(Once again we arrive at a Cain Fragment, inserted directly into the text of the Tales of Classical Perversion with incompletions rendered as though metatext and urtext are interchangeable formterms. As none of this Cain Fragment is in prototext we cannot know if the restcorpus was lost or if it was redacted, but there is circumstample evidence of both. Perhaps one can enconceptualize a Roman-Jewish philosopher of middling intelligence, analyzing personages of the Catiline Conspiracy in a manner thoroughly unscholarly; unburdened by factable knowledge of the trial he discusses, but since those mentioned in the document's remains are entirely whom history remembers most vividly, one must conclude that the writer was of a later century, writing historical commentary as though it were of his present day, or, perhaps a redactor chose those passages of a document from the Catiline Era which he thought relevant to scrollreaders of his day and let the remains disappear.
Let us presuppose, just for an instant, that this were really Cain writing to Abel. While the Bible tells us Cain lived eight-hundred sixty years, he has never lived so long a life as he seems to by the end of this letter, which presupposes that whether or not he is Cain, the writer at the end is in fact the same scribe as the beginning, and, in the only instance among many Cain fragments, lived another seventy years of this lifetime unburdened by death or even by substantial ageing. This is, therefore, a highly unique and disputable Cain fragment. The Cain Fragments are almost certainly forgeries, but it is likely that this fragment is a forgery of a forgery. Nevertheless, if this forgery is a forgery of a forgery, then that would indicate that the Cain Fragments were already of note to people in the ancient world, and forgeries of the forgery proliferate, thereby creating forgeries of forgeries of forgeries ad infinitum. Perhaps scribes of different epochs took it upon themselves to continue the Cain narrative from one generation to generation throughout recorded history at an almost regular instance of roughly seventy years, which in itself is a finding of miraculous proportionality.
Again, one cannot imagidefine one's way into the worldspirit of two millennia ago, and yet this worldspeech timespeaks to us of how Judeopicureans and symposiers may have societoperceived the sociesoul and civispiritus of Rome in the decade directly before the Caesarrise.
Dr. Richard Westenbach - Humboldt University of Berlin - Department of Archeology - 1952)
My Dearest Abel,
It is your brother again, currently named Flavius Iacobus, reporting to you live from Rome, the latest in a protracted series of eternal capitals; yet unlike those others, this one seems to stay put no matter how often it deserves burning like Jerusalem.
This lifetime sees me the latest in a series of Jews born to Rome. When I first got here I was Flavia-bat-Yehuda, a poor servant in Umbria born to Israelite immigrants who fled the Assyrian destruction of Israel's Northern Kingdom. I was housekeeper to a Sabine family who witnessed their famed rape then, of course, shared their fate; only to become slave, then housekeeper, then mistress to Romulus himself, redecorating his hut until the Founder of Rome decided my best decorative use would be on a sacrificial pyre.
Two-hundred years later I was returned to the Italian peninsula as Flavius Avramus: a contract lawyer who settled a dispute between Plebians and Patricians by writing them a simple constitution. The Roman decemvirate told me it was so good Rome was going to adapt it as their founding document, then the decemvirate buried me alive.
Three hundred years later I returned to Rome as Flavius Isakus, a professor of geometry whom Scipio Africanus employed as a tactical advisor during the Second Punic War. Scipio had me crucified after the Battle of Cannae - there were 70,000 Roman casualties that day, all because Scipio thought I told him to attack the right bank but I said to attack FROM the right bank.
Now I'm Flavius Iacobus - a Roman banker born Yaakov de Sabatus, adopted into the Flavians for having repeatedly paid off the orgy debts of six separate heirs. You'd think nobody is horny enough to spend that kind of money on sex, but Romans spend so much on sex these days that some patrician families need to adopt a banker just to keep having it.
This is what happens when a country gets too much power. Some Romans think her power the result of excessive zeal for work, others think power grows Romans lazy. Regardless, Rome is no longer a city or even an empire, Rome is the world, and from here to aeternam, the world shall build on roads Rome paves. For my whole youth (of this lifetime), the goal for which Rome strove was Armenian defeat, and from the moment of our recent victory over King Mithridates, Rome's decline will begin.
