Peripatetics
We have here
to speak
of stone
benches,
hard and
uncomfortable,
mostly
antiquarian,
of peculiar
significance
in the lives
of those citizens
of the
world, those old Greeks
and the
others,
scholars and
vagrants,
walking and
sitting, sitting and walking,
thoughtful
heads, sensitive souls,
sore
behinds;
philosophers
all, of one
sort or
another,
but a hard
bench
is a hard
bench.
The way in
which they
won comfort
from the hard stone
was by
fortitude or willpower
or plain
indifference,
standing the
pain on its head,
or, for the
less limber of mind
or more
resourceful,
by
collecting rags in the streets
or boughs
fallen
from trees
along the concourse.
Symbolizing
the common rights
of
noble-minded men they sit.
Their tired
feet become
precious
necessary relics,
delicate and
easily broken.
Their
thoughts collapse
on their own
lives,
troubled by
too much
time spent
on the road;
the bleak
consequences of
loneliness
and deprivation
make them
old
before they
know it,
cold to the
world
and even
wisdom and
history have
no comfort,
no good end.
Like the
hero of the Odyssey
they return
eventually,
but they
return unrecognized
and leave
again incognito.
Sitting
alone, in the days,
in the
nights, wayward
in their
thoughts,
the history
of Rome, eternal city,
compassed in
blocks of
stone on the
hills;
the tragic
emperor's reign
no more than
the life
of a
precocious child.
A Lady on a marble bench in ancient Rome - Wilhelm Kotarbinski
The hero of the “Odyssey” was Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. Book 19 of Homeros’ epic poem recounted his childhood is recounted: the baby’s wet nurse Euryclea suggested that he be named Polyaretos ("for he has much been prayed for"), but his maternal grandfather Autolycus (“the wolf itself”) decided to name him after his own feelings of anger (odyssamenos) because of his own bitter experience in life. Autolycus was the son of Hermes and Chione – he raped her on the same night that Apollo did, causing her to give birth to twin sons. Odysseus may have been the son of Sisyphus, from whom Laertes bought him and raised him as his son. Odysseus was one of the unsuccessful suitors of Helen and, upon his advice, her father made all suitors promise to defend her marriage to the man her father chose for her. He chose king Menelaus of Sparta, but then she was abducted by another unsuccessful suitor, Paris of Troy. Menelaus then called upon the other suitors to honor their oath. Since an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him if he went to war against Troy, Odysseus tried to avoid it by feigning lunacy, hooking a donkey and an ox to his plow, causing it to swerve erratically because they have different stride lengths. However, Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon put Odysseus' young son in the path of the plow, causing Odysseus to veer away and reveal that his madness was a ruse. Then Agamemnon sent Odysseus to recruit Achilles, since another oracle had said that Troy could not be taken without him. Yet another oracle predicted that Achilles would either live a long, uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young, so his mother Thetis tried to save his life by disguising him as a female. Odysseus, who was often referred to by the epithet “metis’ (cunning intelligence) gave his host’s daughters an array of adornments with weapons hidden among them; Achilles, of course, was the only one to show interest in the weapons, and then Odysseus had a battle horn sounded, prompting Achilles to clutch a weapon and show his trained disposition. Odysseus also persuaded Agamemnon to appease the goddess Artemis by sacrificing his daughter and tricked her mother into believing that the daughter was actually to be married to Achilles. During the long war Odysseus frequently demonstrated his perseverance, diplomacy, and deviance. After Achilles’ death, Odysseus recovered his corpse and armor and, at Thetis’ request, was recognized as the bravest of the Greeks. Finally, Odysseus won the war by tricking the Trojans to take a great wooden horse within their walls and then leading the Greeks hidden within to seize the city. After the fall of Troy, the “Odyssey” recounted his decade-long effort to return home. He was credited with founding Ulisipo (modern Lisbon), and his sons by the various lovers he encountered on his long way home were regarded as the founders of many Italic cities; he was eventually killed by his son by the sorceress Circe. The Greeks admired his trickery, but the Romans, who traced their own ancestry to prince Aeneas of Troy, considered him a villainous falsifier; Publius Vergilius Maro, (“Virgil”) constantly referred to him as “dirus Ulixes” (cruel Ulysses); in his “Aeneid” the Roman poet undermined Homeros’ account via alternative versions told by one of the crew members whom Odysseus had abandoned on the island of the cyclops and subsequently rescued by Aeneas. Dante later placed “Ulisse” in the 8th ring (reserved for Counselors of Fraud) of the 8th circle (Sins of Malice) as punishment for his schemes and conspiracies.
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