Archived "Quotations of the Month"

For people always applaud the most for the song that is newest to circulate among the listeners. Homer, Odyssey I.351-352. The latest news is always a standard subject of the oral poet, whether the bard of antiquity or the improvisational artist of today. In the Odyssey, Phemius (described in the quotation above) sings a song about the Trojan War to the assembled Suitors, because that was the news of the day. Illustration: Apollo, patron god of music, plays the lyre, the instrument with which the bard accompanied himself

Archived quotations of the month

Beginning with September, 2004, my home page will feature a different quotation from Classical or other literature each month, appropriate to the season or to current events. Starting in October, 2004, this page will contain "Quotations of the Month" from previous months. Translations are my own, except where otherwise noted. Do you have a suggestion for a future Quotation of the Month? If so, send me your ideas.

Quotation for February 2010: Inspired by Valentine's Day, Greek goddesses as ancient "cougars" (Homeric Hymn V)

Eos in hot pursuit of Cephalus, in a vase painting (image from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890).

Ancient goddesses as "cougars"

Greek goddesses were the original "cougars," ageless beauties who chase after young, attractive men. Odysseus encountered two of them, Calypso and Circe, both of whom seduced him and wanted him to stay with them forever (Odyssey Books 5 and 10). Calypso, ordered by the gods (in a message brought by Hermes) to turn Odysseus loose, laments the ill fortune such affairs may bring. She tells how Eos, goddess of the dawn, seduced the giant hunter Orion; he was subsequently struck down by Artemis' arrows. (But we know that later he became the constellation Orion.) She tells how Demeter, goddess of the grain "lay with Iasion in a thrice-plowed fallow field" (an obvious fertility myth); Iasion was smitten by Zeus' thunderbolt.

Eos was particularly amorous, being associated in mythology with a succession of lovers, including Cephalus (see the pictures above and below) and the Trojan prince Tithonus, whose story is included in the Homeric Hymn V to Aphrodite.

Aphrodite is caught by her own tricks

The Hymn to Aphrodite tells the tale of Aphrodite's seduction of another Trojan prince, Anchises. Aphrodite, goddess of desire, makes gods, mortals, animals, birds, and the creatures of the sea fall in love. Only three are immune to her powers: Athena, Artemis, and Hestia, goddess of the hearth. Zeus, of course, has fallen in love with mortal women many times. Zeus decides to give Aphrodite a taste of her own medicine by making her fall in love with Anchises, who is tending the herds. There is a delightful scene in which Aphrodite, disguised as a Phrygian princess in gold-trimmed attire and smelling of sweet perfume, wafts over mountains and woods, trailing pheromones of love that make all the animals mate madly as she goes. She seduces Anchises, who is horrified when he finds that she is a goddess, for he knows what has happened to other men who slept with goddesses. She understands his qualms, and tells the stories of other Trojan princes carried off by deities, Ganymede, stolen by Zeus to be his cup-bearer, and Tithonus, abducted by Eos.

Eos fell in love with Tithonus, and the two lived rapturously together. Eos asked Zeus to give Tithonus eternal life, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. He withered away in her chamber, forever helpless and babbling. Other myths tell us that he became a cricket, eternally chirping. While sadness came to Eos and Tithonus, they were the parents of a mighty hero. The son of Eos and Tithonus was Memnon, king of the Ethiopians, subject of a lost epic, the Aithiopis.

The birth of Aeneas

Aphrodite assures Anchises that no bad fate awaits him, nor will she try to make him immortal. He, too, will by the father of a mighty son. That son is, of course, Aeneas, a Trojan hero in the Iliad. He was to become even more famous later as the hero of Vergil's epic, the Aeneid, where Aphrodite is known by her Roman name, Venus.

