Lifting that Socratic barbell

αἰσχρὸν δὲ καὶ τὸ διὰ τὴν ἀμέλειαν γηρᾶναι, πρὶν ἰδεῖν ἑαυτὸν ποῖος ἂν κάλλιστος καὶ κράτιστος τῷ σώματι γένοιτο.

it is shameful to age through carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by bodily strength and beauty.

Xenophon Memorabilia 3.12

Ah Xenophon. How many authors have suffered such relegation? For the price of a few pints I acquired ample amounts of old student readers – defaced, but never despised – from a better, more civilised, age. The kind of texts seldom known and never really read anymore: The Cyropaedia, the Memorabilia, books on hunting… I hesitate before hitting the shift and the a, typing out Anabasis, because I am not entirely confident that old rite of passage which signals the end of beginner’s Greek is well and truly dead. I cannot fully image the Anabasis is unread even in these times.[1]

The above quotation is from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, a collection of Socratic dialogues.[2] . I first came across the quotation as part of unseen. I suspect this is the case for many. More than one textbook must use this as a practice passage. Do not let its memification fool you, this is the culmination of a thoughtful discussion on the complementary nature of physical and mental exertion. This idea of both physical and mental cultivation seems to be genuinely Socratic. At the very least it appears in Plato as well.[3]

This should not be surprising. Socrates was a mason by trade and had fought ably when younger. We too often think of Socrates as an old man or, more truthfully, a paradigm of philosophical virtue and not enough as a flesh and blood personage. D’Angour’s biography, poorly reviewed here, is a good corrective to this.

Discussing excerpts is frustrating – in some real sense excerpts do violence to the whole text not just because context is lost, but because any subsequent reading – should it ever occur – is now indelibly compromised. Go and read at least the entirety of Xen Mem 3.12, it is an interesting discussion. Anyway, this is a clumsy segue, an excuse, to speak briefly about the context of these and other passages. Neither Plato nor Xenophon were anything like our fetid influencers. This is not the “make your bed” of the day.[4] They, like most early philosophers, where very much concerned with the makeup of the polis.

There are many, many, ways to define the polis. I wait with bated breath for John Ma’s new book. There are few more canny historians and his work is central to how I think about that institution (along with Hansen and – oddly!  – Millar). But before we consider political institutions or even mention terms like “hinterland”, one way the Greeks could be said to have thought about the polis is as a collection of citizen [males]. A cheeky but functional shorthand. Is it so surprising, then, that Socrates and co would be concerned with physical training? The anecdote about the Spartans not needing walls and instead trusting to their men differs only from the Athenian conception in extremis, not in kind.[5]

ἄλλου δὲ ἐπιζητοῦντος διὰ τί ἀτείχιστος ἡ Σπάρτη, ἐπιδείξας τοὺς πολίτας ἐξωπλισμένους ‘ταῦτά ἐστιν’ εἶπε ‘τὰ Λακεδαιμονίων τείχη.’

When someone wished to know why Sparta was unwalled, he [Agesilaus] pointed to the armoured citizens and said “here are the walls of Sparta”.

Plutarch Saying of the Spartans 2.29[6]

There is nothing revolutionary in this. I offer no novel reading, no new synthesis of passages. I suspect most of the recent publications on abstracts (“Greek beauty”, “aesthetics” ktl) and concretes (“the body”) make mention of the twin import of brawn and brain, but to what degree is that actually taken into account, as opposed to merely noted? How much are scholars really aware of how anathema would be the kind of noodle armed thinking apotheosised in that infamous Guppy post?

Ironically (but not unexpectedly) the best study on this phenomenon comes from outside of academia. I think I might have recommended this before, William Giraldi’s The Hero’s Body. Giraldi is not the kind of person one would prima facie associate with body building (ha, so much for stereotypes). A journalist, clearly left-wing, a homosexual. None of this screams bro. But the book draws broadly from the Classics. It has been years since I read it, but I can recall elements from the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses. Clearly G is well read and well trained.

Look. I am not one of those moronic statue avvies constantly advocating for an unlearned and uncritical emulation of the ancients, but I do think the link between physicality and learning really important. I cannot stress enough how much experience of things such as  e.g wrestling and horse-riding have informed my reading.[7]

All the more so since I am currently dealing with a loss of physicality.

I shan’t go into too much detail here. Neither the specific sports in which I grew up competing (let us say generic combat sports) nor the injuries (one upper, one lower lol lmao). Rehabilitation is good. It is slow, it is boring, but it is effective. I admit I have worsened things, by throwing out any semblance of portion control, commitment to cardio, or restraint (I must have re-injured myself twice lololol). The initial quotation from this piece often comes to mind. I would not be accounted old by the Greeks. Not yet. Ought I then not feel more shame? Oh, I do, I do. Hold on there’s a big fucking wasp. Christ look at that thing. Absolute GMO motherfucker.

I am finding it harder than I would care to admit that I am not going to compete again. Intellectually I have known this for a while, not least because leaving off was originally a deliberate decision as I entered the adult world. I am not a citizen landowner. The balance between otium and negotium is nihil. I knew it in my brain at least but not my balls, as Socrates would say.[8] Ageing is a difficult thing.

Whatever Xenophon may have said, memories of youth do not keep shame away from age. Learn your grammar, read your texts, but also lift that barbell.

Coda

My friends, I have meandered. I am sorry for wasting your time. I still mourn the half finished drafts not yet recovered from the husk of my former puter and felt that odd urge to just write something. I had originally planned to write out my full programme and various rehab cues but in doing so even I became bored. I’ll be back with something meatier soon.

---

[1] Just kidding! I know from twitter/e-mails that the done thing now is to do 2 years of pointlessly drawn out instruction followed by a career of pretending to know Greek. n

[2] Have you read Waterfield’s Plato of Athens? A recent biography of the other great Socratic. I can’t help but wish more of the genre had survived. By far the most interesting bit of that book is the chapter dealing with the rest of the circle.

[3] E.g Republic 3 410e-412a. Is it too much to think juvenal was parodying this?

[4] There’s a joke to be made about M. Aurelius here…

[5] The military ethos of Tyrtaeus, the sporting exultation of Iliad 23 are not a million miles away. Even in the Xenophon passage the use of  ἰδιωτικῶς ἔχειν earlier on makes this clear. What sort of person is an idiotes, hm?

[6] Why don’t we call these memorabilia in English? Huh? Huh!? Das rite!

[7] That’s right bitch, I stipulated horses to stop your puerile rejoinder.

[8] Socrates is my greengrocer down in Kipseli.

On the death of a computer

Perhaps the most formulative influence on my character, on my approach to scholarship (such as it is), has been my growing up in a working class, blue collar, background. I do not mean any of the many vices and virtues that that background conjures up but the constant envelopment by manual labour. Summers spent on building sites, winters spent rewriting plugs or refurbishing shopfronts (I adore chainsaws) and so on. Of course, let us be honest, it is only the fact that autumns and springs were spent in classrooms that I can look back on this period of my life with detachment: I am free from RSIs, have none of the obscure but common injuries my schoolfriends suffer,[1] and went into the world of fake work.

You will not really find much, if any, classical parallel for this attitude. Hard, physical, menial, work was the stuff on slaves. Think of Odyssey 11 where the ghost of Achilles deems it better to be the merest living thrall than king amongst the dead. Admittedly, a big (the largest) part of this is the shame of living at the compulsion of another but this is a good proxy for menial work. [2]We misread, severely, the spirit of the protestant yeoman farmer into Hesiod for whom no amount of pride and self-sufficiency in ownership of one’s land can mask that work is a toil. Think of the vocabulary that surrounds any discussion of physical labour in Greek. Indeed, the toil of farming is one to win from the earth the gifts the gods have bid be hidden (kρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ βίον ἀνθρώποισιν).

No surprise then that I can think of no apposite quotation for the joy brought by a good tool. The first – the only – thing that comes to mind is Seneca’s torturous reflections on the humanity of slaves, rather than the inhumanity, which to be honest seems to have a lot more rhetorical weight when it reflects what must have been the communis opinio. (It’s in de beneficiis somewhere near the beginning).

So, anyway guys, my computer died. It was sudden but not entirely unexpected. The once mighty machine had been doing the job since 2016 after all, and whilst I can swap out one more part, try one more repair, it scarcely seems worth the cost now. To what degree can an υπολογιστής be a mentula? I can’t help but think, and compare, with the tools I have inherited from near ancestors: Here are one great-grandfather’s woodworking tools, here are the custom smithy tools of another, here a cavalry sabre, and so on. A burnt-out motherboard seems a poor and pathetic comparandum. But then who knows? They were none of them protestants, perhaps they were closer in attitude to the ancients and see nought but praise in being free from such toil, such ponos.

(I am not joking, by the way, when I point out how much the reformation has fundamentally defined the way we read the Classics).

Pathetic or not, I can’t help but be sad. Humans have the odd habit of imputing anima to the in. It’s why so many are so affected by that scene in Castaway when Tom Hanks draws a face on a ball or something (I’ve never watched it), it’s why idiots pay so much for items touched by celebrities or – hypothetically – find themselves utterly unable to dispose of one of the worst made jumpers ever simply because there is some lizard brained hope it retains the faintest imprint of a lost parent.

It is not just misplaced sentiment. A computer now represents a majority of our working life. Long time readers, well 2 of the three at least, will notice the sheer chunkocity of this post so far without being littered peppered with Greek, the apparent paucity of classical references. It’s because the every day tools we take for granted: the ability to type in Greek, Diogenes, my preferred IDEs etc, all are gone. I don’t even have a banner image, since I do not know how to use the image manipulation software here and, damn it, I refuse to learn.

Gone, too, until I salvage one of the hard-disks are dozens of abortifacient half-finished pieces. I have not been posting much this year, but I have been writing. Writing lies with my mouth that is, when I tell you I have been writing. Truly, there were some pieces but most of them no more than a thousand words or so. The larger ones being book reviews which I shall have to get back to soon, that is at least enjoyzble, the reviewing of books. But twitter over the past few years has felt damp. I think we autodidacts, we hemilykoi ektos ths akadamias, kid ourselves immensely with any pretence to a republic of letters.

