2A/N: Everything in this essay is mine, and I reserve the right to beat anyone who steals it.
The Forgotten Muse
Many of the most famous stories are told, not written. In the world of the ancient Romans, there were no books to read as we have today, but instead they had stories, told verbally in the form of plays and songs. In educating themselves, the Romans used many Greek styles, as well as information gathered from around the world.
The Romans were story tellers, rewriting history and taking their gods and traditions from other societies that can before them. As they did this, they conquered the ancient world, becoming the most successful empire since Egypt.
Roman emperors wrote of their mighty conquests, poets wrote of lost love, orators wrote compelling speeches, most of which are still read today. But what did the Romans read? They read the histories of the Greeks, stories of gods and heroes, stories of two brothers whose quarrel have rise to the greatest empire to ever exist.
Knowlegde is power, and the Romans were highly aware of this fact. Their works have survived the test of time; their stories of war, love, and victory are still with us today, giving us a beautiful glimpse into the mysterious world of the Romans.
Bene legere saecula vincere. The bold statement even applies to itself. "To read well is to have conquered the ages," is a concept that is still discussed today. This quote is sure to have been read and known by thousands of people throughout history, and it has truly conquered the ages.
Where would our society be without the aid of history, which has to be written or spoken by someone? Our Roman ancestors brought with them the age of learning, the first true age of enlightenment. It started in Greece, but the Romans had the motivation and the military power to spread it to the whole of the ancient world.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the world fell into the Dark Ages, and knowledge and reason were all but lost to chaos. As humanity emerged from the dark, we went through a dramatic transformation, comparable to the Allegory of the Cave by Plato.
Humanity was once again immersed in the arts, writing their stories for the world to read and hear, just as the Romans had done. We only have a small fraction of time in this world, and it is human nature to want to tell the rest of the world our stories, our thoughts, our inner muses.
In the mythology of the ancient Greeks, the Muses were the goddesses of the arts. They represented the beauty in man, what man could create with his own mind. Humanity in its most basic form is the last Muse, the tenth Muse that the Greeks never wrote great works about.
But the Greeks did write about this forgotten Muse. In the stories they told, stories of mortal heroes, they glorified humanity, and forever left their mark on the world.
No man is more powerful than what he says. Words, spoken or read, hold a power greater than any man.
Words have truly conquered the ages.
A/N: This was an essay for the Junior Classical League, i.e. the national Latin society. We haven't found out who won, but I doubt this did, considering what it's up against.
However, I'm extremely proud of this. I put a lot of thought into this, and it paid off in the form of a great essay.
The maximum was five hundred words, and the essay itself is exactly five hundred words. However, I edited this version just a bit, so this copy is probably just over five hundred.
Thanks for taking the time to read this; I really appreciate it.
Now critique me.
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