Thomas Campion Quotes
Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o'erflow with wine; Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine.
Campion, Thomas. The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres. Thomas Snodham, c. 1617.
This is a fascinating several day holiday in that it not only was a time of required merriment, but all parts of society participated and the normal inequities of Roman society were “reformed” and eliminated for the holiday period. Thus it acted as a safety valve. Consider the notion that such a holiday were celebrated in the slave-holding South. It would not be possible. Roman slavery was understood by all to be a matter of luck and circumstances. Often slaves were much better educated than their masters or better businessmen or soldiers. American slavery was much more hypocritical where the whites created an intellectual justification of the slavery by the inferiority of the Blacks. Giving slaves “equal rights” for a holiday would collapse the edifice they had created. So it took a war to collapse it.
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.
