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.
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?)
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.)