Oh, it is exists. It exists in part, but it is a big club and you, yes you, are not a part of it.[3] There are no patronage networks, no invitations to write for publications straight out of undergrad, no invitations to whatever. There was a time, a brief time, when you could write and be read and be written to in turn but the last few years have felt increasingly barren. I have always felt a distinct sense of unbelonging in the Classics, which fools often take to mean a lack of a sense of belonging (please…) and there is freedom in that. I can be as unfashionable as I want in my methods and outlooks, I can take Critoboulos as seriously as you pretend to take Thucydides, I can scupper writing in  favour of endless reading and re-reading (this is the first year I have read Homer through twice, and we’re not half way done). Is this entirely a boon?

This is not a segue into working class classicism, whatever the hell that might be. Nor, indeed, the place for me to mention how commerce and industry has been infinitely more accepting (you add to the bottom line and can execute a proper cross-field kick?) than the so called intelligentsia. I do not even know to what degree working class classicism even exists as a concept. There is, ofc, that Hall and Steadman edited volume but it has all the voyeuristic taint of the JCR. I like Attenborough, but I rather hear from the lions. Etc.

I am not sure, no longer sure, perhaps never was sure, why I continue to write. However seldom that now is. There is a pithy saying, that painters enjoy painting and writers enjoy having written. But I have never really felt that. Even now, despite the sheer cringing shame I feel at how badly my prose style has dropped off (still not enough shame to proof and edit though lol), I do enjoy the process. I enjoy the taste and shape of words rolling around, coating, the insides of one’s mouth and their slow unfurling onto screen and scroll.[4]

Have you read Eco’s Baudolino? It was, I think, the first of his I read as a boy. There is much to appeal to any budding Classicist. It is one hell of a farce. There is a bit near the beginning when our titular character is being taught to read and, if I am recalling correctly, decides to finish his education before the, eh, amorous abbot can teach him how to write. Why write? He asks. If I write, I can only tell you what I know, but if I read, I can read what anyone knows. And then there’s some bit about being screwnicorn. You are welcome.

Yet writing is not simply just recording what one knows. Look, I have never, ever, “done research” for a piece. That is some shudra-tier behaviour. I read profusely, rarely make notes, and try to think about whatever I have read. Writing is the process of recording what one thinks about what one knows. In this sense, I suppose the loss of all those drafts is a blow, but less of a blow than the loss of all that reading material. I no longer have access to JSTOR or academic libraries, have not for years, yet all those carefully categorised downloads and scans are now cast unto dust. Ouch.

So, is that the way forward? Lector tantum? (ignosce mihi, Iuvenali, sed facilius erat subripere versulum tuum quam fustum Herculi). Maybe. I do not mind an audience of one or two who actually understand and appreciate. Joking aside, I do have that in abundance here. But increasingly the dichotomy between a small, understanding, audience and a large uncomprehending one is immaterial. Not in some pseudo-Aesopic sour grapes, but because this often feels like being on a soapbox rather than anything discursive. Those who have not read Plato make jokes about Socrates’ tendency to monologue, his interlocutors reduced to mere interjections, but even so there is something to be envied in the give and take of it all.

There is something to be said in how writing is really re-reading, and that alone is a reason to keep it up. Everyone thinks they have mastery until forced to articulate and explain. And blogs are like more ephemeral versions of the old common place book.But eh. Maybe the death of my little computer is a sign. Whether that be for a proper break, and a refreshment, a move to somewhere near (how is Substack, guys, seriously?) or simply una nox dormienda. I do not know.  It is of course the fact that this question is utterly unimportant to anyone other than myself which lends it such weight.

The death of a computer is a mean and silly thing. Of course, that is why it can be written about. I have never promised weight things, never had the courage to commit them to anything but the unfinished moulds of shoddy thoughts. That’s not what either of us are here. I suppose the question is then, why are we?

Ok but what have you been reading?

Excellent question! Let’s briefly give some suggestions. Thanks for making it to the end.

Latin

Aha! I swore to devour the corpus of Nepos and I swear I really tried. I made it through his Cato, Atticus, and Hannibal before somehow getting swept up into Livy on the Punic Wars.

Greek

The Anthology. Seriously that is more or less it these past few weeks. It is not something I am properly familiar with, but I was struck recently about the sheer IDIOCY of spending so much time with Byzantine versifiers and not getting properly to grips with this.

English

Only what I am contractually being paid for lol. The English canon became effectively sealed before Austen even drew breadth. Honestly what is the point?

Misc

Harry Potter in French (don’t judge, I need to become conversational again).

Bana’s Kadambari (because I am a glutton for punishment, this syntax….).

Various Luwian inscriptions (Payne)

---

[1] You will be surprised how many chippies and brickies resort to drugs. Honestly, I myself sometimes am by how many of my schoolhood friends have suffered serious harm from such.

[2] Because I say it is.

[3] Or perhaps oyu are? I don’t know you. Good for you, friend. Well done.

[4] Look at that little number in the corner going up with each strike of the space bar. I like to imagine a tiny Bill Gates stuck in the programme, running around and manually updating each number like a score-keeper at an under 11s hockey match.

Sound Changes for the Reading of Ancient Greek 1

This could be an excerpt from my how-to-learn-ancient-greek piece (which has sat at ca. 3k words for like a year). Oh well. Alternatively, some time with Fontomayer may be much more useful.[1]

Yeah, I really need to learn some serious historical linguistics. Ignorance is not bliss, it's bloody annoying.

— Robert Low (@RobJLow) January 13, 2024

Debuccalisation

Fill up your mouth like a puffer fish catching its parents in flagrante. Now hiss like a sexy snake for as long and as powerfully as possible. What does that get you? Kicked out of the library. What else? You should have some sense of /s/ progressing to an /h/ and then nothing. If you can’t do that then stabbing a box o’ wine with a pen knife in Lidl will get you a similar effect. This is called debuccalisation.[2]

Consider the following sequence: (v)owel (s)ibillant (v)owel > vhv > V (capitalised because LOMG). Essentially, your σ cuddled by two vowels became an h and then disappeard. Because Greek hates hiatus, this often forces compensatory lengthening of the vowel. This sequence has a lot of explicatory force e.g

• How the 2nd dec masc singular is ου in Attic (from PIE *osyo > ohyo > oio > ου[3]
• Various second person verb endings e.g εἰμί, εἶ (<εσσι), why the middle present disrupts our lovely PIE m, s, t sequence to give  μαι, ῃ (<σαι), ται
• Various nouns formed like e.g γένος and even some you perhaps would not suspect: Why δοῦλος? < δοhελος < an earlier version with s (cf Sanskrit dasa).

As an extension, Greek generally did away with inherited word initial  S, much like the Iranian languages did, here are three geographic pairs (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit).

• septem; ἓπτα;[4] sapta.
• serpens; ἑρπετόν, sarpa.

Now go look up the paradigm of an “irregular” verb like έχω. You’re welcome.

Grassmann’s Law

In a sequence of two aspirated syllables, the former will become unaspirated. This is a form of dissimilation. This is important for Greek due to the frequency of the reduplicated perfects, so for θύω we get τέθυκα and not the expected *θέθυκα.

Greek certainly loves this rule and you can see the historical outcome of it all over the place e.g the outcome for PIE *dʰédʰeh₁mi is τίθημι.[5]

I didn’t say it was important, I said I liked it.[6]

η or α first declension?

What do you μοῦσα, κόρη, and θάλασσα have in common, other than you need to revise them and I desperately need to include a non-verb based sound change? They’re all first declension. But why the differences in the singular?

Case	μοῦσα	μοῖρα	κόρη
Nominative	μοῦσα	μοῖρα	κόρη
Genitive	μούσης	μοίρας	κόρης
Dative	μούσῃ	μοίρῃ	κόρῃ
Accusative	μοῦσαν	μοῖραν	κόρην
Don’t give a focative	μοῦσα	μοῖρα	κόρη

It’s largely to do with vowel quantity, so, yes, pay attention to those accent markers.

Greek, of course, inherited/co-developed a feminine marker in -a from the nuclear PIE languages.[7] However, at some point the Ionic dialects (of which Attic is just one) changed the long α > η.[8] Sound changes are pretty much exceptionaless unless bothered by a rule so this would have affected both endings and stems, consider:

• φυγή (Latin fuga)
• μήτηρ (Latin mater)

Again, this is the Ionic dialects only so one could still hear Spartan ματέρες telling their children ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς.

If α > η then how do we explain μοῦσα etc above? In Attic a secondary sound change occurred which meant that a an η following ε, ι, ρ was unaffected. Thus one encounters.

• Words like μοῦσα where the α was short (look at the peripsomenon!) and so stayed α, but note how in the genitive and dative the vowel was lengthened (and does not follow ε, ι, ρ). They are not «mixed!»
• Words like μοῖρα which also has a short a but whose stem ends in ρ and is therefore α all the way through. Again, look at the tone.
• Words like κόρη which historically had a long α and due to stem are all eta now.

Consider this rule when encountering unmixed Ionic or Doric forms in your reading, especially first year tragedy.

Next rules?

Look, I absolutely intended to do five in one go but then got distracted. What’s next? Classification of aorist stems for easier learning? Why and how the middle perfect looks the way it does? Honestly those are both way more important than anything I have scribbled down here.

---

[1] Is that the name? My French is not so good anymore. I refuse to check.

[2] Unless you are an American. In which case it is called debuccalisation spelled wrong.

[3][3] I am simplifying the sequence gratia docendi. οιο lives in Homer and Thessalian Aeolic, which further takes it to οι. You may also find the ending as ω (consult your rules on contract verbs wherefore).

