Summer Series: How Does Three Thousand Years Change a Person?
Can anyone who has lived that long think like us?
When we describe Philippe de Clermont as three thousand years old, it’s easy to treat the number as a measure of time. It tells us he has witnessed empires rise and fall, watched languages evolve, and lived through more history than any human being could imagine.
But numbers don’t really tell us what interests me most.
They don’t tell us how someone who has lived for three millennia would see the world.
That’s a much more difficult question.
One of the reasons Philippe feels so believable is that Deborah Harkness rarely uses his age to impress us. Instead, she lets us discover it through his perspective. He almost never reacts to events with the urgency of someone thinking about next week or next year. His instinct is always to step back, look farther ahead, and ask what today’s decisions will mean generations from now.
That way of thinking appears again and again in All Souls.
Philippe builds alliances that may not matter for decades. He invests in relationships before they become useful. He prepares Matthew, Baldwin, and the rest of the de Clermont family for futures they cannot yet imagine. Even when others are focused on immediate problems, Philippe is already considering what comes next.
It’s a remarkable contrast to the pace of modern life.
Most of us measure time in days, months, or perhaps the next stage of our lives. We make decisions based on careers, children, retirement, or the next few years. Philippe has the luxury, and the burden, of measuring time differently.
He thinks in centuries.
That way of seeing the world has surprisingly deep roots in the Homeric tradition.
Although The Odyssey tells the story of one man’s journey home, Homer constantly reminds his audience that every decision echoes across generations. Odysseus worries about the future of Telemachus. The reputation of fathers shapes the expectations placed upon sons. Houses rise and fall because of choices made long before the story begins. Memory extends beyond individual lives.
For the Greeks, immortality was rarely about living forever.
It was about being remembered.
The word kleos described the reputation that survived after death—the stories future generations would continue to tell about you. Heroes sought lasting honor because they knew their lives were finite. Their hope was that their names would outlive them.
Philippe presents us with a fascinating inversion of that idea.
He doesn’t need kleos to survive.
He survives.
What matters instead is whether the people and institutions he loves will endure alongside him. His concern is not his own memory but the future of the de Clermont family. Legacy, for Philippe, isn’t measured by stories told after his death. It’s measured by the generations he helps shape while he is still alive.
That shift explains something I’ve often wondered about Philippe.
He is remarkably patient.
Modern stories frequently celebrate decisive action. Philippe certainly acts when necessary, but he rarely rushes. He understands that some conflicts resolve themselves over decades, that relationships require time to mature, and that today’s setback may become tomorrow’s opportunity.
Three thousand years teaches patience in a way no ordinary lifespan can.
It also changes the meaning of loss.
Philippe has loved countless people, buried friends, watched civilizations disappear, and seen ideas once considered permanent quietly fade away. Yet he continues to invest in the future. He continues to build families, protect knowledge, and believe that some things are worth preserving.
That optimism may be one of his most remarkable qualities.
Deborah Harkness could have written an immortal character consumed by nostalgia, forever looking backward. Instead, Philippe remains surprisingly future-oriented. His deepest concern is not preserving the past exactly as it was, but ensuring that the values he believes matter most continue into the future.
Perhaps that’s the final connection to Homer.
Both The Odyssey and All Souls understand that the true measure of a life is not simply how long it lasts. It is what we leave behind.
For Odysseus, that meant restoring his household so the next generation could flourish.
For Philippe, it means preparing the de Clermont family to survive a future he may never completely control.
The centuries between them are vast.
The question they ask is the same.
What deserves to endure?
Read It Again
As you revisit Philippe’s scenes, notice how often he speaks about the future rather than the past. Although he carries three thousand years of memory, his attention is almost always focused on what comes next - Matthew’s future, Diana’s role, the de Clermont family, and the generations that will follow. His greatest gift may not be immortality itself, but the patience to think beyond a single lifetime.