You'd think decline would make a country less powerful, but no, Rome's too magnum to fail. Every time Rome fails, they simply get more powerful. Romans are such great builders, but no engineering feat can govern an empire of 60 million, and no building can make livable this capital of a million inhabitants. When Rome falls, people will feel the ramifications millennia hence. No country is meant to be this successful, and the more Rome accomplishes, the more accomplishment Romans demand of it.
And what half Rome's citizens demand is in direct contradiction to what the other half demands. Half of Rome demands the government share its wealth among its peoples, while half demands Rome's wealth be hoarded among the wealthiest families - including a large quotient of Rome's poorest inhabitants. Half of Rome demands complete bodily liberation, the right to sleep with any type of person, the right to live as any gender, the right to consume any type of drug, while half believes such liberation breaks the bonds of Roman family and demands the violent policing of Roman virtues like fidelity and temperance with severe penalties for those who violate them. Yet the half who believes in fidelity and temperance is the half that particularly exults in vicious spectacles like executions and tributes and gladiatorial ga...
(Here the narrative breaks off as the author heirs what seem to be copious grievances about living in the world's most prosperous city. The narrative only resumes when speaking of the subject occupying everyone's mind in the very year when King Mithridates of Armenia was defeated. - RW)
...me sets itself up for greater defeat with every passing victory. To conquer pirates and Armenians, Pompey needed every available soldier at Rome's command, united under a single officer. With the growth of armed forces comes a growth in armaments, and apparently Romans' privately held armaments are of even larger quantity than anything possessed by our exceedingly forceful army and police.
Meanwhile the Gauls amass on our border in quantities ever greater. The Gauls are fearful of what we may do to them, and potentially eager for revenge on what we've already done - a threat that could be neutralized if Rome limited its sphere of influence, but of course, Rome never would - because its ambition is to make the world into Rome. Eventually, Rome will grow so powerful that even her greatest victories are defea...
(Given that past here, the fabricator begins to discuss current events, this is presumably where the author would compare the Rome of BC 60s to the Rome of BC 80s when ruled by Sulla, whose iron fist was far deadlier than anything meted out during the Catiline Conspiracy. This scribe seems to paint an overly flattering picture of Roman freedom, because what extant parts of the narrative fail to mention is that in the four hundred fifty years before Julius Caesar's consulship, the Roman Senate granted temporary dictatorial power to ninety-six consuls. - RW)
...tiline, that family-defiling bucco of a conspirator whose debauched hair could serve as its own battle helmet. Has power made Romans the stupidest people on earth? Was Rome blessed by the BBH out of pity because Romans were already this stupid? Or will the naivete which unbridled Rome to reach the highest peaks just as easily create its downfall?
If I'm still alive then killing your brother is more common a sin than it seems; but deflowering your daughter? Sealing a conspiracy with a human sacrifice you eat? What can you say except that when one looks at the trumpery of men like Catiline, you'd think man formed from monkeys rather than ribs. If a serpentine sponge of feces rises so high, is there a sewer into which Rome cannot sink? Rome has so many talented, ambitious men in a veritable arms race to accumulate as many pompous titles as she bestows. And for all the supposedly qualified people in Rome to run this empire, they were all nearly sailed over by the dumbest man on the planet. Not a single man of intelligence knew how to prevent a lifetime takeover of the entire democratic process by the dumbest criminal on the planet.
Whatever stupidity guided Catiline to such heights, the fact is clear as day: he was bait to measure how many fish would bite at a dictator. They say a fisherman once stung will be wiser, but news travels so quickly through the world's forums that a million fish can share your corpse before you realize you're dead. Even were there no conspirator behind Catiline, all these potens look oh so closely at the lessons of the Catiline Conspiracy, testing its data, formulating precisely where it went wrong and documenting every way it went right. Rome claims to be a republic but the empire's run by three or four families. Everybody else is just a bureaucrat under their patronage. Had the Republic hope of survival before Catiline, there's no hope now. Were I to die a natural death, I would live to see Rome a perpetual dictatorship.
