excathedras

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“it is said also that he [crassus] was well versed in history,  and was something of a philosopher withal,  attaching himself to the doctrines of aristotle,  in which he had alexander [cornelius] as a teacher.  this man gave proof of contentedness and meekness by his intimacy with crassus;  for it is not easy to say whether he was poorer before or after his relations with his pupil“ 

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forgive .

     sentences from gnash’s song ‘forgive’. trigger warnings apply.

“ i know you’re mad. ”

“ i know you’re mad when you can’t look me in the eyes.”

“ i need you better”

“ when you say nothing it’s like you’ve stuck a knife in my side ”

“ i know the feeling. ”

“ i know the feeling, it’s not easy being stuck with me tonight. ”

“ it’s not easy being stuck with me tonight. ”

“ to make things right, these things take time. ”

“ these things take time. ”

“ hold me. ”

“ i’m holding onto you for dear life. ”

“ i never know the words to say. ”

“ i never know the words to say, but you forgive me anyway. ”

“ we both know i’m the reason you cry. ”

“ do you need a break? ”

“ do you need some space? ”

“ do you need to change your mind-ways? ”

“ should i get away? ”

“ i’m afraid if i change you won’t look at me the same. ”

“ i wanna be your only shoulder when you have a bad day. ”

“ we’ve been arguing more than what we usually do. ”

“ i know i deserve what you’re putting me through. ”

“ if you mean what you say, and you want to me to go —”

“ if that’s what you want. ”

“ i want you to know that i’ll stay the night if that’s alright. ”

“ i’ll stay the night. ”

“ i’ll stay the night to make things right. ”

“ hold me ‘til the day that i die ”

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carry ! for crassus minor & meto.

one  word  prompts

     IN  HINDSIGHT,  CRASSUS  MINOR  realises as he takes a woozy meto in his arms,  it might have been better to take meto to the physician than his own tent.  alas,  marcus had hardly known anything was the matter until he saw meto’s knees buckle.  he dove to grab him,  awkwardly snatching him out of the air before either of them could crumple in the mud.  he had looked around uncomfortably as he breathed before pulled meto into his arms.  it was dark,  the camp was silent,  with only sentries calmly milling about.  perhaps it was marcus’s lone judgement that had him heading to his own tent.

       he is careful to be ginger when he stoops down to rest him on his bed,  not minding the dirt on the secretary’s sandals as he covers him with his own blanket.  marcus goes to the metal carafe and pours a shallow cup of water,  thinking that keeping this quiet might be best for the time being.  to say that meto is the hardest worker in camp is not to discredit the methods of the soldiers or generals.  some might say,  crassus minor might say,  that he works too hard.  and now it finally shows.  though perhaps it isn’t tactful to let everyone see,  and marcus won’t let that be his decision to make.

       “when is the last time you have had water,  or wine,  or,  gods forbid, a meal?”  marcus demands quietly as he pulls a stool over to sit beside meto,  handing him the cup.  “no,  no,  actually don’t answer that.”  the quaestor reaches over and presses the back of his hand to meto’s forehead before trying his jugular.  “you’re burning up...”  poor thing.  

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@audaciiae.  (  x  )

“Stop.”

Camilla’s voice is sharp, cutting through the silence that lays heavy between them. She stands there in the doorway of the living room, a frown on her face. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like when Charles speaks like this because it means he’s been drinking, and…nothing good ever comes from it.

She takes a step back, swallows hard. Her heart pounds in her chest, hands shaking at her side, but she balls them into fists and shoves them into the pockets of her skirt. “I do love you, Charles. You’re my brother…but you’ve done things that makes me trust you less.” How can I ever trust you again? “If you would stop doing this to me, then maybe I could love you like I did when we were younger, but that’s entirely on you, not me.”

     A  MILD  VERTIGO  HOLDS  charles tightly as if pulling him in circles through a pool of water.  his head spins slowly as he stares down at the dusty persian rug with bits of broken glass on the ochre tassels.  he imagines himself squinting up at the ceiling light to see his vision is kaleidoscopic.  he leans back in his armchair,  his hand holding his crystal glass hanging from the arm.  a slow sigh surrenders from his lungs and he dreads inhaling again.  

       “i’ve made mistakes,”  his heart wrings painfully in his throat. he lifts his glass to gesture at her.  “and maybe you don’t trust me because of them,  but all you’ve done is give me a reason not to trust you either.”  his rheumy gaze leaves her to lay on the rug.  “how the fuck am i supposed to know what’s real anymore?  i can’t trust you to help me out of this.  just leave and be done with me.”  charles sets the glass,  half - empty,  on the wooden end table beside him and pushes himself up from the armchair,  staggering as he does. 

