social commentary
There's a rich history of poetry serving as social commentary, intended to inspire calls to action.
Dictators
Here is a translation apposite to our times from the Roman historian Sallust: Lucius Catiline, born of noble origin, had great vigor of mind and body, but a wicked and perverse disposition. From adolescence, he rejoiced in internecine wars, murders, robberies, and civil discord, and he exercised his youth in these pursuits. Physically, he could tolerate hunger, exhaustion, and sleeplessness beyond what anyone could believe. His mind was reckless, devious, and changeable, simulating and dissimulating whatever it chose, coveting the goods of others, extravagant with its own, avaricious in its desires, adequate enough at speaking, but wholly inadequate at thinking.His vulgar mind continually longed for extravagant things, unbelievable things, things that were grandiose beyond measure. After the dictatorship of Lucius Sulla, he invaded with the most extreme lust of capturing the state, nor did he have the slightest compunction about the means by which he would do this, so long as it would secure rule for him. His insolent spirit was driven more and more by lack of financial resources and by the common knowledge of his crimes, and both of these were exacerbated by the practices I mentioned above. What is more, those practices stimulated the character of the degenerate populace, which was plagued by the most vile and contrary evils—extravagance and avarice.
By William Alfred2 years ago in Poets
