Tools of a Trade
It might be a bit of a stretch but there are similarities between my Friend Baxter and Hannah Arendt's exemplar of a virtuous public servant, Cato the Elder. A somewhat random and possibly a confusing offering that may require an explanation of Scipio's role in the Second Punic War. Worth remembering this was the Roman Republic, not that bowl, indeed bowel of gruel and vice Rome became after it had allowed Julius Caesar following his victories in Gaul and Britannia to effectively engage in a date rape at home. Two hundred or so years prior to that depressing event, Scipio was a new wave sort of chap, exactly the sort of Roman who gave Cato the creeps. Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca of Carthage, Rome's opponent in the Second Punic War may have been more like Cato. You don't take your Elephants across the Alps, along with your breakfast table, storytellers, a parrot, and your mistresses, unless you're fundamentally a conservative sort of chap, which may well have been why Cato who was pretty much terrified of Carthage had convinced himself that Rome's chosen champion, Publius Cornelius Scipio, was far too weak minded and cretinous to stand a chance against The Carthaginians. In the end it might have done the Roman Republic a massive favor if Hannibal had wiped the floor with Scipio, cutout the hero worship of Emperors, this tragic, weak-kneed search for populist saviors. The Punic Wars maybe a niche subject, and granted a very few of us have been subjected to the warped punishment of having to study History of the Roman Republic while in detention, but amongst those of us who've had that rare privilege, a very few of us had risked further punishment by vocally supporting Hannibal in the detention room, and while most of us could have happily garroted Cato the Elder a very few of us, the more imaginative ones perhaps, were devastated when we heard that Scipio had defeated Hannibal.
