Expression

Few figures loom larger than Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC). Born into an old but not especially powerful family, he rose by talent, daring, and debt. As a general he was extraordinary: his conquest of Gaul (modern France) added vast territory to Rome, and his own account of it, the Commentaries on the Gallic War, is still read by Latin students for its clear, vivid prose ('Veni, vidi, vici', 'I came, I saw, I conquered'). He was also a reformer who improved the calendar (the 'Julian' calendar gives us the month of July) and extended citizenship. But Caesar's ambition outgrew the Republic. When the Senate ordered him to give up his army, he instead crossed the Rubicon River in 49 BC, igniting civil war, and after winning it, had himself named 'dictator for life.' To many Romans this looked exactly like the kingship they had overthrown five centuries earlier. On the Ides of March, 44 BC, a group of senators, including his friend Brutus, stabbed him to death in the Senate. Yet killing Caesar did not restore the Republic; it only triggered more war, ending with his adopted heir Octavian becoming Augustus, Rome's first emperor (next week). Caesar's life poses the week's deepest question: how much power should one person hold, and what is the cost when ambition breaks the rules meant to restrain it?

The Romans were less famous for musical theory than the Greeks (whose ideas they largely borrowed), but music filled Roman life, especially its public and practical sides. The army relied on loud brass instruments to signal commands over the din of battle and march: the long, straight tuba and the great curved cornu, which a soldier wore around his body like a hoop. Their blasts told legions when to advance, halt, or retreat, music as a tool of discipline and order, the week's virtue. Music also accompanied religious sacrifices, weddings, funerals, banquets, and theater. The most remarkable Roman instrument was the hydraulis, or water organ, invented in Hellenistic Alexandria and beloved in Rome: it used water pressure to push air through pipes, producing a powerful sound, an ancestor of the pipe organ that would one day fill cathedrals. The Romans even piped music into the bloody spectacles of the arena and the chariot races. Emperors like Nero fancied themselves musicians. Roman music was thus woven into the rhythm of the state, the army, and entertainment, rather than treated as a path to wisdom as the Greeks had. But that water organ points forward: the instrument of Roman games would be baptized and become, in time, the king of instruments in Christian worship.

This week's writing assignment is introduced today and may carry over as homework. Your task: explain how the Roman Republic governed itself, so a reader understands the system and its balance of power (see the full assignment and rubric). This builds on last week's expository skill, now explaining a process or system rather than a single idea. Pull out your government diagram from Day 1. Today's work session: (1) Write a one-sentence thesis describing what kind of government the Republic was (e.g., 'The Roman Republic was a government of shared, balanced power designed so that no single person could become a king'). (2) For each main part, Senate, consuls, assemblies (and tribunes), write one clear sentence on what it did. (3) Write one sentence explaining the idea of checks on power (two consuls, the veto, term limits). (4) Draft your opening paragraph. Remember the rubric: clear thesis, accurate roles, the balance-of-power idea, defined terms (republic, consul, Senate, veto), and a closing on lasting influence (the US borrowed 'Senate,' 'capitol,' and checks and balances from Rome). Watch your subject-verb agreement, it is in the rubric.

Return to St. Lawrence. He lived in the same Roman world we studied, a world that prized discipline, gravitas, and order, and he showed that those Roman virtues, taken up by grace, could blossom into something the Romans could not have imagined: peace and even joy in the face of death, all out of love for Christ and the poor. The empire's discipline drilled soldiers; Christ's grace made a deacon master even his fear of fire. That is discipline perfected by charity. Close the week by recalling your discipline challenge from Day 2.