"Working their looms or whatever"

Penelope at her loom (15th c.)

I never finished Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean (a little too much salaciousness for salaciousness' sake) but I think I might like her new novel, Sweet Girl (about Aristotle's daughter Pythias). From the Global Edmonton:

"When we think of ancient Greece, we think of centaurs and Zeus throwing thunderbolts and stuff, but we don't think of these women trying to take some kind of control of their lives," said Lyon.
"And it seems those were acts that women would undertake as ways of exerting power over their lives."
Such is the quest of Lyon's Pythias, who gets her smarts and love of science from her aging dad.
At the start of the novel, Pythias is seven and boldly declares she wants to be a teacher and doesn't want to get married.
Her viewpoint changes as she matures and, like most women at that time, becomes defined by her fertility and the sexist social beliefs that surround her.
As Pythias's story unfolds, so too does an era of upheaval, as Alexander's death forces Aristotle to flee Athens with his Macedonian family to Chalcis in fear he'll be killed.
But once there, the household is no more stable, and a financially strapped Pythias faces a journey that takes her to the welcoming arms of priestesses, midwives and hetairas (high-end prostitutes).
"I remember really early on the way I kind of imagined her to my editor, we were kicking the ideas around and I said, 'I want her to be a Jane Austen character who likes sex,'" said Lyon.
Lyon said the only concrete facts she had on Pythias came from Aristotle's will, which detailed his plans for her.
"He lays out who he wants her to marry and all the things that he wants to happen to her," said Lyon. "And you get a strong sense of his love for her through the document, and his worry."
Writing the novel made Lyon realize she had "a pretty stereotypical view of what women were at that time."
"I thought: in veils, kept in the house, illiterate, working their looms or whatever and not really doing much else," she said.

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Greek baby names and generations

The Telegraph writes about the new love for Greek baby names among celebrities:

[Robin] Williams had promised his daughter wouldn’t have a “mad celebrity baby name” but something “very solid, old-school”. Theodora is certainly that – nearly 2,000 years old, to be precise.
Of Greek origin, meaning “God’s gift” – from theos (God) and doron (gift) – Teddy has it in common with Theodora Richards, daughter of Rolling Stone Keith and model Patti Hansen, who made up for such a sound choice by then landing her with the middle name Dupree.
Picking the right name can be tricky, and Mr and Mrs Williams aren’t the first high-profile couple to turn to ancient Greece for inspiration. First, there was Zachary, the son of Elton John and David Furnish, whose name comes from Zacharias, another Greek word meaning “remembrance of the Lord”. Kourtney Kardashian, the younger sister of American reality TV star Kim, named her daughter Penelope (from penelops, a predatory bird); while actress Hilary Duff’s toddler is called Luca, from the Greek Loukas, or “man from Lucania”.

I was reminded of a book I recently came across called Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. It argues that history is driven by a repeating cycle of generations: idealist, reactive, civic, and adaptive. In the most recent iteration of the cycle, the boomers are "idealist", Generation X is "reactive", Gen Y is "civic", and the generation to come will be "adaptive". 

I'd be willing to bet that a traditional baby name was Williams' wife's idea -- she's a "reactive" Gen Xer, while he's an "idealist" baby boomer. 

Given my profession, I'm hoping the next generation of "adaptive" college students aren't so focused on consensus-building that they let classroom discussions die, or write dull papers (she said ironically).

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German debts to Greece?

from salon.com:

Beginning in 1942 the German occupiers demanded that Greece pay, monthly, the cost of being occupied. Over the past two decades various Greek governments have raised the subject of that theft, which amounts to $14 billion in today’s dollars (without interest). Germany has dismissed the idea that it owes Greece anything. There is a certain short-sightedness in the German insistence that debts must always, always be repaid.

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The klismos chair, a brief history

I've been looking at ancient Greek furniture lately, and I was particularly drawn to the klismos, a chair with a sloped back and four curved legs.

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For one thing, I remember translating klismos as "easy chair" in my first Greek reading class. Seeing what an austere, if graceful, thing it is, I'm amused that we talked about them as though they were La-z-boy recliners. I also love the idea that they're still part of modern furniture design. It's reassuring to classicists whenever we find a bit of the ancient world in an unexpectedly modern setting.

Recreation of a Greek klismos (credit)

Klismoi first appear in Homer and later in classical art like the vase-painting above. The curved back provides support and the curved legs are very stable, although they may spread out and break if too much weight is put on them.

