there is not time here for me to recount to you all that has been written on that subject. You will find it, however, in my Natural History, if it is ever finished.
Before I get back to the question of the distance and size of the sun, let me mention a few other interesting things I have learned about the great solar disk. Did you know that it is not day or night at the same time all over the earth? While you are having your breakfast, in distant Parthia children are lunching; even further to the east, in India perhaps, they are just going to sleep. Yes, by Hercules, it is true! And it is said that five thousand stadia south of Alexandria in the city called Syene, at noon every day of the year there are no shadows at all, which tells us the sun is straight above. This is further evidenced in those parts by sinking a well, using a plumb to make it absolutely vertical, and lowering oneself into that well. At noon, every day, the sun is centered on the top of the well. The same is said of some of the more southerly cities of our empire. Berenice just east of me is one, and Ptolemais, which I visited while in the Judean campaign with Vespasian. There, this phenomenon only happens for about forty-five days before and after the summer solstice, corresponding to the eighteenth degree of Taurus and fourteenth of Leo; at other times, the sun does not center itself on the top of the well.
In fact, dear Caecilius it is said that in India in some cities during the summer the shadows fall not to the north, but to the south, and our Great Bear is visible there only a few days of the year.
Further it is said that in distant Thule, far to the north, the summer is six months’ day, while the winter is one long night without even a glimpse of the sun. I leave it to you, Caecilius, to attempt an explanation of these wonders of nature.
How easy it would be for the Epicureans to have disproved their own theory, that the sun is no larger than it looks. They only would have had to reach out and try to touch it, for to be that size it must be only an arms-length away. But there are some whose beliefs blind them to facts, and who fear any knowledge which threatens their beliefs. But knowledge and virtue are twins, Caecilius, and to expect to be virtuous without knowledge is to expect a bird to fly without its wings.
So you see, Caecilius, the sun is very far from the earth, and to appear as large as it does, it must be very big indeed. Some have written that the sun is nineteen times as distant from the moon as the moon is from the earth. I know not how they came by that figure. Pythagoras argued that the moon is about 15,000 miles from the earth, and the sun is twice that distance. The astronomer Posidonius, from Alexandria, argued three centuries ago that from the earth to the moon is two million stadia, while to the sun is five hundred millions stadia. Which, if any, of these conjectures is correct remains yet to be seen.
As for the earth itself, which gives us all we need, and more, its trees and flowers, metals and soil, herbs and animals, which we so often turn to evil ends, what do we know of her shape and size? Nearly everyone agrees she is a sphere, as is clearly shown by the shadow she casts during an eclipse of the moon, and that the first one sees of a distant ship, as it appears on the horizon, is the top of its mast.
Eratosthenes, who you will remember came from Cyrene, has estimated the size of the earth, using observations of the length of shadows at different longitudes and complex mathematics beyond my understanding. His results suggest it is 29,000 miles around. Others give different figures. Perhaps some day, if the earth is in fact a sphere, someone will sail around it, and in doing so verify who is right, Eratosthenes or not.
All nature, as you see, is wondrous to behold, and one could spend one’s life doing little more than that, and as my days pass through me, I think perhaps that is the greatest grace we can be given, to study the earth and all her wonders. For in so doing are we not coming to know the very face and substance of God?
Well, I leave you to consider this profound note, reminding you that it is in your very studies, of history, rhetoric and mathematics that you prepare yourself for such an avocation. I live in the hope that perhaps someday all nature, in her plants, animals, mountains and weather, will become part of our youth’s curriculum.
Vale,
Uncle Gaius
5 December, 826
Caecilius,
You should not expect perfection from yourself, nor should you ever cease trying to achieve it. I have traveled much of the known world, and were my health better -- my breathing continues to pester me -- I would visit Aethiopia, perhaps, or even India. Yet in all my travels I have not encountered someone without fault. So do not be too hard on yourself. Quintilian is a hard task-master and you may not always meet his, or even my, expectations. Only continue to strive to do so.
If you recall, some months ago I spoke of the lotus-tree at the Temple of Lucina. If you receive this letter in time, I remind you to stop by the Temple near the solstice and enjoy the song, dance and rituals performed there.
Odysseus’ men were enchanted by the lotus and its fruit. But there is another plant, to me much more wonderful and enchanting than the lotus, which like a lodestone has drawn me to Cyrene.
I accepted this post to Cyrene not as you might imagine out of ambition or mere curiosity or adventure, but because it is from Cyrenaica that nature’s greatest gift to mankind came. I speak of course of silphium, of which I spoke so highly when together we visited Castor’s gardens. It is cold here now and I am wrapped in woolen shawls, coughing and wheezing like a grandpa basking in the sun. While the rest of the city sleeps I wield my reed in the battle against time, which of course I can never win. I wonder, sometimes, how many congii of ink I have moved from inkwell to paper, these many years -- and I fear I am a long way from having finished!
