Friday, September 28, 2007
Medea in Afghanistan?
Euripides, Medea
Lazarus Theatre Company at Theatro Technis
Performance seen: 27 September 2007
George Eugeniou's Theatro Technis in Camden is fifty years old this year. Given the Greek origins of its proprietor, it's not surprising that Athenian drama has featured regularly amongst its shows. I've seen an Andromache, and a Persians. A poster in the foyer records a past performance of Lysistrata.
And now they act as the venue for Lazarus Theatre's Medea, directed by Ricky Dukes. Medea seems quite popular at the moment. This is the second production I've seen this year (after an enjoyable staging by London Ensemble Production, back in March, which I never got round to blogging), and next month it will be the Cambridge Greek Play. And, taking into account last year's UCL play, it seems to bring out the best in companies.
Much play has been made in publicity for this production of it being set in Afghanistan.* In the end, that amounts to little beyond costuming, most notably giving the female cast members head-scarves, and the use of a jet bomber sound effect at the beginning and end of the play. And nothing about any of this says Afghanistan as distinct from any other Muslim or partially Muslim country, such Iraq or Kosovo or Bosnia. Over the past decade or so I've seen plenty of productions of tragedy that have dressed their casts much the same (I think immediately of the RSC's 2005 Hecuba at the Albery, starring Vanessa Redgrave). All that changes are the nations that one first thinks of when presented with such imagery.
Such universality is no bad thing, really. It certainly suits the text, which is a straight reading of the play, preserving all character and place names. Without the programme, one would assume that the play is set in Corinth, and so it should be.
There are a few changes. As often, the Tutor (Stephen Chertion) is given the Messenger's Speech. More unusually, the Chorus is reduced down to a single person. Lydia Larson delivers a disengaged and aloof Chorus - many of the lines where the Chorus are actively trying to dissuade Medea are given instead to the Nurse (Carrie Whitton), and some Chorus lines are even given to Medea. And the Chorus' greatest moment of horror and pathos - their indecision as Medea murders her sons, is cut altogether.
Kevin Cooke's Aegeus is less of a bumbling old fool and more of an ethically-minded statesman than I’ve seen in the past. And Cooke’s performance is so successful that I was surprised when I looked in the programme and saw that the same actor played Creon. I had not spotted this, so different are the performances.
A production of Medea stands or falls on its lead actress, of course. In Louise Coleman, Lazarus has a Medea who is compelling, who dominates the stage from when she first emerges through the doors from the backstage area. She is denied her apotheosis (as was the case in the production from March) - instead her final confrontation with Jason (played by David Seymour, who rises fully to Coleman’s challenge) is visceral, physical, and violent.
I don't think this production is as innovative as it likes to think it is. What it is, however, is a good solid production, that understands what the play is about, and doesn’t mess around. I could do with more like this.
* It's not really worth mentioning that the one piece of press coverage on display talked about classical drama being 'a millennia old'. Oh dear. On so many levels.
Lazarus Theatre Company at Theatro Technis
Performance seen: 27 September 2007
And now they act as the venue for Lazarus Theatre's Medea, directed by Ricky Dukes. Medea seems quite popular at the moment. This is the second production I've seen this year (after an enjoyable staging by London Ensemble Production, back in March, which I never got round to blogging), and next month it will be the Cambridge Greek Play. And, taking into account last year's UCL play, it seems to bring out the best in companies.
Much play has been made in publicity for this production of it being set in Afghanistan.* In the end, that amounts to little beyond costuming, most notably giving the female cast members head-scarves, and the use of a jet bomber sound effect at the beginning and end of the play. And nothing about any of this says Afghanistan as distinct from any other Muslim or partially Muslim country, such Iraq or Kosovo or Bosnia. Over the past decade or so I've seen plenty of productions of tragedy that have dressed their casts much the same (I think immediately of the RSC's 2005 Hecuba at the Albery, starring Vanessa Redgrave). All that changes are the nations that one first thinks of when presented with such imagery.