[4] Greek loss of final m is due to outcome of PIE *septḿ̥

[5] Don’t check Sanskrit here, because it also went Grassmann as fuck.

[6] Yes I know I did originally claim import.

[7] éh₂. Glottalic school don’t you even.

[8] In vowel terms this is raised heights, in orthography a fucking nightmare for my handwriting.

Late Antiquity in Historical Fiction

For someone not entirely a fan of genre literature, I sure am talking about it more and more. Partly because what the pseudo-oligarchic presses call “literature” nowadays is just genre itself.[1] You know the one “oh I’m a 30+ MFA student/professor trying not to cheat on my wife”. I recently read Prins’ The Latinist which was predictably in this vein. Tart’s Secret History may predate the MFAification we suffer but is bred from the same stock. Ok, so partly because of that. Partly because there is an increasing number of readable genre fiction.

That said Rome, at least early Rome, has always drawn very skilled writers. Most famous is our Robert Graves who artfully pilfers from Suetonius and Plutarch for his I, Claudius series. A series of real literary merit.[2] The French may boast of Marguerite Yourcenar and her Mémoires d’Hadrien which are actually not very good, but we pretend so never the less. quid ceteri? John Williams wrote an Augustus and Hermann Broch’s Der Tod des Vergil is as much a love letter to Joyce as the Mantovano. All of these are in some form of artful first person narrative by the by. One could go on, I have not even mentioned Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis though largely because it breaks the 1^st person rule and partly because I dislike it.[3] Same for Wallace’ Ben Hur.

If we eschew any pretence of literary, we can add full on libraries to the above. Your Igguldens and your Sidebottoms and your Scarrows and the like. These are hardly even attempting for the literary.[4] I say that with no insult. I think there is a serious place for pacey, red-blooded pulp. There are few finer genre writers than Howard or Lamb. Historically evocative pulp is especially to be desired.

What about the Spätantike?

It’s very easy to imagine the current focus on all things post Constantinian as a triumph of modern academe. Many quasicognoscenti would even specifically credit Peter Brown (whose own academic memoir proves otherwise). After all, this is how academia works. But the truth is even before Brown was born serious work was being done on authors such as Proclus and Procopius and the church fathers (not just Constantine) and late historians (Nennius, Bede, Eusebius) were all household names. Think, how many famous vignettes – Atilla and the pope, Ambrose humbling an Emperor, Constantine’s vision, various gothic kings in their largesse –  were known to poets and painters? The late antique used to have a much greater pop cultural pull. How many now have read Jerome or a single ecclesiastical author? How many could name 10 books of the bible?[5]

So where are the literary novels? There have certainly been some. One of the most famous, Felix Dahn’s Ein Kampf um Rom, as I have mentioned many times, would make a fantastic subject for a BA thesis for any young blood interested in Vergangenheitsbewältigung and what is wrong with German scholarship. What follows are a handful of novels I’ve found that vaguely fit the theme of this piece. Are they recommendations? I don’t know. Let’s just collate a list. No I am not going to talk about Graves’ Belisarius. In fact, I am not going to talk about Belisarius at all.

Gore Vidal – Julian

Well known and probably overrated. I wonder to what extent this novel has had a hand in propagating a positive image of Julian amongst the masses (outside of simple neo-pagan edginess)? The novel is epistolary in format and the story unfolds via letters from Praxiteles and Libanius as well the purported autobiography of Julian (drawn from his letters and Ammianus). It is a very pleasant read, but the tone seldom gets “Roman”. How does it hold up to Graves? Not amazingly well. I would like to think it has spurred many a new reader to the works of Julian (perhaps the 3rd best of our emperor-authors?) and Libanius, but…

It is not a bad book, but it is very much suffused with the kind of attitudes one expects of Vidal’s upper class Americana. The novel is ultimately saved by its author’s wit and the sheer interest of its subject.

Emperor – Colin Thubron

Perhaps the most successful of the list in terms of being literary. This is a skilfully wrought novel. Thubron brings Constantine I to life via the eyes and letters of various contemporaries. He manages to convey several things about the travelling imperial court at once: The sense of real precarity both internally (a word can see a man on a cross) and externally (we are effectively in a civil war), the very different gendered experiences (including eunuchs), the arbitrary might (and weakness) of the emperor. The relationship between Constantine and Fausta is like something from a Zola novel.

I love the way the historical setting is used. Thubron’s skill as a travel writer really shines. No dumping of information, but those familiar with the period and its people will get many of the allusions. It is above all an adroit psychological portrait of one of the most important historical figures ever to have lived. How this has flown under the radar is beyond me.

Justinian – H.N. Turtletaub

I am putting this here as a counter-point to the above two. It has all the trappings one would think successful, but ultimately it falls a little flat. Which is a shame, because Justinian II is a very intriguing personage. I understand it won an award or two but it does little with its historical setting, seems to use its sources as window dressing rather than truly inhabiting them, and, as an exercise in writing an unlikeable protagonist, it falls far short of the obvious exemplars such as Nabokov (whom I dislike) or Eco (whom I adore).

It is not a bad book by any means and better than 90% of historical fiction but doesn’t quite the make the cut. Still worth reading since the period gets so few chances at the presses.

Cast not the Day/The Philosopher Prince – Paul Waters

I do not think I have ever even heard Waters mentioned around these parts. I first came across his oeuvre when I picked up a book of his set during the Roman conquest of Greece and was immediately impressed by his sympathetic if not sympathising portrait. But these two novels (loosely connected) are where his skill really shines.

Image being a late antique Brittano-Roman. The civic centres, where advancement was always hard, are undergoing rapid change and degeneration. The old gods, which were probably never your gods really, are dying, the new God is as oft supported by chancers and malingerers as by zealots. Who is in charge? The undermanned military? The underfunded civil service? The bishops who rule by nothing but prestige, charisma, and – sometimes – violence? Leave the urban centres and go out into the countryside and you’ll be risking marauding Saxons, Jutes, Angles and Frisians to the east, Picti from the north, and your less romanised ethnic kin everywhere else.

So anyway, Waters gives us a very evocative portrait of a young man, Drusus, growing up amongst all of this. The “sequel” also involves Julian II and is in many ways a much finer depiction of him than that of Vidal. As is that of Paulus Catena.

Eagle in the Snow – Wallace Breem

Once an incredibly popular book, and in some part the inspiration for the film Gladiator (allegedly). Like Waters, this is set within the British provinces for the most part, though its focus also moves as far east as Mogontiacum (Mainz in Germany). Its central praxis is very much the conspiratio barbarorum and its central theme one of barbarism vs civility, posterity vs decay.

I don’t recall there being anything amazing in terms of characterisation and development, and some times the famous figures being marched across the page (Stilicho, Theodosius – comes non imperator, valde) fall a little flat. However, the aim is clearly vibes and this novel has that in spades.[6]

At the Ruin of the World – John Henry Clay

A chance find of this novel is absolutely not what inspired this rapid post. Leaving aside the Turtletaub this is the most seriously spätantike of the list. It is very firmly set in the fifth, rather than the fourth, where Ammianus can’t help us, and we must pull from (vomiting profusely) chroniclers like Hydatius and even (oh god) numismatics to help us form a narrative. It is a very, very, good depiction of the Roman world at the time: social stratification has reached Byzantine levels, supra-regional interest blocks are of critical importance,[7] the line between settled federate barbarians is a real and important one no matter how it is eliding. It is certainly not a happy one, despite what wordcel academix will tell you.

Like Breem above readers will encounter a quick march of familiar characters (here Attila, Aetius, Valentinian, Avitus, Majorian, fucking Ricimer) though the narrative coalesces around three in particular; Arvandus,[8] Sidonius Apolinaris (!!), and Ecdicius Avitus. It veers somewhat between Bildungsroman and roman à clef but never gets self-indulgent and is willing to take its setting seriously. I really liked this book, and its depiction of the Visigoths was outstanding.[9] Just a great example of what someone well versed in the ancient history and 20^th century narrative conceits can do.

Coda

Apologies to anyone expecting a carefully mediated discussion, qua classical reception, of what does and does not get included in Roman historical novels and what that tells us about our intellectual environment. If it makes you feel better, I do think it is much easier to spot that sort of thing in novels set in late antiquity (attitudes to Christianity, civic vs ethnic nationalism etc) than the bas empire (colonisation, colonisation, and a bit of…colonisation). Also, I don’t care? Sometimes it is just nice to enjoy things.

Depending on how good you are at counting we have either six or seven novels here. There must be more than that out there, surely? So if you know a few other titles similar to the above, please let me know, I will add to the list.

---

[1] Pseudo because they don’t own the memes of production, they just culturally monopolise them. Sed qui sunt illi? Nonne in capite oculos habes, stulte? Quo in mundo habitas!? Fucking nerds, immo vero.

[2] Recentiore tempore Robert Harris (no relation) has done the same with Cicero. Readable, good books, best-sellers, but have failed to attract the same level of praise. I like them, and the level of research from letters and speeches is impeccable.

[3] To be fair to S, he has much, much, better novels. His Polish trilology, as it is affectionately known, is fantastic.

[4] Idk what I’m trying to say here. Thought originally in Latin libri qui ad litteras vix tempant. Does it make sense in English? It surely must…

[5] Actually I probably couldn’t and I have read it several times. Ok let’s try. Let’s cheat and use the PD as well as the KD. Exodus, Samuel, Deuteronomy, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Judges, Leviticus, Timothy….ok got it, nice.

[6] Probably. I read this in like 2019 or something.

[7] is it Heather who talks about Gallo vs Italo-Roman power blocks at this time?

[8] Arvandus (Ardabanus) is someone known me to entirely via Apollinaris. I did not expect to find him sympathetic, but then he is easily the most fictionalised here.

[9][9] How often are you going to write “depiction” bro?

My PhD Proposal

The translator is not only a traitor but an expropriator and as I embark on this academic journey toward a Ph.D. in Ancient Mediterranean Studies[1], I aim to prove the link between Greek and Latin lexica and their intimate historical connections to colonialism and violence.

