PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

This is meant to be in the nature of a review, of one particular scene in the film, the immediate reaction of Cleopatra's former tutor, and now close advisor, Sosigenes (Hume Cronyn) to the news that the Romans, having attempted to burn the remnants of the Egyptian Navy, have allowed the fire to spread from the harbor, to other buildings, and then to the massive Ptolemaic Library, where Cleopatra's ancestors, beginning with Ptolemy 1st (who had been Alexander's boyhood friend, though not his boy friend, and, when they were adults, was his chief field comander), attempted to acquire and preserve a copy of every known book in what was then known of the world.  The LXX, or Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which is the preferred version of the Orthodox Church and is more complete than the KJV, was translated by seventy Hebrew scholars (hence its name) commissioned by Ptolemy II.  It will be mentioned in the words that Sosigenes speaks in his shock to know that the Library has been fired by either Roman neglect or Roman intention.

    A scholar, rather than a politician, Sosignes is left alone in the room after the others have left to see what can be done about saving the unburned remnants of the Library.  He slumps against the wall, and just barely above a whisper, utters these words:

"The Platonic Dialogues . . . Aristotle's Commentaries . . ." and, then with an outpouring of emotion that should have earned him an Oscar for best supporing actor, "The Testament of the Hebrew God."

    This is the hardest scene for me to view in the film.  When I have it on my DVR, I pause the film to try to steady my nerves, and if there is a cup of tea with a slice of lemon available, so much the better.  

    And what the Ptolemaic Librarians understood, about Literature in general and Poetry specifically (and Callimachus was the most famous of these), was that the Ptolemaic collection was a Meritocracy.  It was not a democracy of the writings of the hoi polloi or, as I like to call them, clodhoppers---like this country preacher I know who admits he knows nothing ore than what other country preachers have told him, and also admitted that, when he was out of work and seeking employment, he thought the Book of Job had advice to offer to the specific task of finding employment.  

     Callimachus, and the scholar-poets associated with the library, resented Homer's distortion of the myths that had been in existence before he wrote his long poems; and so they attempted to writing mythic poetry, as well as homoerotic verses, to refashion the myths by omitting the Homeric distortions.  This was mot a democratic process.  It was meritocratic from beginning to end, and its end yielded the Neoteric movement among the Roman Poets; and the Neoterics, including Vergil, were opposed to the emperor Augustus' desire that Poetry should report the current events and achievements of his administration.  Even when Vergil composed his epic, he did not follow Homer's verbose length; and, instead of glorifying warfare, he depicted it as horrific.  That is why, when Augustus demanded, from time to time, to hear passages from Vergil's draft of his epic, the Poet was very careful not to read those passages which Augustus would have considered subversive.