Elysian Fields (1/?)

[clodia_metelli]

Title: Elysian Fields (1/?): ego somno solutus sum
Author: clodia_metelli.
Rating: K+
Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley, probably Horsepeople and almost certainly various historical/infernal personages in later chapters.
Summary: It's 43 B.C. and Cicero is dead. He's not the only one. And as for where Aziraphale and Crowley have ended up, well, Heaven and Hell

Comments

[possibly_thrice]

MY SWEET CLODIA

YOU HAVE IN THIS SURPASSED MY WILDEST DREAMINGS

I think my favorite part's the combined reports, but I am not sure because this is so hard to select favorite parts out of.

Or maybe this insertion was it:

(“What? he was on your side too?” said Crowley. “Typical human, you can’t trust any of the buggers. No, I was just there to make sure he came to an unpleasant end. Well, you can’t go making deals with Hell and then living happily ever after. Standard policy. Didn’t you know?”)

In any case. MY LOVE IS STRONG AND PURE AND TRUE and my anticipation is Grate. <3 <3 <3

[clodia_metelli]

*BASKS HAPPILY*

even though I know you are maddened by sleep deprivation at this precise moment :'D

anyway MY ANTICIPATION IS GRATER <3 <3 <3

[possibly_thrice]

au contraire I am PERFECTLY ALERT

PERFECTLY

How come this is locked, by the way?

[clodia_metelli]

Oh you have broken through the SLEEP BARRIER and into the clear, crisp, hypervivid waters that lie beyond? BAD NEWS FOR TOMORROW, MISS.

and

eh

I was feeling uncertain about it and so locked it, at least for posting... may unlock it in a bit, if I reread it and like it enough.

[wormwood_7]

Heaven and hell have the bureaucracy in common if nothing else.
This is really intriguing. I hope you continue it.

Did Cicero really write a (lost?)book about Elysium? I can't visualise it somehow. I know Virgil did, but...

[clodia_metelli]

Yes, the bureaucracy joke's old enough to have its own manuscript tradition. :'D And I do hope to continue this! but how quickly, well, that's another matter...

Cicero didn't write anything specifically devoted to Elysium; but in the 50s BC he wrote a treatise called the De Republica modelled on Plato's Republic. Where Plato's dialogue ends on the Myth of Er, in which someone dies and then comes back from the dead to tell everyone what it's like down there, Cicero's version ends on the Somnium Scipionis, the Dream of Scipio, in which Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus Minor) dreams that his dead grandfather Africanus Maior comes to him in his sleep, accompanied by his natural father Paulus, and they tell him about cosmology and the heaven that awaits Good Citizens. Right up until 1822, the Somnium Scipionis and a handful of fragments was all that survived of the De Republica, but then a palimpsest was found, so now we have a decent amount of the first two books as well.

[wormwood_7]

Thank you for the info :) Very interesting. I have no doubt that Cicero saw himself occupying the position of Especially Good Citizen in the afterlife.

[clodia_metelli]

My pleasure! I did my MA dissertation on the De Republica, so I am delighted to share. :'D And I don't think there's anyone who would argue about where Cicero thought he stood in the grand scheme of things...