Two questions posed by borges | thearticle

At the annual chess match between England and Holland in 1971, I first became aware of the works of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, when I saw the Dutch Grandmaster Hans Ree

absorbed in _The Book of Imaginary Beings_. Adorned with a jacket cover inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, this slim volume became my introduction to an author whose passions included the power

of memory, fascination with the infinite and the game of chess. Concerning chess, Borges wrote: “_Chess is one of the means we have to save culture, such as Latin, the study of the

humanities, the reading of classics, the laws of versification and ethics. Chess is now replaced by football, boxing or tennis, which are games of fools, not of intellectuals_.” Borges

formed a chess-loving triumvirate with two other serially notorious non-winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Vladimir Nabokov and Stefan Zweig. Elias Canetti was more fortunate in

taking the Swedish shilling, having featured chess prominently in the person of the chess playing dwarf Fischerle in _Die Blendung_ (Auto da Fe) while Yasunari Kawabata also found his pot of

gold at the end of the Swedish Rainbow by writing about the Japanese equivalents, Go and Shogi. In 1978 I had the pleasure of meeting Borges in person in his flat in Maipu Street, Buenos

Aires, when I presented him with my book on the recently concluded World Chess Championship between the Soviet World Champion Anatoly Karpov and the Russian dissident, Victor Korchnoi. I had

acted in that contest as Korchnoi’s Chief Second and Head of Delegation, so my book had a considerable number of insights to offer. Borges suffered from hereditary blindness, but assured me

that friends often came round to read to him, much in the way that Milton had friends who came and took dictation. Just imagine dropping over to see the Miltons for tea and being asked

instead to jot down several hundred lines, something like: “_Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit…_”! It was Borges who introduced me to those two burning literary questions which must

assuredly keep the scholarly guardians of western culture continuously awake at night, tormented by insomnia, desperately seeking for the answers. Both concern Virgil (or as he was known in

ancient Rome: Publius Vergilius Maro), the first querying the hero’s flight from Hades in _The Aeneid_; the second focusing on the apparent prediction of the nativity of Christ in the fourth

 _Eclogue_, an earlier work from the same hand. Referring to the two Virgil problems, Borges had this to say on the matter in his book _Seven Nights_: “_what occurs is quite curious and has

never been well explained_…” As I pointed out in an earlier column “Chess: Breaking the Code”, chess grandmasters are ineluctably drawn towards puzzles and acrostics, so I was immediately

enlisted in the quest for solutions. It was, by the way, clear, that Borges was posing questions, but had no intention of proffering any answers. So, the challenge was on. Augustus, formerly

Octavian, was the first Roman emperor and he was determined to commission a national epic for Rome that would rival Homer’s _Iliad_ and _Odyssey _for Greece. For this purpose he turned to

the poet Virgil, whose task was to glorify Caesar’s heir, celebrate his recently established empire, demonstrate the origins of this empire in established myth and history, whilst also

retrospectively prophesying the future glory of the new Augustan world order. This programme was deliberately articulated in _The Aeneid_. Virgil might also be seen as the herald of a

further empire, the spiritual empire of the Christian faith. However, this was unintentional. It arose by accident in a quite different literary endeavour. Virgil is to Rome and Latin what

Homer is to Ancient Greece, Dante and Petrarch to Renaissance Italy, and Shakespeare to England, not simply a poet, but a unifying cultural force, helping to create and cement a national

identity. Two interludes in particular of Virgil’s work do, however, remain problematic: the manner whereby Aeneas, the eponymous hero of _The Aeneid_, departs from his descent to the

Underworld in Book 6, and the prophecies contained in Virgil’s so called “Messianic” _4th Eclogue_.

 Given that Virgil was entrusted by Augustus with the creation of a national epic, the

close of Book 6 of _The Aeneid_, where Aeneas leaves Hades _through the wrong gate _offers up a unique problem which has not only frustrated scholars but simultaneously thrown doubt on

Virgil’s allegiance to the newly created Augustan Empire. Meanwhile, what are we to make of the seemingly proto-Christian paean at the heart of Book 4 of _The Eclogues_, which did so much to

 convince influential early Christians, such as Eusebius, the so-called Father of Church History, that Virgil foresaw the coming of Christ? Can Virgil be considered the prophet of the Roman

Empire, as founded by Augustus, and yet also be regarded as the prophet of the birth of the Christian Messiah? 