That stinking trash had neither money nor legions nor brains to organize his own rebellion. and even were that public toilet to be dictator, there was clearly a puppetmaster to whose questions he provided answers. The feeling of many is that it's King Pharnaces, eager to avenge the Armenian conquest and willing to infiltrate Rome from the inside. As implausible as it seems prima facie, evidence is overwhelming of at least some Armenians colluding with that cow flatulence; but my feeling is that even if Catiline had Armenian handlers, there had to be collusion within Rome's most powerful interests as well. Was it from Crassus's camp, did it come from Pompey's, was it Caesar's? Was it all three? Or was it a different puppetmaster abroad? Perhaps it was King Antipater, but that's too tempting a leap: everyone loves to blame Ju...
(Here is a further break for which one cannot surmise the nature of the missing paragraphs. It is almost as though the writer could not formulate a transition. - RW)
...st as the world was divided between Rehovam and Yerovam, or Menelaus and Paris, (or Cain and Abel), you would think the world would have better options than its current neat division between the priggish Optimates and the vulgar Populares. All it takes to destroy a civilization is dwell within the indisputable apogee of its progress and watch helplessly as the societal organism vivisects itself into two parities with a neatness as miraculous as an ocean pebble.
How?
Because so great are this great society's newbegotten powers that its citizens believe themselves possessed of their truth like God possesses our truths. They grow accustomed so quickly to comforting powers for which they have neither understanding nor precedent that they think themselves gods. The more accustomed they grow to new conveniences, the more dim their realization that they know as little of the innovations' dangers as children, yet have no parent willing to guide them. And because the society believes they understand powers of exponential largesse compared to what they shortly once had, and with so little evidence, the society neatly divides into two parties:
"The Party of More", and "The Party of Less."
The Party of More wants to use their powers to effect enormous change to include everyone, the Party of Less wants to use these powers to exclude everyone from any and all change, and because they dismiss the ideas of all who disagree with them, none are present to tell them their beliefs are impossible, and members of their party constantly push each other into ever more extreme versions of what they already believe.
And yet creation remains complete.
In 3700 years, what God best taught me is that when each person pursues their goal far and hard enough, their goal becomes precisely the opposite of what they initially thought they pursued.
The Party of More who wish to share their riches attract so many who wish to benefit that the value of what they share shrinks precisely to the penury they wish to alleviate - thereby making the Party of More into the Party of Less.
The Party of Less who wishes to preserve and increase their riches repel so many with what must be done to preserve their wealth that the vileness of their actions cause their own downfall. Thereby freeing up their resources and making the Party of Less into the Party of More.
Life is a vapor: the flower withers, the grass fades, the world mourns, but He is forever.
How do we know all this?
Because after the zenith of every civilization in every era, either side of these political arguments achieves a near absolute equality of means to convince the populace that their side is the right one. The Party of More has more adherents, the Party of Less has disproportionate political power to their numbers, but neither party can defeat the other, and within a generation of a civilization's celestial apogee, every society reaches that state of absolute parity - every one, when gridlock freezes all actions in a kingdom where dynamism so recently was the state of everything, until such time as the Holy One BBH decides its time to mix these volatile elements together like we're compounds in his personal chemistry set.
Inevitably, some small event sets dynamic elements in motion again, and in such a frustrated place, mere gusts of wind may set off explosions that cause entire countries to live in abyss and amiss, maelstroms overcome only by darkness on the face of the deep - the imposition of a human dictator who rules his land as though vicar to both God and Sa...
(Presumably the Cain forger-within-a-forger now elucidated what he thought was a terribly interesting theory of how dictatorship is imposed over chaos and authority is chaos's inevitable result. Such theories would be familiar to any ancient reader possessing a cursory familiarity with Plato's Republic. No doubt, the writer fancied himself quite familiar with it in spite of being reading it only cursorily. - RW)
....t are these new powers brought to earth?
It's different in every society. In Sumeria it was writing. In Babylon it was law. In Egypt it was measurement, but in the case of this particularly grandiloquent metropolis, it's their engineering - their capacity to build: housing, plumbing, weapons, tools, roads, roads; roads: roads so strong, so durable, so distant that they pave the world, and what once was a globe of million spheres becomes a place to wander for an eternity.
