Hadrian and other historical thoughts

Two posts in a single month - what is the world coming to?

I caught up on the discovery of a colossal statue of Hadrian at the site of Sagalassos, in southern Turkey, which the BBC had on their news page yesterday, though it was in Archaeology a week ago.

It's a rather splendid discovery, of course. But what interests me is the sociology of the BBC report, and what it says about the way we view Hadrian. All the usual motifs are there - Hadrian's Wall, Hadrian as a good military administrator, Hadrian as one of the 'five good emperors' (a position into which he was canonized by Edward Gibbon).

This fits in with the way Hadrian has always been viewed in England. Because of his association with the Wall, he has, more than any other Roman emperor, been adopted by the English as practically an honorary Englishman - only Constantine comes close in the affections of the English (I refer, of course, to the increasingly small portion of the English population that cares about Roman emperors at all). Hadrian the soldier is highlighted, making him the sort of emperor that retired Guards colonels can identify with. One can't imagine the British press making much of a fuss about a colossal statue of Marcus Aurelius or Gallienus.

There is, however, a different side to Hadrian. That is Hadrian the lover of all things Greek, to such a degree that he was mocked in his youth as a 'Greekling'. (I often wonder if it is coincidental that, in the reign of Hadrian's predecessor Trajan, the satirist Juvenal is, in his vicious attack on Greeks in his Third Satire, using exactly the same word , Graeculus, as was applied to the young Hadrian.) There's Hadrian the homosexual, whose passionate affair with Antinoos scandalized some sections of Roman society, as did the way in which Hadrian mourned Antinoos' death, with an intensity that matched Victoria's mourning for Albert. That's hardly the sort of thing to appeal to retired colonels. (Mind you, having seen some of the images of Antinoos assembled for an exhibition in Leeds last year, I can see Hadrian's point - I mean, I'm a straight bloke, and I'd have done him.) There's Hadrian the capricious tyrant, who exiled and then had executed the architect Apollodorus (who to a degree only had himself to blame - asked for his opinion of the emperor's architectural plans, he made the mistake of giving it), and who executed Senators both at the beginning and end of his reign. Hadrian was in fact, so hated by the Senate that they tried to block his deification after his death, and only the threat of new emperor Antoninus Pius to step down, thus plunging the empire into civil war, browbeat the Senate into acquiescing.

This Hadrian has rather a lot in common with the previous emperor to take up wearing a beard, Nero. (Both emperors wrote poetry, for a start.) What differentiates the good emperor from the monster seems to me to come down to the fact that one survived, and one didn't, and Hadrian survived because he (a) didn't push things as far as Nero - no actual public performances for this emperor - and (b) always knew that the army was on his side (they were always on Nero's side as well, but Nero didn't realize this, and so panicked).

So perhaps Hadrian is the worst of the 'good emperors'.

On a wholly different subject, the Today programme featured an item this morning about an English Heritage sponsored debate that will take place over the weekend, concerning who England's greatest monarch was. This was Today at it's worst. The show always likes to set up confrontations between opposing views, which blights a lot of its non-political reporting, which sits uneasily in such a format. This was particularly unedifying, as Alison Weir, Sarah Gristwood and Martyn Downer, making the cases for their respective choices (Henry VIII, Elizabeth II and Victoria), rapidly came down to 'my monarch's bigger than your monarch'.

In any case, they're all wrong - it should of course be Charles II.

What happens to a listed building when it spoils the view

Briefly, I have a moment to do a post here, and I just would like to mention this story:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2137025,00.html

I am ambivalent on the rights and wrongs of the Elgin Marbles argument, and I don't intend to get involved in the debate here. But I have thought before that the Greek government does its case no favours with the attitude it sometimes takes to those culturally-important monuments it does have.

(Link seen on rogueclassicism.)

Latin - opens the doors?

In Tuesday's Independent there was an article about the increase in state secondary schools in the UK teaching Latin - 459, as against 200 four years ago. Good news, of course, but I find some of the comments made by Harry Mount, author of Amo, Amas, Amat ... and All That, a trifle disturbing. The specific remark is this:

If children learn ethnic studies, in ten years they will earn absolutely nothing from it. The ones who learn Latin will be the ones who will be able to go on to jobs in the City, or as lawyers, or journalists. I think it's deeply patronising for people to suggest that pupils in ethnically mixed state schools should not learn the subject that is going to get them into the best paid jobs.

This isn't an uncommon idea for Classicists to promote. It is true that there are a fair number of people in top jobs who have some sort of Classical study in their educational background. But I wonder whether this isn't a case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc* logical fallacy.

To help explain, let me turn to the history of the Roman empire. In the Open University course I teach, the students are about to embark upon study of the Second Sophistic, an intellectual movement that flourished in the first to third centuries AD in the eastern, Greek-speaking provinces of the empire. The chief historian of this movement was a man called Philostratus, who presents in his Lives of the Sophists a picture where the leaders of this movement were movers and shakers in their local communities, and in the wider empire. The clear implication is that they were influential because they were sophists.

For a long time, in the positivistic way that Classicists used to (and still often do) approach ancient evidence, this was accepted as they way it was, and is enshrined in Glen Bowersock's 1969 study Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. But E.L. Bowie's 1982 article 'The importance of sophists' (Yale Classical Studies 27, pp. 29-59), for me, comprehensively demolishes such a view. Bowie shows that the sophists came almost exclusively from the political and economic elite of the Greek cities, and that their influence arose as a result of that elite status, not directly from their activities as sophists, which were almost incidental.

Which brings us back to Latin in modern Britain. Yes, many people in top jobs went to elite** schools where they were taught Latin (often compulsorily). But did they get to the top because of their Latin study? Or because they went to elite schools, where they mixed with other children of the British social and political elite, and through that had opportunities they would not have had in comprehensives? I rather think it's the latter.

I have nothing but respect for what Lorna Robinson*** is doing with the iris Project, and have contributed to the next issue of the magazine. I'm all for getting more people to learn about the classical world, because (a) it will help them understand their own world better, (b) as Boris Johnson says in the Indy piece, it's socially unjust not to give opportunities to everyone to study the subject, and (c) Classics is cool. But if we as Classicists tell the kids Robinson teaches in Hackney (and I should stress that I've no reason to believe that Robinson herself says anything of the sort) that Latin alone will allow them free entry into the social, political or economic elites of this country, then I think we're selling them a pup.

And do we have to tear down other subjects to promote our own? This is again something often done by Classicists. Boris Johnson, in his mostly enjoyable The Dream of Rome, says that people studying Media Studies would be better off doing Latin. But I don't see why Media Studies should be any less rigorous than Latin. I know it's often presented as just watching television instead of working, but both are subjects that require critical study of texts (in the widest meaning of that term); the only fundamental difference between Classics and Media Studies is the nature of the texts studied. And someone who in ten years' time is working with their local community (and we will always need people in these jobs) might well find Ethnic Studies more useful than Classics.

