Off to botany: Stoic in early spring

Leaves!

The wind blows some to the ground, lush forest makes others sprout when the time of spring comes.

Such is the human race: one prospers, the other perishes.” These verses from Homer's Iliad inspired the philosopher Marcus Aurelius—the main profession of Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD—to write a brief but particularly poignant reflection on impermanence of human existence.

"Only papers that carry your posthumous fame," writes the emperor.

"Because when the time of spring has come, the wind has blown it away too, and the forest lets something else sprout in its place."

Ulf von Rauchhaupt

Editor in the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

• Follow I follow

Antiquity apparently had a somewhat ambivalent relationship to spring.

The story of Persephone already shows this.

The daughter of the goddess of agriculture Demeter is forced to marry off into the underworld, whereupon her mother goes on strike in the upper world until Zeus intervenes, but can only arrange a compromise since the god of the underworld is his brother: Persephone only has to spend half the year with her nasty Spouse spend - but then it's just winter on earth.

Or the crocodile thing.

His Latin name is now given to a genus from the iris family, which has given us a lot of comfort in the last few days, which God knows we needed.

It was mainly the earliest flowering species,

, the fairy crocodile, whose delicate lilac flowers shone everywhere in the sunny cold.

Stoa and root children

For the Romans, however, Crocus was a youth who was killed by an unfortunate discus throw by the god Mercury - although there is exactly the same story of Apollo and the young Hyakinthos.

It is also said that the nymph Smilax fell in love with Crocus.

What exactly happened then and whether it was related to the divine misjudgment has not been satisfactorily reported.

Ovid only mentions that Crocus and Smilax were turned into "little flowers".

Smilax is the Greek word for plants like the field bindweed

, of which Pliny writes that its use in rites and in wreaths brings bad luck because of the sad memory of the nymph being transformed into such a plant because of her love for Crocus.

"Simple people often do not know this and have spoiled their festivals because they mistook the plant for ivy," writes the Roman.

The particular tragedy of the story of Crocus and Smilax may also be that their respective transformations did not leave them together like Philemon and Baucis once did, since the field bindweed only blossoms later in the year.

Whether one interprets the change of the seasons as the result of bickering among the gods and early, lonely fading as a result of immortal carelessness in handling sports equipment - there is always a moment of criticism, dissatisfaction and the idea that lasting flowering should be possible and a eternal summer too, if you please.

One can counter this like the stoic emperor and advise dispassionate acceptance of frailty.

But you can also think of it like Sibylle von Olfers did in her children's book classic "Something from the Root Children" from 1906. The illustrator celebrates the sheer presence of the moments in the course of the year with the help of a group of small creatures, which also call out in the most beautiful moments "Oh, if only it were always summer", but then, fed up with her experiences,