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This is an archive article published on February 7, 2005

Experto credite

The above lines are from the eleventh part of the Aeneid by the ancient Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE). This is the splendid epic poem that b...

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The above lines are from the eleventh part of the Aeneid by the ancient Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BCE). This is the splendid epic poem that begins ‘Arma virumque cano’, I sing of arms and the man…

Why Virgil? As a new millennium Indian, I have little Latin and less Greek unlike my great-grandfather Narayana Shastri, a British subject, who apparently had the time and inclination to acquire both. It’s funny, that’s all, how dead poets who sang of gods and heroes come to mind when you’re in a place you detest and dealing with people who make you despise them. But a certain grim amusement derives from those classical driblets that trickled through the generations and down your throat like cod liver oil, thanks to that pillar of family life, the book room.

For instance, if you work in a dirty, airless basement, you might recall more of the Aeneid: “Facilis decensus Averno; Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras; Hoc opus, hic labor est.” ‘Easy is the way down to the Underworld: by night and by day, dark Dis’s door stands open; but to withdraw one’s steps and to make a way out to the upper air, that’s the task, that is the labour.’

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The Asian fatalist in you might prompt you to say of yourself, “Heu miserande puer, si qua fata aspera rumpas… Manibus date lilia plenis”: ‘Alas, pitiable boy, if only you might break your cruel fate… Give me lilies in armfuls’ (or buy yourself a painting thereof to brighten up your dingy surroundings). The Bhakti influence might prompt you, however, towards “Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamos Amori”; ‘Love conquers all things: let us too give in to Love’ (Eclogue). But what if “latet anguis in herba”: there’s a snake hidden in the grass?

Not your best philosophical strivings or attempts to be friendly can prevail against those determined to dislike you because their own natures are too cramped to endure your fullness. Their hostility thunders through your space, as though ‘Hooves with a galloping sound are shaking the powdery plain’ (“Quadripedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum”).

You may understand and pity them and so rise above their bad behaviour. “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas”: ‘Lucky is he who has understood the causes of things’. “Forsan et haec olim memnisse iuvabit”: ‘Maybe one day we shall be glad to remember even these things.’

‘But meanwhile it is flying, irretrievable time is flying’: “Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus”. If you’ve hit “Ultima Thule”, the farthest limit, it’s best to go with such style that all they can find to say is: “Et vera incessu patuit dea”: ‘And in her walk it showed, she was in truth a goddess’.

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