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“I don’t want to know.” @ antony

fleetwood  mac

     ANTONY’S  LIPS  TWIST  INTO a wiry smile from where they had almost been formed around the preamble of his latest excursion.  in his defense,  whatever caesar had been imagining he would say was surely not as bad as reality,  but antony decides to bide his insubordination for another,  more pressing,  time.  “alright,”  he concedes.  “i’ll keep my secrets.”  he pours himself a cup of strong wine and drinks it,  hardly tasting it before it quenches him and calms his body from the long march to caesar’s position north by northeast to quarter east. 

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  some  one  word  prompts .    (    send   one   of   the   words   for   our   muses   to   interact   based   off   that   word   )

goodbye :  my  muse  kissing  and/or  hugging  your  muse  goodbye.

secrets :   my  muse  sharing/confiding  their  deepest,  darkest  secret  with  your  muse.

nightmare :   my  muse  coming  to  your  muses  aid  when  they  awake  from  a  nightmare.

push :   my  muse  pushing  your  muse  out  of  the  way  of  danger.

embrace :   my  muse  abruptly  throwing  their  arms  around  your  muse,  hugging  them  tightly.

bloody :   my  muse  coming  to  your  muse  with  blood  stains  on  their  clothes  and  hands,  shaking.

drunk :   my  muse  takes  care  of  your  muse  while  they  are  in  a  drunken  state.

bed :   my  muse  wakes  up  in  the  same  bed  as  your  muse  with  little  recollection  of  the  night  before.

slap :   my  muse  slaps  your  muse  across  the  face  out  of  anger.

gone :   my  muse  stays  by  your  muses  side  while  they  take  their  last  breath.

scream :   my  muse  hears  your  muse  scream  and  quickly  runs  to  their  side.

sleep :   my  muse  falls  asleep  on  your  muse,  making  it  hard  for  my  muse  to  leave.

stalk :   my  muse  gets  caught  by  your  muse  trailing  behind  them,  watching  them.

sacrifice :   my  muse  jumps  in  front  of  your  muse,  sacrificing  their  life  for  your  muses  life.

trail :   my  muse  watches  as  your  muse  traces  one  of  my  muses  scares,  asking  them  about  it.

love :   my  muse  confronts  your  muse  about  why  they  never  say  ’ i  love  you ’  back.

piggyback :   my  muse  jumps  on  your  muses  back,  my  muse  gives  yours  a  piggyback  ride.

jump :   my  muse  runs  to  your  muse  and  jumps  up,  my  muse  holding  yours  up  by  their  thighs.

dance :   my  muse  holds  their  hand  out,  waiting  for  your  muse  to  come  out  and  slow  dance  with  them.

carry :   my  muse  carries  your  muse  to  their  house,  either  drunk,  or  a  weakened  state,  can  specify. 

lighter :   my  muse  pulls  out  a  lighter  and  lights  it  for  your  muse  to  use  to  light  their  cigarette.

shot :   my  muse  gets  shot  and  struggles  to  your  muses  house  for  aid.

wound :   my  muse  patches  and  bandages  a  wound  your  muse  has  gotten.

fight :   my  muse  stops  your  muse  from  getting  into  a  physical  fight  with  someone  else.

arrest :   your  muse  finds  my  muse  arrested  in  cuffs  with  swarming  police  everywhere.

hospital :   my  muse  awakens  in  a  hospital,  finding  your  muse  by  their  side,  asking  what  happened.

gun :  my  muse  pulls  out  a  gun  on  your  muse,  your  muse  tries  to  talk  them  into  putting  the  gun  down. 

betrayal :  my  muse  finds  out  that  your  muse  has  betrayed  them  in  same  way  and  confronts  them  about  it.

nude :  my  muse  walks  in  on  your  muse  accidentally  seeing  them  naked.

karaoke :  my  muse  pulls  your  muse  up  on  stage  with  them  to  sing  some  karaoke  songs. 

laughter :   my  muse  hears  your  muse  laughing  uncontrollably  and  approaches  to  see  if  they  are  okay.

murder :   my  muse  walks  in  on  your  muse  committing  a  gruesome  murder.

wet :   my  muse  strips  down  to  their  under  garments  and  runs  into  the  water,  motioning  for  your  muse  to  join  them.

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i  cannot  MAKE  you  understand.  i  cannot  make  ANYONE  understand  what  is  happening  inside  me.  i cannot  even  explain  it  to  MYSELF.

indie , highly selective , GREGOR  SAMSA  from kafka’s  the  metamorphosis.