Such universality is no bad thing, really. It certainly suits the text, which is a straight reading of the play, preserving all character and place names. Without the programme, one would assume that the play is set in Corinth, and so it should be.
There are a few changes. As often, the Tutor (Stephen Chertion) is given the Messenger's Speech. More unusually, the Chorus is reduced down to a single person. Lydia Larson delivers a disengaged and aloof Chorus - many of the lines where the Chorus are actively trying to dissuade Medea are given instead to the Nurse (Carrie Whitton), and some Chorus lines are even given to Medea. And the Chorus' greatest moment of horror and pathos - their indecision as Medea murders her sons, is cut altogether.
Kevin Cooke's Aegeus is less of a bumbling old fool and more of an ethically-minded statesman than I’ve seen in the past. And Cooke’s performance is so successful that I was surprised when I looked in the programme and saw that the same actor played Creon. I had not spotted this, so different are the performances.
A production of Medea stands or falls on its lead actress, of course. In Louise Coleman, Lazarus has a Medea who is compelling, who dominates the stage from when she first emerges through the doors from the backstage area. She is denied her apotheosis (as was the case in the production from March) - instead her final confrontation with Jason (played by David Seymour, who rises fully to Coleman’s challenge) is visceral, physical, and violent.
I don't think this production is as innovative as it likes to think it is. What it is, however, is a good solid production, that understands what the play is about, and doesn’t mess around. I could do with more like this.
* It's not really worth mentioning that the one piece of press coverage on display talked about classical drama being 'a millennia old'. Oh dear. On so many levels.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Red and the Green
One of my hats is as incoming London Meetings Organizer for the British Science Fiction Association. It's a fun role, that allows me opportunities to have interesting conversations with sf authors.
Last night's guest was Juliet E. McKenna. In the course of being interviewed, the subject of the extreme Marxism that popped up in Greek history in the 1980s (Juliet read Classics at Oxford about the same time I was reading Ancient History and Greek in Edinburgh). ("Is that like Extreme Sports?" asked the interviewer, hero of the BSFA Graham Sleight).
The book on the right is not the only instance of extreme Marxism in ancient Greek history, but it is the fountainhead from which all the other instances flowed. G.E.M. de Ste. Croix. The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World was published in 1981 (by which its author was already 70). It is an overtly Marxist theoretical work, that looks at the whole of the history of the Greek world, from as the subtitle says "the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests" (so much of it covers what is often considered to be Roman history). It's a hefty tome, weighing in at 700+ pages including appendices, notes, bibliography and index. If you were an aspiring Greek historian in the 1980s, as I was, it was a book you simply had to have.
But I suspect it was a book more owned than read. Classicists are en masse a very conservative bunch, and much further behind most academic disciplines in adopting the latest trendy theory - post-modernism, for instance, has never really caught on. I think this theoretical conservatism is both a blessing and a curse, but that's a debate for another time. For now, I'd just say that this attitude means that Class Struggle is probably more respected by Marxist academics than by Greek (and Roman) historians, though its subliminal influence may be greater.
For myself, I can't say I've opened it very often, even when I did a lot of research into Greek history, which I haven't for a decade now. I used to refer to it as "The Big Red Doorstop", which says something about my attitude to it. When I pulled it off the shelf last night, I was surprised to find that the frontispiece is Van Gogh's 'The Potato Eaters', though I'm sure I must have occasionally consulted it in the past , and that this is not the first time I've actually opened the book.
On the left is de Ste. Croix's other famous book, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, published in 1972. My copy of this is rather more well-thumbed than Class Struggle - the pages are slightly dog-eared, the spine beginning to crack, and there are pencil annotations in the margins (yes I do write in my books - why do you ask?). It's also listed in the bibliography for my own book.* And it's something that used to come up time and again in other works. I rather think that, within the field of Greek history, this will be the more influential of his two major works. (And it's lighter.)