Of principal importance to my study will be the work of the Estienne family, both Henri and his father Robert. Robert whose Theasaurus Linguae Latinae had some claim to be the most famous dictionary of its day may be said to be the archetype of the coloniser-lexicographer figure I believe I shall encounter throughout the dusty archives of our European past. Indeed, his son Henri referred to his work as a “Herculean” and “heroic” task. Taken at the time of the European discovery and ravishment of the New World I believe there can be only one reading: the Estienne family were attempting to do on the page what the conquistador did on land.

Whilst perhaps unable to match his father as lexicographer, Henri is today primarily known for his “Stephanus Numbers” i.e his pagination of Plato. These numbers are alien to Plato and indeed to the Greek world. They represent a colonial methodology of extracting the knowledge from its host culture and re-arranging it for the voyeuristic consumption of the extractor. To borrow from the framework pioneered by sociolinguist Kenneth Pike, Estienne eschewed an emic (internal) knowledge system in favour of his own imposed etic (external one). The relationship between Henri Estienne and the christofacist and poet Jean de Serres also warrant close examination.

Once this framework has been established, I intend to examine his epigones, especially the Prussians Bekker and Diels–Kranz. I also believe that the untrammelled difficulty of these systems flaunting their dominance over us moderns. I have never, ever, met anyone who can understand or use them. This is a form of gatekeeping, which is always wrong.

Languages arise as a natural ,protective, form of gatekeeping between colonised and coloniser and the use of dictionaries therefore  a deliberate attempt to trans-theft culture and knowledge across this boundary. To this end, a follow-up chapter will closely examine the Greek sources used in the compilation of the earliest dictionaries. It is known, but seldom appreciated, that Greek once again arose in the “West”[2] due to westerly movements of Greeks such as Bessarion and Chrysolaris who brought with them books having failed to continue to oppress the peace-bringing Ottomans. How did Westerners interact with these fleeing refugee-colonisers? What was the nature of the knowledge-exchange? How much trust can be put in anecdotes that Aldus Manutius would put a skiadion on his head and dance around Anna Laskaris calling her “my little baklavopaedo”?

If words are violence, than a dictionary is an armoury and so one question really stands out. Is it possible for anyone to check a dictionary without having metaphysical blood on their hands?

My research aspires to contribute to the ongoing process of decolonizing academia. By revealing these hidden facets of classical studies, I alone shall chart a path toward reimagining classical language education and lexicography in ways that are more inclusive, equitable, collaborative, and less reliant on the languages. Though I know neither Latin nor Greek, I do not foresee this being a problem as I shall be using dictionaries.

---

[1] I reject the term “classics” as one of inherent Eurocentric bias. Moreover, given its origins in naval terminology it is evidence of white western European appropriation of Polynesian excellence.

[2] I do not believe the cultural fixity of our cardinal directions and as such will forgo using the term “West” and any derivations thereof.

The Winter King: A Nayview

ale pan Krokodyl, this is fiction and dark age Britain to boot, what has this to do with the Classics? Silence, child; near any cultural/historical endeavour has something to do with the Classics. Britain does not escape this. Especially since its dark ages were both the product of Roman withdrawal and the eventual crucible for the England that would come. Both Gildas and Bede wrote in Latin. Etc etc. Truth be told I’m writing this because it can be done swiftly, and it gives me a chance to revisit a novel I enjoyed as a child.

I will not say The Winter King’s (hereafter TWK) showrunners did not understand Cornwell’s book. Look, it was a best-seller, produced for and consumed by the mass-market, and nothing in it is terribly complex. It is impossible to reach a basic level of adult fluency in reading and not *get it*. Any cackhanded divergences and fumbling are clearly deliberate. Why? Partly due to the ever-persistent unselfassured superiority complexes tv writers suffer, partly because they’re scared and uncomfortable by the world Cornwell represents. . .

It cannot start with Arthur. This is the first fumbling. Mordred senior dead, Arthur with his appropriate dark-ages scruff staring into the unfocused camera with ringing ears. It’s like a knock off of a Saving Private Ryan shot.[1] Arthur may be the hero, but he is not the protagonist. Every reader knows he or she is picking up another King Arthur book, so by delaying Arthur’s entrance onto the page it is made that much more impactful. Arthur is a rumour. Arthur is – depending on your viewpoint – hope or fear. Consider one of the first descriptions we get of him:

And I was dazzled. It was as though a new bright sun had risen on that dying day. The light slashed over the pastures, blinding us, confusing us, but then the light slid on and I saw it was merely the reflection of the real sun glancing from a shield polished bright as a mirror. But that shield was held by such a man as I had never seen before; a man magnificent, a man lifted high on a great horse and accompanied by other such men; a horde of wondrous men, plumed men, armoured men, men sprung from the dreams of the Gods to come to this murderous field, and over the men’s plumed heads there floated a banner I would come to love more than any banner on all God’s earth. It was the banner of the bear.

The horn sounded a third time, and suddenly I knew I would live, and I was weeping for joy and all our spearmen were half crying and half shouting and the earth was shuddering with the hooves of those Godlike men who were riding to our rescue.

For Arthur, at last, had come.

This page 117 in my edition, and it is Derfel doing the describing. It is a great moment and one that would have looked even better on the screen than the page. How do we see Arthur in TWK? First shell-shocked, then beaten bloody by an ill-cast Uther, and then wheedling and conniving before his exile. This is silly. What makes Arthur so dangerous in the book is that he is not a hanger on at Uther’s court and not particularly close to Mordred. He had gone to Brittany (Armorica) years ago at the behest of his sister, Anna, and made a name for himself there. He comes back for the battle that killed Mordred and is sent back immediately after. He is not a known quantity to the Dumnonian court. I understand that some exec might want more Arthur per screen time but by removing the distance between Arthur and the viewer/reader, and Arthur and Derfel they cut what makes the character work and some of its impact.

(It is absolutely the same with Merlin, but we’ll get to that, if I remember).

This brings us neatly to Derfel and the framing narrative. The conceit of the novels is that an old Derfel, now a monk, is scribing the story for a princess of the local dynasty. Derfel was a character known to earlier traditional Welsh poets, said to have survived the battle at the Camlann. Cornwell employs a similar device as his later novels (the one with Anglo-Saxon guy, can’t remember his name), where the protagonist is an old former warrior of liminal status to his tale (Derfel is an ethnic Saxon, raised a Briton; Uthred – got it! – is an ethnic Saxon, raised as a Dane). This creates an interesting narratorial viewpoint, especially where Derfel’s recollections of his impressions as a young man clash with the epiphanies of old age.

It is also a good framing device because we see glimpses of just how badly Arthur failed, how violent the sundering of the old world from the new. Christianity (something Cornwell always has a problem with, very boomer Atheist energy) has triumphed utterly, as have the Saxons. If I recall correctly, the novels end with the Saxons about to take the monastery Derfel is writing in. It’s not just that we know that Arthur failed spectacularly in the end, it’s that the remaining characters understand that within their own lifetimes which lend the story weight. There is something funny about comparing Samsum (bishop/mouse-king) and his attempts to pacify the Saxon with a translation of the New Testament into English with Arthur’s earlier, more effective, attempts with diplomacy and war.

Let’s get back to speaking of the world which, as I say, the showrunners seem to shy away from. The council in which Uther beats Arthur bloody happens later, and is much changed, in the book. For me it’s the scenery that was evocative. The meeting takes part in an old legionary camp at Glevum.[2] The Romans are another bunch consistently made big by their absence. Derfel, who lives in a hut, is obviously impressed by tile, dressed, stone, and mosaic. Nimue, Merlin, and the pagan party are generally more cautious or outright hostile:

‘But then the Romans came,’ she said, ‘and they broke the compact.’

‘But why?’ I interrupted impatiently, for I had heard much of this already. Merlin was always telling us how Rome had shattered the bond between Britain and its Gods, but he had never explained why that could happen if the Gods had such power. ‘Why didn’t we beat the Romans?’ I asked Nimue.

‘Because the Gods didn’t want it. Some Gods are wicked, Derfel. And besides, they have no duty to us, only we to them. Maybe it amused them? Or maybe our ancestors broke the pact and the Gods punished them by sending the Romans’.

A simple Roman barracks is now palatial to the Britons and as the council goes on the men hoom and beat their spears into the tiles in their assent, breaking what they could never hope to build. Bit by bit the world is chipped away. Again, this is a common theme. Arthur is excited to find lead. Guinevere is searching high and low for Roman artefacts to beautify her villa, mad King Ban is trying to recreate a Roman city, Tewdric and Agrippa are LARPing as Romans etc. This is a very cool aesthetic and one iron age British peoples were keenly aware of. Take, for example, the fantastic Old English poem The Ruin, which begins:

Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;
burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.
Wondrous is this masonry, [which] destiny broke;
Burst are the boroughs, the works of giants decayed.

Imagine all that on the screen. Instead, we get cheap fake biker gear and generic fantasy visuals #945985.

Look familiar? This is an Old English version of the Romulus and Remus myth! The runes read: Rōmwalus and Rēomwalus, twēgen gebrōðera: fēdde hīe wylf in Rōmeceastre, ēðle unnēah: Romulus and Remus, twin brothers, a wolf fed them in Rome, far from home. pic.twitter.com/YYPFftCLLz

— Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril (@PhiloCrocodile) January 4, 2022

Avalon is a similarly missed opportunity, a cowardly retraction from the world as written. What do we get? A generic hippie commune, hand holding, chanting, dancing etc (we even get LSD style visions without the LSD). There is a time and place to talk about how our post-Christian society talks about European paganism and the weird baggage we’ve inherited from hardline Protestantism, neo-pagan reactionaries, and drugs. Sadly/Happily, that is not here. Let’s just compare it to the books.

