History equally applied! Julia, on out last encounter, charged me to equally apply history. And what, pray tell, does 'History Equally Applied' mean? For days, for weeks I chased that. No answer was ferreted from anything I could summon up.
Then from nowhere (which is lubricrous) or from somewhere (which is ambiguous) came the mist covered memory of a Book Club I had once been a member of. A sophisticated reading list, a demanding outline, gave way rapidly to our mundane concerns. Month after month we tried to peel away ego-preserving chatter, apply what educators label 'critical thinking'. Mostly we failed to step outside our narrow time and space.
And now I was urged to 'apply history equally'. Without time travel, which is not available, only in the musings of a creative or mad mind, the only interaction with Julia or Carti or Tanaquil comes through reading, to anyone. How do I admit their appearances to me? Unless I confess to being mad or at least very creative.
And what do I read?
History! And what is history? Filtered accounts of events, colored sketches of people, shaping of both to meet the needs of reader or reader or both. How often have we heard- it is the winners who write history. Therein lies my problem.
I am, so Julia (THE EMPEROR'S DAUGHTER) has appointed me 'determiner of woman's place in history'. Does she know what she is asking? I recalled a lecture of one of my Ancient Rome History professors. It involved a story from 490BC, long after Tanaquil, long before Julia or Carti.
To set the stage-- The Roman populace had picketed, rioted and negotiated with the ruling oligarchy until the Tribunate (people's representatives) was established.
Enter the historical scene a young patrician soldier who led an attack against a long standing and persistent foe of Rome, the Volcian city of Corioli. The young patrician, Gaius Marcius, decidedly defeated the Corioli and was renamed on his return to Rome "Coriolanus".
The next year when famine struck Rome, Coriolanus, puffed up by his status, suggested to the patricians, examining every means to hold on to power against the common folk, that they withhold imported grain from the common folk until they agreed to give up their ridiculous claim to a tribunate.
The Tribunes, intoxicated with their newly acquired power, won. They invoked the provision of the Tribunate Ruling which gave Tribunes the right to confront anyone who caused harm to the state. Coriolanus was exiled.
Coriolanus joined the Volcians-- (what choices did he have?). As a leader of a Volcian army he fought aganist the Rman troops he had once led. His final attack against his former country is a story which makes Roman History Sing.
With a superior army he marched toward Rome intent on righting the slights to his person. He arrived at the very gates of Rome. Refusing pleas from government officials and priests to spare Rome, he was met by his mother, leading a contingent of woman matrons. His mother stood resolutely before her son and said, "Before you take Rome, my son, you must march though me."
Coriolanus cried out, "Mother, you have saved Rome, but you have surely destroyed your son." He withdrew. Rome was saved; Coriolanus was executed by the Volcians as a traitor.
HISTORY or MYTH?
With information like that I ask again-- What, pray tell, does history equally applied mean? The sharing of questionable, exaggerated, filtered accounts of events and people?