The trouble with this sort of attitude is that associating Latin with top jobs, and asserting its superiority over other disciplines, gives Classics a snob value. Frankly, this sort of arrogant elitism has done Classics as a discipline no good at all over the years. It has, I suspect, provoked a reaction against the subject, which left Classics departments in schools and universities vulnerable to cuts. The recent resurgence of the subject has come partly as a result of discarding such attitudes, and being more inclusive. And that's right. I would never for a moment say that the study of Classics is for everyone. But I don't think social background should be a factor in deciding whether or not it's for you.

* "After this, therefore because of this".

** I'm using 'elite' because I can't think of a better word. I don't mean to imply that anything I describe as 'elite' is necessarily better than the non-elites.

*** That's Robinson, not 'Richardson' as the Indy seems to think.

Hadrian's Wall - what's it all for?

Mary Beard's latest blog post is about citing Hadrian's Wall as a precedent for George Bush's planned fence along the US-Mexican border. This, she says, is "Another misuse of the classical past I'm afraid."

But is she right?

A couple of things she says need interrogating. She points out that the common picture, of Hadrian's Wall as an extended city wall from which barbarians were repulsed, is incorrect - the Wall was never sturdy enough to repulse that sort of military assault. That's all perfectly true, and in any case the Romans didn't conceive of defence in that fashion - the Roman army defended the provinces by drawing attacking forces into open combat and wiping them out. But such an observation applies only to the actual curtain wall and associated ditches. The whole complex of Hadrian's Wall includes forts where the troops were based, milecastles, turrets for observing activity in the frontier zones, and outpost forts beyond the wall. It's a lot harder to argue that these could have served no purpose in the military defence of Britain.

And I wonder about the way she characterizes the way the Romans thought of the frontier. She says:

The Roman image of the frontier was usually much more subtly nuanced. The empire shaded into “foreign” territory across many kilometres that were melting pot of cultural difference and often a hot-spot of trading and commercial activity. It was a question of frontier zones, rather than frontiers – governed partly by Rome, partly by a whole variety of non-Roman powers.

Now, it's certainly true that the Romans tended to think of external kings who had made agreements with Rome as being essentially part of the Roman empire - 'client kings' were as much as anything an alternate method of governing areas within the empire to direct rule from Rome. Moderns don't always recognize this (I encountered this recently on a guided tour of Colchester Castle, where we were told that Prasutagus of the Iceni was not amongst the eleven unnamed British kings mentioned on an inscription in Rome as having submitted to Claudius, because he remained king - I'd argue that retention of his crown on Roman terms was, to a Roman, submission). But the picture Beard presents looks like a modern archaeological way of looking at the frontiers, rather than necessarily something a Roman might have thought.

I don't know of any ancient sources that present quite the view Beard has, though I'm happy to be proved wrong if anyone can cite something. There are plenty of texts that talk as if Rome has no limits at all, and the world is divided merely into areas Rome rules and areas Rome will rule. But, if I recall correctly (and again, please correct me if I'm wrong), many of these date to the Augustan period. There's a danger of being too simplistic when one talks about 'what the Romans thought', and forgetting that over a period of several centuries, prevalent opinions could change.

Hadrian's Wall is not quite as unique as Beard implies - there are other frontiers in Germany (where the linear barrier is a palisade), in North Africa (where the forts are scatted along a road), and of course the Antonine Wall, further north than Hadrian's Wall in Scotland. It seems to me that it was becoming possible in the second century for some Romans to think in terms of linear limits to the Roman empire, even if they still understood that their influence could project beyond it (which is no different from modern nations who believe that their influence goes beyond their borders).

What cannot be questioned is that linear barriers were built. And once one builds a fence or a wall across a piece of ground, one is making statements about the territory either side of that barrier. A barrier like Hadrian's Wall carries with it an emphatic statement that the territory behind it was Roman; but it also carries a (perhaps less emphatic) statement that the territory beyond the wall, if not entirely given up by Rome, was certainly somewhere that Rome did not maintain such a strong claim to.

Let's return then to George Bush's fence. I think this is rather more like Hadrian's Wall than Beard allows. Many purposes have been suggested for Hadrian's Wall, from giving the soldiers something to do, to securing lines of communications. beard lists most of the suggestions. It is entirely possible that many of them are valid - indeed, I think it likely; I've always been suspicious of attempts to find the One and Only Reason for historical events, as single causes rarely tell the whole story.

One of the suggestions is that the wall was meant to control the non-military movement across the frontier zone. I think there's a lot to be said for that, and if that's true, then is that not exactly the same as the stated purpose of Bush's fence? Bush wants the fence to prevent illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the US. This is what has been suggested for Hadrian's Wall - making sure people could only cross the frontier at manned posts, where they could be taxed, and their right to enter the empire be confirmed.

It has also been suggested (and again I'm sympathetic) that, regardless of any practical purpose, Hadrian's Wall had a symbolic function. It was meant to show to anyone crossing the frontier that they were entering a more powerful state than they had left. The Bush fence seems to me to fulfill the same purpose (as do the hoops that Immigration makes anyone trying legitimately to enter the US jump through).

And propaganda goes both ways. There's a case for saying that the Bush fence is meant to assuage the fears of people living in the southern States that they are about to be swamped by immigrants. Something Must Be Done, and it doesn't matter if it's practical, or if the threat is genuine, as long as action can be seen to have been taken, and that action can be seen as resolute.

And so I find myself wondering whether, if we knew more about the second century AD in Britain than the anonymous fourth-century concocter of the Historia Augusta did, would we see an emperor under pressure to Do Something about the barbarian threat, and choosing to produce something that might not keep the barbarians at bay, but let his subjects sleep at night?

International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant's Day

April 23rd is apparently International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant's Day, in which all those who believe in the value of putting material up for free on the web as a supplement to legitimate professional publication should post something of professional quality. It's more meant to be for those doing fiction or other creative writing, but I've seen quite a bit of non-fiction posted, so here's my contribution, something that will eventually end up in my book on Classics and SF. And yes, I know the referencing style is inconsistent, but I really don't have time to sort that out now. (Some of this material appeared before in this post, but belongs in this section of the book.)

‘T for Tiberius’: the original Star Trek[1]

For more consistently successful use of classical imagery in the 1960s than that achieved by Doctor Who, it is necessary to cross the Atlantic. America’s most influential sf series of the decade was undoubtedly Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.[2] The central notion of this series was the following of the adventures of the Captain and crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a combination warship/exploration vessel in the service of the Earth-based United Federation of Planets in what is eventually established to be the 23^rd century.[3] Like Doctor Who, Trek also turned to the ancient Mediterranean for inspiration for episodes. Unlike Doctor Who, it was much more even-handed in terms of taking inspiration from Rome and Greece.