Merlin (who is not yet meant to be present) rules Avalon by ancestral right and despite his religious trappings is as probably as onerous a lord as any in iron age Britain. It is an odd and unsettling place. Even Derfel, who as one of Merlin’s foundlings leads a slightly privileged life, is aware of this. Merlin has a mad captive who once cooked and ate a child, the captain of his guard is a lecherous dwarf, he collects the unfortunate and the disabled as if some sort of nazi zoo-keeper due to his odd religious beliefs. Morgan, Arthur’s sister, is not a stunning blonde but someone more than half burnt in a house-fire. Even Hywel must be transformed from disabled veteran to a handsome black farmer.[3] That’s before you get to the druidic paraphernalia as described (skulls, assorted human and animal remains, etc etc). It is not meant to look like an expensive holiday retreat. Merlin is not a Dumbledore figure and rules as much through fear as by wise counsel. Part of what motivates e.g Morgan’s conversion to Christianity is because they apparently can see her as a person and not a curiosity.[4]

At no point is the viewer allowed to experience the vulnerability, the weirdness, the presence of death and disfigurement, that lies so close beneath the thin and fragile veneer of civilisation. Everything, down the perfectly curated blood splatters, is all very Hollywood.

Merlin brings us to casting. Whenever these things are mentioned nowadays there is the ritual re-statement of the modern faith. You know of what I speak. “I don’t see colour”, “I don’t care about the actor as long as they can act” etc etc. I am not going to do that, because I think the visual language of any historical production is important, because I think treating ethnic minorities like Pokémon you can pepper into any European historical drama is both racist and uncreative, and moreover because I think the casting here is generally very bad. Merlin stands out as a particularly poor choice. You could put him in white face and a wig, and he would still be a poor choice. He is not meant to be youngish and handsome and normal and charming and well groomed. Merlin by the way is very much the ethnonationalist par excellence and is obsessed with driving the early English from Britain. Put it like this: were he to meet someone like Trump his response would be to mock his policies are pusillanimous before promptly deporting him. Making Merlin, and indeed seemingly 40% of the British population, black is quite a thing when all this is considered. It also raises interesting questions about modern English and Welsh populations if seemingly 50% of Y and MtDNA of the islands is wiped out between the 5^th century AD and recorded history.

By the time you realise Guinevere (described as angular, strong, forest green eyes and luscious red hair) will be played by a black actress in a blonde wig you could be forgiven for thinking the showrunners are appropriating, abusing, fetishing, and using ethnic minority actors. But race is not the only confounding factor in the casting. Uther looks like he has never lifted a sword in his life, he looks the bureaucratic craven. Owain is a South FC tatoo’d giant in the books, not someone who runs a vegan hot-dog stand. Nimue is meant to be rail thin and unsettling, not especially pretty. Who is well cast here? Arthur I suppose. Oh, and Derfel too (forgettable so far).

The casting alone is not the issue. They could have 23andme to find actors exclusively from the original Welsh tribal septs with correspond to Powys, Dumnonia, Rheged etc, it would not matter. There is a persistent unwillingness, perhaps an embarrassment, for engaging with the source material.

It is not just just about that bugbear/bugman word “accuracy”. There is much, even in the original novel, that specialists would find at which to raise an eye. If there were any Druids in the 5th century A.D, they were certainly not men of power with rival priest-hoods, and for all Cornwell’s depiction of the church one must remember that it was the last genuinely Roman institution in these islands. In fact it was the church that would acquire a Brythonic national character as the newly Christianised Anglo-Saxons would then begin to persecute the Welsh as foreigners and heretics. Lastly, sadly, we probably can reconstruct too much of Dumnonia during this time to fit an Arthur figure in. 😦

No, it is not just about “accuracy” but about faithfulness to the material, and a sort of historical verisimilitude. Perhaps we could excuse all sort of infelicities in the writing if the world looked a little less like a hipster bar in Camden market. [5]

It is clear that they really did not want to adapt the books and wanted, instead, to push their own generic fantasy series. Even the treatment of “magic” belies this. What a shame, because I and many remember the books fondly. At what point will the studios learn from the mistakes of shit like The Witcher or [insert other fantasy series name here]? Why are they letting no-name no-talent hacks mess with the works of their betters? If your ideas and writing are so, so, brilliant, random writers – when write, publish, dominate best-seller charts and literary discussion both. These are the people striking for MORE money? Parasites, parasites, all of them.

Ok I want something better, where now?

Which is the frustrating thing because it is not as if there is a surplus of iron age British versions of the Arthur story, at least not in TV/Movie form. There is the 2002 King Arthur with Clive Owen and the 1972 (!) BBC Children’s series Arthur of the Britons, which I have obviously never seen, but nothing else comes to mind. Doubtless between marketing strategies and the complicated legal web of rights this series has poisoned the well for a more sympathetic adaption any time soon.

In terms of novels, you are much luckier. Rosemary Sutcliff wrote a series of young adult novels starting with The Lantern Bearers in 1959, though I suspect it would be hard to read them as an adult. Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave (1970) has a good mix of grounding and fantastical elements and tells the story from the viewpoint of a young Merlin. This is an interesting conceit, not least because it allows her to flesh out Uther and Ambrosius Aurelianus. Henry Treece is scarcely read today but I am partial to his grounded and violent The Great Captains (195X). For those of you wanting a weirder and more literary take, I leave it to you to track down John Cowper Powys’ insane Porius. Good luck!

Anyone interested in the culture behind the tales is encouraged to get a good translation of the Mabinogion. In terms of drawing history from the texts, not least the odd Y Goddodin, you can do no better than go and find  @ActualAurochs substack, which I will link here.

---

[1] I have actually never seen that film. I am assuming.

[2] Modern Gloucester. Pronounced something like glosta. dw about it.

[3] You may be the kind of person to feel his mouth opening, finger raising in some sort of “well achtckually disabled people are still people” mode. Shut your whoreborn mouth, nobody is saying otherwise. But is very clear both by modern statistical distribution and the ideology of the past, they were atypical and it is this strangeness (no value judgement) that causes Merlin to seek them out. Just shut the fuck up.

[4] This is a simplified reach.

[5] Trick question. They’re all hipster pubs. You know if you’re the kind of idiot paying £8 a pint in Camden, this really isn’t for you.

Storming Heaven (review)

Why do I do this? Why do I wait so long before finally sitting down and writing out a review, leaving to chance that I may save from my ever-entropic memory some semblance of the facts and impressions of the book? Perhaps it is a kind of test. If it is, then this book passes the test indeed.

This is the second book in a planned trilogy, I have previously reviewed the first book. Indeed, common sense and decency says that both writer and reader (re)read that review before embarking on this one lol.

We can talk about the previous book’s climax now. It ended in a great combination of the eruption of Thera and what I am going to loosely call the god vs the serpent mytheme. Don’t worry, I will keep this brief, I just want to throw out some of the parallels so that we can see what Cameron is working with here. In this mytheme, and it is found all over the world, a god contends with a serpentine beast which in older academic literature was seen as an allegory for nature.[1] Just search for the term chaoskampf. Anyway, Greek is unusual in having at least two of these.[2] In the context of the bronze age the Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Elish, the contest between Marduk and Tiamat must have been the most famous. Certainly, Cameron’s retelling retains some sense of that epic explosiveness. But Cameron manages to riff-on without exploiting or, worse, “deconstructing” the myth and his twist is a welcome one. The second book continues in this vein, drawing from the world’s bronze age mythologies and cultures and adding to them the kind of character driven writing that helps make the world feel alive.

This is book is Cameron’s Two Towers moment, in that the fellowship once gathered is now sundered.[3] I’ll sketch out some impressions without going too much into the plot. On one hand we have Zos along with scribe Polon and mystery child Daos. Zos, as I might have said before, ought to be boring. After all he is he closest to a cookie character sword and sorcery character and his backstory seems played out to Tartarus and beyond…and yet…and yet you can’t help but be charmed by him.

The other team is led by Era who, as I am keen to reiterate, is certainly not poorly written (and her relationship with Dite in this book adds something to her character) but she just continues to be quite a bit shit. All that time in the previous book jockeying for position only to endlessly complain. It feels churlish to refer to her and hers as the B-team, especially since what they get up to is so much more epic in scope. They still have everyone’s favourite insectoid desert hermit, they have a magic donkey AND a bear, they travel to this world’s versions of Britain (the tin isles) and the new world etc.

I suspect we will be seeing more of the new world in the next book. It is an interesting analogue with the expected flora (tobacco) and fauna (jaguar knights, oh my) and the human built environment seems to draw from diverse inspirations. Absolutely love that one guy has an Aztec war club.

There is a third character stream here, arguably the best. Meniaten rules Narmer (our Egypt analogue) which needs must be one of the most powerful states. It certainly seems analogous to Ramessid Egypt (they own territory abroad, love chariots, and are quite war-like). She is clearly inspired by female pharaohs like Cleopatra and Hatshepsut,[4] but Cameron wisely avoids the totemic hagiography such figures attract in modern mass media. She understands the double edged sword of authority, unlike Era, and she is aware of but not beholden to her sexuality, unlike Sypa. We meet someone whose back is up against the wall – who typifies the Roman ideal of ruling an imperium being, essentially, to hold a wolf by the ears – but who is consistently trying her best. She’s a great character and a wonderful excuse for Cameron to write what must be the best chariot battle scene I have ever read. It makes you realise how truly insanely awe-inspiring Qadesh must have been.

The world

What about the mysteries the author hinted at in the last book?  It is a testament to how well drawn the setting is that one cares. We have already spoken of the introduction of iron but C’s surface level use of that faerie trope hides some interesting little threads. I still want to know what is going on with those stone hammers. What about the old gods? At one point Pollon draws a stone arrow and you lean forward into your book expectantly…and still we are denied. We learn a bit more resin and the dry ones. I am still wondering exactly what the other gods meant about Anzu – here a lion, not a bird – being a relic from the old gods. There is much here of the Lovecraftian theme promised by the word chitinous.

