More epitaphs

Heffers, usually an excellent bookshop, went a bit mad with my ordering Volume II of the Greek Anthology – it seems that ordering only one volume of something is deeply suspect behaviour, and thus their computer system won’t really do it. In any case, my book finally arrived, so here are a couple of poems that I like.

A. You died of drinking too much, Anacreon.

B. Yes, but I enjoyed it, and you who do not drink will come to Hades too.

GA. 7.33, by Julianus, Prefect of Egypt

Androtion built me for himself, his children and his wife. As yet, I am no one’s grave and so may I remain for long; but if it must be so, may I give earlier welcome to the earlier born.

GA. 7.228, Anonymous

 

Tunisian mosaics

Taking advantage of some boredom time to post a few photos from my trip to Tunisia. I have so many photos, that I thought I’d just do one theme at a time. Today’s theme, mosaics. Now, I was never that excited by mosaics – but in Africa, where wall-painting was rare, the Romans made the most beautiful and intricate mosaics I have ever seen by a long way. Here are a few of my favourites from the Bardo Museum and the museum at El Jem.

(My friends are there to show the scale of this thing…)

This is the portrait of Virgil, a really famous African mosaic.

I think the final two (both at El Jem) might just be my favourites!

 

Epitaph poetry

I’ve been told off for not keeping my blog up, so I’m going to make an early New Year’s resolution to do a bit better. (I know I’ve been saying that for several months, but I mean it this time!)

So, this week I’ve been working on Greek epitaphic poetry. One of the earliest known Western literary genres is epitaph- almost as soon as writing came to Greece, people started to use writing as well as images on gravestones to commemorate their loved ones. Many of these epitaphs were written in hexameter or elegiac verse, even if they were only one or two lines long. Rather later, writing epitaphs seems to have become a virtuoso display for Hellenistic poets, in particular – they would write epitaphs for fictional people and fictional graves, or even for famous people long dead. In a way, it’s a very restricted genre – it’s short, and needs some essential information, like the name of the deceased, to be included. But on another level, that’s the challenge. What really strikes me about literary epitaphs (read the Loeb Greek Anthology, Volume II, if you’re interested) is the massive range of reactions which a single life can inspire – and the poets play up to that.

I have a favourite literary epitaph I’d like to share with you. This is Book 7.176 in the Loeb Greek Anthology.

Not because I lacked a funeral when I died do I lie here, a naked corpse on wheat-bearing land. Duly was I buried once on a time, but now by the ploughman’s hand the iron share hath rolled me out of my tomb. Who said that death was deliverance from evil, when not even the tomb, stranger, is the end of my suffering?

I hope you can see immediately why I like this poem so much – it’s like imagining the sound of one hand clapping. It’s recognisably an epitaph, so we’re expecting to be able to imagine a passing traveller stopping to read it on a tomb by the roadside. But no – this epitaph could never have appeared on a tomb. So how is the deceased talking to the stranger at all? Is he talking directly to us, or to someone who has found his body? Has anyone found him? The deceased is also taking on Epicurean philosophy, which says that death is the end of all sensation and should not be feared – he directly confronts us with the fact that he is aware of his suffering after death. He also confronts Platonism and other philosophy which says that the soul separates from the body at death and forgets the experiences of the body – he still cares deeply about his body.

 

Financial crisis

This amused me. In fact, I meanly took some personal delight at banking suddenly becoming so precarious – it means that people can’t try to convince me that selling your soul to the private sector is the sensible, lucrative and/or only choice for graduates. Turn to teaching, my dears, I’m sure you’ll be better off for it.

 

Home and back into the swing of things

Hello all. Tunisia was amazing – 40 degree heat and beautiful sights, all amazingly free of tourists (except those who were periodically bussed in on organised tours). My friends and I often had whole areas to ourselves, and were more often than not the only non-locals on the public transport. Definitely an unforgettable experience. Photos will follow when my internet sorts itself out a bit – it’s running too slowly right now, and would take me ages. Those of you who know me can see them all on Facebook, though.

I came home to quite an exciting email (in Classicist terms…) from my Director of Studies, Olga, saying that she there is a conference coming up which she thought I might enjoy. It’s on the 7th of December, in Nottingham, and is on ancient gender-specific communication. Now, this is pretty much exactly the area which my dissertation will be on, so I’m already on the list of those attending.

