it seems safer to write down nothing at all. I wonder, writing about omens, if the quotes around all these words that are not mine, words copied from other books, will exculpate me from my guilt in copying them down.
And more of Tarquin:
“Out of his garden vultures drove the young of eagles, and in the men’s hall, where he was having a banquet with his friends, a huge serpent appeared and drove him and his companions from the table. . . . But as Apollo declared that he should be driven from his domain only when a dog should use human speech, he was inspired with confident hope, thinking the oracle could never be fulfilled.”
Omens abound when Rome by her enemies is threatened:
“On the Capitol blood is reported to have issued for three days from the altar of Jupiter, also honey on one day and milk on another—if anybody can believe it; and in the Forum a bronze statue of Victory set upon a stone pedestal was found standing on the ground below, without anyone’s having moved it; and, as it happened, it was facing in that direction from which the Gauls were already approaching.”
“Meanwhile portents had occurred which threw the people of Rome into great fear. A river in Picenum ran the colour of blood, in Etruria a good part of the heavens seemed to be on fire, at Ariminum a light like the day blazed out at night, in many portions of Italy three moons became visible in the night time, and in the Forum a vulture perched for several days.”
Even in the midst of battle, eyes stay lively for omens:
“Meanwhile a wolf in pursuit of a hind entered the space between the two armies, and darting toward the Romans, passed through their ranks. This encouraged them, for they looked upon him as belonging to themselves, since, according to tradition, a she-wolf had reared Romulus.”
But my favorite omens emanate from the Punic Wars. The truer the threat, and Hannibal—who, not taking advantage of a battle won in which he could have overrun Rome, spends the rest of his life lamenting the error, chanting to himself, O Cannae, Cannae!—seemed a god of threat himself, the wilder the form an omen takes:
Now Heaven had indicated beforehand what was to come to pass. For in Rome an ox talked with a human voice, and another at the Ludi Romani hurled himself out of a house into the Tiber and perished, many thunderbolts fell, and blood in one case was seen issuing from sacred statues, whereas in another it dripped from the shield of a soldier, and the sword of another soldier was carried off by a wolf from the very midst of the camp. And in the case of Hannibal, many unknown wild beasts went before him leading the way, as he was crossing the Iberus, and a vision appeared to him in a dream. He thought once that the gods, sitting in assembly, sent for him and bade him march with all speed to Italy and receive from them a guide for the way, and that by this guide he was commanded to follow without turning around. He did turn, however, and saw a great tempest moving along and an immense serpent following in its wake.
Other examples:
“A hermaphrodite lamb was born, and a swarm of . . . was seen, two serpents glided under the doors of the temple of Capitoline Jupiter, the doors as well as the altar in the temple of Neptune ran with copious sweat, in Antium bloody ears were seen by some reapers, elsewhere a woman with horns appeared and many thunderbolts . . . into temples . . .”
Plutarch records “that shields sweated blood, that ears of corn were cut at Antium with blood upon them, that blazing, fiery stones fell from on high, and that the people of Falerii saw the heavens open and many tablets fall down and scatter themselves abroad, and that on one of these was written in letters plain to see, ‘Mars now brandisheth his weapons.’”
Lastly, and oddly, a favorite, after the death of Scipio Africanus:
“And this in particular seems to me to have been the meaning of the mass of stones that had poured down from heaven, falling upon some of the temples and killing men, and of the tears of Apollo. For the god had wept for three days, so that the Romans on the advice of the soothsayers voted to hew the statue in pieces to sink it in the sea.”
The ocean that is made of tears and in its grieving wears the stone away.
The god of prophecy crying while the stonecutters cut him limb from limb to throw the severed stones into the sea.
Some fear far above the clouds. That there is a weight there waiting to fall. That the gods etch in clouds as on stones the messages that might rain down. That a tempest rains down a library. That a book cracks open a head.
Is it omen when the world begins to speak for itself, long weary of being spoken of or for. The passive voice refuses its position. The accusative wants to accuse. That old contract by which the names name the things of the world rests on a secret agreement that those things keep silent. But then a shield begins to bleed, a statue cry, a vulture presides over Law, and language doesn’t work the right way anymore. It doesn’t describe what it names. It does different work. It beseeches. Then the words that come out our mouths beg the things we name to tell us what they mean.
A child in the moonlight looking up at the moon cups her hands around her ears.
O Cannae, Cannae!
There sings all around me in my ears the song I cannot listen to hear.
Iris once told me that we have to close our eyes at night when we go to sleep so that the darkness doesn’t get in our heads.
I said, “But when we close our eyes it’s dark.”
“That’s a different kind of dark, Daddy. Everyone knows that.”
Hana when she was only two, putting her to bed for the night, rocking her to sleep, says with her eyes closed, already in dream: “A cricket in the desert, a cricket in the desert.”
Now she puts her headphones on and closes her eyes; no one else can hear the cricket’s song.
Some Animal Poems for Children to Learn and Sing
The Golden Age
Then the animals could talk in words.
The sparrow to the farmer sang
and the farmer sang along,
the pine and the laurel counseled
the honey in its tomb to sing a tune,
and the bees agreed with the deities
that the flowers perfumed the muse
and made prophecy the deeper root.
The Lion and the Bow
The fox pulled the arrow out
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