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     MARCUS  HAD  BEEN  ONE  of the furthest along the grape vine,  and yet he still had heard about the altercation between his father and caesar,  and ultimately meto,  that had quietly sent crassus back rome  ( and raging into the face of his eldest son,  who clutched his summons as his father screamed,  reducing him from a nobleman of thirty years to a child. ).  the assortment of cuts and bruises on meto’s face only confirms the truth,  though crassus minor cannot tell was mark was caused by his father’s rapacious hand.  still,  he would believe the tale even if meto was unmarred ;  crassus is a great serpent who constricts anything and anyone of their worth and swallows their capital whole,  down into his pit of a belly.  as his own blood,  marcus has yet to see his greed deterred by anything.

       he tries not to stare at meto,  sitting stiffly and busying his hands with organising his parchment,  taking his pen,  dabbing it in the ink.  the sound alone was enough to transport him back to that red - tiled veranda out in the garden,  sitting with his brother on cushions and listening half - heartedly to lessons on grammar and geometry while meto listened along with them.  he had been much different then,  of course.  his short hair accentuated his scrawniness,  the smoothness of his skin revealing a face teetering on the edge of malnourishment.  he hadn’t the strength to speak up for himself,  let alone grant people permission to sit in his presence.  his lips twitch with discomfort as he remembers reaching over and snapping meto’s stylus,  snickering as crassus reprimanded him for his mathematical errors,  

       “publius?”  the laughter sputters from his chest before he can think to stop it.  he has been compared to his brother for his whole life,  usually to expose the shortcomings and disappointments of marcus himself  (  ‘a more sensitive disposition’ is what his mother calls it.  ),  but such a comparison was the last thing he would have expected from meto,  due to their strained history.  “no,  no;  warring and marauding are his delights,  not mine.  i....well,  i am more interested in other pursuits.”  chiefest of them,  at the moment,  is laundering finances and properties from his own father.  crassus minor is an unremarkable man,  but his knowledge is formidable,  and his ideas threatening,  and caesar has a use for such a mind,  even if it is embedded in the head of another crassus.  he shifts in his chair and quiets.  he isn’t sure if meto is aware enough of the hidden small fortunes within the transactions between crassus and caesar that are so easily overlooked in the ledgers and manifests,  and crassus minor is not in the practise of detailing his own criminality aloud.  resting his hands in his lap,  he changes the subject.

       “i must say,  though,  you surprised me just as much,”  marcus gestures at meto.  “it is good to see you flourishing here.”

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Spartacus | Stanley Kubrick | 1960

Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, Nina Foch

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am i an old hollywood ballerina yet

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i will write soonish this week but i’m super busy with schoolwork and yearning. im coming at you live to say that marcus antonius is ridiculously sexy

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Anthony Perkins, 1959

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how come caesar can come back as a ghost but crassus can’t come back as a ghost who makes quips in the back benches of the senate and makes you find a tenner in your pants pocket and carries his head around

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@theophanie.

     HE’S  BEEN  PREPARED  FOR  THIS,  for confrontation,  for a while now,  a few days less than a fortnight.  the summons came on a blustery fall evening,  and with them a name mentioned in caesar’s letter that sounded unsettlingly familiar in his mind.  it gnawed at the fringes of crassus minor’s memory as if he were trying to recall a holiday from years ago,  trying to make faces of names,  people from neat scrawl on a damp piece of parchment.  

       frustrated,  it led him to rifle through his father’s accounts,  flipping through years of ledgers and guestbooks,  scanning through endless lines of meticulous penmanship detailing every household matter from the counts of feathers in pillowcases to outputs of silver mines in africa.  he found the name in the manifest of slaves,  and suddenly a deluge of memories returned to him,  permeated by grammar lessons and the afternoon sun coming in the atrium,  and the awkward exchange of glances as dinner was served.

       years away from his family have re - carved marcus from entirely different stone,  leaving him chronically humiliated by the disposition of his former fallen state and its constant reminder that lived on in his father and younger brother.  constantly,  he reveals that dreadful shame,  in some never - ending emotional prostration to remedy what he can never remedy.  and yet,  in a way,  marcus is glad that shame is the worst he has to live with.  it is a luxury he knows that others cannot indulge in.

       still,  it curls in his stomach,  makes his hands clammy and his eyes flighty as he sits in warm tent,  longing for the brisk freeze outside to calm him.  just as he thinks it,  a gust of air sighs through the opening.  crassus minor stands to greet him.  he would recognise his face anywhere.  “meto,”  he says,  trying to be kind but he fears that he comes across perhaps a little strangled.  “i hope you’ve been well.”

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