These are the talks being given:

10.00 ARRIVAL AND COFFEE
10.30 JENNIFER COATES (ROEHAMPTON) Gender myths and gendered reality: a
sociolinguistic overview;
11.15 TONI BADNALL  (NOTTINGHAM) Gendered speech in Lesbian love-lyric?;
12.00 EVERT VAN EMDE BOAS (OXFORD) Gender-specific communication and
speaker-line attribution in tragedy: two test cases;
12.45  LUNCH
2.00 JUDITH MOSSMAN (NOTTINGHAM) A man's a man for all that: male speech
in Euripides, Trojan Women;
2.45 STEPHEN COLVIN (UCL) The koiné: a common language (for men, that is);
3.30 LUUK HUITINK (OXFORD) Xenophon's gallery of women: speaking women in
Xenophon's works;
4.15 TEA
4.30 ALISON SHARROCK (MANCHESTER) Further voices in Ovid's Metamorphoses;
5.15    HELEN LOVATT (NOTTINGHAM) The eloquence of Dido: speech and gender
in Virgil's Aeneid;
6.00 CLOSING REMARKS AND WINE RECEPTION

I’m particularly interested in the one on the Koine, as I don’t think I’ve heard it discussed in a gendered way before. But it all sounds interesting, and it will be fun to part of the grown-up Classical community; hopefully it will give me a taste of things to come when I’m (with any luck) a grad.

 

Summer is at an end

Well, not really – but I’m going to start work on my dissertation today, so it feels like back-to-school time. I also vow to do more blogging! Summer has been a bit of a Classics-less time for me, but I hope from now on I’ll have lots more to say. Heading off to Tunisia next week too, so I’m hoping to take some great photos!

And today, this is in the news. Perhaps a massive statue of Marcus Aurelius isn’t the most exciting thing (cool as he is), but I always like it when Classics makes the front page.

It’s also results time in England, and I like looking at the graphs the BBC runs, such as this one. As you can see, Classics is a bit of a self-selecting area, with far higher results on average than more widespread subjects. What I’m curious to know is how they worked out in a previous study that Latin is one whole grade harder than other GCSE subjects.

 

Summer Camp

No time/energy for anything much Classical right now, as I am away working at a summer camp. Didn’t think I’d have my laptop, but someone was heading towards my house on their day off, so she picked it up for me. The job’s great – it’s a sports camp for international students – even though I’m the least sporty person here by far. I’m just in the office, so that’s ok. Wish I spoke more languages well, though! Sometimes someone who speaks their language is all a little one needs when there’s a problem. One day I shall learn Italian, if only to be able to talk properly to the great kids at places like this!

My French is getting a rare outing, though. Sometimes this is a bit of a mistake – some of the more annoying girls now refuse to speak any English to me, even though everyone is supposed to speak English at camp as much as possible. I’m trying to have some grown-up conversations with the French travel company reps who’ve come over with some of the kids – they’re about my age. Sometimes it’s just too tiring, though, since I haven’t spoken French in so long. But I’ve got three weeks more to practice, I suppose!

Having my laptop back has led to happy Amazon searching (based on the lovely wages I’ll get by the time I’m home). I think I’m going to get Adams’ Bilingualism and the Latin Language, as I think one of my papers next year is pretty much based around this text. And it’s a cool-looking tome. I also want to get an Oxford Latin Dictionary, either for my twenty-first, or out of my wages. What annoys me is that it is printed in Oxford, but it is £100 cheaper to order it from America than from England, even taking shipping into account. Silly world we live in. I think £100 is quite enough to spend on a book anyway, even a massive dictionary! (Some would say that it’s silly even to spend it on a dictionary. But we don’t talk to those people, right?)

Hope all of you are well and enjoying summer – if anyone has tips for maintaining sanity at summer camp, I’d be happy to hear them!

 

Some Homeric precision

Homer, in my opinion, was not a very precise man. And even less so if there wasn’t actually one of him. Seeing as scholars can be less than accurate about his identity and the time in which he lived, articles such as this don’t have me immediately convinced.

The idea is that the celestial movements mentioned in a short space of time in the Odyssey at the point when Odysseus kills the suitors rarely happen all at once – the only possible date is April 16, 1178 B.C. That sounds pretty impressive, until you realise that they were only looking in the hundred-year period either side of the (already pretty theoretical) date of the fall of Troy. Had it been the only date within five hundred years either side, they might have convinced me.

In any case, Homeric poetry is surely too formulaic with its sun/sky/stars-type descriptions to stand up to this level of scrutiny, isn’t it? Post-exams, I’m trying in vain to push all this kind of knowledge out of my mind…

 

Nearly done

One more exam to go – Linguistics, which should be my favourite thing. But at this point, when everyone else I know has finished, or finishes today, dragging on for two more days seems pretty impossible. At least I have a May Ball and a June Event to look forward to next week. Can’t beat a theme like “night in the chocolate factory”, in my book.

