The Glorious Deeds of the High-King Caesar

July 8, 2016 2:57 PM

Caesar, now: a man angry, valourous, fair, bulky, madly-bold, high-spirited, very difficult, haughty, dour and grievous, vehement-natured, firm, strong, contemptuous, self-willed, unsimple, severe, keen, unloved, famous, wrathful, cunning, eloquent, unashamed, indefatigable, venomous, hostile. A king in kingship and a soldier in deeds of valour and bravery, a battle-tower in courage, a soldier in activity. In the floodtide of his grace and his age was he then.

In Cath Catharda is a medieval Irish epic about the Roman civil wars.

"Next to the Táin bó Cúalgne and the Acallam na Senórach, the Cath Catharda (The Civil War of the Romans), is the longest prose composition of the mediaeval Irish. It is a free adaptation of Books I–VII of Lucan's Pharsalia, a poem which seems to have been popular in Gaeldom, not because of its poetic merits, but from its stirring accounts of battles, onfalls, sieges, its reports of visions and speeches, and its vivid descriptions of magical processes for dispelling disease and ascertaining the future. Even its less praiseworthy characteristics—its pedantic language, its unnatural similes—must have gratified the Irish literary taste, the debasement of which seems to have begun in the fourteenth, and grown in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries."

- Whitley Stokes, translator of the Cath Catharda

"In Cath Catharda is probably the most effective of the classical adaptations, and certainly the most 'native,' in the sense of being adapted to Irish literary tastes. The translator successfully cuts, expands, and restructures the Latin text. The central battle of the Pharsalia is greatly expanded, while Books 8-10, dealing with the aftermath of the battle, have been cut. Lucan's difficult and allusive poetry is rendered into clear and rhythmic prose, characterized by abundant use of native motifs and formulas."

-A more generous appraisal from Barbara Hillers' article in Celtic Culture: a Historical Encyclopedia

posted by Iridic (15 comments total)

Huh! I had no idea.

I'm reminded of the medieval notion that Virgil was a powerful sorcerer, which is the premise behind Avram Davidson's Vergil Magus series; and following a wiki trail led here:

In modern Welsh, Virgil's standing as a magician has become embedded in the standard words for pharmacist (fferyllydd), the place for picking up a prescription (fferyllfa), and the profession of pharmacist (fferylliaeth, also an older academic designation for chemistry), all of which derive directly from his name.

It's like the Celts, having been at the edge of the Empire or entirely outside it, remembered it centuries later as a distant, exotic realm of battles and magic.
posted by theodolite at 3:35 PM on July 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

How interesting. I'm looking forward to checking this out. I do like seeing how different cultures approach their epics!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:54 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love seeing not just how different cultures approach their epics, but how they appropriate adapt epics from other cultures. The Icelandic versions of continental chivalric romances are ... particularly striking.

*hurriedly bookmarks a fun new text*
posted by Quasirandom at 4:02 PM on July 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm reminded of the medieval notion that Virgil was a powerful sorcerer

I like the idea that history might ludicrously misremember major figures.

Stephen Hawking, DJ
Dwight Eisenhower, children's entertainer
Queen Latifah, first of her name, empress of the United States and protector of Mexico

Seriously, why did people think Virgil was a sorcerer?
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:07 PM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Stephen Hawking, MC you mean.
posted by stevis23 at 5:22 PM on July 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

I imagine these stories of Caesar would have been brought back to Ireland by crusaders.
posted by foobaz at 5:30 PM on July 8, 2016

Seriously, why did people think Virgil was a sorcerer?

Because his Fourth Eclogue is about a messianic world-savior figure and early Christians were like whoa, this dude saw the future. That's how it all began.

And the process of mythologizing historical figures is totally still ongoing. Albert Einstein turns up in stories about religion. I could tell you basically anything about Howard Hughes and you'd probably believe it. Ditto for Hemingway as long as it was macho. Now that people don't believe in magic any more, there's less outright "He was a magician" stuff, but just think of the image of Tesla as a science-magician, inventing weather machines and teleporters that the government covered up.
posted by No-sword at 6:59 PM on July 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

The path from being in history to being in mythology passes through being in fanfiction, it would seem.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 7:29 PM on July 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'd love for someone to retranslate this from Irish! Fantastic.
There are several excellent looking recent translations of Lucan to read along with it.
posted by geeklizzard at 7:41 PM on July 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Virgil's presence reminds me of Atila the Hun in the Nibelungensaga as Atli. It's so neat when historical figures get wrapped up in epics.
posted by branravenraven at 11:23 PM on July 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Quasirandom: The Icelandic versions of continental chivalric romances are ... particularly striking.

They're pretty amazing, it's true. Some change quite a bit, while others are very faithful to the original. Indeed, some romances are only preserved whole in Old Icelandic translations, most famously the Thomas of Britain version of Tristan and Iseult.
posted by Kattullus at 2:01 AM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

And the process of mythologizing historical figures is totally still ongoing.

Ask anyone on this site about Mr. Rogers.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:09 AM on July 9, 2016

I love this. I don't care what the stuffy old bastards say about debasement of taste -- or rather I do, because that's a sign that something really interesting is happening under the surface, something I can learn from. Take this pronouncement of a warrior:

‘It were great and dear to us if we could follow thy command as we should wish: and we resolve that the folk against whom thy battle-trumpets will urge us will never be fellow-citizens of ours, or at peace with us. In presence of our weapons of war, we pledge our words that if thou bid us plant these swords in the breasts of our brothers and our fathers, or in the entrails of our wives at the time of childbed, we would do it for thee, without delay or contest.’

I first became familiar with the diction of Celtic epic from T.H. White's The Once and Future King. White didn't think much of the Celts, in that book. He considered them a people without any law but the law of blood and force majeure. I thought this was simply his British chauvinism, but if this is a good sample of how epic warriors in Celtic sagas were said to behave, then I begin to see what he was thinking of.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:14 AM on July 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

> I don't care what the stuffy old bastards say about debasement of taste

I hate it; why can't they simply talk about taste changing? Your own taste is going to look "debased" in a few centuries, you stuffy old bastards! They say the same thing about late Byzantine literature, Persian poetry from India, etc. etc. Open your eyes and ears, sheeple scholars!

> I'd love for someone to retranslate this from Irish!

Then you're in luck, because that's what the first link goes to.

I like the fact that the earliest of the Related Posts is mine from 2004 about Narts.
posted by languagehat at 8:36 AM on July 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Take this pronouncement of a warrior...

Interestingly, that speech is a direct lift from the Pharsalia:

No citizen
I count the man 'gainst whom thy trumpets sound.
By ten campaigns of victory, I swear,
By all thy triumphs, bid me plunge the sword
In sire or brother or in pregnant spouse,
By this unwilling hand the deed were done.

Now of course the Irish paraphrase emphasizes the violence over the obedience and martial pride; but the violence had always been present in that oath.

That's one of the fascinating things about the Cath Catharda: the author had (presumably) never seen a solemn marble statue of Julius Caesar, or a Shakespeare tragedy about Caesar, or a sumptuous BBC costume drama about Caesar; and unlike Lucan, they had no ideological interest in the death spasms of the Republic. So when the author looked at Caesar, it was without (many) preconceptions.

And what did they see? Not a majestic symbol of overreach and empire, to be played with dark insight by John Gielgud or Ciaran Hinds. Instead, they immediately (and cheerfully!) recognized a classic archetype of Irish mythology: an angry warlord willing to drown the world in blood to revenge himself against the slights of his enemies. The killer beneath the marble.
posted by Iridic at 12:21 PM on July 9, 2016 [9 favorites]