Book 6 of _The Aeneid_, where Aeneas descends to Hades to witness a pageant

depicting Rome’s future glory, makes it abundantly clear that this is a poem of empire, and in particular of the Augustan empire. Aeneas is a man of destiny, a message reinforced and

repeated throughout the epic, and that destiny is to ignite the process of empire which Augustus was to perfect. As Anchises, the (already dead) father of Aeneas, says in Book 6, “_Tu regere

imperio populos Romane_”, “_your task, Roman, will be to govern the peoples of the world_.” So, with the message of empire and destiny clearly articulated, universal bafflement, alternating

with some over elaborate pretexts, or just plain ignoring the issue, have been the most popular critical responses to the manner of Aeneas’s departure from Hades, a mode of departure which,

prima facie, seems to undermine the entire imperial message. There are two gates by which to depart from the classical Underworld, the Gate of Horn and the Gate of Ivory. The tradition of

evaluating the veracity, or otherwise, of visions and dreams, by reference to either a gate of ivory or of horn, goes back at least to Homer’s _Odyssey_. In book 19, Penelope refers to the

gates and specifically mentions that the gate of ivory signifies _false_ dreams. Thus, Virgil deliberately and unequivocally places himself in the Homeric tradition when he writes of the way

Aeneas departs from the kingdom of the shades, as masterfully composed into English by John Dryden in 1697: “_Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
 _ _Of polish’d ivory this, that of

transparent horn:
_ _True visions thro’ transparent horn arise;
_ _Thro’ polish’d ivory pass deluding lies.
_ _Of various things discoursing as he pass’d,
_ _Anchises hither bends his steps

at last.
_ _Then, thro’ the gate of iv’ry, he dismiss’d_ _
His valiant offspring and divining guest_.” And for those who prefer the Latin: “_Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur _

_cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris; _ _altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, _ _sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes. _ _His ubi tum natum Anchises unaque Sibyllam _

_prosequitur dictis, portaque emittit eburna, _ _ille viam secat ad naves sociosque revisit_” I think it important here to mention in passing the immense skill Dryden shows in his

translation. _The Aeneid was _written in a metre, it had beat and rhythm, and flowed like modern poetry. No other translation comes close to capturing the poetical side of Virgil as well as

Dryden’s version. For a poem designed to celebrate the newly created grandeur of imperial Rome, commissioned by the first emperor in person, and, if accounts are to be believed, in parts

read out to Augustus and his court by the poet himself, this shot aimed directly at the validity of the empire, seems to be running a certain degree of risk. For a crime involving a self

confessed “poem and a mistake” — “carmen et error”, the poet Ovid was banished by Augustus to Tomi on the Black Sea. Augustus evidently had a well-informed interest in the arts. Had he taken

exception to seeing his glorious imperial creation mocked and dismissed as a pack of lies, there might well have been unpleasant consequences for the author of the offending lines. Yet no

comment, hostile or otherwise, appears to have been made at the time, no later effort was made by imperial censors to remove these verses, (as Augustus certainly had the power to remove

parts of _The Aeneid_ which displeased him), while many subsequent critics have skated over what appears to be a huge contradiction in Virgil’s own imperial project, amounting to doubts

about the nature and continuity of the Roman Empire. My solution to this apparent conundrum is that there is no contradiction in the manner of Aeneas’ “re-appearance into the upper airs”, 

“_superasque evadere ad auras_” and the reason that no adverse comment was made at the time is because the departure was entirely consistent with Roman thinking and pious religious attitudes

of the day. When a Roman commander was outstandingly victorious, the Senate could vote to award him a triumph. The ‘triumphator’ rode in a special chariot, drawn by four horses. He wielded

an ivory baton and sported a laurel wreath, while his toga was brilliant purple, embroidered in gold. In earlier periods, the general would himself be painted vermilion, using the mineral

cinnabar, a sulphide of mercury, just as the statue of Capitoline Jupiter’s face was painted red on important state occasions. Yet most significantly, behind the general, a public slave, the

whisperer at the triumph, held a golden crown of Etruscan design over the triumphator’s head, while repeating into the general’s ear, the phrase: “_Respice post te, hominem memento te_”,

“Remember you are but a man and take heed of what is to come.” The slave’s presence was apotropaic, a defence against hubris, warding off the envy of gods, perhaps furious that a mere mortal

was being so acclaimed, while also supplying a vital sense of perspective to the man whose triumph was being celebrated. The Roman triumph, with its peculiar features of the whispering

slave, not to mention the licence given to the common soldiers on that occasion to sing lewd songs about their own commander, can be seen as a metaphor. Both elements introduced a deflecting

function, indicating that the Roman mind, even at its most celebratory and triumphal, was profoundly aware of the possibility of a severe downturn in fortune. Mary Beard, in her excellent

book _The Roman Triumph_, points to the “ambivalence of triumphal glory” and it is in this context that we may now re-evaluate the departure of Aeneas through the deluding gate of ivory.

