I CAN ONLY admire the education that enabled Dr Brian Arkins (Letters, yesterday) to tell us how the Taoiseach's latest difficulties "bring to mind, inevitably, the dictum of Tacitus about Emperor Galba: capax imperii, nisi imperasset." It would have been impressive enough if the dictum had been brought to his mind unexpectedly, or even as a mild surprise. But that it should have happened "inevitably" is a tribute to his classics teachers, writes FRANK MCNALLY
Presumably Dr Arkins is a graduate of the old school. Unfortunately, the old school was knocked just before I was due to start there. We had a Latin teacher at the new school, but he died half way through first year, and my chance at a classical education went with him. The only thing I still remember from my second-hand text book is a rhyme written by the previous owner: “Latin is a language/As dead as dead can be/It killed the ancient Romans/And now it’s killing me.” So I had to look up the emperor Galba yesterday and was delighted to discover that today is his birthday. Historians agree he was born on the equivalent of December 24th in the year 3 BC: which, by another happy chance, makes him a very close contemporary of a certain Jesus of Nazareth, in whose honour this week’s celebrations occur. Ironically, Biblical historians suggest that Jesus too was born around 3BC or 4BC; although not in December.
But that’s all by-the-by. The context of Tacitus’s comment about the emperor, as I now know, is that everyone believed he would be a great leader until he became leader, a setback from which his reputation never recovered. As Dr Arkins suggests, this judgment has been echoed in preliminary assessments of Brian Cowen.
Yet in defence of emperor and Taoiseach alike, it must be said that both men inherited disastrous economic situations and so had to make very unpopular decisions. Indeed, with uncanny modern resonance, one of Galba’s most controversial moves was to cancel bonus payments to the Praetorian Guards: a move that provoked the guards to threaten industrial action of the Roman kind.
Classical scholars will be familiar with Cicero’s last word: “Strike”. This was not an exhortation to workers to down tools. On the contrary. It was an order to his executioner, before whom he was kneeling.
Similarly, Galba eventually had to bow to his critics. In AD69, only seven months after taking power, he officially tendered his neck, which was accepted.
It may be some consolation to Brian Cowen that Galba's immediate successors suffered the same fate during the "year of the four emperors". And as he reflects on his own annus horribilis, Mr Cowen might consider the preamble to Tacitus's account of contemporary events: "The history on which I am embarking is rich in disasters, terrible with battles, discordant with seditions and savage even in the intervals of peace: four Roman emperors cut off by sword, three civil wars, [. . .] disasters in the west; Illyricum convulsed, the Gallic provinces wavering, Italy afflicted with calamities unheard of before or else recurring after the lapse of ages; Rome laid waste by fire, her most ancient temples destroyed, the Capitol itself wrapped in flames by the hands of her citizens; the rights of religion violated; enormous adulteries; the sea crowded with exiles, its cliffs stained red with citizens' blood. [. . .] Never indeed has it been proved with more terrible calamities [. . .] that the gods are concerned not with the protection of the innocent but only with the punishment of our guilt."
And the Taoiseach thinks hehas problems.
I WAS WRITINGhere a while ago about the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition and its campaign to legitimise debate about whether the plays attributed to Shakespeare really were written by Shakespeare, or by somebody else.
Now I see the movement has claimed another high-profile supporter.
Former US supreme court justice Sandra Day O'Connor is the latest big name to sign the "declaration of reasonable doubt". She joins more than 1,600 other signatories, including acclaimed Shakespearian actors Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi (who played one of the emperor Galba's predecessors in the famous BBC series I Claudius).
The theory that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare has a long history. Mark Twain was an early exponent, favouring Francis Bacon as the true author. Indeed Bacon was a long-time leader in the field of alternative candidates, but has since fallen away.
And although the field has expanded to Grand National proportions, one Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, has now established such a long lead that the race is as good as over, barring a fall.
That is if you accept the validity of the race. Certainly there are reasons to wonder why, if Shakespeare was who he is supposed to have been, he left so little hard evidence of his existence. Yet the sceptics’ campaign to have the case reopened is still considered by most traditionalists (or “Stratfordians”) to be on a par with membership of the Flat Earth Society.
And while the Stratfordians can mount impressively reasoned rebuttals, their scorn for the “Oxfordians” has also been encouraged by a phenomenon frequently mentioned in this column: “nominative determinism”, or the theory that people’s names influence their vocations.
Thus the first man to write a book revealing the true Shakespeare (ie De Vere) was the unfortunately-titled J Thomas Looney, who spent two years struggling to find a publisher, partly because of fears that his name would undermine sales. If that weren’t bad enough, other early sceptics included scholars called “Silliman” and “Battey”. The PR campaign has been uphill ever since.