Rome's roads brought her wealth beyond any state, but with more work than elsewhere, Rome has more workers, more mouths, more garbage, more crime, more noise, more fire. The more Rome builds, the the more buildings f....
(another element which tells us this Cain fragment is a particularly ill-made forgery is that wherever an old paragraph leaves off, the next paragraph resumes with the exact letter which was the next of what we must presume the former word would have been - a feature I have been at great pains to translate precisely. If this Cain fragment is, as I could not suspect more strongly, a forgery from at least 300 years later, then it is a trick designed to orient the reader so he might feel continuity between passages that have none. - RW)
...all major politicians in Rome profess to be horrified at the prospect of permanent dictatorship, yet each seeks it. Those who don't actively seek the throne, like Cato and Cicero, are thrust into life-threatening danger.
Every Roman knows that Pompey and Crassus detest one another, yet recent machinations show they're in alliance and I have no doubt they asked Cicero to form a triumvirate of Rome's most powerful men; but Cicero knows such alliances only end with one ally eliminating the other two.
There is a small chance that by staying out, Pompey and Crassus may kill each other and Cicero may restore Rome to the republican virtues he claims it's always had, yet Pompey and Crassus are just the latest in a long series of civic monsters created by the Roman Republic, so whether Rome stays republic or becomes dictatorship, why should anyone expect those who follow them to act better?
In any event, I think it far more likely that one still more authoritarian and canny than the other two will prevail, and we must occasionally allow the devil his due, if a republic allows for death to populate the planet as Rome has, perhaps only a dictato...
(It is probably impossible to know in what follows whether or not the fabricator views Caesar or his actions with approval or censure. But in what follows, the Cain forger clearly looks upon Caesar with an awe he has for no other politician of his era. - RW)
...Rome so takes its democratic norms for granted that it could turn dictatorship overnight and half the population wouldn't know for a hundred years. Rome rose because the rest of the world ran itself with mediocre tyrants while Rome's republic allowed educated men of ability to rise to the station of their worth.
It's still an abysmal model for maximizing human potential, but Rome's model was so superior to any other provided that should Rome 0become just another tyrannical imperium, when will a world power rise to Rome's like station and simultaneously so rise with better means of governing?
Perhaps I'd seen Rome's like in the rise of Sumer, but it's been two-thousand years since Rome improved upon Sumer's model. How many thousands of years will it be before we see again the likes of R...
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...assus seems cold and wooden from the podium, but in person he's the most likeable man in Rome who converses with any slave as his equal, convinces everyone he agrees with what they believe, tells women and business associates exactly what they want to hear, and like all likeable moderates, cuts professional corners exactly as he does ideologically. The man is corrupt as a rotted fig and rumors persist he conspired with Cataline to lend money at interest that would make Crassus dictator of Rome's dictator.
Crassus still believes he can make himself dictator, but the world of Crassus is the world of likable mediocrities who hand out giftbags at the end of an orgy. If Crassus is remembered in thousands of years, it will be as moderate corruptors always are, the mediocre villain in the hagiography of a fanatic.
Yes, Spartacus was a slave, but as far as slave life goes, Spartacus's was fairly glorious: a highly literate descendent of the deposed Spartaocid Dynasty in Armenia, allowed for years to soldier in the Roman army and even to keep his priestess wife when he became a slave; whom upon becoming a slave used his collegium education to preach to fellow gladiators that colonialism is a particularly Roman invention and that the so-called universality of the Roman system is particularly designed to oppress occupied peoples and indoctrinate them into wanting to be Roman.
What did Spartacus do when he wasn't burning his captives? He and his wife were lecturing them about his ideas. Were his ideas right? I never read those treatises and I'm convinced no one else has, but when people explain them to me I can never make sense of that collegium shite, it reminds me too much of all that rabbinical doublethink, but right or wrong, what the fuck did Spartacus know about slavery? I have lived more slave lives than Spartacus and died on more crosses, but there would be no privileged pseudo-slave leading the Roman Empire to the cross had the entire empire not been robbed blind by money-mad p...