Virgil appears here to be saying that Roman greatness is an established fact, that Augustus is the summit of Roman Imperium and that the immediate future holds nothing but golden prospects

for the Roman state, guided by such an illustrious hand, and with every chance of similarly glorious successors. However, in the long term, _sub specie aeternitatis _in fact, Rome, in spite

of its splendour, remains a mere blip in the endlessly stretching waves of future millennia. As Dryden puts it, in his translation of _The Aeneid_: “The Gods too high had raised the Roman

state; Were but their gifts as permanent as great” (“Nimium vobis Romana propago visa potens, Superi, propria haec si dona fuissent”.) In this sense any dream of permanent domination of the

world by Rome is nothing but a delusion. Apart from being quite literally true, this attitude would, in any case, always be a praiseworthy and pious one to adopt in the secure knowledge of

the jealousy of the gods. Uttering this piece of prudent self-deprecation at the close of Book 6 can, therefore, be seen as a useful, indeed, commendable insurance policy against hubris,

precisely along the lines of the _memento mori _message of the sibilant slave and its apotropaic function. There is one further curious way in which the end of Book 6 references the imperial

message, by departing through the illusory gate of “ivory” “_ebur_”. The name Caesar is, according to the 4th century AD writer Servius, in his commentaries on _The Aeneid_, taken from the

Carthaginian word for elephant; “_elephant_” of course appears in Virgil’s text. Not only is the elephant a chess piece in many cultures, such as Russian, equivalent to our Bishop, the name

is thought to have arisen because Caesar’s grandfather (also Gaius Julius Caesar) had killed a Carthaginian war elephant in battle. Caesar certainly used an elephant device on his coinage,

so Caesar himself had deliberately associated himself with the elephant symbol. Hence Virgil forged a further link, with the Ivory Gate of Departure from Hades, to Julius Caesar himself and,

therefore, also to Caesar‘s heir, Augustus. Four centuries later however, the Roman Empire still flourished but there had been some major changes. Christianity was accepted as the state

religion by Constantine the Great in the 4th century AD. The key date, of course, being the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, from which The Nicene Creed derives, and over which the emperor

presided in person. As a kid I used to attend church on Sundays and whenever we had to recite the Nicene Creed, having no knowledge at the age of eight concerning Constantine or Nicaea, I

reasoned that Nicene must be a Christian way of saying “ Nice.” As it says in 1 Corinthians 13:11 “ when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child…”

The grand title Pontifex Maximus, or Chief Priest, was adopted both by the emperors and the early Popes, and is still in use. Interestingly, at Papal coronations, the ritual of thrice

burning a piece of flax continues to mirror the warning of the triumphal slave. Virgil died in 19 BC, years before Christ’s mission came to Rome, so how are we to interpret the Messianic

tone of the 4th Eclogue? This is a poem which, with its mention of a Virgin, a new world order, an all-powerful father, a miraculous child, and the forgiveness of sins, not to mention

universal peace, helped to convince early Christendom that Virgil must have had a hot line not just to Hell, as in _The Aeneid_, but also to Heaven: “_Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur

ordo: iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna_”. The early Christians were deeply impressed that Virgil had seemingly prophesied the nativity of Jesus Christ in language and tone

remarkably similar to that of the Old Testament Books of the prophets, such as Isaiah, where it is written: “_The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and a little child shall lead them_”. As

the Western Roman Empire declined and fell, so Virgil’s reputation as a poet began to fade, but his fame as a seer and magician correspondingly rose. He even appears as the wizard and

concocter of potions Fferyll (a Celtic rendition of Virgil’s name) in the ancient Welsh national epic, _The Mabinogion_, and Virgil’s name still persists as the root of the Welsh word for a

pharmacy, fferyllfa. The board game gwyddbwyll is mentioned frequently in _The Mabinogion_ and was a favourite of the pages of King Arthur’s retinue and has come to mean chess in modern

Welsh. It is more likely, though, that the actual game was probably closer to Fox and Geese. Reverting to the reasons for Virgil’s mediaeval fame as a sorcerer, no less an authority than 

Boris Johnson took time off from the meteoric rise of his political career to write as follows of Eclogue 4 in the Chapter Augustus Caesar and Jesus Christ in his book _The Dream of Rome_:

“_Forty years before Jesus was born, and when Augustus was already consul, Virgil wrote a poem which has earned him the status of a kind of pagan saint. It is the 4th or so-called Messianic