Hoping to get back to the blogging rather more once exams are over.  Until then, I hope you’ve all been amused as me with the English media’s obsession with what was set on this year’s English finals: Amy Winehouse was included and, suffice to say, we’re all being accused of the usual “dumbing down”. Mary Beard prints the question in full and, I have to say, I wouldn’t have wanted to answer it!

 

Revision

One week to go till exams… Just taking a couple of minutes to share a couple of articles I thought were good when I was revising Athenian Economy and Society (which Paul Millett made a much better course than I was expecting it to be).

First one you can tell is good by the title: “Fish, Sex and Revolution in Athens”, by James Davidson. It’s about, well, fish, and their relationship with democratic ideals in Athens. Classics has been around a very long time: any topic you can think of is out there somewhere!

The second is a little bit more serious: “Starr on Slavery”, by Carl N. Degler (the article he’s reviewing appears in the previous issue). He’s a historian of the American South, I believe, but he has some really good insights here into what makes a society a “slave-based” society. It’s not necessarily, as Starr suggests, the number of slaves, or that slaves do all the work, or even that every free person owns slaves. Take a look.

 

Boris

It’s not often that someone’s first name is also their nickname, but Boris Johnson has managed to reach that level of fame. The new Mayor of London (God help us) has always been very keen on Classics – I think he’s still the president of the Joint Association of Classics Teachers. His dad said last week that people who are good at Greek and Latin can do anything, including sort out London. My lecturers tend to complain that it’s only a buffoon who’s promoting Classics in the papers… but at least it’s someone, I suppose.

The BBC has run quite a funny article entitled What can Boris learn from the classics?. I rather like their summary: 1) watch your back, 2) watch what you say (not, let’s say, what Boris has been known for up to this point), 3) pretend to be stupid (much more what Boris is known for), 4) watch out for biographers, 5) buildings make a good legacy. Perhaps a rather random collection, but there you go!

This is the best story they’ve got:

But the masters of classical pithiness were the Spartans of Greece. It is said Philip of Macedon once sent a hostile message to the Spartans saying something along the lines of “if I bring my army down to Sparta, I will knock down the walls and kill everybody”. The Spartan oligarchs reportedly sent back the one-word reply “if”.

Those Spartans, eh?

(As an aside, why on earth does the first commenter say this article is stupid because Boris went to Oxford, not “Oxbridge”? That’s a fairly standard abbreviation, surely?)

 

Monstrum

Lack of regular blogging is a result of revision eating all my time… only three weeks to go!

But in the midst of all the stress, interesting things definitely emerge. I wanted to share this article with you, on disability in the ancient world. I stumbled across it through a strange sequence of events that have nothing to do with revision – my boyfriend is thinking of doing something on 1968 for his dissertation next year, so he bought the New Statesman which was having an anniversary edition, and I noticed that Victoria Brignell is one of their online columnists. I knew the name immediately – she was the daughter of my RE teacher, and went to my school about ten years before me. I knew she’d done Classics at Cambridge (like me) and then went on to become a journalist, so seeing something she’d written was quite exciting. Do check it out.

I find this particularly interesting:

We can tell a lot about a culture’s values by the language it uses. Neither the Greeks or the Romans had a word equivalent to ‘disabled’ but the term that they often use is ‘teras’ (for the Greeks) and ‘monstrum’ (for the Romans). These are the same words they use to describe mythological monsters, such as the Gorgon Medusa. The Latin ‘mutus’ referred to both somebody who couldn’t speak and someone who is stupid. No one could accuse the Roman of being too politically correct, as you can see.

…

Roman religion also encouraged parents to ‘expose’ their offspring. Just as physical fitness and health were believed to be signs of the gods’ favour, so disability was a mark of the gods’ displeasure. For this reason, a disabled child was often seen as a form of divine punishment upon its parents. Romans tended to interpret unusual natural occurrences as signs of impending disaster and this increased their suspicion of disabled people. Abnormal births were an indication that a catastrophe might be around the corner. It’s revealing that the noun ‘monstrum’ is related to the verb ‘monere’ meaning ‘to warn’.

Beneath the article, someone has commented “What a fantastic article and the first time I’ve heard a good argument for learning Latin!”.

