Tag Archives: carpe diem

01/22/14

Let the Dice Fly High

Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar. Painting by Lionel Royer, 1899. Caeasar's successes in Gaul shifted the balance of power he shared with his rival Pompey and prompted his crossing of the Rubicon.

Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar. Painting by Lionel Royer, 1899.
Caeasar’s successes in Gaul shifted the balance of power he shared with his rival Pompey and prompted his crossing of the Rubicon.

One of the most definitive kairos moments in history unfolded in a cold and dark hour one early January morning in 49 B.C.

Warriors of Rome’s Thirteenth Twin Legion, veterans of the violent Gallic wars that had consumed much of the Roman Republic’s martial energy over the previous decade, stood on the bank of the Rubicon river on the edge of their homeland.

Their loyalty rested on the man who had first led them out of those fields on the opposite side of the river and across the high Alps at their backs. He stood among them, singled out by both the station he had achieved in life and the burden of the decision he was weighing in his mind.

His name was Gaius Julius Caesar, one of two surviving triumvirs of Rome, and he was now the declared enemy of a republic that had dominated much of the Mediterranean world for nearly half of a millennium. His dark eyes peered out from his broad face with the intense stare of a hawk and reflected the flickering light thrown from a nearby torch as he surveyed the unfolding scene. (1)

Caesar’s “thoughts began to work,” wavering as he weighed the consequences of the action of the hour. According to Plutarch Caesar “revolved with himself, and often changed his opinion one way and the other, without speaking a word. This was when his purposes fluctuated most…computing how many calamities his passing that river would bring upon mankind, and what a relation of it would be transmitted to posterity.” (2)

He quietly discussed the situation with a few close advisors. There was little they could say—to the north lay exile and defeat; to the south lay civil war and ruin. Caesar’s next step would be irrevocable, carrying the ripple of drama to the farthest corners of his world.  

The lynchpin moment, though great, was short. Caesar had turned fifty years old the previous July, but his decisiveness, energy, and drive were still terrifying traits to behold. Lifting his voice above the din in the darkness behind him, “in a sort of passion,” he abandoned “himself to what might come, and using the proverb frequently in their mouths who enter upon dangerous and bold attempts” Alea iacta est—Let the dice fly high “with these words he took the river.” (3)

Caesar would go on to defeat his enemies as they fled Rome, shaken loose by the speed of his approach and the confidence of the battle-scarred men at his side. He would later crush his rival Pompey in a final battle at Pharsalus in central Greece, despite being outnumbered three to one, and chase Pompey to his death on the far shores of Egypt.

The day would come when he would crown himself dictator of a new Roman empire, launching a new halcyon age for a 500-year-old civilization that would endure 500 years more.

The muddy channel of the Rubicon eventually became lost to history as time eroded the coastal plain it traversed on its fall from the Apennine Mountains running the spine of the Italian peninsula to the west. But the river’s more enduring imprint fossilized into the eponymous symbol of definitive action, the climax in every drama triggering a final denouement away from the familiar.

“Crossing the Rubicon” became the calculated point in a chain of action beyond which one could only press on to a new and different horizon.

What are you prepared to risk when you find yourself standing at your own Rubicon?

Bust of Julius Caesar Vatican Museum

Bust of Julius Caesar
Vatican Museum

 

(1) “Caesar is said to have been tall, fair, and well-built, with a rather broad face and keen, dark-brown eyes.” Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, The Twelve Caesars, 1:45, as translated by Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957) revised by James B. Rives, 2007.

(2) A. H. Clough, tr., Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881), 517.

(3) Ibid.

 

01/6/14

Seize the Day

Fragment of a Kairos bas-relief copy of a 4th century B.C. work by Lysippos, found in a cloister in Trogir, Croatia.

Fragment of a Kairos bas-relief, a copy of a 4th century B.C. work by Lysippus, found in a cloister in Trogir, Croatia.

 

Life is busy. Are you managing your time well? Are you making a conscious effort to enjoy the moment or maximize every opportunity that comes along?

Ancient Greece was a busy place too.

Lysippus, a prominent Greek artisan in the 4th century B.C. who at one time served as Alexander the Great’s personal sculptor, created a bronze statue of a kairos image that he likely erected in the public square, or agora, outside his home in the city of Sicyon. The statue depicted a young man with a long lock of hair across his forehead and wings on his feet. This statue was probably similar in appearance to later Roman marble bas-reliefs of a kairos creature that are still in extant.

An inscription by a Greek poet named Poseidippus was carved at the base of this statue to explain the sculptor’s intended allegory to all who passed it:

 

Who and from where is the sculptor?

—From Sicyon.—

And his name?

—Lysippus.—

And who are you?

—Right Occasion (Kairos), the all-subduer.—

Why do you stand on tip-toe?

—I am always running.—

Why do you have a pair of wings on your feet?

—I fly with the wind.—

Why do you hold a razor in your right hand?

—As a sign to men that I am sharper than any sharp edge.—

And why is your hair over your face?

—For the one who meets me to grasp at, by Zeus.—

And why is the back of your head bald?

—Because none whom I have once raced by on my winged feet will now, though he wishes it, take hold of me from behind. The artist fashioned me in such a shape for your sake, stranger, and he set me up in the portico as a lesson. (1)

 

Such imagery allows us a peek at the Greeks’ original intent for the meaning of kairos within their own cultural context. Kairos becomes a fleeting moment, one that must be grabbed forcefully as it passes. But it is also a dangerous moment, one with razor-thin margins. It is both dangerous to any who are unprepared to meet it and dangerous to those who may be subdued by them who wield it successfully. Even more danger lies in kairos as the fountainhead of regret—once kairos has passed by, opportunity closes its door forever.

By the time of Lysippus and Poseidippus, creating their works at the end of the great Classical Age of Greece, the concept of kairos had come to possess multiple religious, ethical, and philosophical overtones. Though the linguistic term had originally referred simply to any “decisive crucial place or point, whether spatially, materially, or temporally,” (2) kairos had by then become firmly established in the Greek mindset as an ideal to be pursued, much as the Latin phrase carpe diem would later be used by the Roman poet Horace: “While we speak, envious time will have fled; seize the day (carpe diem), trusting as little as possible in a future day.” (3)

Lysippus’s lesson is still relevant today. It’s your time now. Remember kairos. Carpe diem. Seize your day.

 

(1) Lucia Prauscello, “Sculpted Meanings, Talking Statues: Some Observations On Posidippus 142.12 A–B,” American Journal of Philology, 127, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 513.
(2) Ralph W. Harris, ed., The New Testament Greek-English Dictionary, Vol. 13, (Springfield, Missouri, 1990), 213.
(3) Horace, Odes IV, 11, 7-8 as translated in Gabriel Adeleye et al., World Dictionary of Foreign Expressions: A Resource for Readers and Writers, (Wauconda, Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc.,1999), 113.