Captain James Kirk’s middle name took a long time to be established. Indeed, when he was first introduced, in the second pilot of Star Trek, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ (1966), his middle initial is shown on a gravestone as ‘R.’ This detail had been forgotten by the next time someone wanted to give Kirk’s middle initial, and so it became ‘T.’ But what this stands for remained unknown throughout the original run of Trek.

That it is ‘Tiberius’ was finally established in 1974, in an episode of the animated series of Star Trek that followed the original – ‘Bem’, written by David Gerrold. Almost everything that happened in the animated episodes is considered non-canonical for subsequent Trek productions. That is, they are never referred to, and no attempt is made to avoid contradicting them. But, curiously, the detail of Kirk’s middle name does get into the Star Trek canon.[4] This suggests that it was series creator Gene Roddenberry’s notion, rather than writer Gerrold’s.

In Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979),[5] there is a preface made out to be by James Kirk himself. In that preface, Kirk shows his Classical credentials by stating that he has come to be seen as a new Ulysses, and that he is uncomfortable in the role. He also explains his name:

My name is James Tiberius Kirk. Kirk because my father and his male forebears followed the old custom of passing on a family identity name. I received James because it was both the name of my father’s beloved brother as well as that of my mother’s first love instructor. Tiberius, as I am forever tired of explaining, was the Roman emperor whose life for some unfathomable reason fascinated my grandfather Samuel.

Anybody who has read Suetonius’ Life of Tiberius, or is familiar with I, Claudius or Tinto Brass’ 1979 film Caligula, will know that Tiberius was notorious for the quantity, variety and invention of his sexual perversions. Several questions therefore clearly arise. What exactly was it about Tiberius that so fascinated Samuel Kirk? Do Samuel Kirk’s interests, together with James being named after his mother’s ‘love instructor’ (whatever one of those is), explain the voracious heterosexual appetite of the grandson?[6] But above all, what was Roddenberry thinking?

The full establishment of that detail, of course, postdates the original series. Looking at the ‘classic’ episodes, and passing over the hyperbolic assertion of Allan Asherman that the second pilot, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, has ‘all the elements of a Greek tragedy’,[7] the first episode that I will studied comes from the second season. Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon’s ‘Bread and Circuses’ (1968), which of course takes its title from a famous line of the Roman poet Juvenal (Satires 10.80-1: ‘The citizen anxiously wishes for two things only, bread and circuses’).[8]

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise arrives at a planet which has developed in much the same fashion as Earth (explained in the episode by a pseudoscientific excuse called ‘Hodgkins’ Law of Parallel Planet Development’), except that the Roman empire never fell. Thus the viewer is presented with a late twentieth-century Earth ruled by a First Citizen and a Proconsul, in which the leading car is called the Jupiter Eight. Slavery still exists, and imperial rule exploits the population and keeps it downtrodden.

What is most interesting about this story is the gladiatorial show which takes place in the episode. It is an often-noted irony that Hollywood epic, from Ben Hur to Gladiator, moralizes about the provision of gladiatorial spectacle or similar bloodthirsty entertainments whilst at the same time indulging in recreations of them, providing the audience with the very circenses Juvenal mentions. By placing the episode’s gladiatorial shows in a television theatre, with canned applause, cheers and boos, Roddenberry and Coon make this irony explicit. ‘Bread and Circuses’ becomes a satire on American television, and its tendency to drop to the lowest common denominator. (Star Trek was constantly battling with the networks.) It also picks up on the use of Rome as a metaphor for America, and a warning of what America could become, that can be found more clearly in Anthony Mann’s film The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

In one further point the story draws inspiration from Hollywood epic. The Enterprise crew escape with their lives, but do not overthrow the Roman tyranny. In the episode’s closing scene, however, it is revealed that the key resistance to Rome, what Kirk, Spock and McCoy thought were the followers of the Sun, are in fact followers of the Son, of God (i.e. Christians). It is made fairly explicit that this religion will bring freedom and justice to this planet. I have already mentioned that such a message is often to be found in Hollywood Roman epics.

The gladiatorial motif is also used in another episode produced almost simultaneously with ‘Bread and Circuses’, ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion’ (1968), [9] written by Margaret Armen. In this aliens abduct Enterprise crew members, force them to fight to the death and gamble on the results.

This is a far more straightforward treatment of the subject matter of bloodthirsty entertainment. The gladiatorial elements are ascribed to aliens, and thus distanced from humanity, whilst Kirk is seen verbally and physically to espouse the human (i.e. American) devotion to freedom and the human (i.e. American) ability to triumph over outstanding odds. It is poorly-written and clichéd, and entirely lacks the satirical edge of ‘Bread and Circuses’.[10]

‘Bread and Circuses’ is an example of interaction with ancient Rome (albeit a rather bizarre one). Star Trek also has a clear example of borrowing from Roman culture (in addition to the gladiatorial motif in ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion’). This is found in a first-season episode, Paul Schneider’s ‘Balance of Terror’ (1966), the plot structure of which is inspired by the 1957 World War II film The Enemy Below, about a US destroyer’s pursuit of a German U-boat. The Enterprise takes the role of the destroyer, and a hostile spaceship capable of hiding itself through a ‘cloaking device’ is the U-Boat.[11] As part of the back story for this episode, viewers are introduced to the Romulan Star Empire. This is based on the twin planets of Romulus and Remus, ruled by a Praetor, and has officers called Centurions (in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it is further revealed that there is a Romulan Senate, presided over by a Proconsul). Mark Lenard’s studied performance as the Romulan Commander in ‘Balance of Terror’ seems deliberately reminiscent of Laurence Olivier in Spartacus (1960).

It’s interesting to quote what a 1988 article on Star Trek has to say about the Romulans:

Like the Klingons, the Romulons [sic] are a warrior-race, but one molded in the shape of the Roman empire. Romulons have Latinate names and dress in toga-like tunics with sashes and ornate helmets similar to those of Roman legionnaires.[12]

There is actually quite a lot to disagree with in that statement. Decius in ‘Balance of Terror’ does have a Roman-sounding (indeed Roman) name. However, he is the only Romulan given a name in any of the original Star Trek episodes in which they appear (‘Balance of Terror’, ‘The Deadly Years’, 1967, and ‘The Enterprise Incident’, 1968). By the time they return in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Romulans are given almost exclusively non-Latinate names, such as Tebok and Tomalak. In fairness, Rick Worland would not have seen any of the relevant episodes when he wrote the paragraph quoted above. What is less easy to accept is the description of the Romulan uniforms as ‘toga-like’ and having Roman-style helmets. This seems to be stretching a point, and the Romulan uniforms seem much more imaginative, and to be drawing on other sources in addition to Roman dress. On the other hand, the Romulan warships are famous for a large bird of prey painted on them, reminiscent of the Roman imperial eagle (and, of course, the American eagle).