The world here feels lived in because, I suspect, the author has so obviously lived in it. Let’s ignore the action sequences. Fight scenes are like sex scenes – it’s about who can write them the least poorly. Cameron clearly knows his stuff here, as anyone who has read his Chivalry series can attest,[5] and is capable of conveying what is happening without taxing the reader or coming off self-indulgent.[6] Leave such scenes I aside, what I mean is the word lives in the smaller details. Early on there is a scene or two where one of our heroic teams (Zos’) go to parley with someone. This is not a trivial trip and requires some camping. It is easy enough to miss the little details in what is already a great scene full of character development and lore exposition, but the worry of heating the clay pot without cracking it (gradually!), the careful lighting of the taper for the fire, the improvised tongs, the particular bronze tool used to make spoons…the scene comes alive a way they seldom do in genre fiction. Cameron has clearly been there and done that and it shows. One wonders how many clay pots he has ruined by scraping too hard.

Nor is this the only such scene. He knows that certain bows need thumb rings (learn that lesson once) and there is something familiar in the way he describes the back pain you get when you’re knee to wearing armour. It is not the only scene, but it typifies the book for me.

I hope I haven’t wasted too much timing pointing out historical/archaeological/mythic parallels. Even so, I have only mentioned a few of them. There is much more to the books than check-box site-seeing and you will note I have avoided the bugman term “world-building”.

The Netflix in the room.

Sword and sorcery stuff is, I think, still in vogue despite whatever happened to the last season of Game of Thrones.[7] Netflix has tried and failed to launch a series of competitors, based on books (The Witcher, Shadow and Bone, Letter for the King). These were all abject failures.[8] But here in Cameron’s new series is a gift from the chitinous pseudo-gods. The bronze age is under-explored territory as it is and the infusing of magic and fantasy makes this into a particularly evocative pastiche. It would look especially good on screen. All the tick-boxes demanded by idiots around conference tables are here! You get the mainstream appeal of the Greek/Near-Eastern/Egypt analogues with all the additional diversity you can handle. Your strong female lead is baked in. A living breathing world that is just asking for spinouts both spatial (what else is happening in Vetulania?) and temporal (show us the old gods). You can move between sci-fi and fantasy or character study at will. For the rest of us, there is simply the fact that it is a great story.

I do not in any way suggest that Cameron has been mercenary in his composition, but simply that if any modern series is deserving, it is this one. This novel is well worth your time.

---

[1] No doubt the people of the 19^th century were influenced by the weight philologists gave to Sanskrit, and to RV 1.32 in particular.

[2] At least. The St. George motif could arguably represent a late third. Perseus, Bellerophon additional ones to the Zeus and Apollo stories…

[3] Jackson’s moving the death of Boromir from TTT to TFOTR is perhaps his one and only improvement on Tolkien. But then Tolkien himself was ardent that he wrote one book, not three, so I suppose it matters not.

[4] The latter may well be the reason we refer to Egyptian kings as pharaohs (metonymy for “great house”).

[5] I also quite enjoy the idea of Fiore dei Liberi being portrayed like some Glenn Gould savant but for swords.

[6] I think Cameron must have popularised phrases like “making a cover” and I know I have started to colloquially explain riposting from posta di finestra as “rain off a roof”…

[7] I did not watch, sorry.

[8] Did not watch, either, sorry.

The First Lines of the Odyssey

There is an old – perhaps dying, perhaps dead! – tradition that young would be Homerists are set an essay on whether or not the ending of the Odyssey as we have it is legitimate. This is a task that requires close reading and delving into the wonderful secondary literature produced by figures like Page, Merkelbach, Wilamowitz and others as well as a sensitive ear for metre and style.[1] Writing an essay on this is a rite of passage for young Classicists, the major inspiration for which throughout the period of Anglo-German scholastic dominance being a reference in the scholia to Odyssey 23.296 τοῦτο γαρ πέρας τῆς Ὀδυσσεἰας φησίν ὁ Ἀρίσταρχος (Aristarchus says this is the end of the Odyssey).[2]

Let’s uno reverso that bitch and consider the beginning of the poem. No, no, not from an old school analyst viewpoint, there is no reason to assume it anything but integral to the text. I want to compare and contrast it with the Iliad.

How are we going to do this? I do not want to create a pseudo-philological commentary or write mere literary impressions. I don’t have access to any of the great commentaries right now either. Instead, I will just open my text (sorry I am OCT-cel, no Teubner bucks and religion aversion to Van Thiel) and throw stuff onto the page whilst waiting for lunch. I will jump between word, line, and greater chunks. Look, these are just off the cuff comments, feel free to jump in with emendations and alternatives.

I will largely, as always, be working from the Greek. If you want a translation you can see this considerate entry by Lin or grab any book.

My attempt at Odyssey 1, 1-10, inspired by the awful rendering from earlier.

It isn’t hard to do these poems justice or make them understandable in translation because they are actually very good. pic.twitter.com/wI2Epzulwo

— Lin-Manuel Rwanda (@lmrwanda) July 19, 2022

ἄνδρα Staid, trite, overworn truism that just as the Iliad begins with μῆνις (wrath) and thereby announces its theme, this poem does with man. The parent language had two distinct words for man *wiHrós and *h₂nḗr. The former gives us familiar reflexes such as Latin vir,[3] Old Irish fer, Old English wer, and Sanskrit vīrá. We know both words existed contemporaneously because languages like Sanskrit retain and utilise both but Greek is defective here. ἀνήρ therefore carried all the semantic range. Hunting, fighting, bravery, virtue, competition etc etc. However, is it a good first word? Yes, Odysseus is all these things, but the immediate narrative will shift to the gods (the opposite of man) then a boy (not yet a man) and much of the remaining text will display just how mean a thing man can be without fellowship, mission, and the god. Hmmm.

μοι ἔννεπε: Wonderfully archaic verb, cheekily lengthened by an additional ν to fit the metre. Eye-catching enough for Livius Andronicus to go out of his way to find a Latin verb to echo it in his Odusia. In the Iliad and in melic poesy it is overwhelmingly used with something of the air of a yarn. This is where you wriggle your arse more comfortably into its seat.

μοῦσα: Who is this Mousa and why is she invoked here? Is she synonymous with the Iliad’s θεά? Or the generic goddess in line 10 who is, nonetheless, a θύγατερ Διός? How much of the apparent Hesiodic and later tradition can we read into this word? Ascribing her as Calliope seems a touch too far.

πολύτροπον: In no way “complicated”, he is not some errant will we won’t we boyfriend. I admit it is a difficult thing to convey in translation, even into colloquial Greek (even Plato, Plato!, seems to struggle Hippias Minor 364e). H is relying on this ambiguity, one who often turns and is turned about. Pulleyn’s phrase as being “of many turns” is perhaps the most apposite English translation.

ἔπερσεν: This innocuous verb is Homer staking his Odysseus’ claim to be the sacker of Troy (poor Epeius) though in direct speech later Odysseus will use the verb in the 1^st person plural. The narrator does use the verb of Odysseus’ actions elsewhere (in Thrace? I can’t recall) and therefore it is a key part of his personality. Yes, he sacked Troy, he sacked the Ciccones, and by God he’s going to sack Ithaca as well. Reader, he’s going to sack you.

ὃς πολλὰ πλάγχθη…πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων…ἔγνω…πολλὰ πάθεν:  The polyptonic tricolon is not in anyway an accident. It tells you exactly what kind of hero this Odysseus will be.[4] Moreover, the traits here are typically heroic deep in the time of Eurasian heroic cultures: consider the first 10 or so lines of the Gilgamesh.

This is Sophus Helle’s 2021 translation, which is worth your time.

Incidentally, the near-eastern antecedents to the Odyssey are a very interesting topic. If only we had people who had read the texts and were interested in what the relationship(s) could tell us, rather than ressentiment driven ideologues obsessed with using the Greeks to score points against the chuds, we could have some really interesting discussions.

νόστιμον ἦμαρ: Serves to misleadingly align this poem with one of the various nostos narratives that were popular at the time. I think experienced listeners would automatically know (look how different the proem is from shorter epics…) that this is not the case, but even they would appreciate how artfully H. plays with expectations. Is the Odyssey a nostos narrative? Yes and no.

τῶν ἁμόθεν γε…εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν: The line is misleadingly difficult and translators smooth over this. I wish I could find my copy of Pulleyn to check how he renders it.  *ἁμός is not elsewhere used and Chantraine’s assumption that it is either an archaism or an Atticism seems bland and unconvincing.[5] Maybe the use of the elative suffix points more to an archaic origin.

How are we taking καί here? Overall, the sense of the line seems to be that Homer has asked the goddess to give him the tale Odysseus from anywhere she chooses and is simultaneously positioning himself both as passive recipient (hence the καὶ ἡμῖν, along with the audience) and performer at once. This is a key part of H’s rhetorical strategy.

What is H. on about? Well, there are endless variations and competing narratives but the goddess is going to give him, and therefore you, reader, the true one.

INCIDENTALLY, How do we, as grammatically aware Anglophones, feel about all the imperative verbs, addressed to the gods? In many languages such as Greek and Sanskrit this is simply the done thing, but the early Romans seemed a little phased by it: there is a big jump from Livius’s hedging to Virgil’s Musa mihi causas memora…Hmm that’s the second time Livius has come up. Maybe you read fragments?

I am getting bored with word/line commentary. How well does this set up the rest of the book? Despite starting with “man”, the proper scene we have is…of the gods? This is a much cosier style of assembly scene than seen in the Iliad. Zeus is (avoiding the whole issue of ἀμύμων Αἴγισθος) concerned with theodicy:

ὢ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται:

ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽ ἔμμεναι, οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ

σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽ ἔχουσιν,

O popoi![6] How the mortals now blame the gods

and say that their troubles come from us! Yet they themselves

have pains beyond their allotted fate due to their own recklessness!

