"Nothing Is Forever: This Too Shall Pass.

My copy of The Aenied

The ancient Persian Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur told the tale of a powerful king who asks his assembled wise men to create a ring that would make him happy when he was sad. After deliberation the sages handed him a simple ring with the Persian words "This too shall pass" etched on it, which had the desired effect to make him happy when he was sad. It also, however, became a curse for whenever he was happy he knew that that too would pass.

We would do well to heed this tale in these momentous and troubling times. In our 21^st century  Covid world, where locked down nations, faltering economies, young people missing their education, global warming threatening the planet, inequality, great social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Occupy, Extinction  & Me Too vent their anger, increasing divisiveness permeates our politics, poverty and malnutrition stalk many lands, civil war and strife is present in countries across the world and increasing sabre rattling by the world’s superpowers are witness to the disturbing times in which we live. But we should, too, remember something else: that in the great span of history and of mankind they are but tiny events which will, in the fullness of time, be replaced by other great concerns – but also great joys; as the tale tells us “these too shall pass”.  

I was reminded of this last night as I lay reading in bed. I am currently working my way through the magnificent translation by Princeton Professor Robert Fagles of Roman poet Virgil’s epic work The Aeneid written in about 30 BC and telling the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas and his passionate but ultimately tragic love affair with Dido the beautiful and powerful Queen of Carthage, and his travels and battles to fulfil his destiny, ordained by the Gods, to found the city of Rome and the Roman civilization. The Aeneid was written by Virgil in order that the Romans could celebrate their city’s origins and the creation of their great and mighty Empire in the same way that the Greeks celebrated their civilization through Homer’s poems The Illiad and The Odyssey. It is not overstating the importance of The  Aeneid to say that the great poem has shaped the political and cultural landscape of Europe and the western world as much as the Bible has shaped Europe and the west’s spiritual landscape – and still today it explains much of our current world.

As I read the glorious words of Book 9 of the poem (only three more books to go!) I came across these few lines describing the Rutulian and Etruscan Latium armies flooding out onto the plain where a great battle is to be fought against Aeneas and his invading Trojans:

“.......And next his entire army

Moving out across the plain,

Rich in cavalry, rich in braided cloaks, purple plumed gleaming helmets, bright gold.

A force like the Ganges rising spreading, fed by seven quiet but mighty streams

Or the life giving Nile ebbing back from the plains

To settle down at last in its own bank and bed.........”

 Could it be, I wondered as I read of the great battle that the Virgil and his fellow Romans knew of the existence of the mighty Ganges River in India? Did they ever go to India in those far off days over two millennia ago? I could accept that they knew of the Nile, after all, that mighty river flows into the Mediterranean Sea and the Romans were a Mediterranean people – but India and the Ganges was another thing, a far off world. Did the Roman knowledge and influence spread that far?

But immediately I wondered this I also knew the answer for I was taken back to another wonderful book I read recently, Colin Thubron’s magical and powerful  travel book The Lost Heart of Asia in which he vividly describes the peoples and cultures of that remote region. The city of Merv (once known as Antiochia and one of the largest cities in the world  in ancient times, with a population of over half a million) sits on the Silk Road in Turkmenistan, central Asia. The Silk Road in ancient times brought silk and spices, paper, gunpowder and other exotic items from the East – India & China – and was the route taking gold and silver, wool, animals, pottery and other wares from the west to far away China and India in the east. But, the Silk Road, carried other things; even as early as 300 BC  it took ideas, religion, philosophy and culture from east to west and west to east – and more worryingly it spread diseases across the two continents, most notably the Black Death. Although it is unlikely (but not impossible) that Romans actually ever visited China (and vice versa) those two mighty civilizations  certainly knew of each other’s existence and power; they were ancient trading partners via the myriad of merchants who travelled the Silk Road carrying and trading their wares as they went. The results of those trades eventually ending their journey in the markets of Rome and China’s ancient capital Xi’an

Roman coin found at Merv

In Thubron’s book he records how, on visiting the area around present day Merv, he was struck by the people of the area, many of whom had a very definite olive skinned Mediterranean appearance. He was struck, too, by the number of Latin sounding words in the local vocabulary and even street names frequently had a Latin “feel” about them. He discovered, too, that it was not uncommon for ancient Roman coins to be dug up in the fields and for homes to have shrines dedicated to Gods with clear connections to the Gods of ancient Rome. How could this be, that in place far from Rome, in the heart of what was once the mighty Persian Empire that there is this oasis of Latinate people, artefacts, language and culture amongst the endless deserts, mountains and peoples that dominate central Asia - the lands of those other mighty and feared warrior rulers, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.