Star Trek can make such use of the Roman empire because of the hostile American popular attitude to Rome noted earlier. With the Federation as representative of the American dream, it is natural to base one of the Federation’s enemies on the anti-America, Rome.[13]

Star Trek also deals with the Greeks, in three episodes. Two of these, one from the second season and one from the third, draw from Greek culture in a fairly transparent fashion. The first is Gilbert Ralston’s ‘Who Mourns For Adonais?’[14] (1967), most famous at the time for the costume worn by actress Leslie Parrish (it involved a heavy strip of material drawn up from the waistband, arranged across her breasts and then draped over her left shoulder, but not anchored in any way at the back, relying on the material’s weight to keep it in place). In this episode, the Enterprise arrives at a planet where they find a being claiming to be the Greek god Apollo, and wanting the Enterprise crew to worship him.[15] This is the sort of theme that appealed greatly to Gene Roddenberry; humans encountering god-like beings, and defeating them by their mortal (and moral) qualities, which the quasi-divine beings have forgotten. Kirk theorizes that the Greek gods were powerful alien beings who visited Earth thousands of years ago, and were accepted as divinities.

The choice of Apollo is interesting. Star Trek emerged out of the optimism for space exploration engendered by the NASA programmes of the 1960s, and Starfleet appears a natural successor to NASA. By 1967, at the forefront of NASA’s activities was the Apollo programme to put men on the moon. First aired in September 1967, ‘Who mourns for Adonais?’ was undoubtedly written and filmed with the knowledge of the Apollo 1 fire of January 27^th of that year.[16] This may well have something to do with the sympathetic portrayal of the god.

Apollo never falters from his claim that he is a god, except in one scene where he almost admits to Carolyn Palomas (Parrish) that he and his fellows had a non-divine origin.[17] This attitude is conveyed by a marvellous performance by the experienced Shakespearean stage actor Michael Forrest.[18] Forrest had previously starred in Roger Corman’s 1960 Atlas, and so had previous association with the whole sword-and-sandal or peplum genre[19] (the production team originally considered a British actor, but could not find one suitable). As Gideon Nisbet shows in his discussion of Atlas, modern American audiences find it hard to take seriously the notion that a man dressed in an ancient tunic and showing a lot of leg can be a virile male lead, unless they have a reluctant Christian girl to win over. Yet Forrest spends the entire episode dressed in a very short gold lamé tunic, which he apparently disliked, without ever once giving any suggestion of camp (though a ‘blooper’ reel does show him parading effeminately in it). The episode does this by drawing upon the conventions of Roman toga epic, and the central romantic clash between the pagan male and Christian female that often features. In this instance, for ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ read ‘irrational’ and ‘scientific’. Apollo claims divinity; Starfleet officer Carolyn Palomas has been trained to deny such notions (reflecting the rationalist outlook of the series as a whole). Yet despite this, Palomas falls for Apollo, and in an abandoned final sequence (reinstated by James Blish when he novelized the story in Star Trek 7 (1972)), falls pregnant by him.

This is one of the most philosophically interesting episodes of Star Trek. It ends, after the Enterprise crew have caused Apollo to destroy himself, with Kirk musing on whether it would have hurt them so much to gather a few laurels in Apollo’s honour.[20]

The second Greek episode, Meyer Dolinsky’s ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’ (1968; originally entitled ‘The Sons of Socrates’), comes from the third season. At the time, this episode was controversial in the United States, because it was reportedly the first television show to feature an interracial kiss (between Kirk and Lt. Uhura, though according to William Shatner the director refused to actually allow their lips to touch); in the UK, the episode was banned for over a decade, presumably because of a scene where two Enterprise women are threatened by Kirk and Spock with a whip and a branding iron.

In ‘Who Mourns For Adonais?’ the Greek elements are integral to the story. In ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’, they seem more like window-dressing. There is no real reason for the Platonians to be followers of Plato, as the real story revolves around their possession of strong psychokinetic powers and their irresponsibility in using them. There is no good evidence from the episode that Dolinsky had actually read any Plato, unless you believe that the central message of Platonism is that the powerful should be self-indulgent hedonists and bully the less powerful.

Finally, there is ‘Elaan of Troyius’, again from the third season of 1968, written by John Meredyth Lucas. A Greek connection for this episode is often overlooked,[21] but is clearly present in some of the names, and the basic premise, drawn from the Trojan War, though Lucas departs from that premise at many points.

The beautiful Elaan is clearly Helen of Troy, who can make any man fall in love with her (given a pseudo-scientific explanation as being due to a biochemical compound in her tears). She is marrying the ruler of Troyius (Troy, of course), in order to bring about the end of a war between Troyius and her own planet, Elas (= Hellas, the Greek name for Greece). This puts in danger of the same lack of imagination identified above for Underworld and The Horns of Nimon, but other names, such as Petri, Kryton, or Dohlman (the position Elaan holds) do not appear to be Greek, or if they are, are not easily found in the Iliad. Nor is the story’s progression; Elaan’s marriage is part of diplomatic manoeuvres between Elas and Troyius, but she herself is vain and spoilt (as has been observed,[22] more Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew than Helen of Troy), and does not want to marry; her bodyguard Kryton is conspiring with the Federation’s enemies, the Klingon Empire, to prevent peace. Elaan manages to make Kirk fall in love with her, but Kirk teaches her the importance of duty, and she proceeds to Troyius and her marriage. This is quite distant from the basic outline of the Trojan War, but one of Homer’s themes, the importance of doing one’s duty, does survive.

---

[1] This chapter concentrates on the original series of 1966-1969. Subsequent spin-off series were the animated series of 1973-1975, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999), Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001), and Enterprise (2001-2005). There were also ten motion pictures made from 1979 to 2002, and a large number of spin-off novels, comics and video games. These will only be touched upon tangentially.

[2] At the time Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space was more popular in the ratings, but it is Star trek that is now iconic.

[3] This is left vague in the original series, with some episodes, such as ‘Tomorrow is Yesterday’ (1967), suggesting that it might be the 22nd century. The dates were fixed when Star Trek: The Next Generation was produced in the 1980s.

[4] Technically not until mentioned on-screen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

[5] Persistent rumour has suggested that this, whilst appearing under Roddenberry’s name, was actually written by Alan Dean Foster. However, though Foster had done the equivalent when he wrote the novelization of Star Wars (1976), which was published as by George Lucas, and though he was undoubtedly involved at an early stage in the screenwriting of what eventually became Star Trek: The Motion Picture, he denies writing the novelization, and David G. Hartwell, who edited the book, insists that it was written by Roddenberry (Ayers 2006).

[6] Writers of ‘slash’ fan fiction featuring the unspoken love between Kirk and Spock (of whose work Roddenberry was presumably aware) might take such a statement as evidence that they were right all along.

