In 49 BCE, inclement weather interrupted a battle between Julius Caesar’s legions and allies of Pompey Magnus at Ilerda, now called Lleida, in Spain. The epic poem On the Civil War, composed about a century afterward by the Roman writer Lucan, describes dense clouds that “thickened into rain” above the fighting and burst upon nearby mountains “inflamed with snow,” doubly inundating the encampments below. “And now the snows of the Pyrenees, which even Titan could never melt, are flowing, and the broken rocks are wet with frost. Caesar’s arms are shipwrecked on the field.” Perhaps such lyricism would have improved our own inclement weather reporting at MICDS this week? “Campus inflamed with snow. School awaits the advent of Phoebus Apollo. Please see your email for more information.”
As was Caesar then, so are we today the subjects of seemingly overwhelming externalities. “The fitful changes of the year governed the fates,” wrote Lucan of the Battle of Ilerda, an observation as applicable to fitful Spanish rainfall swamping Roman soldiers 2,074 years ago as it is to fitful winter snowfall enveloping us today — or, more destructively, to fitful Santa Ana winds fueling wildfires in Southern California, or to fitful seismic shocks that destroyed hundreds of lives earlier this week in Tibet. Non-environmental externalities buffet our species as well. Six of the world’s 12 largest national economies, including Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, have experienced significant political turmoil or contentious leadership struggles in the last year, and many of these conflicts continue. Reflecting on the present situation in our own nation, I admit to being heartened by Peggy Noonan’s hortatory opinion piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ahead of the upcoming inauguration and presidential farewell addresses. (“Mr. Trump… paint a bright future that is achievable” for a country that “needs a mood shift,” she urged. “Mr. Biden… say something deep and true that we need to hear.”) The fact remains, however, that a consensus political vision continues to elude United States citizens, and anxiety about the state of the world is a stubbornly prevalent feature of American life.
At MICDS, we must—and we will—persist in our commitment to presenting a hopeful counterpoint for our students to the daunting and dispiriting externalities to which they are, and will be, inevitably subject in their lives—the “fitful changes” governing their circumstances. I am reminded of the fatalistic yet nonetheless buoyant poem From Far, from Eve by the English classicist A. E. Housman, who also happens to have been one of history’s foremost authorities on Lucan:
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.
Now—for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
Lucan’s unpredictable “snows of the Pyrenees” are akin to Housman’s unpredictable “twelve-winded sky”—yet Housman establishes the human self amidst the fickle “stuff of life”: “here am I.” He knows his time is short (“for a breath I tarry”), so how best to use it? Take another’s hand. Be a friend. (“What have you in your heart? How shall I help you?”) The poem is a short and sweet challenge to its reader: of meaninglessness, make meaning.
While escaping the flood from the Catalan mountains after the Battle of Ilerda, Caesar’s and Pompey’s legions accidentally set up camp close to one another. Realizing their proximity, the soldiers began to mix and socialize—they were all Romans in this civil war after all, some of them perhaps even friends (“What have you in your heart?”)—until their leaders discovered and separated them. Lucan laments the self-destructiveness of the conflict, of citizen against citizen, and begs nature to assert its own capriciousness as a check on Caesar’s and Pompey’s own:
Load the air with clouds continual. Forbid the tide, once risen, to return. Let rivers backward run in different course; and the earth, shaken, make way for floods. Let torrents spread afield unmeasured waters. Melt snows. Spread lakes upon the land, and seas profound—and snatch the groaning world from civil war.
Whatever the challenge, of nature or of humanity, we will equip our students to meet it at MICDS. “Here we are,” we assure them. “What have you in your heart?” we ask. “How shall I help you?”
As much as it has disrupted our week, the snow really is so beautiful. Many thanks to our own Garrett Liberman ’25 for taking the photograph that accompanies this letter. Always reason, always compassion, always courage. My best wishes to you and your families for a joyful winter weekend under the twelve-winded sky.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist: In the Waiting Line by Zero 7, featuring Sophie Barker (Apple Music / Spotify)