Tea at Trianon: Virgil on Courage

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Virgil on Courage

From The Imaginative Conservative:

Courage is found in unexpected places. It is not the sole province of soldiers, nor does it find its only fulfillment in the vanquishing of enemies. Indeed, courage manifests itself most powerfully, not in a single deed of valor, but in a lifetime of endurance.
It is the soldier who stays at his post, not the one who rushes into battle in a fit of suicidal rage, who is the most courageous. It is the parent or the teacher or the doctor who stands beside those entrusted to his care, no matter the cost or the danger, who embodies the essence of courage. The courageous stand firm and true when everything around them is crumbling. They are often afraid, but they do not give in to their fear; they are often confused, but they work through that confusion to fulfill the duty assigned to them.

My Aeneas showed greater courage in fleeing from Troy than he would have shown had he stayed and fought to the death for his lost city. In leaving, he followed the harder path, the one that called for him to accept a new and radically different goal and to adopt radically new strategies for achieving that goal.

Growing up as a soldier in Troy, Aeneas, like Hector, had been taught that courage meant facing one’s foe and defending one’s city. When the ghost of Hector appeared to him and told him to leave Troy, Aeneas was forced to learn a new kind of courage. It was a lesson he did not want to learn. (Read more.)