[7] Allan Asherman, The Star Trek Compendium (1987), p. 17.

[8] Duas tantum res anxius optat / panem et circenses. Recent translations tend to avoid ‘circuses’ for circenses; so Rudd in the Oxford World’s Classics edition has ‘bread and races’ (1991, 89), whilst Green in the Penguin uses ‘bread and the Games’. These, I feel, lose the cultural resonance of ‘bread and circuses’, which has passed into popular usage.

[9] Recorded after, but broadcast before, ‘Bread and Circuses’.

[10] There is also the first season episode ‘Arena’, in which Kirk has to battle an alien captain at the whim of god-like beings (which are not rare in Star Trek). This would be more a case of allusion than anything else.

[11] Up to a point. The Enemy Below ends with the destruction of both vessels, clearly not an option for an ongoing series like Star Trek.

[12] Rick Worland, ‘Captain Kirk: Cold Warrior’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 16 no. 3 (Fall 1988), p. 110.

[13] There is no doubt some truth in Worland’s assertion (op. cit., p. 112) that, to some degree at least, the Romulans stand in for Red China in an allegory of the Cold War, with the United Federation of Planets as NATO, and the Klingon Empire as the Soviet Union.

[14] The spelling is deliberate, after Shelly’s ‘Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats’ (1821).

[15] On this episode see now Otta Wenskus, “Star Trek: Antike Mythen und moderne Energiewesen,” in PONTES II: Antike im Film Film, ed. Martin Korenjak and Karlheinz Töchterle, Comparanda 5 (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2002), 132-133; Winkler 2005, 400-5.

[16] Wenskus 2002, 130, notes that the motto of Starfleet Academy, ex astris scientia, is patterned on that of the Apollo missions, ex luna scientia. The Academy motto, however, was not introduced until an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation broadcast in 1992.

[17] This scene is discussed by Winkler 2005, 402.

[18] His name is spelt this way in the credits for this episode, though he has more often been credited as ‘Michael Forest’.

[19] See Nisbet 2006, 9-20.

[20] Since Kirk has been the prime mover in destroying Apollo, this line actually seems quite odd coming from him. William Shatner was rumoured to have ensured that he got all the best lines in the show, and one wonders whether this one was originally intended for another character, perhaps Dr McCoy, whose role is often to act as the crew’s conscience.

[21] Including by myself in earlier treatments of this topic, and I am grateful to Dr Alexandra Villing of the British Museum for bringing the episode to my attention.

[22] Gerry Turnbull (ed.), A Star Trek Catalog (1979), p. 130.

An iconographical question

I have an issue I'm trying to get to the bottom of, regarding the iconographic attributes of the god Mercury.



The above is Augustin Pajou's Mercure ou le Commerce from 1780. This shows the typical attributes of the god with which we are all familiar. What I am interested in is his winged hat. I'm trying to find when this particular design, a sort of steel helmet, is settled on. I can't find any examples of this exact design predating the Renaissance.

It has similarities to the travelling hat, sometimes winged, sometimes not, which Hermes wears in red-figure vases, such as that depicted in the Sarpedon vase by Euphronios depicted below:



The nearest Greek analogue I can find is on the Hermes Logios now in the Palazzo Altemps, though I can't be sure the head isn't a restoration.



Many Roman examples seem to dispense with any identifiable headpiece beyond the wings, as shown on the Gosbecks Mercury below.



Anyone got any observations, or other examples to present?

Atlantis was not Crete

I'm writing this blog entry as I watch a BBC Timewatch programme on the Minoans and their fate. The programme is pushing a 'new' theory about the destruction of Minoan society, that a volcanic eruption at Thera caused a tidal wave that swept away settlements across the Aegean. So far, so good, though this theory has, quite literally, been around at least since I were a lad, and all that seems actually new is improved scientific understanding of the power of the explosion of Thera and knowledge of the destructive power of tidal waves gained in the wake (if you'll forgive the pun) of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, allied to more and better archaeological evidence.

What is really getting me shouting at the television, however, is that the bloated, rotting, stinking cadaver of Atlantis has been dragged out again. Was Plato's tale of Atlantis a folk memory of the destruction of Minoan civilization, the programme asks.

No.

The tale of Atlantis is only known from Plato's Timaeus and Critias. It is not independently attested in Greek literature, unlike other myths, such as that of the Minotaur. Plutarch mentions it in his Life of Solon, but he explicitly cites Plato, so is not an independent witness. Secondly, the tale is given in great detail. For some, this is evidence that Plato can't have made it up. It is precisely the opposite. Plato wrote the Timaeus in about 360 BC. The conversation that it allegedly reports must have a dramatic date of about 425 BC. The tale of Atantis is told by one of the speakers, Critias, who heard it when he was a boy of ten. We know Critias was born in 460, so that dates Critias getting the tale to 450. He got the tale from his grandfather, who was about 90 at the time - the grandfather allegedly got it from the Athenian statesman Solon, but since he died about 558, one must start to question that detail. Solon himself was told by Egyptian priests. That the story is then told in such clear detail by Plato suggests large-scale embroidery. Without independent evidence, which does not exist, one cannot get anywhere in finding a historical core to the legend.

But why should we look for one in the first place? The trouble with the way Plato's account of Atlantis is used by those who believe in a historical Atlantis is that it ignores the genre that Plato writes it in. Contrary to what this programme has said (and I cannot forgive them for this), Plato was not a historian. He was a philosopher. That difference is very important. He is not interested in recording history or folklore - he is interested in making philosophical points, and uses a number of devices to do so. He is quite prepared to make things up to do so. Atlantis is surely another example of this. It is no more sensible to search for Atlantis than it is to try to find More's Utopia, or Swift's Liliput, or Orwell's Animal Farm.

Notably, not one of the experts they have on screen have mentioned Atlantis once - this appears to be entirely the imposition of the narration, presumably the idea of the producer, slipped in to get people to sit up and pay attention. And so more people will be encouraged to take a postivistic view of the Atlantis tale.

In the olden days, programmes like Timewatch and Horizon used to debunk nonsense like this, not contribute to it.

More gladiators

Following on from this post, I notice that Mary Beard, who spoke at the conference, has blogged it. Her report of her own paper is interesting. Perhaps she overreacts in underplaying the importance of gladiatorial combats - lack of frequency, after all, can contribute to the importance of an event rather than detract from it - but we modern westerners, fascinated by the (allegedly) alien concept of men killing each other for popular entertainment, do generally overplay it. The gladiatorial games were not top of the bill when it came to Roman mass entertainment - that was chariot racing. I always tell my students that (depending on which figures you use) the Circus Maximus could hold between two and five times as many people as the Colosseum, that it was riots by chariot racing fans that nearly brought down an emperor (Justinian, in AD 532),* and that there's a reason Juvenal (Satire 10.81) says panem et circenses, not panem et munera.