Here, in translation, is Aphrodite's telling of the story of Eos and Tithonus:

Just so did golden-throned Eos snatch away Tithonus, of your race, who was like unto the immortal gods. And she went to ask the dark-clouded son of Kronos that he be immortal and live forever. Zeus nodded his assent and fulfilled her desire. Foolish girl! Lady Eos did not think within her heart to ask for youth and the scraping away of deadly old age. Indeed, while lovely youth possessed him he lived in enjoyment with golden-throned Eos, the early-born, by the streams of Ocean, at the ends of the earth. But when the first gray hairs fell from his beautiful head and noble chin, lady Eos stayed away from his bed, but she tended to him, keeping him in her home, with food and ambrosia, giving him beautiful clothes. But when hateful old age completely pressed down upon him, and he could not move his limbs or lift them, then in her heart this seemed the best plan: She put him in a chamber, and closed the shining doors. His voice, indeed, flows in an endless stream, and there is no more strength, as once there was in his supple limbs. (- Homeric Hymn V (to Aphrodite) 218-238)

Another interpretation of Eos and Cephalus, in terracotta (image adapted from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie.) In this version, Eos is not so attractive (more maternal?), but Cephalus looks rather contented (or is he just surprised?).

Quotation for January 2010: For Martin Luther King, a prophetic dream (in Vergil's Aeneid)

The Cumaean Sibyl, depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. In Vergil's Aeneid, she directs Aeneas to the entrance to the Underworld. She is an old woman, because Apollo, while giving her immensely long life, punished her rejection of him by not granting her eternal youth.

Dreams of a promised future

In January, we celebrated Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, and February is Black History Month. King's two most famous speeches, the "I Have a Dream" speech of August 1963 and "I've Been to the Mountain Top," delivered in 1968 the night before his assassination, bracket his national fame. In the former, the "dream" was not a sleeping fantasy but a prophecy, not only for Black people, but for the country itself:

"...I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..."

In the latter address, he cast himself prophetically as Moses, looking from Mount Nebo upon the land that will be Israel, which he will never reach:

"...I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land..."

Prophecies of a great nation

The prophetic dream, of course, has a long history. Dreams (the sleeping kind) were important in divining one's course of action. Among famous examples were the dreams of visitors to the sanctuaries of Asclepius, which dictated the course of treatment for the ill. This month's quotation is from the sixth book of Vergil's Aeneid, in which Aeneas, going to the Underworld, learns of his future life, as well as the future greatness of Rome, which will be founded and enriched by his descendants, but which he will never see. This, also, is not strictly speaking, a dream, except for its curious ending. It is modeled on two different episodes in Homer's Odyssey.

Aeneas and Odysseus

The principal model for Aeneas' visit to the Underworld is Odysseus' adventure in the Land of the Dead in Book 11 of Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus, following directions from the goddess Circe, visits Hades' realm to inquire of the spirit of the great seer Teiresias what his future will be. While there, he first meets the shade of his comrade Elpenor, who, having fallen fatally from a roof, was yet unburied. He meets the ghost of his mother, who tells him of the havoc caused by the suitors of his wife Penelope. He meets the ghosts of fellow warriors, like Achilles and Ajax, heroes like Heracles, as well as nameless, wandering wraiths of no renown. Fearing that Persephone will send up the dread Gorgon, Odysseus departs in haste. In Aeneas' case, the role of Circe is filled by the Cumaean Sibyl, whose cave at Cumae (probably the wrong one!) is still pointed out as the place where she gave her prophecies. Aeneas soon meets the ghost of his helmsman Palinurus, who had likewise died in an accidental fall, from the stern of his ship. He meets his former lover, the Carthaginian queen Dido, who, abandoned by him, comitted suicide. Like Odysseus, he meets former friends and enemies, and figures from the mythic past. But in a departure from Homer, Aeneas, guided by the ghost of his father Anchises (filling a role similar to that of Teiresias) sees spirits about to be reincarnated — as Roman heroes of a glorious empire that is to come, not in Aeneas' own lifetime, but in the future! In the most poignant passage, Vergil interpolates a figure from the Emperor Augustus' own circle, Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia and his intended heir, tragically dead at the age of 20. What an impact this must have had, as Vergil recited his poem to the emperor and his family!