I never met de Ste. Croix, but I did see him across the common room in New College one time when I was visiting. This was in the early 1990s, and I gather that by this time he was quite unwell, and his faculties were not all they once had been. Yet he still continued to write up to his death in 2000.
In other news, Doctor Who is doing a story set in the Roman empire, the first since 'The Romans' in 1964. Be assured that I shall be blogging that when it is broadcast.
* Amazon appear to have misspelt my name. There was a time when this book was credited to 'Antony G. Keen' and 'Anthony G. Keen'. Clearly someone thought, obviously that's the same person (correct), and deleted what they thought was the least likely spelling, without checking the actual cover of the book (incorrect).
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Bacchae, with Alan Cumming
Euripides, The Bacchae, in a new version by David Greig
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
Performance seen: 19 September 2007
The Bacchae is possibly one of the most terrifying pieces of Greek theatre that survives. In it, Euripides returns to the theme of his other horror-play, Medea; that an excessive devotion to rationality and denial of irrational emotion can only lead to disaster.
The horror of the final denouement, as Agave comes on stage bearing the head of her son Pentheus, whom she and her sisters have torn apart, is unsurpassed. This horror is heightened because of its inevitability. The audience knows that Pentheus' destruction is inescapable, because Dionysus, whose true identity only the audience knows, has told them.
But it is also a funny play. There is a deep level of irony, as Dionysus warns Pentheus that (to paraphrase) 'if you insult me you insult the god.' Pentheus takes it metaphorically, but Dionysus means it literally. And when Pentheus is dressed as a Maenad, the audience is clearly meant to laugh. This laughter, as Pentheus can be seen walking into the trap, heightens the horror.
Bacchae is a very intertextual play, putting on stage the god who was already placed in the theatre in wooden statue form. Reference to earlier plays can be seen – Tiresias, for instance, appears fixed in the 'old man' persona that Sophocles had made famous in the Antigone and Oedipus, despite the fact that Bacchae takes place generations earlier. And it was probably influential from even before it was performed. When Aristophanes premiered his Euripidean tribute/parody Frogs in January of 405 BC, he made Dionysus lead character. Though Bacchae was not produced until later, probably in March of the same year, coincidence seems unlikely. Aristophanes might have seen the text found amongst Euripides’ papers after his death in 406.
That influence of Bacchae echoes down the ages. It seems to have influenced some accounts of the death of Orpheus, in which the poet is torn apart by Maenads at Dionysus’ instigation (though in others, such as Ovid, Bacchus punishes those responsible); like Pentheus, all that is left of Orpheus is his head.* Anthony Shaffer must surely have been thinking of the play when he wrote The Wicker Man, in which the upright and rational Sergeant Howie is entwined in the schemes of Dionysiac pagans, and part of the trap involves dressing Howie in clothes appropriate to the pagan celebration.
The National Theatre of Scotland's production, directed by John Tiffany and starring Alan Cumming as Dionysus, comes to Hammersmith laden with expectation, having been the hit of the Edinburgh International Festival. By and large, I think it lives up to those expectations, though it does have something of the curate's egg about it. In many ways, it's a fairly traditional approach. The play's Theban setting is retained, rather than a modern relocation, though the production is in some ways very Scottish – Tony Curran's Pentheus belongs to the line of Glasgow hardmen that James Cosmo and Billy Connolly have played so successfully on screen. The idea of Dionysus as rock star is not particularly novel – I saw it used in a production of Frogs back in 1996. And the androgyny of the god is inherent in his origin myth.
Central to this version, of course, is Cumming's performance. He enters in a deus ex machina brought to the beginning of the play, with his bare arse forming one of the play's main talking points. The night I saw the play, he seemed to be suffering from a cold, and sounded flat in his first song. Nevertheless, his sheer exuberance carries the play along well, together with some impressive special effects (one of which threatens to give you sunburn), and I found it impossible not to have a big grin on my face through much of the play.
