As thou intendest to live when thou art gone out,...so it is in thy power to live here. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Book 5.
Images: Some of my images from Hadrian's Villa taken way back on my first visit to Italy in 2005. All images licensed with Creative Commons Attribution courtesy of Mary Harrsch (Required).
Give to others readily, and cherish good hopes. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Book 1.
Image: Month of December from the Chronography of 354 with Saturnalian dice on the table and a mask (oscilla) hanging above by the 4th century CE calligrapher Filocalus.
Although Saturnalia is usually remembered for festivities, gift giving, and, in the ancient Roman world, role reversal between slaves and their masters, there was a less benevolent aspect of the chthonic god, Saturn that connected him to the underworld and its ruler Dis Pater also known as Pluto. Ten days of gladiatorial events were presented by quaestors throughout December and early Christian critics of the 3rd century CE, in their anti-pagan campaigns, claimed the primeval Saturn had at one point before the establishment of the Republic, demanded sacrificial male victims (virorum victimis). It was said, though, that when Hercules visited Italy, the civilizing demigod insisted that the practice be halted and the ritual reinterpreted. Instead of heads to Dis Pater, the Romans were to offer effigies or masks (oscilla). Figurines (sigillaria) exchanged as gifts were also thought to represent token substitutes.
Near is thy forgetfulness of all things, and near the forgetfulness of thee by all. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Book 7.
Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, is one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. The other four are Acheron (the river of sorrow), Cocytus (the river of lamentation), Phlegethon (the river of fire) and Styx (the river that separates Earth and the Underworld). According to Statius, it bordered Elysium, the final resting place of the virtuous. Ovid wrote that the river flowed through the cave of Hypnos, god of sleep, where its murmuring would induce drowsiness. The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In the Aeneid, Virgil (VI.703-751) writes that it is only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated.
Amongst authors in antiquity, the tiny Lima river between Norte Region, Portugal, and Galicia, Spain, was said to have the same properties of memory loss as the legendary Lethe River, being mistaken for it. In 138 BCE, the Roman general Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus sought to dispose of the myth, as it impeded his military campaigns in the area. He was said to have crossed the Lima and then called his soldiers from the other side, one by one, by name. The soldiers, astonished that their general remembered their names, crossed the river as well without fear.
Image: Sleep and his half-brother death, 1874, by John William Waterhouse, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