*Not that there weren't riots in amphitheatres - that in Pompeii that got their amphitheatre closed down for a decade comes to mind.

Gladiators in Chester - apparently really

Alun Salt points his readers at this page from the BBC's website, reporting a conference this weekend that has happened in Chester. To someone who has studied Roman Britain, it seems a quite bizarrely written item. Take the second paragraph:

Experts have unearthed evidence in the remains of Chester Amphitheatre which suggests gladiators appeared there.

Well, yes, of course gladiators appeared in the amphitheatre. That's what happened in amphitheatres. Why should anyone ever think differently?

The next paragraph sheds a little more light - "It was previously thought the arena was only used for ceremonial activities" - but in fact you need to go to other reports to find that what this refers to is the notion that amphitheatres in Britain were only used for military parades and training.

Personally, I've never bought that. The only argument in favour seems to be that amphitheatres in Britain, such as those at Caerleon, Chester, and London, are often associated with forts or fortresses. But for a start, at least one isn't (Silchester). And in any case, an association with a fort doesn't prove that gladiatorial games didn't take place there. If you found a football field in a modern army base, you wouldn't conclude that, because of the military association, no-one actually played football there. I'm more than happy to accept that ceremonial events and military activities did take place in amphitheatres in Britain (after all, modern football stadia are used for activities other than football matches, such as pop concerts), or even that the Roman army paid for those sited next to forts. But I have never seen a convincing argument that these buildings were not used for the same purposes for which amphitheatres around the empire were built.

I wonder, as well, if there isn't a bit of cultural snobbery behind the military theory. It used to be suggested that the Greeks in the East weren't interested in gladiatorial games, because they didn't in general build amphitheatres - the subtext being that the culturally educated Greeks were above such vulgar Roman entertainments. The problem is, they weren't - what happened was that instead of building new specialist amphitheatres, already existing theatres and stadia were converted for gladiators. So I wonder whether in the past, British archaeologists wanted to think that ancient Britons, our noble ancestors, would have no interest in the spectacle of men killing each other. But it's now clear that the Britons loved it as much as anyone else in the empire, and I for one have never believed otherwise.

Antony and Cleopatra

I was going to blog about this news story, and point out that coins with this sort of depiction of Antony and Cleopatra have been around for years (there's one which, if not struck from the same dies as the Newcastle example, is certainly struck from dies made to the same design, illustrated in the Roman history text book I used as an undergraduate in the mid-80s), so the difference between ancient and modern portrayals of Cleopatra is not exactly 'news' - but then Mary Beard beat me to it.

The education of the imaginary aristocracy

In the long-running BBC Radio soap The Archers, there is a character called Nigel Pargetter. I have tended to charitably consider him to be an idiot. Tonight, he surprised me by quoting Ovid from memory. The passage is Heroides 5.21-2, and the rather free translation Nigel quotes is:

The Beeches, faithful guardians of your flame,
Bear in their wounded trunks Oenone's name;
And as the trunks, so still the letters grow.

(I don't know the translator, as the only place I found that exact rendition through a Google search didn't attribute it. I'm guessing it's Victorian, and probably famous. Anyone know?)

It says something quite reassuring about our connection with the Classical past that a character on a soap opera (albeit broadcast on a self-consciously erudite radio station) can still quote Ovid.

2007 KCL Greek Play

Sophocles, Trachiniae
King's College London Greek Play
Performance seen: February 8th 2007

The first Greek tragedy I ever saw in the original language was Sophocles' Trachiniae (Women of Trachis), in Cambridge in 1983. I still remember it vividly. Now the relatively rarely-staged (compared to the Oedipus Rex and Antigone) Trachiniae becomes the first play I've seen two Greek-language productions of (without, incidentally, seeing an English version in the interim).

I've noticed over the years that the King's Greek Play has a tendency to be theatrically experimental. Even when the staging is fairly conventional, they'll choose a leftfield text like Rhesus. 2007 is no different, and director Caroline Fries scatters throughout the play what I can only describe as artifices, seeking to engage the Greekless audience. Perhaps that's appropriate, as Trachiniae sees Sophocles himself experimenting, with a female character, Deianeira, Heracles' wife, who is, as Judith Mossman noted in her pre-performance talk, not bad in herself, but through naivety and a lack of common sense manages to kill her husband, a central conflict between two characters (Heracles and Deianeira) who never meet, and a Messenger whose initial action is to report an offstage messenger's speech.

The question is, do any of the artifices work?

Before tackling that, I have to be fair and point out that playing a role in a Greek-language production is difficult, especially if one is not a native speaker of the modern language (and there are noticeably fewer people in prominent roles with that sort of background than there have been in previous years). Not only does one have to remember lines in a tongue not one's own, but one has to appear as if one knows what the lines mean. I have seen Greek language productions where actors were speaking words when they clearly had no idea of the meaning, and had just learned the text by rote. No-one in this year's King's Greek Play committed that sin. And these are amateur actors and an amateur production. So I cannot set too harsh a standard upon such a show (which is not to say that student productions cannot sometimes reach very high standards indeed).

So, what are some of the artifices? The production makes a point of eschewing surtitles. I think this is a shame, as I was glad to see them appear in 2005. Instead, there are short readings in English. These are usually given at microphones by the sides of the stage, though the dying Heracles remains on his cot. They are translations of lines of the play, summaries of the action, or texts that resonate with the same themes (I recognized Shakespeare and the King James Bible). There are also short filmed sequences projected on to the backdrop (as there had been in a previous KCL version of the Antigone that I saw, and didn't much like). I'm not sure that this helps the audience follow the play's action - I found myself wondering how someone unfamiliar with the work would cope. The film sequences also occasion the odd pause as the cast wait for them to start, which cause the action to drag. (As does the bringing on of Heracles, where the lights are dimmed as his cot is pulled on by stagehands, who then left before the action resumed - far better, surely, to begin the scene as Heracles is brought on.) All this can only be accommodated through what seemed to be the slashing of significant sections of the Greek - this at least is what I surmised from the way those around me following the work with their Oxford Classical Texts flipped their pages over.

The Chorus are clad in Greek-style dresses, and masked, after a fashion - their faces are painted white, with a black domino mask painted across that. The intent here may be to present the Chorus as uniform, but in fact the make up actually highlights the differences in their faces. But there is some attempt at music (though little movement), with the Chorus singing two songs, and a duet with Deianeira.

Deianeira is portrayed confidently by Charlotte Murrie, and it soon becomes clear that her halting delivery is intended to show Deianeira's state of mind, and not because she has forgotten her lines. (Unfortunately, the play began with an English prologue by an actress who had forgotten her lines.) She is clad in a forties cocktail dress, with a large flower in her hair, an echo, as the programme notes reveal, of Billie Holiday's look. Heracles' new bride, Iole, is clad identically, underlining the way in which she is intended as a replacement for Deianeira. It also adds incestuous overtones to Heracles demand that Iole be married after his death to his son Hyllus - like Oedipus, Hyllus is to plough the furrow previously ploughed by his father.