The Chorus are portrayed as a group of black women, clad in red, singing and dancing across the stage. They are also made into more active participants in the play. They are not just Dionysus' audience and fan club. They know who he is (which in Euripides' text they do not), and Dionysus disguises them as Theban functionaries, to help him weave his web around Pentheus (the Times reviewer found this distracting, but I think that's unfair). I always intrinsically approve of a staging that restores music and movement to the Chorus (though at least one production has done this in a manner that actually put me off), and I thought the choreography and harmonizing effective and exciting (even if it did remind me of Return to the Forbidden Planet at times). The connection with gospel music highlights (if not, perhaps, deliberately), that the Chorus, and indeed Greek tragedy as a whole, emerged from religious ceremony.
I also like that not only the Chorus sing, but both Dionysus and Pentheus get musical numbers (and Cadmus and Tiresias do a little bit of soft-shoe shuffle). Arias were an important part of Euripidean tragedy. They are difficult to do in a modern production, and it’s nice to see someone try.
For me, the weakness comes at the end of the play (an opinion shared by a number of friends who've seen it). Previous productions I've seen (such as Peter Hall's at the National Theatre in 2002) have tended to play down the comedy. This staging plays that up, which causes problems on the transition to the horror of the end (not helped by bringing Pentheus' remains on stage in a bin bag). Not until Paola Dionisotti's Agave finally realizes what she holds in her hands does the right emotional pitch get hit, and silence descends on the auditorium. And then Cumming comes back on and slightly spoils it all.
So splendid as the god in human disguise, he can't quite carry off the god as god, despite a bank of bright spotlights behind him (though it surprised me that there isn't a costume change to underline the change in status). Instead, he comes across as a petulant child. Faced with Cadmus and Agave’s reasonable statements that the punishment they have received does not fit their crime, Dionysus says that it's not his fault, it's theirs, it serves them right, anyway Zeus approved his plans - he does absolutely anything rather than accept any personal responsibility. This is explicit in Greig's translation - what Euripides intended is hard to divine, as the text is defective at this point, but I suspect he may have intended to convey more of a sense that justice of a sort has been done (compare the end of the Hippolytus). Cadmus (Ewan Hooper), on the other hand, emerges as the only character with his dignity intact.
Despite my qualms, however, this remains a memorable production of a memorable play.
* Edit 21/09/07: A little extra reading shows that this is wrong. Orpheus’ death at the hands of Maenads inspired by Dionysus featured in Aeschylus' lost Bassarae, and so that legend may have influenced the depiction of Pentheus' death, which is not attested in literature before Euripides.
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
Performance seen: 19 September 2007
The horror of the final denouement, as Agave comes on stage bearing the head of her son Pentheus, whom she and her sisters have torn apart, is unsurpassed. This horror is heightened because of its inevitability. The audience knows that Pentheus' destruction is inescapable, because Dionysus, whose true identity only the audience knows, has told them.
But it is also a funny play. There is a deep level of irony, as Dionysus warns Pentheus that (to paraphrase) 'if you insult me you insult the god.' Pentheus takes it metaphorically, but Dionysus means it literally. And when Pentheus is dressed as a Maenad, the audience is clearly meant to laugh. This laughter, as Pentheus can be seen walking into the trap, heightens the horror.
Bacchae is a very intertextual play, putting on stage the god who was already placed in the theatre in wooden statue form. Reference to earlier plays can be seen – Tiresias, for instance, appears fixed in the 'old man' persona that Sophocles had made famous in the Antigone and Oedipus, despite the fact that Bacchae takes place generations earlier. And it was probably influential from even before it was performed. When Aristophanes premiered his Euripidean tribute/parody Frogs in January of 405 BC, he made Dionysus lead character. Though Bacchae was not produced until later, probably in March of the same year, coincidence seems unlikely. Aristophanes might have seen the text found amongst Euripides’ papers after his death in 406.