Those hoping to hear about the man may be disappointed since we have gone from him to the gods, to a man but the mytheme of Aegisthus is very important. It offers a paradigm to Telemachus, at least to an extent, as we do not (yet) want him to kill his mother and he is faced not with a single adulterous suitor but several.[7] It also offers a warning to Odysseus. Unlike the other survivors, his nostos is still incomplete (11-13) and can easily end the same way as Agamemnon’s. It is not until books III and IV that we see what a safe and sound homecoming (Nestor) and an amicable, axe-free, spousal reconciliation (Menelaus and Helene) can look like.[8] Even that type of reconciliation is smashed between the threat of Calypso (1.13-19; 5) in the poem’s broader narrative structure.

Ok do let’s wrap up because περιπλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν and my lunch is almost done.[9] How does is the opening of the Odyssey? Well obviously, it is very very good. The proem and the following lines set up the narrative beautifully, even if at times they play with expectations. There is very little of the whole text that you can’t find an excuse to talk about.[10] Does it compare to the Iliad? I don’t know, it certainly doesn’t make me want to take my shirt off and punch things. Gregory Nagy, an American scholar finer than his tone-deaf sycophantic epigones, claims that people are variably Iliad or Odyssey people. Maybe I’m just fixed in Iliad mode. I think this might be the first appearance of the Odyssey on the blog since I pipped the BBC and several others to the post explaining what that fragment was several years back.

This is a fun exercise, that takes mere minutes. Give it a quick try now and then.

---

[1] The trick is to find out what your tutor believes and write the exact opposite.

[2] Actually no lol he doesn’t. I wrote that. I have no access to the scholia or anything cool right now. I have no access to a proper library: Be cool, ok? We’ll find the actual Greek later. I’ll slip it in before more than 5-10 people notice.

[3] Potentially quite complicated because the vowel in Latin is short, not the expected outcome of a vowel plus a laryngeal. Note, however, the irregular noun vis where in most cases the I must be long. All is well in Latinland!

[4] οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ ᾿Οδυσσεύς (16.204) – remember, H is constantly up against and part of a multiform tradition.

[5] If former, why no other testimony (even across cognate langs), if the latter, surely there would be much richer semantic parallels within the Attic and neo-Attic corpora.

[6] It’s just an exclamation guys like πω πω or ώπα or something.

[7] I believe multiformity allows as to whether or not Penelope is/has/can betray Od or not. Nonnus definitely retains some recondite epichoric variation (Dionysica 14.92) and Pausanias’ scandalous version (8.12) is common knowledge.

[8] I am not diving into the ambiguity around Helen here. Maybe some other time.

[9] Pls remind me and I will teach you make proper souvlaki (τυλιχτό and everything) in domestic oven.

[10] Yes, text. Americans, cry.

Reflecting on the death of Homer in 2023

Oh god I can’t let another month pass without posting. It is good to take stock and reflect now and then. A chance twitter interaction got me to think about what I believe was my maiden post here, on a random suppuration in the war between those who read the Classics and those who get paid to pretend they have. What was it Calvino said? Ah!

I do not have the energy to re-read VDH’s book. In fact, I am not even sure where the hell my copy is currently. The original idea behind that post was to tackle a series of books whose theme was the state of the discipline and the point of the Classis (Zuckerberg, Adler, etc etc) and half write reviews, half riff on whatever the books brought to mind. This never materialised and I am somewhat glad it did not. Talking about doing stuff is never as fun as actually doing stuff. Talking about the Classics is never as fun as reading them.

This will prove to have been the smarter choice. After all, what has changed since I first wrote that post? The trends that I identified have continued, hardened, engorged themselves on self satisfaction and self-perpetuating furor. The professoriate is more politicised than ever and unable to stand for the simplest of evident truths. Consider the current controversy of an African-American Cleopatra. Consider what people with fancy titles in their twitter bio are saying. I can even just copy-paste a quotation from the earlier post:

“But look at the discussion of Afrocentrism, where DuBois spends more time calling out writers like Lefkowitz for her apparent racism in debunking Afrocentrists than highlighting that the Afrocentrists are, in fact, grossly wrong”.

The more things change? We are reaching levels of Zhdanovshchina none thought possible.

The online space for discussing the ancient world has, I think, died. All the interesting blogs I used to read have basically stopped posting and #ClassicsTwitter has devolved into the water cooler chat of the uncool cool kids. There is no avenue for discussing and debating the past qua past. I would perhaps be a little comforted if I thought that kind of serious reading and thinking was still going on within Classics departments if any of the correspondence sent my way by students (again, a sadly dilapidating stream) is indicative, God, even that is much imperilled.  

I now longer care if the “burn it all down” people get their way. In fact, I think it might well be the healthiest course. We have survived the fires of Savonarola before. Enough of the tools of real Classics have been digitised, documented, and dispersed to adjacent disciplines that a handful of enterprising scholars could pick things up 50-60 years from now and convince a university to give it another ago. I pity the youth. I envy the youth.

I keep writing, much to the disappointment of many.[1] People keep reading.[2] And whilst I don’t believe in any of the truth claims and calumnies being thrown at our subject of study and its Wissenschaftsgeschichte (the Classics are not uniquely the bestest everer things written by humans; its dead paper is not uniquely Hitler like in its complicity in white supremacy), I still find the material so fascinating. Yes, even the stuff I have read and re-read.

About a decade ago we were sitting in a friend’s house in a Saronic Island and he, good natured scientist, asked me why the hell I was reading the Iliad yet again Perhaps he had a point. In the intervening time I have read the text again and again, and even as the uncountable stacks of academic literature in English, French, Greek, German, and – horror! – Latin fade from my mind the poem is clearer than ever. Nor is Homer the only author like that for me. Yes, I too feel some compulsion to lie to you about how there’s some recherché author like Philostratus or Alciphron occupying my mind right now.[3] Let’s be honest.

How many disciplines can offer even this? How big a shame is it that there are people out there swapping out politics for close-reading and robbing their charges of this kind of lifelong connection? “Here’s why Trump is worse than Agamemnon”, “Top 50 reasons Circe would want you to be an ally for X”, “Think you have daddy issues? Meet Electra!” Enough. Whatever. Who is this stuff for?

Again, I can’t bring myself to re-read that VDH book or indeed any other with the mere study of the Classics as it subject, but I do not think it has aged as badly as one would hope. For all its polemic it was prescient.

Anyway, just a short off the cuff note. I hope you are all doing well.

“In their heyday the cultures of antiquity were mighty coursing rivers. We’ve inherited error riddled MSS, rotten papyri, ostraka etc… a muddy stream in other words. We can’t afford to obfuscate things further.”

---

[1] Myself included lads, don’t worry.

[2] Absolutely fucking bewildering.

[3] Are either of them still obscure within the modern curriculum?

Why Odysseus would not get tenure

When I think of Odysseus my mind immediately goes (yes, this is perverse) not to the Odyssey but Sophocles’ Ajax, especially the opening. I am not a Sophocles man. I am certainly not a Euripides “man”. I am scarcely an Aeschylus kind of chap, but this play has a special place for me. I had read it in English and Greek (and even a bit in French) before I ever encountered it in Ancient Greek, whereof I was subject to an exacting instructor.[1]  The opening is striking. If we borrow some ideas from Taplin’s seminal The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (the only good book on Greek tragedy??!?) we can build up a sense of how much.

Odysseus and Athena are alone on the stage. The setting is the Achaean tents at Troy. We should imagine something akin to whatever the Greeks were using during the Peloponnesian war and neither the opulence of the Persian Great King nor the sumptuous settings later painters used. There is no marble here. Athena was played by a man and it would have had to have been a tall one (consider Herodotus’ anecdote of Phye and Peisistratus. Or, indeed, any statue) and the mix of height, stupid mask, peplos and (mock?) armour and military boots. This last, the combination of feminine with military would have been especially unnerving to the Athenians. The combination of two or more familiar things to create something new and uncanny is an interesting human past time (consider the cross-dressing priests of Wodan, the castrati of Cybele).

Odysseus too, more mundane, perhaps less effective. The canonical description of him seems to have been the teichoscopia episode. He is not much to look at, unprepossessing and not the equal of the other Achaeans in height but when he speaks… (Iliad 3.221-223):

ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ ὄπα τε μεγάλην ἐκ στήθεος εἵη

καὶ ἔπεα νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσιν,

οὐκ ἂν ἔπειτ᾿ Ὀδυσῆΐ γ᾿ ἐρίσσειε βροτὸς ἄλλος.

…but when he let go the great voice from his chest,

and [spoke] words like winter snow,

there was not another mortal who could strive with Odysseus!

(Next follows Ajax but we will get to that later, hang on to your pantaloons).

This is a hazardous description. One that could just as easily fit a character from Greek comedy or the satyr plays (think of Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds). This Odyssean disjunction between form (in the serious sense of Greek μορφή) and function (here, speaking well) is ripe for comedy. This is the Odysseus we find on funny pottery, such as the one I intend to make the banner here. Fat cheeked and ugly but boy can he talk.

This is taken to the extreme in the Odyssey which is not a sequel but another branch from the same tree. Odysseus is first absent (hence the Telemachiad of the first four books) and then sullen and depressed when we see him during book five. But from the moment he washes up in Scheria it his voice and his words like snow (consider this simile!) that define him. He convinces Nausikaa who really ought to be thinking of rape and murder to help him.[2] She provides him with clothes and sends him on his way.[3] Arete, the niece-wife of Alcinous, notices straight away that this stranger is wearing clothes that she herself has made. Surely, she has more than xenia on the mind? Yet he convinces her. Many of the most memorable sections of the poem are told in the voice of Odysseus. These are the episodes fondly remembered by those who have never read the poem, the cyclops etc.[4] In fact, when Odysseus tells the Phaeacians his tale the result is very much as Helen predicted (Odyssey 13.1-2):

So he spoke and they were all hushed in silence

spellbound they sat throughout the shadowy hall.