As you know, I treat my asthma with laser. But the laser I use is not the true laser. Real Cyrenaican laser, which I knew as a young man -- I almost shudder to even write it -- may be extinct from the face of the earth. I will tell you what I have learned of the silphium plant, and the sad story of its demise.
Theophrastus tells us that at one time silphium grew throughout Cyrenaica, though I doubt it grew equally well everywhere. This is a harsh and beautiful land, and except along the coast the one thing it lacks is reliable rainfall. He informs us that silphium first came to grow here after a period of heavy rains, when forests also sprouted up in the mountains where they hadn’t grown before. I believe, though he does not say so, that Theophrastus actually visited Cyrene and his comments are based on first-hand observation.
Since his time, when silphium was comm
on here, many factors have worked together to bring about its demise. First, the forests Theophrastus mentions were cut down, in the kind of senseless profit-making I have seen in Judea, Gaul and Spain, and even our own country. A favorite tree growing here is called the thuon tree, which makes beautiful furniture. Thuon was exported to Greece for that purpose, then to Rome. When the trees were gone, the earth could not hold onto her soil, which eroded away, leaving only scrubby grassland fit neither for forest nor field, but only the most marginal pasturage.
Vespasian, who learned it while quaestor here, recounted some of this story to me even before I left Rome. Centuries ago, before even the Greeks had visited here, the native tribes first harvested wild silphium, then found they could grow it. But by the time Cyrenaica became a Roman province the story was quite different. As I have already told you the Temple of Apollo, at which Vespasian was a priest, owned large tracts of land which they rented out to tenant farmers. Through regressive taxation the peasants and small landowners one by one went into debt and were forced to sell their holdings to the larger estates. It is these estates we’re trying now to break up through agrarian reform. Though some think the peasants backward and uneducated, I’ve found that they possess a rustic wisdom, especially concerning the land, passed on for many generations, and it is the highest of folly to think we know better than they about these things. The concentration of land into a few large landowners is the same all around the empire these days, and Vespasian has promised to do what he can to change that. The large estates are owned by absentee landlords who are looking only to maximize short-term profits. Instead of caring for the land they use it to make as much money as rapidly as they can. Let me give you an example of how shortsighted that can be. Because the rains here are limited and unpredictable the land used to be left fallow for a year, to build up its supply of moisture. But the big landlords did not want to see their fields being unproductive for an entire year, so they discarded that venerable tradition. In order to make more money, after the wheat or barley was harvested in the early summer they insisted on growing summer crops to use the land before the fall sowing of the grain. Now cumin, and saffron, chickpeas, millet and lupines grow on the fields between harvest and sowing of the main crops. You can tell when you travel in the countryside who owns the land; if it is cropped every season, without fallow, it is a big landlord; and probably a Roman landlord, I am sorry to say.
Wheat, which we Romans demanded because it makes a finer, tastier bread, produces only half the yield as barley, which means more land is needed to grow the same amount. So the locals continue to eat their rough barley-bread -- which we use in the army as punishment to soldiers who need disciplining -- and watch as acre after acre of their traditional pasture-lands are converted to wheat-fields. During the summer they used to pasture their sheep on the plateau to the south. But now it is crop-land, and because they must look elsewhere to feed their sheep, marginal wild lands are continually being cropped and turned to desert.
Now the story turns back to silphium, which grew best in the dry edges of the pastureland. The plant and its resin became in time so valuable that the government declared a monopoly on it. The natives were no longer allowed to either grow or sell it. A black market arose, with silphium raised by the natives being smuggled out of the country through the Syrtic Gulf.
Meanwhile the wealthy landlords, who had contracts with the government to grow silphium, fenced large areas off to protect the plants from the natives’ sheep. This so angered the natives that they would go out into the silphium fields at night and pull up the plants. If they could not profit by them, then no one would. I have nightmares, sometimes, dear nephew, of seeing those plants, uprooted and dying in the hot Cyrenean sun. If only one were still alive today, the species would not be extinct. Yet I sometimes think that if I were in the peasant’s position I would do the same.
When sheep graze on the silphium plant they produce meat with a unique flavor of its own, which became in time a much sought-after delicacy. Sheep love the taste of silphium, and will go out of their way to find it. So though the natives were not allowed to legally sell silphium, they could sell mutton from sheep which had grazed on it. So it was that many fields of silphium were decimated by flocks which had “accidentally” broken through the landlord’s fences.
