Poem by MG King /
“quod enim genus figurae est, ego non quod obierim?
ego mulier, ego adulescens, ego ephebus, ego puer”
I. Iunia bullata
Long before he was a tyrant killer,
he was begotten of a most strange paradox:
Brutus, born in the shadow of Lucius,
first was Iunia haunted by homonymy,
possessed by the perpetual dictatorship of a name.
Behind her, light was cast by something great,
that ever-binding mos maiorum,
that unspoken legal covenant around her outline,
etching lines onto the cave wall,
never straying from what she was to be when she was born.
Nine days after this,
a shade descended upon the earth, clutching the back of an eagle,
and it placed around her neck a bulla,
and it placed onto their head a chaplet of laurel,
and it placed into his hands a penchant for playing make-believe.
Nine days after his birth,
long before he was to fall upon his sword,
he became Marcus Iunius Brutus,
beloved of Mars, born into conspiracy,
and became the shadow of Lucius.
II. Marcus lacerans
Long before he was to mutilate triumvirs,
he was Attis under the pine, mutilating himself,
holding a dagger to his chest,
slowly and secretly and all on his own,
sixteen and struggling to put on his toga virilis.
He was meant to be a savior,
but now he is Marcus,
plagued by the vice of an inverted Elagabalus,
playing a man as skillfully disguised as Clodius,
far from the woman he was born to be.
His mother would have helped Iunia set on her shoulders a stola,
but now “Marce” rolls off her tongue like anathema,
and now she whispers in his ear,
hands not deigning to disturb the woolen burden,
“No matter what, you’ll always be my little girl.”
III. Marcus qui laceratus est
“You are now much more of a man than I, Octavi,”
he would say to the soon-to-be-divine,
the soon-to-be-august fabricator of a different sort,
“Look now at the hairs which grow above your lips,
lips to deceive and turn brick to marble.”
Brutus would remain bare-faced until he was burnt,
the wound he left on Philippi cauterized,
until Antony ran his fingers through the ashes,
until Octavian, with half a heart, apologized to his bones,
until nature stood up to speak to the world.
IV. Iunius togatus
But when he was Iunia, he was a thrashing, confused child,
held fast in Servilia’s arms,
and at least for a few years she smiled,
for she did not have to pretend to see that thing as a boy,
nor as a man she had no intention of raising.
MG King is a first-year on Colgate Swim & Dive who plans on majoring in Classics and English. His free time, unsurprisingly, is spent thinking about maritime disasters, appreciating the works of William Shakespeare, and arguing with strangers on the internet about Roman history.