ὣς ἔφαθ᾽, οἱ δ᾽ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ,

κηληθμῷ δ᾽ ἔσχοντο κατὰ μέγαρα σκιόεντα.

A cursory reading would define Odysseus by his ability to speak, this would be stupid. But let’s explore the impact of his words first. Both Homers present this skill in a double-edged fashion. Yes, it is a great boon. It wins him the help of Nausikaa, Alcinous etc and later that of Eumaeus but at critical points it fails him or even compounds his troubles.

One of the most famous instances of this failure is the presbeia episode in Iliad 9. Here, Agamemnon is persuaded in private to try and conciliate Achilles. Nestor appoints Phoenix (an entirely Iliadic creation), Ajax (also an Aeacid!) and Odysseus to carry the message. When they arrive it is Odysseus who usurps the role of leader and opens the embassy (Iliad 9.222-4)

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἐξ ἔρον ἕντο,

νεῦσ᾽ Αἴας Φοίνικι: νόησε δὲ δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,

πλησάμενος δ᾽ οἴνοιο δέπας δείδεκτ᾽ Ἀχιλῆα:

but when they had put off their desire for drinking and feasting

Ajax nodded to Phoenix but brilliant Odysseus noticed

and having filled a beaker with wine he raised it to Achilles:

He recounts Agamemnon’s offer brilliant; this is an artful example of the oral poet’s skill. Yet we feel how flat the speech lands. Achilles’ response starts off plodding and then becomes almost forensic in the way it extricates what Aristotle would call arguments of logos, pathos, and ethos in term. The opening alone gives some sense of this. If anything, Odysseus’ speech may have made things worse. Do we expect him to fail? Odysseus has been linked with Achilles before under the yoke of Agamemnon, for in the first book Agamemnon plays with seizing his concubine. It is Odysseus who successfully returns Chryseis to her father at Agamemnon’s request. It is Odysseus who quells the incipient revolt of Thersites. It is Odysseus who is praised so appropriately by Priam. In fact the entire tradition, with earlier stories of Odysseus bringing Achilles from Scyros and “vanquishing” Ajax, sets us up for an Odyssean victory. Splat goes that.

More famous is his failure in the Odyssey which, perhaps more than any other poem, advertises the power of speech (the Sirens etc). Odysseus has escaped the cyclops and, yes, this involves perhaps the most famous pun in Greek literature. Terry Pratchett would be proud and yet when he gets to the safety of his boat,[5] he can’t help but boast. Threaten. His men are panicked and try to restrain him.[6]

We have taken an overlong detour from Sophocles. All this is to say that whilst the broader reception of Odysseus primes the audience to form some association (positive or negative) with Odysseus’ skill at speaking (we could go on!), the opening of the Ajax plays this inheritance. Let’s review the opening scene again. Yes, you will have to scroll up. I have given you the mise-en-scène. What is interesting is how in the face of Athena and her machinations Odysseus’ power of speech is effectively robbed. She intends to call out Ajax and Odysseus is driven into panic: τί δρᾷς, Ἀθάνα; μηδαμῶς σφ᾽ ἔξω κάλει etc etc. The sudden shift from set-pieces to one liners, from weary assurance to panic, neuters him. This must have been both unnerving and enthralling to a Greek audience.

Of mice and men heroes.

Are we to worship Odysseus? Did the ancients? One would have thought these are two very distinct questions. I think I have already demonstrated the rich variation in his earliest reception without dipping into epic fragments, lyric, and Pindar: I have not the confidence of the Greekless that I could explain the very complex context there briefly. The first point is that Odysseus was talked about. Positively or negatively, he remained an archetypical character in Greco-Roman literature centuries after poor Homer became consigned to school-text or elite plaything. He was an inherently ambivalent character. This is what is meant by Odysseus’ remark to Penelope that “no other Odysseus will return to you”. Americans who always take things to far (who the fuck adds a third piece of bread to a burger) have taken Parry’s insight and ran it to insipidness. Homer was not an academic nor was he writing for such an audience. Not every little utterance is a statement on oral poetics.

Nevertheless, the ancients did literally hero worship Odysseus.[7] The most obvious example would be Polis cave at Ithaca.[8] Caves, like springs, were often sites of cult in Greece and the larger Indo-European speaking world and in this cave archaeologists have recovered tripods, presumably used as votive offerings, from around the 8-9^th century BC. Do these tripods, predating Homer, represent worship of Odysseus from that period? Not necessarily. But the cult boasts an oddly long durée and whilst reemployment of cult centres is well known,[9] so is continuity. It is not without probability that the earliest layers of cult belonged to Odysseus well before Homer’s grandfather was born. Anyway, there are direct testimonies of Odysseus receiving hero cult from the late classical/Hellenistic period.[10] He also received hero cult in Laconia and there are numerous ktisis myths about him in the Northwest (Epirus) and Italy/Sicily.

This ought not be surprising. There is nothing about the Greek concept of heroism that obliges it to be admirable to us. The word is opaque in its etymology, and I am not going to try and guess at it. What is it about this fact – the ancients venerated Odysseus – that has caused such an uproar? Well we will come around to that.

Seeing is believing?

What does it mean to claim something? How does this differ from proving or asserting? Early in the Iliad, when the rancour between Agamemnon and Achilles erupts into a breach, Achilles says something curious about his rival (Iliad 1.91)

ὃς νῦν πολλὸν ἄριστος Ἀχαιῶν εὔχεται εἶναι

he who now claims to be by far the best of the Achaeans.

Now εὔχομαι is an odd word. I will spare you the strain of reaching for your Cunliffes.[11] Its basic meaning is often glossed as some variation of praying or wishing and this sacral element seems to be the original meaning if we can trust comparative evidence from Vedic and Avestan. In the Iliad it seems to mean something like claim/assert and is used to frequently and so blandly that it must be semantically neutral. However, it would be churlish not to assume that here Homer is able to slap a bit of sauce on that line. I do not think Achilles is employing the verb in a semantically neutral sense at all. More like “he [Agamemnon] claims to be the best [but clearly isn’t].

Claiming/asserting is not the same as proving. Is not the same as being. A man can put their voice to any words but is of no account without action. Achilles has good cause to doubt Agamemnon, as the rest of the text hints at. Think of his disastrous inability to marshal his troops in book 2, the way Nestor make control of the council in 9 and elsewhere, his obstinate inability to see, to understand, why Achilles is upset beyond the level of monetary recompense.

Odysseus too is an important example.[12] It is clear from the first book of the Odyssey that he has somehow passed from history to myth without dying (this limbo like uncertainty is what drives much of the Ithacan drama) and for all his powers of speech he must prove himself worthy. This is why he must defeat the Phaeacians at games before verbally disclosing his identity. This is why Penelope must test him. This is why all the suitors and, yes, the complicit maids must die.

Claiming/asserting is not the same as proving.

What does it mean to be a classicist? What does it mean to say you are a classicist? I am not entirely shamming. I do not know. Over a decade or so past I would have asked that question in neotenous enquiry. What does it mean? Who should I read? What should I do? Etc etc. Now I feel rather like Osric or some other grizzled character in the Conan the Barbarian “what is best in life?” “What is the riddle of steel?” Someone provide an answer, please. Whatever it is, I remain unconvinced that claiming you are a classicist, even through the medium of a diploma, makes you one.

What we have seen the past few days week is a lot of claiming, a lot of sneering. I forget the origin of it. Someone, probably some American, claiming that Odysseus represents some lesson for young men today (he absolutely does). I suspect the wrong kind of person said and so the classicistuli who in other circumstances might be selling books barely a parasang away from “Business Secrets of Achilles” or “What Odysseus teaches us about Psychology” but agitated by that eternal in/out group preference margin came out in droves to hector and bluster.

(Bear with me, I’m getting distracted and losing focus)[13]

What struck me was the vehemence in their tone. Not only is Odysseus not someone to emulated by men today (debate, probably provable) but the ancients themselves would also deny this. This is demonstrably false. Ludicrously so. Is it projection? So many in academic positions do not know their texts, read only excerpts, and the pressures of graduate school and adjuncting often seem to destroy any love of reading – it would be easy to project this frame of mind onto others. If you don’t read and you think others do not read, this is a good line of argument to take.

Is it appropriation? This is something we do not speak enough about. We’re happy to talk about right wing appropriation of the Classics (whatever the fuck that is) and leave the highly politically charged readings of Anglo-American scholars as neutral, as read. I am more surprised than I ought to be that #ClassicsTwitter allowed a group of professors, teachers, and other educators state false-hoods elide the line between themselves and the ancients and label any dissent as illiterate.

Claiming/asserting something, throwing about your university credentials, is not the same as proving from the sources.

---

[1] I can still tap out the more challenging metrical sections if I really try. Probably.

[2] As in to be wary of it. The text does not suggest that Nausikaa is liable to rape or murder anyone.

[3] It has never been fully explained to my why he was so naked. What an oddly pervy sea-storm.

[4] polyGETFUCKEDemus more like.

[5] Tbf I agree. With one eye the cyclops probably doesn’t have good depth of vision at the best of times. Let alone blinded.

[6] Don’t worry I won’t quote more Homer at you. I have some respect for your screen space. But do quickly look up 9.480-

[7] How cynical “hero worship” sounds to us! Our modern narcissism can never ever ever admit that we are in any way lesser, or that our necks turn up as easily as they do down.

[8] Or, rather, the loizos cave in polis bay, as they would say in Greek.

[9] Late antiquity typically sees “pagan” sites become Christian. Even earlier, we see internal development of Greek deities e.g Athena in Arcadia. Cults change, people change.

[10] You can read e.g C Antonaccio An archaeology of ancestors, but esp I Μalkin The returns of Odysseus.

[11] Oh god do you use Autenrieth for casual reference? How embarrassing.

[12] Much like a bad odour, I told you we would be back.

[13] Look guys for better or worse these posts or one or two shots. I’ll try to edit it sometime later.