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...ompey is not a man. He's a machine of murder. This machine is the most beloved man in Rome, known for being Rome's most tireless administrator, but that's exactly what he isn't. He's just a general who knows nothing but war nor wishes to learn. Some call Pompey one of that new type of conservative who believes that by imposing his values elsewhere, Rome will elevate their tribute states, but that's all a ruse. Pompey Magnus is precisely that old sort of Middle Eastern adventurer who never gives thought to his subjects after he conquers them; he simply lusts to conquer. He trains giant mechanisms to conquer then disbands them before they can help rebuild the societies he destroyed. He gets credit in Rome for allowing the East to self-govern, but what makes Pompey's reputation so effective is that he leaves his conquered territories so chaotic that they kill themselves while he moves on to his next glory, and there are so few Romans in the conquered territories that Rome has no idea about the casualties inflicted by Rome's unregulated proxy kings.
A lot of senators claim that would Rome have a dictator, Pompey would easily be the best as being reliable and trustworthy, and most importantly, too libertarian to state fund ambitious building and employment projects like Caesar's proposals. But Pompey will never be a dictator nor would he hold power because a true dictator provides the one thing Pompey never does: authority. Were Pompey to rule Rome she would be left to the same chaos as the entire Middle East. Historical infamy is made from such R...
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...o is precisely the sort of man everyone claims they aspire to be but everyone hates because he achieves it. His oratory defends democracy with prophetic force worthy of Jeremiah, yet millions resent Cicero because in pointing out the greatness of Roman virtue, he holds the mirror up to how everyone fails to live by it but him; therefore they call him a Rome-hater rather than the man who loves its virtues beyond Rome's deserts.
The very Romans he champions call him smug and arrogant, they carry on about the circumstances of his birth, they call him a supercilious snob; but whether any of it is true is immaterial. The more judiciously he conducts the investigation into Catiline, the more it seems to Romans a show trial; the more evidence Cicero turns up, the more they think it manufactured; the bigger a story Catiline's conspiracy becomes, the less Rome cares. Cicero might very well be the assinus arrogans gossip claims he is - surely no one but a bore would signal virtue so loudly, but he could act as saintly as Hestia and people would still think he views them as his inferiors precisely because he extols virtues no Roman has.
No one worries that Cicero looks down on them, they worry that Cicero is correct to look down on them, and they would rather sabotage the future than improve their own lots, because if Cicero enacted policies that created a world of smarter, better Romans, future generations would look back on our Rome as a city of violent animals.
Cicero is surely not the criminal Pompey or Crassus is, but his willful naivete is even more dangerous because he enables blood by preventing it. He claims he saved the democratic process, and he's absolutely right, but by clothing republican ideals in such hauteur, he slayed it for future generations more thoroughly than a Catiline ever can. He claims he saved the republic from civil war, but by framing the Catiline conspiracy as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism rather than a mediocrity who rose to power from slime, he condemned Rome to an eternity of civil war.
Already we see how Clodius, who seems to have abused every woman in Rome, turns on Cicero. Cicero spoke out against Clodius's misogyny, which is obviously the moral thing to do; but once Clodius revealed his true nature, it cost him so little to switch his loyalty from the moral gesticulating of Cicero to the rapacious libertinism of Crassus.
Cicero constantly sets a precedent for virtue that cannot be followed. Perhaps Cicero's virtues will go into abeyance for a while, but they will come back, and the ability of tyrants to kill on the massive scale hinges on the invocation of vir...
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...o is hardly the most dangerous man in Rome so long as Cato the Younger lives. A man of impeccable virtue is as rare as a peaceable Roman, and the one virtuous man in Rome is her most lethal. They call him a reactionary but reactionary or revolutionary, it's all the same isn't it?
Fanatics are always the best, most virtuous people and their trustworthiness ends up killing us all. When virtuous beliefs are as simple as Cato's stoicism, no society can be worthy of a man like Cato who devotes every waking moment to his zealot zen.