I can't say that there were any particularly bad ideas used in this production. But the artifices seemed to me not to add up to more than the sum of their parts. There was no unifying theme bringing the various devices together - for all that last year's production seems to have somewhat divided people I've spoken to, there was at least a single central idea from which the other ideas flowed. I couldn't see that in this production.

So this version of Trachiniae seems to me to be a failed experiment. But it is a failure produced by people who have talent. To progress one must experiment, and if that exposes one to the risk of failure, that does not invalidate the experiment, for that is how one learns.

Carnivalesque #23 - Ancient/Mediaeval

Welcome to , the blog carnival dedicated to pre-modern history. This month, as every two months, it's the ancient/mediaeval edition.

This has been an interesting experience - I've been behind on reading blogs of late, so did an intense couple of days catching up, partly following links provided by David Meadows' valuable rogueclassicism. And thanks to everyone who made recommendations.

Where to start? Well, why don't I start with the end - specifically Phil Harland in Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean examining apocalyptic visions.

Staying with Near Eastern and non-western cultures, Frog in a Well has a post about seventh-century BC guidelines for Chinese students, with some comments about how they inform the attitude of current students (which, having spent a year teaching in China, I can vouch for). Meanwhile, Rich Baker gives a useful ten paragraph guide to Ancient Egypt.

I didn't know much about the mediaeval bloggers out there, so this was a revelation. In the Middle has an interesting post on man-eating animals in mediaeval art (and early Christian literature). Aliamore's Edward II blog is a tremendous resource for the ill-fated Plantagenet - I can't single out one post, as they're all excellent. And, straying out of period, Another Damned Medievalist talks about the role C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien may have played in forming modern views of Islamic peoples.

There's been some debate about the state of Anglo-Saxon studies. It was kicked off by Michael Drout here. A number of the responses are to be seen here, but there have no doubt been others.

I read the ancient blogs after the mediaeval ones, and I was probably a bit tired by then. So the ancients may be a bit neglected. Nevertheless, I did find a new blog I wasn't aware of. Classics Reloaded is the product of an undergraduate Classics Studies major, who shows more intelligence and perception than many graduate students I've come across. They must be a delight to teach. The best post is their discussion of the Melian dialogue in Thucydides. I was recently writing about the Dialogue in another context, and I agree with MJD that Thucydides intends his readers to believe that the Melians are right, both morally and in terms of Athenian self-interest (though part of his message is also that being right doesn't necessarily save you). Their post on Sophocles' Antigone gives me a way to mention the much-blogged (e.g here) book report on the play by a young Britney Spears. She seems to have read the work and understood the plot, which was probably all that was expected of her.

Alun Salt always gives good value. In i-Science, he has a sensible discussion of The Star of Bethlehem, including one of his genius remarks towards the end. Meanwhile, in Archaeoastronomy, he reflects on the second season of HBO's Rome series, just begun in the US, and mentions Mediawatch-UK's qualms. For those of you who don't know, Mediawatch-UK are carrying on the work of Mrs Mary Whitehouse, trying to stop British broadcasters exposing those incapable of turning their televisions off to the merest suggestion of sex. I saw one of their spokesmen recently on a programme about Monty Python's Life of Brian, talking about how Christians were at a disadvantage when dealing with their opponents, because Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek - in a tone of voice that suggested that he really, really wished Jesus had been a bit more hard-nosed about this.

In the more professional end of the blogosphere, I've been meaning to mention Mary Beard's A Don's Life for some time. Beard generates a wide range of reactions. My own view is that, while sometimes she paints a picture of university life that bears little relation to any experience I've had, on other occasions she can cut right to the heart of the issue. A couple of recent posts caught my eye. In one, she compares exam papers from 1902 and 2006, and discovers that the Edwardian papers required more knowledge, but less actual thinking. In another, she discusses ancient racism, in response to a recent controversy on British television. Personally, I find it difficult to read Juvenal's Third Satire and not conclude that Romans could easily hold horrible prejudices based upon someone's ethnic origins - whether you call that racism or xenophobia may be hair-splitting.

A couple of posts dealing with the move from late antiquity into the early mediaeval period. Muhlberger's Early History spends Christmas Eve blogging a couple of articles, one of which reminds us that Egypt was once a centre of Christianity (this connected for me with the first episode of new BBC4 series Art of Eternity). Meanwhile, Carla Nayland discusses what seems to be one of the more sensible books on King Arthur. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to recognize that Gildas doesn't actually say who commanded at Badon, and certainly not that it was Ambrosius Aurelianus (who personally I believe was dead long before).

A few more Roman links: At Westminster Wisdom, the Gracchi have an in-depth (if occasionally poorly-punctuated) discussion of Fergus Millar's The Roman Republic in Political Thought. Meanwhile, David Parsons on the ARLT blog has a sensible post on teaching Latin. His conclusion: that promoting the language is more important than internecine arguments about which course one uses. And I include Troels Myrup's post on a talk at the Getty Villa purely for the photo of the villa itself, which immediately made me think of villas in the Sabine Hills, such as Hadrian's at Tivoli. (The Getty Museum has, of course, been in the news a lot recently with regard to demands for the return of allegedly-looted antiquities. rogueclassicism carries all the latest news reports.)

Finally, some fun ones. Adrian Murdoch at Bread and Circuses gives some rules for writing about late antiquity. Susan Higginbotham presents a playlet which in one short paragraph expresses all my qualms about Richard III's apologists. And whilst this post has nothing directly related to pre-modern history, Richard Nokes is a professor of mediaeval literature, and the little playlets at the end are hilarious.

Last call

Last reminder that I'll be hosting the next edition of , the pre-modern history blog carnival, the bimonthly Ancent/Mediaeval issue, later this week. There's still time to nominate, either through the submission form at Blog Carnival, or by sending an e-mail to carnivalesque @ earlymodernweb . org . uk, or to me at keentony @ hotmail . com (spaces included to thwart robots).

Upcoming Carnivalesque

Just to remind everyone that the next edition of , the pre-modern history blog carnival, the bimonthly Ancent/Mediaeval issue, will be hosted here, appearing around January 25th. Please nominate any appropriate blog issue for inclusion, either through the submission form at Blog Carnival, or by sending an e-mail to carnivalesque @ earlymodernweb . org . uk, or to me at keentony @ hotmail . com (spaces included to thwart robots).

I'm particularly interested in mediaeval recommendations, as those blogs I don't normally read myself.