That influence of Bacchae echoes down the ages. It seems to have influenced some accounts of the death of Orpheus, in which the poet is torn apart by Maenads at Dionysus’ instigation (though in others, such as Ovid, Bacchus punishes those responsible); like Pentheus, all that is left of Orpheus is his head.* Anthony Shaffer must surely have been thinking of the play when he wrote The Wicker Man, in which the upright and rational Sergeant Howie is entwined in the schemes of Dionysiac pagans, and part of the trap involves dressing Howie in clothes appropriate to the pagan celebration.
The National Theatre of Scotland's production, directed by John Tiffany and starring Alan Cumming as Dionysus, comes to Hammersmith laden with expectation, having been the hit of the Edinburgh International Festival. By and large, I think it lives up to those expectations, though it does have something of the curate's egg about it. In many ways, it's a fairly traditional approach. The play's Theban setting is retained, rather than a modern relocation, though the production is in some ways very Scottish – Tony Curran's Pentheus belongs to the line of Glasgow hardmen that James Cosmo and Billy Connolly have played so successfully on screen. The idea of Dionysus as rock star is not particularly novel – I saw it used in a production of Frogs back in 1996. And the androgyny of the god is inherent in his origin myth.
Central to this version, of course, is Cumming's performance. He enters in a deus ex machina brought to the beginning of the play, with his bare arse forming one of the play's main talking points. The night I saw the play, he seemed to be suffering from a cold, and sounded flat in his first song. Nevertheless, his sheer exuberance carries the play along well, together with some impressive special effects (one of which threatens to give you sunburn), and I found it impossible not to have a big grin on my face through much of the play.
The Chorus are portrayed as a group of black women, clad in red, singing and dancing across the stage. They are also made into more active participants in the play. They are not just Dionysus' audience and fan club. They know who he is (which in Euripides' text they do not), and Dionysus disguises them as Theban functionaries, to help him weave his web around Pentheus (the Times reviewer found this distracting, but I think that's unfair). I always intrinsically approve of a staging that restores music and movement to the Chorus (though at least one production has done this in a manner that actually put me off), and I thought the choreography and harmonizing effective and exciting (even if it did remind me of Return to the Forbidden Planet at times). The connection with gospel music highlights (if not, perhaps, deliberately), that the Chorus, and indeed Greek tragedy as a whole, emerged from religious ceremony.
I also like that not only the Chorus sing, but both Dionysus and Pentheus get musical numbers (and Cadmus and Tiresias do a little bit of soft-shoe shuffle). Arias were an important part of Euripidean tragedy. They are difficult to do in a modern production, and it’s nice to see someone try.
For me, the weakness comes at the end of the play (an opinion shared by a number of friends who've seen it). Previous productions I've seen (such as Peter Hall's at the National Theatre in 2002) have tended to play down the comedy. This staging plays that up, which causes problems on the transition to the horror of the end (not helped by bringing Pentheus' remains on stage in a bin bag). Not until Paola Dionisotti's Agave finally realizes what she holds in her hands does the right emotional pitch get hit, and silence descends on the auditorium. And then Cumming comes back on and slightly spoils it all.
So splendid as the god in human disguise, he can't quite carry off the god as god, despite a bank of bright spotlights behind him (though it surprised me that there isn't a costume change to underline the change in status). Instead, he comes across as a petulant child. Faced with Cadmus and Agave’s reasonable statements that the punishment they have received does not fit their crime, Dionysus says that it's not his fault, it's theirs, it serves them right, anyway Zeus approved his plans - he does absolutely anything rather than accept any personal responsibility. This is explicit in Greig's translation - what Euripides intended is hard to divine, as the text is defective at this point, but I suspect he may have intended to convey more of a sense that justice of a sort has been done (compare the end of the Hippolytus). Cadmus (Ewan Hooper), on the other hand, emerges as the only character with his dignity intact.
Despite my qualms, however, this remains a memorable production of a memorable play.