Even the introduction of garlic, a plant which follows our countrymen wherever we go, helped silphium’s demise, for it grows well on the same land that silphium did. Many acres of silphium were plowed under to grow garlic. In Augustus’ time we demanded both the silphium plant and the laser made from laserwort be sent back to Rome as tribute. Our cooks and our doctors found it was a delicious condiment and a useful medicine, and as it became more popular its price rose. As its price rose, it was over-harvested here, until there was none left.
So you see, Caecilius, it is a complex story, of politics between the landlords and natives, of the avarice of the landlords and those who had cut down Cyrenaica’s forests, of the thoughtless demands of the Roman public, and the consumption of silphium-flavored sheep, that has resulted at last in the extinction, so far as I have been able to determine, of this wonderful plant, one of nature’s finest gifts to mankind. Would we not, and properly so, be angered were someone to wield a hammer and destroy that most perfect of statuary, Praxiteles’ Cnidian Venus, chipping away until it was gone, completely and forever? Should we not be angered even more when we lose not just a simple stone treasure, lovely as it is, but a living gift of nature? And have we not handed out hammers to all who want, and given them permission in our greed and ignorance to chip away until silphium is no more?
We are too often proud of our accomplishments, my son, and not humbled enough by our faults. If you would be a good man, ever keep this in mind. Was not Nero so blown up in self-importance that he thought himself a god, while now instead we are blessed with an emperor who is not afraid to look at, and even laugh with us at, his --I will not call them flaws, but imperfections. Let your life be a mirror, dear nephew, in which you are not afraid to see yourself as you truly are.
I have learned that in Arabia, in the land of the people known as the Sabai, there is a valley with very unique soil and prospect. Here, and only here in all the world does the frankincense tree grow, from which is harvested, then carried by camel through a city called Gaza in Judea, eventually to Rome.
I have concluded that since frankincense may only be found in one locality on the earth, it is possible the same is true for the even more valuable silphium. As you know, I have searched all my life, following advice Castor gave me that a passage in one of Aristotle’s lesser works describes a tract of silphium far off in the hills of Cyrenaica. As you know, Castor once grew silphium in his gardens in Rome. I sat beside what may have been the last plants on earth. Now I go to the far ends of the world to search for any living remnants of the plant. But I have not found any. Nor do the locals admit there are any. Whether there is or not anywhere in the country, without surveying it acre by acre, I cannot say for sure. But everyone I speak to tells me it is gone.
You will recall the seeds given me by Antonius Castor. I have used half of them in an attempt to grow the plant in the garden here behind the provincial palace. Like Castor, to improve the chances of the planting, I have ordered quantities of soil brought in from the regions in which silphium once thrived. The seeds were put in the soil two weeks ago. Every morning I go out, and dropping onto my hands and knees, stare at the ground, which yet seems barren.
So now you know the real reason I have come to Cyrene, to search out the last of the silphium. I have failed at that, and must admit to myself that the most effective medicine for my condition has been forever taken from me. Many others will suffer unnecessarily, as I do. And no one will be able, any more, as I was blessed in Castor’s garden, to feast their eyes upon this precious gift of nature, vibrantly alive, through the mystery of its life transforming the simple elements of earth into a blessing for mankind. Is there a lesson in this
for us? Are we capable of learning it?
11 August, 827
Caecilius,
Yes, I will be at your side when you receive the toga virilis. You need guidance now, as you are becoming a man. By agreeing to be your guardian I have agreed to provide that guidance. My own father was too busy to be with me during my ceremony, so be assured I will be there.
In fact my appointment as governor of Cyrene is coming to an end and I will soon return to Rome to determine what happens next. Vespasian has mentioned to me, in a letter, that a posting to Gallia Belgica might be in order. It sounds interesting. We shall see. I am ready for a change.
I am sorry to report that the silphium seeds I planted did not grow, and except for the few left in the box Castor left me, there may be none left on all the earth.
Fondly, and sadly,
Uncle Gaius
Chap. 17
Rome
75 C.E.
It is by no means every monarchy
which we can call a kingship,
but only that which is
voluntarily accepted by the subjects
and where they are governed
rather by an appeal to their reason
than by fear and force...
Thus is formed naturally among men
the notion of goodness
and justice, and their opposites;
this is the beginning and birth
of true kingship...
Polybius, Histories VI.4.2;7.1
Though I'd played a big part in planning Vespasian's Templum Pacis I was in Belgium when it was dedicated. Rabirius, the forum’s architect, had set the Temple of Peace building itself at the forum’s focus, but surrounding it, as I hoped, he'd placed many gardens, large and small. Nero’s death extinguished the Augustan line, so for the first time in almost a century we had an emperor outside that line. But we would do what we could to attach ourselves to Augustus' gravitas, so we designed Vespasian's forum to play off the popularity of Augustus' forum, just across the way.