The Caesar Revolts

“Who shall my great reports of vict’ry chant?

Who shall proclaim my armies’ wond’rous feats?

The destruction of my opponents shan’t

Forgotten be, and neither shall my deeds.

The Mighty One of Great Rome I once was,

But now in dirty clay the Emp’ror lies,

His kingdom lays in ruins. Yes, it does.

His decomposing carcass, food for flies.”

The grand Empire’s splendid blazing Sun

By morbid darkness overtaken be,

But, though the gloomy, shady eras run,

The tale of one, Cæsar, comes down to me.

“Future Cæsars, remember, as you wane,

Thy bodies are tied to the mortal plane.”

I once looked upon the Emperor Julius Caesar. He spoke to me. His words were not comprised of sounds and syllables, his eternally unmoved lips made no noise. In the man’s eyes there was nothing but ghastly emptiness, yet his gaze produced the fear of God in men. A crown of golden leaves sat permanently fixated upon his head, revealing to all ages of men that shall see his countenance that this king was the mightiest of rulers. As I turned to observe more closely the one who spake with me, I noticed that he is like unto the sons of men, clothed with a garment down to his lower shins. His head and his hairs were a dark variant of golden, like bronze, his polished feet like fine brass. Caesar spoke. My soul listened. Who was he? Who am I?

I am Caesar, my Romanian compatriots call me Cezar. I once looked upon the Emperor Iulius Cezar. The older Cezar, the greater Cezar. Rather, it would be more fitting to say I looked upon his image.

After we had defeated the German Führer and his forces in the war, I moved to Paris. As with any young man trying to establish himself in society, I first sought a quality education. This I received at the hands of some of the most prestigious institutions in France, while specializing in Mathematics. My desire was to become firmly established as one of the great mathematicians of the modern age. I thought it is once again the perfect time for a great Mathematical awakening, like those of Pythagoras, Euler, and Gauss, and I thought I could be the one to spark this fire. Truly, I believed that if we could but understand numbers, we would see and feel the unseen music of the universe, as Pythagoras once believed. I would say that we must once again step deeper into the most unexplained of unexplained phenomena of our galaxy and realize that nature’s language of numbers beckons us to look further into God’s creation.

What a fool I was.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”

Can I understand God? Will I ever understand his most mysterious ways? Can broken man piece together the puzzle of reality?

All my years of struggle and effort came to nothing. After obtaining my diplomas and degrees of merit from high institutions of education, I was left with nothing. My money was spent, my youthful years were gone, and there was nothing left to prove. No one wanted me. For the entirety of two years, I searched every institution in France to see if they are in need of a mathematician. I spent more money travelling by train than I made, cleaning the kitchen of a Paris bakery. My efforts were unrewarded, and it all came to nothing in the end.

In those years, I became a philosopher. A philosopher, not out of desire, but out of despair. I would take long walks through Paris every morning, visiting many gardens, museums, and monuments along my path. Meditatively, I would ponder the most and the least pressing matters of existence, I would ponder nonexistence, I would ponder God, and salvation. Truly, earthly despair bubbles up in the hearts of men to make them the greatest of philosophers.

One fateful day, when on my morning walk, I encountered Julius Caesar of old, the one whose name I bear. I could not but stop and stare, and listen, and ponder. There he stood before me, a tall bronze figure, with an inscription beneath his static stone feet: “IMPERATOR CAIVS IVLIVS CÆSAR.” Facing towards him, at his feet, was a small, creaky wooden bench. I sat down and looked at this graven image for a long time, I was deeply drawn to it.

One Caesar, a legendary general and emperor of the known world. The other, Cezar, an unknown foreigner looking for a workplace in an industrialized Paris. One Caesar, immortalized by grand sculptures and stories and poems. The other, alone and forgotten in a metropolis of six million souls. One Caesar, the epitome of purposeful living and success. The other, an unemployed pretend philosopher, who thinks he has life figured out, but knows nothing of real life. As I pondered this contrast, it felt as if the stone-faced image had something to say. I listened intently. This contrast between me and the mighty Caesar spoke to me. I pondered this, and my situation, and many other things for well-nigh two hours and at last came to my most momentous conclusion: “I must return to Brasov.”