Starry Starry Night

From Anton Petrov's amazing What Da Math Youtube channel, we're acquainted with the fruits of this awesome period of astronomical discovery. We've learnt that the Terran system extending past the moon's orbit, is a sea of hydrogen, the real source of the water gas that comets generate as they pass through to us, not themselves as the classic ice balls at all. We've photographed a supposed black hole and seen amazing multi-star systems. 

We have created a fifth state of matter and tracked space hurricanes. Everyday, new worlds fill our catalogues and entice our wanderlust. One thing, our Jupiter and Earth are cosmic midgets among the super Jupiters and super Earths that make up the majority of the planetary population. 

And yet, not so much as the signature of microbial life to ease the uniqueness of our creation. As yet, Perseverance has yet to tip over that rock with microbes at the bottom. As yet, a few questionable radio signals indicate who and what awaits us in the great beyond. 

Amidst the dimming of Barnard's Star, are there brothers from other seas, other mediums, observing us even as we speak? Do they have three hands, gills for lungs, strange epics for their reptilian race? As great as our instruments and men have reached, as far as our imaginations have crossed paper and celluloid, still we await the great transformation of our truths that meeting Them would grant us. 

At which point, the new alien civilization we would be watching and studying, wouldn't be theirs. It would be ours, the great city state of the species irredeemably changed in outlook. What then our beliefs and attitudes, what then our very view of ourselves in this infinite cosmos?

 Georgics

I'm afraid both the passing of the ages and the distortions of the popular imagination have lost to us the actual nature of the Romans of the Empire. So what were they, inbred tyrants, untrammeled militarists, a species as domineering as they were craven in their appetites? At least, that seems to be the impression you get at times, even from 'highbrow' entertainment and literature.

In truth, go back to the era of Rome in its full bloom, anywhere from the beginning of the 1st century BC to the end of the 1st century AD and what do we find? From the palatial estates to the beggars at the Colosseum, we find farmers. As my old teacher once said, "scratch any Roman and you'll find a farmer!"

A man whose whole worth, whose honor, whose dignity and whose legacy was tied to the land he owned, the seasons, what crops came to bear. The heritage of cultivating the richness of the earth, of truly investing wealth in that and what labor came with it, is the heritage the Romans bequeathed to all their cultural heirs, including ourselves. The legacy of cultivating the land, exploiting it as opposed to merely conquering and claiming it, meant that the barbarians who took over after them not merely had a basis in organizing their cities and countries to come, but the habits needed to feed them as well. 

There is no higher regard I can think of for this constant labor of growing from the willing and furtive earth. What greater pleasure than feeding your family from your own plot, of providing for them from one's own efforts? Perhaps I should take up a garden myself, sometime.