The World Great and Small

I didn't write this, I am putting it here because I like it.

The World Great and Small

My brother is not my enemy. That is all the consolation that I have, If we had fought. If one of us had killed the other over the affairs of the great world, what difference would it have made to Abrogastes and Eugenius, to Theodosius, or to the gods?

Father once told me that we are like the barnacles on the hull of a ship and the ship is the great world of Caesars and empires and gods. We live in our own small world where what matters is more a matter of the hailstorm that flattened the crops and whether or not your belly is full. The events of the great world are as remote as the thoughts of the ships captain to the barnacles.

"But what if the ship is wrecked", I asked.
"Then we cling to some fragment large enough that we won't notice the difference."
"Do you believe we can?"
"No", he said.

The ship was wrecked a few years later. Those same Goths who fought for Theodosius at Aquilea turned on the empire. On their way to Rome they ransacked Grandfather Falco's estate. He met them at the door, sword in hand, on his head the old helmet he hadn't worn in fifty years. A Goth laughed and ran him through with a spear.

The barbarians left the city a hollow shell. Now though the Roman corpse may still be seated on the throne of the world, it is truly dead, its heart torn out, its limbs rotting in the sun.

I think of that old stoic epitaph. I do not exist. I existed. I do not exist. I care not. So it is with all things, even the world, even the gods.

So it is in the great world and in the small.

Extract from:
The Great World and the Small by Darrell Schweitzer