* Edit 21/09/07: A little extra reading shows that this is wrong. Orpheus’ death at the hands of Maenads inspired by Dionysus featured in Aeschylus' lost Bassarae, and so that legend may have influenced the depiction of Pentheus' death, which is not attested in literature before Euripides.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Helen of Troy
Euripides, Helen of Troy
The Scoop at More London
Performance seen: September 7th 2007
The term 'Greek tragedy' covers a wide range of different tonalities. At one extreme is a passionate horror like The Bacchae (currently running at the Lyric Hammersmith). At the other is Helen, which is often described as a light comedy. There's a lot of grounds for such a description. Both Helen and Menelaus can be portrayed as comic characters, flighty and vain, and foolish and rather stupid, respectively. And the play has a 'happy ending', with the reunited lovers escaping, Helen's disappointed suitor Theoclymenus resigned to his fate, and only the nameless Egyptians slaughtered by Menelaus and his Greeks coming off badly. It is easy to play Helen as almost a Noël Coward comedy of manners.
Steam Industry Free Theatre's approach in this production, directed by Phil Wilmott, is slightly different. They don't neglect comedy, by any means. Menelaus' shipmate, here named Atticus and demoted to the rank of slave [Edit 18/08/09: I let myself down here with a lack of familarity with the play - Meneleus' shipmate is clearly marked out as a slave in Euripides' original text.], is outrageously camp in the portrayal by Nick Smithers, whilst Paul Critolph's Theoclymenus is full-on pantomime villain. But Wilmott's adaptation seeks to find the seriousness in the play. Kerry Skinner's Helen is a woman wronged by malicious gossip, whilst Stewart Alexander's Menelaus, if sometimes confused, carries enough dignity to suggest why his wife should actively want him back.
This is quite a lean Helen as well. The action is got through in about seventy-five minutes. This is largely achieved by cutting most of the choral odes (which in any case don't directly address the action in the way most Greek choruses do). But Helen's explanation of her plan to Menelaus is also cut, so both she and her husband are presented as making up their deception of Theoclymenus as they go along. This is both funnier, and makes Helen and Menelaus more admirable. (On the other hand, Atticus' role appears to have been slightly expanded.)
Other changes involve the replacement of Helen's opening monologue with a dialogue conveying the same information to the audience, between her and the god Hermes, as he abducts her from Sparta. Hermes also returns in place of the Dioscuri at the end. Atticus and Teucer deliver the messenger's speech between them (and to the audience, not to Theoclymenus), and minor roles such as the door keeper are subsumed in the the Chorus.
The stage set has the look of a beach on the Indian Ocean. This is rather dictated by the need for it to also serve for an earlier performance of The Jungle Book on the same day. But the costumes are made to fit, with the Chorus clad in long skirts and midriff-baring tops, with the male members clad in baggy multicoloured shirts and shorts. (The beach effect was emphasized when I saw the play by a co-operative stiff breeze down the Thames.)
Steam Industry have often used the Scoop, the small open theatrical space (inaccurately described as an amphitheatre) in in front of City Hall on the south bank of the Thames, to stage Greek drama (Oedipus, Agamemnon and Children of Hercules). But this is the first time I had seen it. Though the space has nothing like the scale of a true Greek theatre, the tiers of stone backless seating and the open-air environment conveys some of the same effect, though Euripides never had the benefit of radio mikes.
I shall watch out for further productions in this venue.
The Scoop at More London
Performance seen: September 7th 2007
Steam Industry Free Theatre's approach in this production, directed by Phil Wilmott, is slightly different. They don't neglect comedy, by any means. Menelaus' shipmate, here named Atticus and demoted to the rank of slave [Edit 18/08/09: I let myself down here with a lack of familarity with the play - Meneleus' shipmate is clearly marked out as a slave in Euripides' original text.], is outrageously camp in the portrayal by Nick Smithers, whilst Paul Critolph's Theoclymenus is full-on pantomime villain. But Wilmott's adaptation seeks to find the seriousness in the play. Kerry Skinner's Helen is a woman wronged by malicious gossip, whilst Stewart Alexander's Menelaus, if sometimes confused, carries enough dignity to suggest why his wife should actively want him back.