A Neapolitan Aphrodite

A couple of months back, one of the memes floating around the blogosphere was The Greek Mythology Personality Test. When I took this test, I came out as Nemesis, but that's not particularly important. What I want to talk about is the illustration chosen for those whose result was Aphrodite. The creator of the test used this:



This is the Aphrodite Kallipygos, "Aphrodite of the Beautiful Arse". I make no apologies for the vulgarity. I'm translating Aristophanes at the moment, and pyge is a good Aristophanic word, for which translations such as 'buttocks' or 'behind' seem too tame.

There are many different 'types' or patterns of Aphrodite statues. You may be familiar with the coy nudity of the Capitoline Venus, or the disinterested self-regard of the Capuan Venus, of which the best-known example is the Venus de Milo. The Aphrodite Kallipygos is less well-known - I'm not aware of any other examples. But the Kallipygos is my favourite piece of ancient sculpture - I have loved it since first encountering it in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples back in 1999.

It is well-named, even if some argue that the statue described as the Aphrodite Kallipygos in antiquity, from the sanctuary of Aphrodite in Syracuse, was not the original of the statue in Naples. Attention is focused on the exposed bottom. If one goes around the other side of the statue, there is less emphasis on nudity, and certainly less than in the Capitoline and Capuan versions. The breasts are largely covered, though one nipple is exposed, and while the pubic area is not concealed, the drapery falls in such a way as to suggest that actually it is. And the tilt of the body is encouraging you to go round behind her. Again, the use of the drapery actually makes the body more erotic than the total nudity of other Aphrodites.

I like this statue because of the humour here, which I think is not to be found in much statuary. And, as anyone who has compared Priscilla Presley in Dallas and Priscilla Presley in The Naked Gun will know, a female who is funny is sexier than one who is not. I love the way that Aphrodite is caught checking out her own lines. She personifies a certain sort of shallow vanity, that can be found in many sitcoms - she is obsessed with ensuring that her body is as perfect as it can be. (The character Lydia Weston in Less Than Perfect is an example.) But of course, as she is divine, her vanity is justified. It is a beautiful arse.

Interestingly, the humour I see in this almost completely derives from the seventeenth-century restoration of the statue by Carlo Albacini. The sculpture was found in the area of Nero's Domus Aurea (and isn't it exactly the sort of statue you would expect that emperor to surround himself with?), and passed into the collection of the Farnese family. In those days, people restored the missing parts of statuary - in this case, including the head and shoulder. So Aphrodite's gaze is directed by Albacini; we really don't know if the original statue was depicted with her looking lovingly at her bottom. But I'd like to think that it was.

But I don't really care. What is important is that this statue delights me, and will continue to delight me, and I wish to introduce her to as many people as I can, so they may share my delight.

Orestes: Blood and Light

Orestes: Blood & Light
By Helen Edmundson, based on Euripides
Shared Experience/Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn

Performance seen: November 30th 2006

One of the pleasures of teaching for the Open University is the wide variety of backgrounds from which your students come. So it is entirely possible to be leafing through the programme for a production in a north London community arts theatre, and discover that the costume supervisor is a former student. But enough of that ...

Given how everyone talks about how rarely Euripides' Orestes is performed, it seems a bit of a luxury to be able to see two productions in the space of just over a year. Even more to be appreciated is that both productions have been very good. But there comparisons have to stop, as the two versions are very different. The Oxford Greek Play from last year was, bar a few chops here and there, a faithful performance of Euripides' text. For Helen Edmundson, writer of Shared Experience's version (which has previously been performed in the same venue as the Oxford version), Euripides is merely the starting point. Whole characters and scenes are lost (Pylades, the Chorus, Apollo and the deus ex machina, the Messenger, and to all intents and purposes the Phrygian slave, made into an African woman and with her role much curtailed). Those characters that remain are given things to say that Euripides never wrote. The result is something that is a work in its own right. At one point, as Electra and Orestes carefully and tenderly planned to take their own lives, I actually thought that the play would end here, a long way from Euripides. It is entirely correct that Edmundson's name comes before the Athenian's in the credits. And this is no bad thing.

In place of the removed characters and scenes, Edmundson gives a much expanded role to Electra, that Greek girl with an excessive interest in the male members of her family. This Electra is as complex as ever (and Edmundson includes explicit references to Euripides' other portrayal of the character in his Electra). She can see through the lies of others. She has a scene with Tyndareos in which she shreds his self-righteousness to pieces. But she is in her own way as insane as her brother. Electra takes Pylades' role in driving events forward. It is Orestes' sexual desire for his sister that reignites his desire for life, and Electra that suggests the murder of Helen. (Yet at one point Orestes deserts he to plead his case, feeling that she will be a hindrance - this is perhaps a reference to something similar in Euripides' original, where Electra is excluded from Pylades and Orestes' plotting, and treated as a junior partner.)

Helen is given a larger part. Ironically, this makes her less sympathetic. He defence of her own and Clytemnestra's actions contains a strong element of hypocrisy, and rejection of personal responsibility. She fled with Paris because of lust, and that is her excuse.

Menelaos is also a lesser person than Eurpides depicts. In many of the plays that Eurpides wrote about Menelaos, he is either manipulative (Iphigenia at Aulis, Andromache), or foolish (Helen, Trojan Women). In Orestes, however, Menelaos is the most honest character, who never promises more than he can deliver (for which he is condemned by Orestes as a fair-weather friend), and he never allows his temper to affect his judgment (unlike Orestes and Tyndareos). Edmundson's Menelaos on the other hand makes promises to Orestes that he has no intention of keeping. And in that he helps bring about the destruction of his family.

In the end, the theme of Edmundson's play seems to be responsibility, and the avoidance of same. Orestes and Electra claim that they are acting on Apollo's command, Helen blames lust, whilst Menelaos betrays his responsibility to his brother's children. All this leads to an ending that returns to Euripides' apocalyptic vision, shorn of the cop-out of the deus ex machina.

The cast are excellent, though their different ethnic background requires a greater suspension of disbelief to accept that they are all related to one another. The lighting makes effective use of the theatre space. And yes, my student's costumes were good.

I'm not sure whether I agree with Edmundson's reading of Eurpides as an out-and-out anti-warmongering writer (a reading of the play also to be found in Philip Vellacott's introduction to his Penguin translation). But overall, this was a fine piece of work, which I enjoyed rather more than some of the critics seem to have.

November Carnivalesque

The November edition of , the pre-modern history blog carnival, is up at Even in a little thing. This is the bimonthly ancient/mediaeval edition (on alternate months it's early modern).

The next ancient/mediaeval Carnivalesque will be hosted in this very blog, in late January. So drop me a line, to the contact email in my profile, with any ancient/mediaeval blog entries you think particularly memorable. It's a bit like Pick of the Week, really. Only without Chris Serle.

It's a pity that I've got some time now to actually do more entries here, as I would be honour-bound not to include them in the next Carnivalesque.