Incense for the Emperor

It was just a small thing, the least of things, a thing hardly to be noticed.

Not to be marked as an enemy of the empire, all one had to do was throw a bit of incense on the brazier set before the statue of the emperor. What could be easier than to offer a bit of scented smoke and a dribble of wine to prove one’s loyalty to the ruler of the world? Especially when to refuse meant death.

The temptation must have been overwhelming—all it would cost was your immortal soul.


What it looks like to be up against the world. 
All he had to do was take off his hat. 
Was that so much to ask?

Comments

  1. Uncle BearJanuary 26, 2019 at 7:01 PM

    But, but, but...... a MAGA hat means you're a racist, anti-woman, anti-people, non-person.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Zaklog the GreatJanuary 26, 2019 at 8:23 PM

      I have it on good authority that when a white person puts on a MAGA hat, their soul is immediately ripped from their bodies and dragged to the tenth level of Hell, and their bodies are inhabited by super-racist demons.

      Delete
  2. HitzJanuary 27, 2019 at 5:07 PM

    And today (January 27, 2019) the NPR news program, All Things Considered, ran a piece about how many people find the MAGA caps (they are caps and not hats!), racists, anti-women, anti-immigrant (both legal and illegal) all because of the Charlottesville incident. Some have compared the cap to the Confederate battle flag.
    It makes no sense at all. I do not recall a bunch of MAGA cap wearing thugs charging into a women's march, a Black Lives Matter demonstration, or raiding the local bionicos store.
    It all comes down to the Left wanting it's pinch of incense, as you wrote, as well as the tug of the fore-lock, and the doffing of the cap to show allegiance to their "justice" and "goodness" and "rightness." Those who don't conform will be metaphorically crushed for things as minor as "facecrime."
    The ancient Romans thought the Goths as barbarians. The Goths thought the Romans immoral. We are Goths.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Free Speech Fundamentals: Building a Platform

Image
Milo's platform It is without a doubt one of the sillier complaints that protestors at Milo's talks have regularly made when they are trying to shut him up for having conservative political opinions about freedom of speech. For example, at UC Davis, where the protestors effectively shut down Milo's event the night before with their violence , after which the next day one of them demanded of Milo as he was talking to the crowd gathered outside to hear him speak (see video at 4:01 ): "Where's my platform? Where is everyone else's platform?" Milo admonished him: "You had it last night, brother," but of course the young man was not satisfied. He thought that it was Milo's fault that nobody wanted to listen to him. Trigglypuff at UMass Amherst had the same complaint, if imperfectly expressed (see video at 1:26 ): "But this is free speech! If you're so concerned about free speech..."--meaning presumably hers, as she clearly wa
Keep reading

A Poetry Class for the End of the World

Image
  Milo and the Professor are back with a special episode of Friday Night’s All Right,  available on Censored.tv ! With protestors storming the Capitol Building and tempers running high, what better poem to capture the Spiritus Mundi  than “ The Second Coming ” by William Butler Yeats?  Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Reel shadows of the
Keep reading

Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

Image
I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ide
Keep reading

The Lord's Prayer, Thanks Be to Dogs

I've never really liked the Lord's Prayer very much. It seems, I don't know, so spare, not really a prayer at all. Not like the collects that we read in church, nothing like Anselm of Canterbury's far more moving and affective prayers. Prayer should be more meditative, right? Not just a blank asking for bread and forgiveness. And yet, I know that to learn to pray, I need to learn the Lord's Prayer. It is the prayer that Our Lord taught us, after all. There must be something in it. My scholarly inclination at the moment is to start looking for commentaries. Maybe Luther's, but that's in my office on campus and I'm at home now. There's the Catechism of the Catholic Church right behind me on the cabinet that I'm using here at home as my "desk", purportedly for keeping handy the things that I most want or need to read next (like that book I'm supposed to review, you know). But then I still wouldn't be thinking about what
Keep reading