Cato's the only honest man in Rome, but his austerity causes him to live in a constant state of the most eruptive rage, and the rage of his belief taps into the unarticulated rage of the populi because he shows it possible for powerful men to live righteously. It gives some of them a hero and casts everyone else in the role of villains. The passion of Cato's following will terrify Rome into a dictator's hands and destroy everything Cato means to create. If or when Rome acquires a lifetime dictator, it will be Cato's insistence on stoical justice that pushes him ther...
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...ere he not fairly old already a Crassus dictatorship might last, but the Rome of Crassus would be pure kleptocracy. Rome has less bribes and blackmail than cynics suppose, but far more than any Roman supposes who doesn't contemplate how things get done. In the Rome of Crassus, nothing would be done without bribes and blackmail, and an honest man is a dead man because the dead tell no tales. Crassus might eventually be deposed too; not because a Crassus dictatorship would be so oppressive, but because those who cannot succeed in a corrupt dictatorship would feel so humiliated by what must be done to rise that they would rather kill than do it. But in a war against incompetents like that, men like Crassus would easily win, and whomever succeeds Crassus would be even more corrupt.
If Pompey becomes dictator he will be overthrown. You simply cannot be the absolute ruler of the most powerful country in the history of Earth, govern it incompetently, then expect to rule without provoking a civil war and being assassinated. Perhaps he can find a governor more competent than himself and go off to conquer more countries, but what competent administrator would want to take government of the whole world upon themselves without becoming the unquestioned head of state? If such a steward is successful, they become a threat to the ruler, and must be killed. So yes, Pompey the Imperator wouldn't last longer than King Nadab, and wars following his deposition could take ten-twelfths of Italy with him. Replacing his patrician dictatorship of libertarian anarchy would be a populist dictatorship of total subservience to the next man's will, who, like Spartacus, would seize power for himself in the name of the people.
And then there's C...
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...e's obviously not Spartacus. A Caesar dictatorship would not be the rule of the people by a populist tyrant who kills them in their own name. But there's argument to be had that of the three pretenders Caesar is the most evil, the most ruthless, the most letha...
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....ve a client who works with staffers in Cicero's office, and he's heard rumors that Caeasar was not only involved in the Catiline Conspiracy, but apparently Caesar himself would lead a band of conspirators to kill democratic opposition like Cicero, Cato, and Scipio.
There's an even worse rumor proliferating in that vicious web of forum gossip, but in the version of the rumor I heard, there was a conspiracy to assassinate a hundred senators indiscriminately in the capitol itself even as the Senate was in session, install Crassus as the dictator with Caesar as his deputy, reorder Roman policy to favor them, and then give the government back to Rome's elected consuls. Per what I heard, the only reason it didn't happen is that Crassus got scared at the last minute and didn't show up on the day, while Caesar was coordinating the soldiers in the forum's plain daylight.
You can never completely believe these rumors, there is no censorship for gossip you hear in forum chats, but if any of this is true and Caesar can emerge from the such conspiracies with no stain for leading the most vile parts of them, then the future of Rome is with Caesar, and the future is empire at its bloodiest and cruelest. This is a man possessed of all the iron of Alexander the Great, but with the talent to survive.
There are so many stories about so many figures that it's almost more prudent to refrain from knowing them, and if one does hear, try not to discern the true from the false, and if darkest versions of events are proven true, try not even to judge the perpetrators. There is no censorship for gossip you hear in forum chats, but if any of this is true and Caesar can emerge from the such conspiracies with no stain for leading the most vile parts of them, then the future of Rome is with Caesar, and the future is empire at its bloodiest and cruelest. This is a man possessed of all the iron of Alexander the Great, but with the talent to survive.
This, at least, is a dictatorship that can last and spare us century after century of civil war. If democracy is leaving, we will never get it back. At least this would be a dictatorship by competent tyranny who can do some minimum of good, with a civil war that lasts one generation rather than a hundred year. Look at Caesar's employment and building programs, look at his programs to entertain the poor and (occasionally) feed them. If Rome exists in this sort of dictatorship, the citizens that won't revolt, and provisions will be in place to ensur...
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