Page 14 of Broken Beauty (Beauty 3)
“This isn’t an issues class. I do expect you to stay up to date with what’s happening in the political sphere…and catch yourself up if for some reason you haven’t been following the news for the past five years. But I’m not going to tell you how to feel about euthanasia or whether you should support a candidate who smoked pot. That’s your job to figure out, as a citizen and as esteemed graduates of this program. This class is about giving you the means to convey those feelings and your support. The language. The tools.”
Another pause, and in any other class, there would be shuffling as students turned, disinterested, to their phones. Instead, there was only thoughtful silence. Erin found herself thinking as well. What tools did she have? Responsibility as a citizen…those were strong words, but he said them without rancor or judgment. With a certain sense of trust, as if he believed that a bunch of hungover college students really would come up with the right answers on their own.
“What’s your name?” he asked one of the boys across from her.
“Uh, Allen.”
“Allen, can you read the first paragraph of the first chapter please?”
Pages rustled as everyone flipped open to the right page. The chapter heading said, PRECEDENT.
Allen read aloud, “A precedent is an earlier event or action regarded as an example or guide to be considered in similar circumstances or a principle established in a previous situation that may be applied to subsequent cases with similar circumstances.”
“Hmm,” Blake said. “That’s a perfectly whitewashed definition, but I think we can do better than that. Anyone want to give it a try?”
The room was quiet. Blake waited.
Finally Jeremy spoke up from beside her. “It’s a way of explaining current behavior based on something that happened in the past.”
“Excellent. Framing the present using the past. What’s the benefit of doing this?”
“If something was true then, then it holds that it will be true again,” another student supplied.
“Using the past as context. Good.”
“Consistency,” a surly-faced boy said. “Rules are established and then followed.”
“Yes. Right. What else?” When no one answered, he continued, “Why is precedent such an important tool that they put it front and center, first chapter in the textbook?”
Erin looked down at the glossy white pages with stark-black ink. A few sentences had been highlighted from the previous owner. There was a lot of small text but nothing to give her a clue as to why this was first—or even important at all.
Blake seemed to settle in, resting his elbows on the chair back in front of him.
“There was a time that no one could match the power of Rome,” he began. “One who came close was Carthage, with its advantageous trade position and well-developed culture. Unfortunately, the Romans considered the Carthaginians to be savages and a threat to their way of life. Or so they claimed. In truth they simply wanted the wealth of Carthage. So, following an inspection of the city and surrounding countryside, a Roman commission reported to the Senate ‘an abundance of ship-building materials’ and claimed the Carthaginians had built up their fleet in violation of the treaty.”
Blake paused his story and reached back to take a sip of water. That moment of quiet seemed to give the girl across from Erin courage.
“You’re slanting it,” she blurted out. As thirty faces turned to her, she blushed, looking like she wanted to take it back.
Blake turned to her too, unoffended. “How so?” he asked mildly.
“You’re telling us their motivations, that the Romans really just wanted their wealth, but you don’t know that. Maybe they believed the other people were a threat.”
“Maybe so. And that’s a benefit of history, we can look inside their private writings and their memoirs. We can get a firmer grasp of what they thought outside their public speeches. Unlike current events, where all we have is the public view.”
“Another benefit of precedent,” Erin said under her breath.
He flashed her a quick smile. “Yes. Exactly. Now the Carthaginians knew they were going to get their asses handed to them.” One of the boys snickered at the language here. Blake continued. “So they pleaded with the senate, swearing that they were not in violation of the treaty, promising that they would surrender without a fight.
“So the clever Romans came up with three challenges. On the first, they requested three hundred sons from the noble families as captives. Carthage sent them over in a ship. For the second challenge, they demanded that Carthage send them armor and weaponry. Carthage complied. When it came time for the final challenge, the diplomat explained to the Carthaginians that they would need to move their city, the buildings, everything, ten miles to the left.”
Someone snorted. “Why?”
“The location near the sea had corrupted Carthage’s temperament,” Blake said. “At least according to the commissioner.”
Quiet laughs of disbelief rang out in the small room. It was ridiculous, and yet it was real. History.
“Here Carthage had no choice but to refuse. Imagine moving a whole infrastructure ten miles to the left. It was impossible. Clearly Rome was looking for an excuse to invade and steal their resources.”