The answer was both simple and thought provoking. In 53 BC, at about the time that Virgil was writing his Aeneid the Roman army under Marcus Licinicus fought the great Battle of Carrhae against the armies of the mighty Parthian (later the Persian and then the Iranian) Empire under the command of General Surena. The Romans were routed, even humiliated, and Marcus Licinicus fell in the battle. Thousand of Romans were slain and at the conclusion of the battle over 10,000 of them were taken prisoner and sent as slaves to the city of Merv. It is recorded that to humiliate the Romans even further General Surena ordered that a Roman prisoner be found who looked like the dead Marcus Licinicus and when such a prisoner was found the young Roman soldier was dressed up as a woman and paraded tied to a horse and facing backwards through the streets of Merv as the crowds mocked him. But, those terrible scenes were not quite the end of the story, the world moved on.

The years passed and with each passing year the Roman “slaves” slowly became part of the Merv society: as they diligently fulfilled their slave duties and their knowledge and skills were appreciated and understood by their owners they slowly  but surely were given more freedom from their slavery and they prospered, they married local women, had children, settled down and became part of the life, culture and economy of that great city. Others, on gaining their freedom, moved on travelling further east to China where many settled and prospered in the City of Liqian and yet others took up arms again, but this time in the armies of the Chinese Xiongnu tribes and fought against the Han Dynasty at the Battle of Zhizhi. The result of all this is that still today, those echoes of those far off times  impact on the streets and lives of Merv and its surrounding areas – the past empires, the battles and the killing are long forgotten, “These too have passed”, and are replaced by everyday life of marriage, birth, everyday life and prosperity and death. In short the world moved on. 

In the final few minutes of Shakespeare’s great play The Tempest mighty Prospero reflects the transient and ephemeral nature of mankind and his world by speaking some of the most famous words from all Shakespeare, indeed from all literature, and in doing so he confirms Attar of Nishapur’s tale of the ring upon which was etched “This too shall pass”:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep”.

Quite, and today, as I think of the many and worrying present discontents that scream from our 24 hour TV News and are splashed in large print across our newspapers– Covid, divisive politics, global warming and the rest – it is very easy to be worried, angry, upset and fearful of the world in which we live. But we would all be well advised to also be hopeful because for each and every one of us, “These sadnesses, worries and anxieties too shall pass”. Of course, once these have “passed” there will without doubt be others to concern us but as my little brief excursion into ancient history via Virgil’s The Aenied  and Thubron’s wonderful book reminded me we are all just tiny specks in the great sweeping and moving sands of time; the mighty Roman and Persian armies of three millennia ago are long gone, the majestic and once all powerful Empires and Emperors of Rome, Persia, and the rest are swept away, all dust, and the ancient Trojan, Greek and Roman heroes so magnificently described by Virgil are no more. That is the nature of all humanity it is never still, "all things will pass".

Sara Teasdale

A century ago in 1918 during the final months of the 1^st World War Europe lay in ruins, there were millions dead and the whole world was reeling from four years of intense trench warfare the like of which the world had never before. It was all witnessed by the young American poet Sara Teasdale who reflected upon her ruined world but also upon its rebirth and the inconsequence of we, mere mortals, in that rebirth. The result was her famous poem of hope There Will Come Soft Rains, a work that perfectly encapsulates the ephemeral world that mankind inhabits. It is, perhaps, apposite for these Spring days of rebirth as we struggle to move forward, remake our post Covid lives, and hope our many present discontents “will pass”. Like the tale told by the Sufi poet, or the rise and fall of great empires such as those recorded by Virgil and Homer, or the story of the once great city of Merv the poem is a fitting reminder in these momentous and worrying times of our transitory world and the transitory lives that we all lead.

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.