Sound stuff

" A sound mind in a sound body" is a phrase learnt at school, where one also discovers the Latin avatar of the aphorism: mens sana in corpore sano. It is taken from a famous wishlist written up by the Roman satirical poet Juvenal. It was part of the poet's answer in his Satire X to the question what people should desire in life.

The list and its many other desirables comes up during a visit to Antwerp to the house of celebrated 16th-century painter, Peter Paul Rubens.

The artist, greatly admired for his Baroque mythological and allegorical paintings, got Juvenal's list engraved on the triple-arched portico that led to an inner garden. Rubens also installed a massive marble of Hercules in the garden.

The hero who was half-man, half-god, taught men to believe in themselves and to honour their mortal portion without neglecting the immortal soul or anima. Juvenal's list on Rubens' wall reiterates that dictum: it asks us to "pray for a soul that lacks fear of death; that does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes that the labours of Hercules are better than the feasts of an Eastern king."

Rubens, who was also a renowned diplomat and a contemporary of Mughal emperor Abkar, knew the splendours of royal courts, eastern and western, at first hand. Yet, he fervently believed what Juvenal advised in his verses - that there is no shortcut to a tranquil life except through the footpath of virtue. This eschews the 'Royal' Highway of excess and greed. We forget these lessons of history only to repeat them, as the Occupy Wall Street movement shows.