Klismos chairs were revived in the eighteenth-century neoclassical period, first as props for historically-themed paintings and later as everyday furniture.

Neoclassical chair based on klismos (credit)

 Amazon lists several modern klismos chairs (shockingly expensive). "Design by Todd" considers how they could be used in a modern house, ultimately concluding that they are best employed as a "statement piece" or a "sculpture" -- too deep to sit in comfortably.

Oh well, it's better than a backless stool, right?

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Birds do it, bees do it ...

Kohl container from Egypt

From Care2, a website on healthy and green living (strangely enough), comes this list of 22 unusual word origins:

7. DogI mentioned before that some etymologies are just plain baffling; dog is unquestionably one of those. The word dog was docga in Old English, but nobody can decide where it actually came from. The word hund (of Germanic origin, which became modern-day hound) was much more common, so it’s likely that dog/docgawas an informal or non-literary word… but how did it spring into existence? No one really knows for sure. 

8. ButterflyThere are several conflicting explanations for the origin of butterfly. It may come from a combination of Old English bēatan “to beat,” and flēoge “fly.” The first part of the word may instead come from butere, or “butter,” which may have originally referred only to yellow-colored butterflies. However, my favorite explanation of butterfly is that is could have come from the Middle Dutch word boterschijte, which referred to the fact that their excrement may look similar to butter: literally, “butter-shitter.” Think of that the next time you encounter a gorgeous butterfly!

10. AlcoholThe word alcohol came into English with the help of Latin, but it’s originally from the Spanish Arabic al-kuḥul, which means “the kohl” (kohl being a black powder that is used as eye makeup). Wait, what? Well, the process that is used to make kohl involves vaporizing and then cooling a solid substance, while the process of distilling alcohol is the same deal, but with a liquid. So, over the course of centuries, it began to mean an “essence obtained by distillation” and then finally “spirit of wine, ethanol.”

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Good for them

Greek professors in border towns are moonlighting at Albanian schools:

The representatives from these seven universities that met with Albanis wanted to explore whether professors from Ioannina University -- and especially in the medical field -- would be interested in teaching in Tirana a few days a week. Other than a good supplementary salary, the offer also included travel expenses, a car service from the Greek-Albanian border into Tirana, as well as room and board.

Things are still wretched over there, but I'm still a little envious of a situation where professors are in actual demand. Pin It

Who doesn't love a little Latin prose humor?

"The Ides of March

Dear D-L-L,

I am studying Latin prose composition. I have been studying it. I shall be studying it. I shall be about to have been studying it ... you may expect to hear from me next, either whole and happy and free from conditions, or in fragments."

-Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster

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Tying the knot

An article on the "Mother Nature Network"  recently discussed reef knots on the Mars rover , briefly mentioning their origins in Egypt and Greece. I needed an excuse to look at something pretty (it being rather grey and grim in my remote Midwestern locale), so ...

Googling the Greek name for it, "Herakles knot," brings up dozens of ancient necklaces and tiaras. It seems that the knot symbolized fertility and the marriage 'knot,' a meaning which probably grew  from its use in medicine and especially to tie women's belts.

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Another symbolic knot, the proverbial "Gordian knot," was perhaps a "knot-cypher" that symbolized the "ineffable name of Dionysus." (Graves, The Greek Myths, 284) 

A bit of a tangent, but Celtic knotwork may have originated in the late Roman empire, where interlace floor mosaics are popular:

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After all, what do we do as classicists but study beautiful and enduring things made from simple materials?

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It's called panegyric, people.

Bust once thought to show Poppaea Sabina

I might be missing something about the new poem praising Poppaea Sabina, second wife of Nero. MSNBC implies that its sentimental theme shows a "very different side to this ancient couple." Nero, of course, is said to have murdered his first wife Octavia to marry Poppaea, and to then caused Poppaea to miscarry by kicking her in the stomach.

MSNBC also ponders why the poem "was written nearly 200 years after Nero died … why [would] someone so far away from Rome bother composing or copying it at such a late date." The article explains some possibilities below, such as a "deification poem" or a "poem of circumstance" comparing an Egyptian official and his dead wife to Nero and Poppaea.

That's all well and good, but this notion that the romantic relationship in the poems shows a "different side" of Nero is silly. Should the poet have represented Poppaea as trapped in a relationship with a crazed despot?

My spouse and I debate the point of classics education sometimes, but I hope we at least teach our students not to take everything they read at face value.

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