What a grey day...

What a dreadful day for Charlie Appleby, to which you can add my name, and possibly, some of you. Eight runners yesterday, and only Al Zanati came close with a 2nd. Luckily for me, and sadly unbeknownst to you, Madame, when punting, only backs greys. When I say “only”, I mean Greys and female trainers… and female jockeys… and friends’ runners… and horses belonging to syndicates she’s in; runners from stables where we had a drink with the trainer in the pub. And horses with a faint connection to a family name.

I did some scoffing at her 50p e/w selections and then, as you do, felt guilty at my rudeness and besides, supposing she had a winner. You, too, would probably scoff at a Scoffer who was being scoffed at by a scoffing wife, as a Blackadder character might say. Thus, Gewan 25/1, Grey Cuban 12/1 and Binhareer 9/4 made some tiny inroads to my personal devastation. Overall, however, I was crossing Loser’s Desert and no horizon was or is yet in sight.

Which segues me neatly into yet another rabbit-hole Sunday. This long descent into a cultural and historical hell is firmly at the door of Mary Beard in the Telegraph, who mentions Tacitus, as she is wont to do, at the drop of a winged helmet. She quoted Tacitus as saying, “They make a desert and call it peace”?

No, I thought. This doesn't seem right somewhere… I cannot think or remember why. Then, of course, the rabbit disappeared around the corner, and I was off.

Tacitus is apparently quoting, or rather, paraphrasing Calgacus, an enemy of Rome and the leader of the Caledonian confederacy at the Battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland around AD 83 or 84. Both battle and Chieftain appear in Tacitus’ biography of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the biography now known as Agricola.

Actually, it’s probably not a fact, in that it is thought very likely that Calgacus never existed. Certainly, the battle happened, but only Tacitus tells us the numbers, which were essentially a rout of 30,000 Caledonians with 35% dead to a few hundred Romans. The Battle of Mons Graupius did take place, and was the last major battle of Agricola’s campaign to conquer Scotland. While it was a military victory, Agricola was recalled to Rome shortly after, and the Roman conquest of the entire island was never completed. The battle marked the limit of sustained Roman occupation in Scotland, which was later defined by defensive lines like Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall. Calgacus, however, is never mentioned again after the battle, or indeed elsewhere in history.

Given that it was common for Roman historians to create speeches for key figures to express broader political or philosophical points, Calgacus either survived, retreated and lived in a cave for the rest of his life, or he was a figure invented to deliver Tacitus’ powerful critique of Roman conquest, safely suggesting these words came from the mouth of an enemy of Rome. It may even have gone deeper than that, because Tacitus's political philosophy, centred as it was on the moral and real conflict between Senate and Emperor represented by “Libertas” and “Servitium”, was a reflection of his own embitterment, both for himself and his father-in-law, Agricola.

Agricola had been appointed governor of Britain by Vespasian in AD 77. That support was lost, however, with the death of the emperor and the accession of Domitian, whose rule, according to Tacitus, stole fifteen years from the lives of those who suffered it and forced all to experience “the depths of slavery”. As for Agricola, who handed over to his successor, “a province peaceful and secure”, it seemed that Britannia, according to Tacitus’ Histories, was abandoned by Domitian almost as soon as it had been conquered.

Then, when we examine the speech, the original Latin ends: “…Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant”. The literal translation is “They make a loneliness, and they call it peace.” That then somehow became “They make a desert…” but “solitudinem” would more likely refer to “solitude”(loneliness). A better translation, that I discovered elsewhere in the vast caverns that sprawl off the rabbit hole, is: “They make a desolation, and they call it peace”.

These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desolation, they call it peace.

Luckily for us all, it is almost impossible in the 21st century to see any comparisons. It is hard to perceive any country where the rise of the Imperial system sees that country’s political and moral leadership lose their Libertas whilst slipping into Servitum. I can’t imagine any modern commentators would discern a similar moral decay that led the Senate of ancient Rome to embrace servitude, competing to flatter the Emperor rather than acting with courage or independence. The Republic ended as a result of civil wars, and the price of imperial peace was the suppression of political freedom. Honourable Romans faced the simple choice of Stoic opposition (sometimes known as Martyrdom, where you speak out in support of Libertas and are executed); or Compromise, where you survive, even holding high office and helping to administer the state, but accepting Servitum as his own father-in-law, Agricola, had done.

As Tacitus later suggested, the clever ones are those who survive by finding a “middle way” through the ever-present threat, while gently reinstating Libertas.