Revising ancient warfare, I discovered that – if you’ve seen 300, you’ll know what I’m talking about – the thing about each Spartan warrior in a phalanx protecting the one to his left with his shield is probably wrong. Recent experimental archaeology (an excellent profession, where they make stuff like armour the ancient way, put it on and try to fight someone) suggests that the hoplite phalanx was more spaced out than is usually thought, simply because of the room you need to use a sword effectively. So the character who betrays them because he’s too disabled to fight needn’t have after all! (And that bit was made up for the film anyway – traditionally, they were betrayed by a local.)

 

Choices

Technical problems are all fixed, and the internet has returned to my room! Whether this is actually a good thing for my revision schedule remains to be seen…

Last week we had to choose our options for the momentously named Part II – I was so excited about it. As always (A levels, degree, specialisation within degree…) I love finding out what the people around me are interested in. In any case, I’ve gone for a very Philology and Linguistics based Part II – one paper on Historical Linguistics, one on Latin/Greek bilingualism in the Roman Empire (very fashionable topic, I’m told) and one interdisciplinary on Death. This is what I’m most excited about, I think, because the lecturers were so energetic – but it looks like it’s going to be a very popular course.

In honour of Paper X1: Death, then, here are some quotes from Seneca the Younger’s letters, which I was revising yesterday (the translation is from this book, which I recommend).

“I shall die” : What you mean is this -  I shall cease to be liable to illness, I shall cease to be liable to bonds, I shall cease to be liable to death… Every day we die, for every day part of our life is lost… the final hour when we actually die does not alone bring our death but simply completes the process. (Letter 24)

“So,” I said, “is death making all these trials of me? Let him: I made trial of him long ago.” “When?” you ask. Before I was born. Death is non-existence. I already know what it is like, and it will be the same after me as it was before me. If there is any torment in the after state in must have been present in the state before we came to birth; yet we felt no distress then. I ask you, wouldn’t you call anyone an utter idiot who thought that a lamp was worse off when it was extinguished than before it was lit? We too are lit and extinguished. (Letter 54)

Puts exams in perspective a bit… some find it all rather morbid, but I find it very comforting. Maybe I’ve watched a bit too much Six Feet Under. All the same, I think that my Desert Island Discs book would be a massive book of Seneca the Younger’s complete works. Maybe even in Latin – that would take me a good few years.

 

Technical difficulties…

Really frustrated that I haven’t been able to post for the last few weeks – I’m back at college and the internet in my room is completely broken. I’m hoping it’ll be fixed in the next couple of days… but then, that is also what I was promised last Tuesday. Ah well, I’ll get there!

I was amused by Mary Beard’s post about the new doors at the Classics faculty – felt it was bizarre that people from around the world were commenting on doors I use most days. Having seen them, I don’t think they’re really ugly; but also, I can’t really remember how they look different from the previous doors. Ah well. They do, however, make opening the door manually really difficult.

Also annoyed at college internet for making me miss the Pompeii episode of Dr Who. I saw about the first twelve minutes. Not actually the internet’s fault, as I could have remembered to watch it when it was on real TV. Anyone see it?

I’ve also been very pleased in the last few days to realise that Amazon booksellers use the fact that postage is set at a flat £2.75 for books to charge just 1p for all Very Short Introductions. I’m planning to buy up the Classical ones and learn them off by heart for my exams. The first one to arrive, and very much recommended (as is the speedy bookseller Speedy Tortoise) is “A Very Short Introduction to Ancient Warfare”. May post a review when my internet works – it’s not at all how it sounds.

 

The value of teachers

Just read this on the BBC website. The irritatingly-named “credit crunch” is going to affect us all, I think – and if it goes on for long, then I worry about how people of my generation will be able to buy a house at all, especially as many of us are setting out into the adult world already weighed down by the student debt we were so encouraged to take on.

What surprised me more about this article, though, was not that hardship grants to teachers have increased recently, nor that they have risen by 70% in the first three months of this year. What I find incredible is that we need a charitable foundation to keep teachers afloat. Surely it’s just bizarre that a country like the UK can value its teachers so little? I know this is true of many public-sector workers – nursing springs to mind as a forever underpaid job. But these are people who all have a minimum of four years at university (while nursing did not used to require a degree) – in the future, that will be four years of student debt. Can the government really continue to allow teachers, and everyone else on public salaries, to struggle to afford the cost of living?

I’m used to people saying that Classics teachers are unnecessary, or a luxury, or not really for the public sector. It’s valued hugely by some, and not at all by plenty of others. But it seems that even the “core” subject teachers are not being treated as they should be – as intelligent graduates, with skills they could easily take elsewhere.