Eclogue, and when the early Christians looked back at it they could scarcely believe it. This greatest of the Roman poets appears to prophesy the coming of the Saviour — in language that is

uncannily like that of the Old Testament Bible. There is going to be a new Golden Age, says Virgil, in the Messianic Eclogue. The creator of this age will be a wonder child. He will free

mankind from sin and pacify and rule the world_“. As Virgil wrote: “_pacatumque regit patriis virtutibus orbem_”, (“armed with his father’s powers he will rule a world at peace”). While

Boris was editor of _The Spectator _he once invited contributions in Latin, to be rewarded with a crown of laurels, or something suitably redolent of classical recognition. Accordingly, I

wrote my chess column that week in Latin, describing a bold knight attack with the words: “Quadripedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.” (“The sound of galloping hooves shook the

crumbling plain”). As with my article “In which I am accidentally declared a physics genius”, I seem to have scored nul points or less, since after many years I am still awaiting my Corona

Literaria. _The Messianic Eclogue_ established Virgil’s prophetic credentials so powerfully that even Dante, in the greatest Christian epic ever written, _The Divine Comedy_, dating from 

over a thousand years later, still employed the character of Virgil as guide for his passage through the Inferno and the Purgatorio. However, no modern scholar seriously believes that Virgil

predicted the birth of Christ. After Boris Johnson rejected that seductive notion, he argues forcefully that the wonder child has to be Octavian himself. However, the dates rather seem to

undermine the thesis of our current Prime Minister. Virgil is more likely to be addressing an unborn child, and Octavian was a young man of twenty-three, whose wife had a child (Julia) on

the way, when the poem was written. The date can be confirmed because of the reference to the Consul Gaius Asinius Pollio, who held office in 40/39 BC, when Octavian’s wife was pregnant.

Coincidentally, Octavia, the sister of Augustus, married at the time to Mark Antony, was also pregnant with a baby girl, Antonia. Both mothers gave birth almost at the same time. Since the

Triumvirs, Octavian and Mark Antony, were the two most powerful men in the Roman world at that time, it is difficult to be clear as to whether the child mentioned in _The Eclogue_ was

intended to be the offspring of Octavian’s sister and Mark Antony or of Octavian himself and his wife Scribonia. On balance, Julia just has to be the prime candidate, since Octavian was

located at the epicentre of Roman power, the eponymous capital itself, while Mark Antony was sojourning in more distant Athens. The Eclogue is a poem about promise, not achievement, and that

promise was dashed when, in 39 BC, both children were born and turned out to be girls, hence incapable of any sort of succession. This hymn of praise to the imaginary glorious future ruler

then became redundant, only to be unearthed by early Christian writers and erudite political and military leaders, such as the late 3rd century usurper and proto-Brexiteer, Carausius.

Claiming to be emperor and basing this claim on a Britain divorced from Europe, he used inscriptions from _The 4th Eclogue_ on his coinage, in order to herald a golden age, ushered in by his

own rule and taking the initial letters from the lines: “…_redeunt saturnia regna iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto_” (“… and also the reign of Saturn, while a new generation is sent

down from heaven on high”). The upbeat manifesto of Carausius reminds me of that Doctor Who episode, “The Pirate Planet”, where a suitably Buccaneering Blackbeardish figure is constantly

proclaiming a new Golden Age. Cue another chess link, K9, The Doctor’s robotic doggy friend, always defeated Tom Baker (my favourite Doctor) whenever they played chess. As for the prediction

of the birth of Christ in _Eclogue 4_, this can now be identified as mis-directed praise for a future Roman emperor who was not to be, neither a son of Octavian, nor indeed of Mark Antony,

but a daughter, ineligible to reign, according to the customs of the time. The great irony is that early Church Fathers, such as the influential Eusebius, who collected what he believed to

be pagan writings supporting the future nativity of Christ, and who was a close adviser to Constantine, evidently mistook Virgil’s words for a genuinely Messianic prediction. Virgil,

therefore, may have done just as much, if not more, to assist the official birth of the fledgling Christian Church under Constantine the Great, than he did for the original Empire of the

Caesars, the distant ancestors of the Czars and Kaisers to come. Even Queen Victoria finally got in on the act, to some extent avenging the memory of Julia and Antonia who could never accede

to imperium. In India, the likely birthplace of chess, Victoria was not a queen but Kaisar-i-hind, The Caesar of India. Although he did not answer the two questions, I am grateful to

Borges, lover of both chess and Latin, for providing a rich seam of mental stimulation during the forty-two years since I had the privilege of meeting and conversing with him. This week’s

game is a fabulous loss by the reigning king of chess, Magnus Carlsen, who succumbs to a spectacular queen sacrifice from a relatively obscure opponent.