Alea Iacta Est
In later life, my father became a religious extremist.
No, not Taliban, not Jihadist, nor devotee of Islamic State, Boko Haram or any of the other zealots we hear so much about on the news nowadays.
What I mean is, he was a fully paid-up, mainline, hard-core, born-again Christian.
He didn’t just believe in Jesus and his teachings as laid out in the New Testament; he also considered everything he read in the Old Testament to be literally true. To him, Eve really was persuaded by the serpent to take fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and share it with Adam in disobedience to God’s command. He believe in the Fall of Man due to this Original Sin which has cast an evil shadow over every human being born since. Even me.
Perhaps, in his eyes, especially me because I was born out of my parents’ lust and fornication. My mother had paid the ultimate penalty for her part in this sin by dying in childbirth.
As a consequence, my father chose to hide us away from society, and we became recluses. He bought a remote property in the Scottish Highlands and stocked it like a survivalist - creating his very own Garden of Eden.
He taught me to read and write; naturally my main textbook was the King James Version of The Holy Bible. But in earlier days, my father had been a Classics lecturer, and had all the famous volumes of tragedy, comedy, poetry, history and philosophy, in both Latin and Greek, and this too he imparted to me.
Obviously we had no internet access, telephone, TV or radio, and no electricity or mains water supply. When we weren’t cultivating the land and preserving the produce, we filled our days with reading. We lived a simple, frugal life for many years.
One day, my father, now using a cane and able to get around only with the greatest difficulty, lost his footing at the top of the stairs and experienced the Fall of Man in a very real and personal way. I buried him next to my mother’s memorial stone.
Having pondered deeply over the question of what to do next, I decided to head off and see if the world was as wicked as my father had maintained. I filled a backpack with all that I could carry and stood in the garden. With no compass or map to guide me, I simply chose a direction at random and set off.
Very soon, I came to a gently flowing stream. Although it bore no physical comparison to the River Rubicon, when I found stepping stones by which to cross, I was reminded of Julius Caesar’s famous words alea iacta est - the die is cast. I had always interpreted this to mean ‘I have made my decision’. But, standing on the other bank, I felt the great Roman general could just have well have been saying ‘Whatever happens now is down to luck’.