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Hopeful Assassins of Zeno
Songs for pierre chuvin

Album

Songs for Pierre Chuvin

Released

April 10, 2020

Length

3:15

Previous Track

"January 31, 438"

Next Track

"Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons"

Hopeful Assassins Of Zeno Lyrics

Original lyric sheet for "Hopeful Assassins of Zeno," courtesy of Reddit.

Hopeful Assassins of Zeno is the seventh song on Songs for Pierre Chuvin.

Lyrics[]

Get tired of coming in from the mountains every year
Find some place to set up shop around here
Spread out a little, circulate
A log that floats down river
Will certainly take on weight

Meet some people, make some friends
How long till we get sent back to the mountains?
It all depends

On the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful

Get familiar with affairs of state
Foretell the future
Get a pretty good success rate
Notch some wins, take some losses
Be nice to the guys who wear necklaces with crosses
They will stab you in the back

You gotta turn the other cheek
You gotta learn to love Jesus, so to speak

Like the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful

Real filthy, think about getting clean
Even hear the soldiers talk about it, down at the canteen
Little kings keep coming, one another's head
Which is exactly how the portents read
Watch with wonder
Fail to discern
These people never learn
How long until the snake devours its tail?
Longer than we think

Still it's gotta happen sometime
Until then, raise a drink

To the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "This is a song about, um, not ancient Rome, ancient is, like, pre-zero, this is a little later than that. This is about a time when -- well. The young Church, which turns out to be the Catholic Church... didn't really have a name yet... The Christians are beginning to accumulate power and they're suppressing what we've now called the pagans, which is kind of not exactly a slur but it's not really a useful term, pagan, um, but uh, but all the people practiced whatever religion they were practicing before the Christians came around, right. And, uh, and they would show up in a country and say "well, the Christians are here, it's time for us all to be Christians." And, uh, but the people who they called pagans were not dumb, they would go, these guys have a lot of power... play it cool. And a number of them would do covert action, right. Show up at the church, believe, believe every word you say, absolutely. Plotting, plotting for the moment that like, that like, the actual emperor would leave, right, and now all that's left are his chumps and then we can kill these people and be rid of these nuisances, right. So this is uh, this is about, uh, one of these moments, and it's called 'Hopeful Assassins of Zeno'." -- 2022-08-19 - Brooklyn Arts Center - Wilmington, NC

Things Referenced in this Song[]

  • See Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, pp. 95-98.

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]


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