This is quite a lean Helen as well. The action is got through in about seventy-five minutes. This is largely achieved by cutting most of the choral odes (which in any case don't directly address the action in the way most Greek choruses do). But Helen's explanation of her plan to Menelaus is also cut, so both she and her husband are presented as making up their deception of Theoclymenus as they go along. This is both funnier, and makes Helen and Menelaus more admirable. (On the other hand, Atticus' role appears to have been slightly expanded.)
Other changes involve the replacement of Helen's opening monologue with a dialogue conveying the same information to the audience, between her and the god Hermes, as he abducts her from Sparta. Hermes also returns in place of the Dioscuri at the end. Atticus and Teucer deliver the messenger's speech between them (and to the audience, not to Theoclymenus), and minor roles such as the door keeper are subsumed in the the Chorus.
The stage set has the look of a beach on the Indian Ocean. This is rather dictated by the need for it to also serve for an earlier performance of The Jungle Book on the same day. But the costumes are made to fit, with the Chorus clad in long skirts and midriff-baring tops, with the male members clad in baggy multicoloured shirts and shorts. (The beach effect was emphasized when I saw the play by a co-operative stiff breeze down the Thames.)
Steam Industry have often used the Scoop, the small open theatrical space (inaccurately described as an amphitheatre) in in front of City Hall on the south bank of the Thames, to stage Greek drama (Oedipus, Agamemnon and Children of Hercules). But this is the first time I had seen it. Though the space has nothing like the scale of a true Greek theatre, the tiers of stone backless seating and the open-air environment conveys some of the same effect, though Euripides never had the benefit of radio mikes.
I shall watch out for further productions in this venue.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
They're gunning for us, you know ...
The BBC reports that the TaxPayers' Alliance (an organization that seems to get most of its information from the Daily Telegraph) has released a document criticizing the number of 'non-courses' offered by UK Universities. Their argument is that "[b]y offering 'non-courses' and blurring the distinction between learning that demands serious scholarship and that which requires none, universities put at risk academic credibility."
Why does this matter to us in the sf community? Because the TPA's second example of a 'non-course' is the University of Glamorgan's BSc [Hons] in Science: Fiction and Culture.
At the heart of this particular instance, of course, is the old argument used to discredit Media Studies degrees - 'I can watch television programmes, so clearly a degree in them is just rubbish'. Well, I'm sure these people can read books as well,* but that doesn't invalidate English Literature degrees. To suggest that the study of sf does not require academic rigour is insulting. But I am hardly surprised.
* Actually, I'm not completely sure about that.
Why does this matter to us in the sf community? Because the TPA's second example of a 'non-course' is the University of Glamorgan's BSc [Hons] in Science: Fiction and Culture.
At the heart of this particular instance, of course, is the old argument used to discredit Media Studies degrees - 'I can watch television programmes, so clearly a degree in them is just rubbish'. Well, I'm sure these people can read books as well,* but that doesn't invalidate English Literature degrees. To suggest that the study of sf does not require academic rigour is insulting. But I am hardly surprised.
* Actually, I'm not completely sure about that.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The future for Classics A-Levels?
Again, rogueclassicism brings an important story to my attention.
The Times reports that the OCR exam board are planning on amalgamating the current Greek, Latin, Ancient History and Classical Civilization A-Levels into one single Classics A-Level.
What is wrong with the OCR? Earlier this year, they were planning on scrapping the Ancient History A-Level. In May, they said that they'd changed their minds, having been put under a great deal of pressure from the universities and government and opposition ministers. Yet here they are, three months later, seemingly going back on what they said, and indeed apparently taking an even more extreme approach. Do they somehow think that people won't notice? Presumably they will argue, as they did before, that they aren't abolishing the particular subjects, but continuing them in a different format. That didn't wash last time, and I doubt it will this. The chief executive may say that all the classicists he's talked to think this is the best way forward, but I can't imagine any of the ones I've heard speak about this taking the same view.
