A Dream of Cicero

 

Marbles: What’s wrong, Swan? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

Swan: I have! I had a crazy dream last night I met Cicero.

Marbles: You’re kidding. You’ve been reading your books too much.

Swan: As little as I can, in fact, with all my teaching. I don’t have time to read.

Marbles: Now you’re not kidding. Tell me more.

Swan: Well, we met in a Roman villa. It seemed to belong to a friend of his. There were tall columns, statues, fountains, everything you might imagine.

Marbles: Beautiful serving girls?

Swan: Hold your horses. Cicero was writing a book, looking out over the hills down to the coast. The view was amazing. I asked him what he was writing and he said, “a dialogue about the academics.”

Marbles: Now this is something. It does sound as if you fell asleep on your books!

Swan: Very funny.

Marbles: So what happened next?

Swan: It’s somewhat embarrassing.

Marbles: Most dreams are, when you tell them.

Swan: Well, I got angry at him.

Marbles: You did? I can’t imagine he’d be easy to argue with – or whether you’d even get a word in edgewise.

Swan: It burned me up to hear about the book. I said, “Look, Cicero, you, of all people: can’t you find something else to write about? Haven’t you already spoken your piece about the liberal arts and the humanities?” He just sat there and gave me a puzzled look.

Marbles: I bet he did.

Swan: You know how I get when I’m worked up. “Cicero,” I said, “how could you possibly understand our academic life? We scholars are all too often maligned and misunderstood. Nobody appreciates how hard we work. Not administrators, who constantly give us more regulations from their cozy offices! Not parents of students and politicians, who think we live the good life, la dolce vita, as we teach a few hours a week so we can travel to conferences at exotic places, where over wine and cheese we can debate with each other what seems to them ridiculous things: the finer points of humanist philosophy or Lacanian literary analysis. And don’t get me started on students and their ingratitude! Just the other day I was telling my colleague – you know, she and I have been collaborating on that new study of the a-privatives of Aeschylus – that there are few, very few, who truly appreciate the value of our efforts: not the Dean, who is always slashing our research budget, nor our colleagues in the sciences, who consider us vain and impractical, and certainly not the wider public. In how many popular murder mysteries is the scholar the true culprit? Even Woody Allen fell into this conventional mindset.”

Marbles: Was Cicero interested in your work on Aeschylus? He probably missed the reference to Woody Allen.

Swan: He gazed at me blankly, with that funny nose of his. So I continued: “And Cicero, even these studies take second place to my efforts to build community among my colleagues. Why, I have been working as chair of my department to quell and resolve their complaints, even unspoken ones, by bringing to light their divisive nature. If I spent half the time on my scholarship as I did on these efforts, I may have produced another book, or at least another paper. But what thanks do I get for that? On the contrary, nothing except stony silence, backbiting, envious glances. None of my good deeds goes unpunished, that’s how ungrateful they are. So leave off writing your book, unless you are composing an encomium: we deserve an eloquent apology, not a disputation.”

Marbles: How did he react to your outburst?

Swan: He looked at me carefully. I reddened in the face, to be honest, since he studied me for some time. Then, arranging his robes, he said, “You seem to suffer from a delusion. Let me tell you a story. A man I once knew told me about a vision he had. He imagined he was taken up into the sky, beyond the earth, and saw his world from a new perspective. He came to understand that his hopes and fears were fixed in too small an orbit, that his sense of his own importance had to be weighed across the dimensions of time and space. I would recommend you attach your flights of fancy to this starry messenger, since at this point, after listening to you, I don’t know whether I should cry with Heraclitus or laugh with Democritus. I’m inclined towards Democritus, and would almost ask you what you ate for dinner last night, since the vapors of your stomach seem to have fogged your mind. The academics I am writing about are professional skeptics, a philosophical school, who weigh the pros and cons of every argument before reaching a decision about its truth.”

Marbles: Well, this is embarrassing.

Swan: Do you think? Rather than raised up, I felt very cast down. But he must have felt sorry for me because he added, “I am glad you are working on Aeschylus. And like the ghost of Darius in his Persians, I have some degree of foreknowledge, even though my sense of the present day is dim. I can see that there will be more discord than harmony, more division than unity, more pride than humility.”

Marbles: When will this happen?

Swan: He did not say. He was rather vague. But my sense is that it is still a ways off, after our careers are over.

Marbles: That’s a relief. How did your conversation end?

Swan: That’s about it. He saw some people coming to him in the distance, perhaps Octavian’s friends, and he went inside the villa. Then I woke up.

Marbles: It’s a good thing it was only a dream!