KEEP ME IN YOUR PRAYERS
Keep
me in your prayers.
The sky keeps the stars in its deep layers.
Both angels and stars survive forever.
They always watch the Earth's game players.
Life is nothing else than a guest shelter.
Time drives everyone both kings and beggars.
The hues of the seasons are fortune tellers.
You crossed the Rubicon for our love's treasures.
I will reach your yacht, my dear sailor.
Keep me in your prayers.
The sky keeps the stars in its deep layers.
Both angels and stars survive forever.
They always watch the Earth's game players.
Life is nothing else than a guest shelter.
Time drives everyone both kings and beggars.
The hues of the seasons are fortune tellers.
You crossed the Rubicon for our love's treasures.
I will reach your yacht, my dear sailor.
Keep me in your prayers.
Caesar -- Adolphe Yvon
The phrase “to cross the Rubicon” (meaning "to take a decisive step") appeared in the 1620s, an allusion to a historical event that had been depicted in the mid-1490s by Francesco Granacci while he was employed in the workshop of his brother-in-law Domenico Ghirlandaio. It referred to a turning point in the life of Gaius Iulius Caesar, as described by 2ND-century historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus in his “De Vita Caesarum.” The Rubico was a small stream south of Ravenna that marked the boundary between the Roman province of Gallia Cisalpina, governed by Caesar, and Italia. As promagistrate, Caesar held the imperium ("right to command") within his province, but within Italia itself only the elected consuls and praetors held that authority; any promagistrate who entered Italia with an army automatically forfeited his imperium and was therefore no longer legally allowed to command troops. Exercising imperium when forbidden by law was a capital offense, as was obeying the commands of a general who did not possess the authority. In 49 BCE, as Caesar’s term ended, the Roman Senate ordered him to disband his army and return to Roma and explicitly ordered him not to lead his army into Italia. But he disobeyed and marched to the border. “Realizing what a step he was taking,” according to Suetonius, “he turned to those about him and said: 'Even yet we may draw back; but once cross yon little bridge, and the whole issue is with the sword.’ As he stood in doubt, this sign was given him. On a sudden there appeared hard by a being of wondrous stature and beauty, who sat and played upon a reed; and when not only the shepherds flocked to hear him, but many of the soldiers left their posts, and among them some of the trumpeters, the apparition snatched a trumpet from one of
ReplyDeletethem, rushed to the river, and sounding the war-note with mighty blast, strode to the opposite bank. Then Caesar cried: "Take we the course which the signs of the gods and the false dealing of our foes point out. The die is cast.” (Here, Caesar quoted from Menander’s 4th-century BCE play ”Arrhephoros” about the girls who served Athena Polias on the Akropolis in Athens and ended their term with a mystery rite in which they carried unknown objects into an underground cavern and exchanged them for other unknown objects.) The advance into Italia forced his former son-in-law and ally Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to withdraw to Campania with his own army. The resultant civil war led to Caesar’s emergence as ruler of Roma. The Rubico lost its importance in 42 BCE when Caesar’s great nephew and heir Gaius Octavius Thurinus, the future 1st emperor Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus, merged Gallia Cisalpina with Italia, and the river itself subsequently lost its identity and coherence. In 1933 the Fiumicino was officially identified as the former Rubico.
Very insightful poem and ode to just for the grace of God Go I
ReplyDelete