But maybe I'm being unfair. When planning just to get rid of Ancient History, a spokesman stated that the OCR board still offered "a comprehensive suite of A-levels". The only thing I can see on OCR's own website is a news item about their plans for the new revision of an Ancient History qualification within the Classics A-level suite. Looking at the subjects there, it seems quite a comprehensive and intense list, and there's easily enough material for two years' school study. What it looks like to me is that there is planned to be a single Classics A-level, with Latin, Greek, Ancient History and Classical Civilization options.
Okay, so perhaps one can argue on that basis that the OCR are preserving coherent A-level syllabi in all four subjects. But the crucial question is whether students will be able to take this Classics A-level suite in more than one form. I would think not, otherwise why not keep them as discrete A-levels.
And that I think would be a problem. When I was at school, I took Greek, Latin and Ancient History A-levels. It looks to me as if such an option be not be available under the OCR's plans. As a result, no school child will get the same education in the Classics that I benefited from. Someone who takes a single Classics A-Level will not learn as much about the subject as someone who takes three.
Having lost over Ancient History (though now apparently pretending that they haven't), I expect OCR might well lose over this as well. I will be following this story with interest.
What is wrong with the OCR? Earlier this year, they were planning on scrapping the Ancient History A-Level. In May, they said that they'd changed their minds, having been put under a great deal of pressure from the universities and government and opposition ministers. Yet here they are, three months later, seemingly going back on what they said, and indeed apparently taking an even more extreme approach. Do they somehow think that people won't notice? Presumably they will argue, as they did before, that they aren't abolishing the particular subjects, but continuing them in a different format. That didn't wash last time, and I doubt it will this. The chief executive may say that all the classicists he's talked to think this is the best way forward, but I can't imagine any of the ones I've heard speak about this taking the same view.
But maybe I'm being unfair. When planning just to get rid of Ancient History, a spokesman stated that the OCR board still offered "a comprehensive suite of A-levels". The only thing I can see on OCR's own website is a news item about their plans for the new revision of an Ancient History qualification within the Classics A-level suite. Looking at the subjects there, it seems quite a comprehensive and intense list, and there's easily enough material for two years' school study. What it looks like to me is that there is planned to be a single Classics A-level, with Latin, Greek, Ancient History and Classical Civilization options.
Okay, so perhaps one can argue on that basis that the OCR are preserving coherent A-level syllabi in all four subjects. But the crucial question is whether students will be able to take this Classics A-level suite in more than one form. I would think not, otherwise why not keep them as discrete A-levels.
And that I think would be a problem. When I was at school, I took Greek, Latin and Ancient History A-levels. It looks to me as if such an option be not be available under the OCR's plans. As a result, no school child will get the same education in the Classics that I benefited from. Someone who takes a single Classics A-Level will not learn as much about the subject as someone who takes three.
Having lost over Ancient History (though now apparently pretending that they haven't), I expect OCR might well lose over this as well. I will be following this story with interest.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Prometheus
rogueclassicism brings this to my attention.
Read it; it's genius.
(Two posts in the same day? It's the end times, I tell you ...)
Read it; it's genius.
(Two posts in the same day? It's the end times, I tell you ...)
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.
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.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
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.)
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.)
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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:
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.
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.
Monday, April 30, 2007
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:
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?
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?
Monday, April 23, 2007
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]Troy Hellas , the Greek name for Greece
For more consistently successful use of classical imagery in the 1960s than that achieved by Doctor Who, it is necessary to cross the
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
In one further point the story draws inspiration from
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
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
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
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
Star Trek can make such use of the
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
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 27th 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.
[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
[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 (
[16] Wenskus 2002, 130, notes that the motto of
[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 ‘
[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
[22] Gerry Turnbull (ed.), A Star Trek Catalog (1979), p. 130.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
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?
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?
Friday, April 20, 2007
Atlantis was not Crete
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.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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.
*Not that there weren't riots in amphitheatres - that in Pompeii that got their amphitheatre closed down for a decade comes to mind.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Gladiators in Chester - apparently really
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.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The education of the imaginary aristocracy
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.
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