Procrastination in the desert

via Wikimedia Commons

If you sometimes want to roll your eyes at yet another story on computer use as a threat to productivity, check out this piece on early medieval acedia. I'm pretty sure the desert fathers weren't on Facebook... Pin It

"A cultural language ... in dialogue with the idea of antiquity"

If you haven't already, check out Mary Beard's "Do the Classics Have a Future?" over at the New York Review of Books.

A taste:

The truth is that the classics are by definition in decline; even in what we now call the “Renaissance,” the humanists were not celebrating the “rebirth” of the classics; rather like Harrison’s “trackers,” they were for the most part engaged in a desperate last-ditch attempt to save the fleeting and fragile traces of the classics from oblivion. There has been no generation since at least the second century AD that has imagined that it was fostering the classical tradition better than its predecessors. But there is of course an up-side here. The sense of imminent loss, the perennial fear that we might just be on the verge of losing the classics entirely, is one very important thing that gives them—whether in professional study or creative reengagement—the energy and edginess that I think they still have.

Pin It

Happy Holidays

via Wikimedia Commons

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

      - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm  Pin It

Ancient men had it sort of rough, too

This evening I'm intrigued by the Discovery News article on medieval knights with PTSD:

Tales from that era include all sorts of gruesome details, Kaeuper said. Many tell of warriors vomiting blood or holding their entrails in with their hands. One mentions a Castilian knight who gets a crossbolt stuck up his nose in his first fight. Another tells of a fighter getting slashed by a sword through his mouth. Again and again, there are references to bad food, uncomfortable conditions and relentless fighting.

Elizabeth Chadwick's novels cover this really well, especially The Champion, which deals with the surprisingly crummy lives of tournament knights, those who live off tournament earnings instead of inherited wealth. There is also her wonderful A Place Beyond Courage, which tells the story of John Marshal, who had half his face melted off by a burning lead roof and then walked 25 miles before receiving any medical treatment.

I had similar thoughts to this article the last time I watched the Rome episode "Pharsalus." Pullo and Vorenus are about to set themselves adrift on a raft made of the bodies of their dead comrades. Meanwhile, the female characters (who undoubtedly have their own tribulations) trade verbal barbs:

Pin It

Kevin Young's Ardency

The Boston Globe review of Ardency hooked me with its first line, "a good epic poem is hard to find these days." Ardency tells the story of the Amistad slave rebellion. It has three sections, one in the voice of the slaves' interpreter, James Covey, one based on the slaves' letters from prison, one in the voice of the rebel leader Cinque.

As a classicist, I am always a tad suspicious of modern poetry, but I found Ardency a fast, energetic read, with a genuinely American feel. (As a reader it's always nice to want to read a poem slowly, but it's essential, especially with a narrative work, that you're not forced to read it slowly because of preciousness or an overly fragmented style.)

Gabriel, Escalastio, Desiderio - in the seas beneath
the States, names new & Christian fell around you
like the lash. (Ardency lines 1-3) 

Pin It

Those darn Furies, always so vengeful

I'm on a (very long) waiting list for Fury at the public library. Today I thought I'd drop by Amazon and check out the reviews. I was quite amused.

Fury is a tale of high school students punished for juvenile misdeeds by the ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance. Some of the reviews complained of uneven pacing and wooden dialogue. Okay, fine. As a longtime fan of Simon Pulse for escapist reading (I devoured Samurai Girl and The Nine Lives of Chloe King) I'm not expecting The Brothers Karamazov.

But there are also repeated complaints that the Furies are too harsh (potentially punishing every transgression with death), illogical and 'favor revenge.' Is this pressure on YA fiction for warm-fuzzy morals a new thing?

I fear that this reflects what my students, just out of high school themselves, expect of mythology. Thus, instead of examining how Greek literature illuminates the human condition in all its breathtaking ugliness and glory, I'm going to have to spend the next semester talking about why the gods are immature. (Akin to talking about why Greek heroes love to fight. They just do. It's what they did.)

May the Fates send me a more imaginative group than that. (Not that I expect them to be 'fair' or anything...)

Pin It

Why the Romans Celebrated a Child-Killing Patricide

Io, Saturnalia! Tee

Today is the first day of Saturnalia, the great winter festival of the ancient Roman calendar. On the face of it, it doesn't speak well for the Romans that one of their major holidays celebrated Saturn, a god perhaps best known for eating his own children.

But as with most Greek mythology, it is best to look beyond the borderline-nonsensical surface story to the larger cultural significance. And Saturn, of course, ruled over a golden age that only a dramatically transgressive act (like devouring your own offspring) could bring to an end.

As I look ahead to teaching mythology next year, and as I indulge my various modern-day guilty pleasures (like the BBC's Robin Hood series), I ponder the ridiculousness of many ancient and modern myths. I hope to show my students that they should then ask "Why is this myth ridiculous in this particular way? What does it tell us about the people who created it, believed in it and derived great satisfaction from the different versions of it?"

Io, Saturnalia! Mug 

Previous offerings in the Classics Daily shop:

Latin Zombies ("cerebra, cerebrum...") tee and mug

Cano ("I sing") iPhone and iPod case

Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo ("Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.")

Quod me non destruit, me nutruit ("What does not kill me makes me stronger.")

Epistula enim non erubescit ("A letter does not blush.")

Meles mellis non curat. ("Honey badger don't care")*
Id quod mater tua dixit non est. ("That's not what your mother said")
Quis pater tuus? ("Who's your daddy?")
O tempora! O mores! ("Shame on the age and its principles!")

      Venefica aetatis meae illustratissima sum ("I'm the brightest witch of my age")

*available in several versions

Pin It