i wish there wasn’t such a stigma around being proved wrong, bc it’s a part of life, no one can be right all the time. if we didn’t feel as much shame about it i think a lot of things would change a lot faster
we all need to practice saying “I hadn’t thought of it like that” “I hadn’t seen it that way before” “I must have misunderstood the first time I heard about it” “if I had known those facts I wouldn’t have thought like I did”
Okay, it’s official. I’ve found my favourite historical anecdote of all time.
So in ancient Rome they had this tradition where they had to consult the gods and check they had divine approval before they went into battle. They did this by bringing forth a flock of sacred chickens and throwing grain at them. Their behaviour would then determine whether or not the gods were on your side. If the hens didn’t eat or wouldn’t leave their cage, it was a Bad Omen and you had to postpone battle and ask again the next day. If the chickens ate happily it was a Good Omen and you could go and chop up some Gauls or Carthaginians or whoever you happened to be fighting.
Now, there are lots of little stories about these chickens, but I just found one I hadn’t seen before. In 137 BC, the consul C. Hostilius Mancinus tried to take auspices before battle, but:
the chickens once released from their cage fled into a nearby wood and even though they were sought with the greatest diligence, they could not be recovered.
Can you fucking believe that. Can you actually believe that happened. The Romans have a reputation for being so stern and sensible and stoic and that happened. Like… everyone’s ready for battle, so you turn to your assistant and say “BRING FORTH THE CHICKENS” and you throw down the grain and open up their cage and the chickens just. run. they fucking run. those tiny velociraptor bastards abscond screaming into the woods like there’s no tomorrow. Blinking in disbelief, you send soldiers into the woods to recover them but those feathered bandits are gone. Vanished. The gods have deserted you. You’re beating bushes and following the sounds of triumphant clucks. The soldiers are frantic. The chickens are gone.
He lost the battle. It was a Bad Omen.
That sounds like the ultimate Bad Omen like at that point you go home and start drawing up an armistice bc the gods told you to go fuck yourself with chickens
That’s… pretty much what happened. The chicken omen, along with a few other Bad Omens, resulted in:
infelici pugna, turpi foedere, deditione funesta
“a lost battle, a shameful peace treaty, and a calamitous handover.”
so yeah, he lost the battle and had to go home and sign an embarrassing peace treaty that the Romans complained about years later, and when they talk about him they curse him for his praecipitem audaciam – “reckless audacity” – and vesana perseverantia “insane obstinacy” because NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU’D LISTENED TO THE CHICKENS AND POSTPONED BATTLE LIKE THEY TOLD YOU.
Don’t forget naval commander Claudius Pulcher, whose sacred chickens refused to eat anything before the battle of Drepana. He tossed the chickens overboard, saying if they won’t eat, then let them drink, and went into battle where he promptly lost almost all of his ships and crew. I forget if he died or returned to Rome in disgrace, but it was a freaking disaster and the sacred chickens called it.
I’m not sure which phrase in this post is my favorite, “bring forth the chickens” or “this would have never happened if you listened to the chickens.”
What about Pulcher’s line: “Bibant, quoniam esse nolunt!” – They can drink if they won’t eat! – after which the sacred chooks went swimming.
I bet the spreading news of what he’d done ruined the morale of his entire fleet and went a long way towards why he lost the battle. Men who think their commander has offended the gods aren’t going to fight well on his behalf, in case the gods spread their offended wrath around. (If I remember my “Myths of Ancient Greece and Rome” correctly, the Olympian lot tended to do that a lot.)
AFAIK when Pulcher* returned to Rome in disgrace the Senate immediately tried him for impiety (a Senatorial message to the gods that they didn’t approve of him either) then banished him to exile where he died soon after.
Moral: don’t be horrid to the holy hens.
(*For the second time in this post, spell-checker wanted me to spell his name as “Pucker”. Appropriate, I suppose. Go figure.)
“The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle or who, feeling fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate of the Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy. It is also the reflection in woman’s consciousness of the fact that she is under surveillance in ways that he is not, that whatever else she may become, she is importantly a body designed to please or to excite.”
one of the more valuable things I’ve learned in life as a survivor of a mentally unstable parent is that it is likely that no one has thought through it as much as you have.
no, your friend probably has not noticed they cut you off four times in this conversation.
no, your brother didn’t realize his music was that loud while you were studying.
no, your bff or S.O. doesn’t remember that you’re on a tight deadline right now.
no, no one else is paying attention to the four power dynamics at play in your friend group right now.
a habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every little detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight….it’s all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t do that. I’m not saying everyone else is oblivious, I’m saying the over analysis of minor nuances is a habit of abuse.
I have a rule: I do not respond to subtext. This includes guilt tripping, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, etc. I see it. I notice it. I even sometimes have to analyze it and take a deep breath and CHOOSE not to respond. Because whether it’s really there or just me over-reading things that actually don’t mean anything, the habit of lending credence to the part of me that sees danger in the wrong shift of body weight…that’s toxic for me. And dangerous to my relationships.
The best thing I ever did for myself and my relationships was insist upon frank communication and a categorical denial of subtext. For some people this is a moral stance. For survivors of mentally unstable parents this is a requirement of recovery.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 