For this week’s Music Monday, a rock original with Latin rhythms. For the background graphics of the North American desert, I borrowed a few clips from Dark Sun. Please check them out!

The song is basically a musical rant that invokes an obscure anecdote from the life of Julius Cæsar. When young, Cæsar was captured by pirates while visiting a Greek teacher of rhetoric. While waiting for the ransom from his family, Cæsar shared some of his poetry; the pirates ridiculed him. In anger, the young Roman vowed that after he was freed he would gather a flotilla, hunt down the pirates, and crucify them all.

The pirates laughed. Then, they received their ransom and let Cæsar go. Then … he fulfilled that promise.

“If I be” is in the subjunctive. The present subjunctive is rare in modern English, surviving largely in elevated rhetoric. Yet, when inspired to throw down a Latin rock song on revenge (especially one which references Cæsar’s interrupted rhetorical training) I decided that the phrase “if I be” made the best title, despite its unusual grammatical mood.