Halfway down the Danube

Mathematicus, Bernardus Silvestris

Now this was a strange find. It's an incomplete Latin dramatic poem from the middle of the twelth century, dug up from the Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge article by Deirdre Stone, 71 (1996), 209-283.

A summary: a childless wife consults an astrologer, who calculates that she will soon bear her husband's child, who will grow to be excellent in every way, and become the king of Rome!

And then kill his father. Oops.

No, you haven't heard this one before.

On hearing this, said husband sorrowfully tells his wife to kill the child when it arrives, but the baby has such a great personality, in nascente fuit tante deitatis imago vix poterat credi materialis homo, ' the new-born child was of such god-like appearance that he could scarcely be believed of human substance', that his mother sends him to wet-nurse exile instead, giving him only the name... Patricida. Foreshadowing is a sign of quality literature.

As a youth, Patricida studies philosophy, and then, scared of a life of idleness and leisure, he joins the military. Of course, Rome is at war with Carthage, and Hannibal manages to capture the king of Rome and the senate. But Patricida and his legion blindside the Carthaginian forces just as Hannibal is receiving the Romans' surrender. The Romans decide to give Patricida a triumph, and the king of Rome, reading the writing on the wall, gives him the crown.

Patricida's mother, keeping tabs on him from afar, is troubled by these events. All the astrologer's prophecies have come to pass, except for the one about her husband. So she and he have a sit-down, some self-hating misogyny here: si libeat superis genus evertatur iniquum femina vivat homo tum suus orbe suo, 'if it please the gods, let that evil species, woman, be destroyed, then let man live for himself in his own world'.

Husband says now, hon, you're heaven and earth to me, cara comes mihi sanctus amor mihi gratia concors, 'dear companion, blessed love of mine whose delight is my delight', with a boy like that I don't mind so much, and it's fated anyway.

The parents visit the king. Patricida recognizes his mother, but not his father, but is kind to both. Tearful introductions are made, and his father explains the situation honestly to Patricida. I made a mistake when you were younger, son, but fate fixed it for me. When the time comes, son, do what you have to do. It's all right.

Patricida, understandably, is left in a tizzy by all this. He devises a Cunning Plan, and calls together a special session of the Senate and People of Rome. He asks for one special gift from the city, just one and only one, no questions asked, no strings attached, but only if they think he really deserves it.

The people blush, honest, erubuit populus, and shout their approval.

Patricida doesn't beat around the bush. I'm not asking for stuff, people, but ut liceat mihi propriam conficere mortem, 'to be allowed to bring about my own death'. That's right, mors est Roma tuum munus mea, 'your gift, Rome, is my death'. The beauty part is, this way I don't get to kill my father and I become a star that watches over the city. (Yes, a star. Don't ask.) It's a win-win situation.

The Romans rather disagree. But Patricida even gets legal on them, quoting Justinian, Dux populi victor munus quod queret habeto, 'The leader of the people, the conqueror, let him take the reward he seeks'.

And then it stops.

The Mathematicus is 854 lines of elegaic couplets, using classical prosody and not rhyme. Stone provides a facing English translation, thank goodness. The plot is not taken from the Oedipus story, which was my first guess, but from a persuasive monologue, a suasoria, from the late antique author pseudo-Quintilian's declamations. No, I hadn't heard of him either.

Now my lone remaining reader is asking, Carlos, isn't this freaking obscure even for you? Well, it is and it isn't.

You see, a mathematicus was an astrologer, and at that time, and for long after, astrology was a 'hard science'. Johannes Kepler was a mathematicus. The conflict that drives plot of the poem is free will versus scientific prediction, not predestination.

In that, the Mathematicus prefigures much 20th century science fiction. The conflict that drives the Mathematicus is the same tension that drives Isaac Asimov's early Foundation stories, is the same question that Paul Atreides and his monstrous descendant brood over in Frank Herbert's Dune novels. As Walter M. Miller, Jr., put it in his Canticle for Leibowitz:

Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America -- burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?

There are no references to Christianity in the Mathematicus. None. In fact, the poem so troubled one copyist that in one manuscript (provenance Beaupré, 12th century, now in Bern) all "reference to antiquity and especially any mention of pagan gods or astrology is deleted as well as anything that could be considered lascivious. The result hardly makes for a coherent narrative" (Stone, 216). Only 587 lines survived this treatment.

Yes, the Mathematicus ends on a cliffhanger. There are manuscripts which date from near the time of composition, so it's unlikely the ending was lost.

A possible hint to the end of the story might lie in the source material. Stone gives the synopsis of the declamation of pseudo-Quintilian's from which the plot was taken. It concludes with: "Now you can say 'you lie, astrologer'. My only fear is that my death will kill my father."

On the other hand, Bernardus may have deliberately kept it ambiguous. He was a smart guy, connected to 12th century Chartres and Tours:

Bernardin li Sauvages
qui connoissoit toz les langages
des esciences et des arts

and is perhaps best known today for one chance borrowing C.S. Lewis took from his Cosmographia. But I think that's for another post.

Posted by coyu at September 28, 2004 12:15 AM