Minoan flush toilets?

This review of Frank Joseph's The Lost Worlds of Ancient America made some pretty startling (to me) claims about Minoan civilization:

"Each palace had bathrooms with flush toilets. The rooms also had heat and running water suggesting that the Minoans had a considerable civil engineering capability. They understood water flow, elementary thermodynamics and heat transfer."

The claims about heat and running water are pretty decently supported, if I understand correctly. But this was the first time I had heard about the toilets! I took a few minutes to research this claim with the tools at hand (the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Google Books). As a result, I have a new perspective on my own research as seriously lacking in unintentional hilarity. Take this subheading from what I am sure is a very fine archeological report from Israel:

"The Toilets Excavated By Woolley 

The number of well-preserved bathrooms and restrooms found at Tell Atchana is extraordinary in comparison to that found at any other Middle or Late Bronze Age Levantine site...."

A footnote mentions a dispute as to whether the seat of a Minoan toilet was a true seat or a "squatting board". In all seriousness, I know someone has to study the history of toilets. I often experience a sincere envy towards those who study the really practical aspects of ancient life (as opposed to my own field, which is something like "guessing what ancient poets were thinking, what they thought the audience was thinking, and what they audience thought that the poet thought they were thinking.")

Basically, it seems that although some dispute the presence of toilets at Minoan palaces, most accept their existence. They appear to have resembled the outdoor latrines you often see in Roman archeological sites (only with fewer seats, one assumes) and used stone drains.



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Don't make me use this: Odysseus to Thersites

From Stephen Mitchell's Iliad (2.244-248):

"But I swear to you now -- and if I don't do what I say,
may somebody come and cut my head from my shoulders --
that if I ever catch you spewing such nonsense again
I will strip you naked and whip your a** out of here
and send you back to the ships, howling and bawling."

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Classical myth and the Hunger Games

I planned to base a mythology lesson on The Hunger Games, although ultimately it did not fit into the schedule. Although I enjoyed the book, and thought there were a lot of general parallels with the classical world, the movie really brought the classical parallels into focus for me.

1. Theseus and the Minotaur
This is the source mentioned on Suzanne Collins's Wikipedia page. I have to say, I mocked Athens quite a bit in class this semester (Hercules murdered his whole family! But then Theseus takes him to Athens where anything can be fixed!). So I have a hard time getting really into this as a source myth. I'm not saying that THG is not a worthy modern interpretation, just that the comparison doesn't fire my imagination.

2. Antigone
This is a parallel the movie brought into focus quite beautifully for me. Covering Rue with flowers and gesturing accomplished in a couple of minutes much of what it took Sophocles hundreds of lines (and one really annoying heroine) to do.

3. The Iliad
Something about the luminous lighting in President Snow's garden (and his revolting detachment from the Games) really suggested the Greek gods to me. Maybe this is the approach the next movie about Greece should take -- skip the togas and just get a really scary white-haired man in a rose garden to play Zeus. Pin It

College graduation in the Bronze Age

Cool quote from the intro to Stephen Mitchell's Iliad:

"Here, amid all the sorrow and concern and deep husbandly love, in what both these admirable people sense may be their final meeting, at the climax of a prayer Hector must know will never be fulfilled, is the image of a mother rejoicing at her son's return from battle with the bloody armor of the enemy he has just killed, as if she were watching him in his robe and mortarboard graduating from college."

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Achilles the vampire?

Last week's myth class perked up briefly when, in a sudden fit of inspiration (desperation?), I compared Achilles to a vampire. Prior to the poems' conclusion, he stops needing to eat and reaches almost demonic heights of rage, so I said that he was "almost an undead figure." The students seemed quite taken with this idea.

No doubt if I rewrote the poem to include some zombies and vampires (a la Jane Austen), some of them would actually read it.* Never mind that the work's humanity is supposed to be the point ...

*Emboldened by the fact that I'd already given the evals, I asked recently if anyone had actually done the reading. (This was after asking several factual questions about the text that no one would answer.) The response was, shall we say, less than heartening.

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'Our way is the old way'

It seems like everyone in Game of Thrones is a classical scholar. Ned Stark is killed more or less because he borrowed the wrong book on genealogy from the Grand Maester. Jaime Lannister studies the White Book of the Kingsguard for tips on how to stop being a massive jerk. Tyrion Lannister gives his evil nephew Joffrey a rare biography of four ancient kings (which he promptly destroys).

Bits of treasure and knowledge survive from Valyria Before the Doom, which is also where the old ruling family of Westeros came from. House Targaryen sounds like a hideous domestic disaster to me -- brother-sister marriage, madness (no doubt aided and abetted by a limited gene pool). But the new ruling family wants to be just like them. Jaime Lannister fantasizes about making his sister/lover an honest women; Tywin Lannister obsesses over owning a Valyrian steel sword. Something about that connection to the mysterious, fragmentary past...

Anyway, I finally gave in and started reading the Song of Ice and Fire series (=Game of Thrones). It's fantastic, and I can report that even the lower-rated fourth book is enjoyable. Its flaws, such as slightly slow pacing and a length(ier) list of characters, are the sorts of things classicists tolerate well. Pin It

Inventive spellings of classical names

Creative spellings I've witnessed or heard about this semester:

Opedidus Rex, the famous play by Sophocles

Oddyssey (the student was perhaps commenting on Odysseus' questioning of heroic ideals?)

Oddisseous

The 'profit' Tiresias

For the record, I don't grade on spelling and I have some respect for student's efforts to deal with words and names that are clearly not part of their everyday vocabulary. On the other hand, phonetic spellings like the third above make me wonder how often this particular student has seen the name in print, in his or her textbook. Pin It

Why is the third declension such a black hole for students?

I started my fall Latin course absolutely to help my students succeed in understanding and using the third declension. I even broke a rule that's been repeated to me many times, which is not to distract students by telling them about grammar before you get to it in the book.

"Now, this is the first declension. You take the word's stem (which is self-evidently the same in both the nom. and gen. forms) and attach endings to it."

"By the way -- when you get to the third declension you will need to use the genitive stem, because it's different from the nominative stem.

"Hi, welcome back! Today we're going to talk about the second declension ... By the way ---" etc.

The third declension fell about halfway through the semester. What did they do? Wait for it ...

Over and over again, they took a few (randomly selected) letters off the end of the nominative stem and attached the third declension endings to it.

Readers, I introduced this new (but not unheard-of) concept so carefully. We looked at the endings and the new nouns separately. Then together. We discussed common patterns in third declension nouns. We drilled. We looked for third declension nouns in readings.

After we had reviewed about four times, it seemed clear that my students were going to have as much difficulty with it the seventh time as they did the first time.

I am told that this is a not uncommon reaction to the third declension, and I'm baffled. Would it be better to introduce this declension first? Is there a textbook that does that?

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"Eros is an enemy"

From Chapter 1 of Eros the Bittersweet:

"Desire, then, is neither inhabitant nor ally of the desirer. Foreign to her will, it forces itself irresistibly upon her from without. Eros is an enemy. Its bitterness must be the taste of enmity. That would be hate."

Cool.

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It worked for Heath Ledger and Queen

Filmmaker to bring the Middle Ages and Rap together in ‘The Quickener’

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