Gate of horn, gate of ivory

Aeneas' departure from the Underworld abruptly changes to the language of dreams, although this visit was not depicted as a dream. There are, says Vergil, two gates of Sleep, a gate of horn, through which true dreams emerge, and a gate of ivory, through which false dreams pass. Aeneas comes out though the gate of ivory. Why? This passage is lifted from Book 19 of the Odyssey, in which Penelope tells the returning Odysseus (whom she still does not trust to really be her husband) of her doubts concerning a prophetic dream she had of his return. In Greek the words make a pun. Dreams proceeding from the gate of "horn" (keras) are fulfilled (krainousi), but those from the gate of "ivory" (elephas) deceive (elephairontai). Why did Aeneas depart from the gate of ivory? Many theories are proposed, including a suggestion that because false dreams were thought to occur before midnight and true dreams after midnight, the gate of horn wasn't yet open. But why would he be in such a hurry? Perhaps, because these events are still, for Aeneas, in the future, they are for him just a dream, not reality?

Below, in translation, are the final lines of Aeneid Book 6. Young Marcellus is seen walking beside an older hero, also named Marcellus:

But Aeneas said, for he saw walking beside [the older Marcellus] a young man of outstanding beauty and radiant armor, but with a face showing little happiness and downcast eyes, "Who, father, is that who accompanies the hero as he goes? Is he his son, or someone from the great line of descendants? What great acclaim there is from the companions around him! What presence he has! But black night flies about his head with a mournful shade." Then father Anchises began, with welling tears, "O son, do not inquire of the great sorrow of your family. The fates will merely show him to the world, nor will they allow more. Ye gods above, you thought the Roman race would be too powerful, if your gift to them remained their own. How great a lamentation of men will the Campus Marius make around Mars' great city! And what a funeral will you see, Tiber, when you flow past his newly made tomb! No other boy of the Ilian clan will raise our Latin ancestors to such hope. Nor shall the land of Romulus take such pride in any son. Alas filial duty, alas ancient faithfulness, alas right hand unconquerable in war! No one could with impunity have borne arms against him, whether he had gone on foot against the enemy or dug his spurs into a horse's foaming flanks. O pitiable boy, if somehow you could break through harsh fate! You shall be Marcellus. Give lilies from full hands that I may scatter their purple flowers, that to the shade of my grandson I may at least give these gifts, and perform this ineffectual duty. So they wandered over the whole region, in those wide fields of mist, surveying all. After that, Anchises led his son through each sight, and kindled his mind with a love of coming fame. Then he told the hero of wars that must be fought, and taught him of the Laurentine nation and the city of Latinus, and how he might avoid or bear each labor. There are twin gates of Sleep, of which one is said to be of horn, from which easy exit is given to true shadows, the other, perfect, shining with white ivory, but through it the spirits send false dreams up to the sky. Having had his say, Anchises accompanied his son, together with the Sibyl, and sent them out through the ivoried gate. Aeneas made his way to the ships, and rejoined his comrades. Then he went straight along the shore to Caieta's harbor. Anchors were cast from prows; the sterns stood along the shore. (-Vergil, Aeneid V.860-901)

"Moses on Mount Sinai," woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543). Moses ascended one mountain, Sinai, to receive the Ten Commandments. At the end of his life, he ascends Mount Nebo, from which he looks down on the promised land that he will never reach.

Quotation for December 2009: In the winter season of the Northern Hemisphere, a shout-out to the Antipodes, where it's summer

Helios, god of the Sun, pilots his chariot across the sky (image from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890). For those who sleep by day and party by night, this is a sight never seen.

Winter here, summer there

In the Northern Hemisphere, from which this Web site originates, this is the beginning of winter. The days grow shorter, and the U.S. has suffered its first blizzards, shutting down highways, trapping hikers, and bringing down power lines. The wind howls through the trees. As Hesiod says, it is then that Boreas, the North Wind,

blowing through horse-breeding Thrace upon the wide sea, makes it heave, and the earth and the woods bellow. Falling upon many high-crowned oaks and thick pines in the mountain glens, Boreas brings them to the bounteous ground; then the entire immense wood roars, and the wild beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs, even those whose hide is covered with fur; chill as he is, he blows through them, although they are shaggy-breasted. (-Hesiod, Works and Days vv. 506-513)

In our modern world, in the face of the blast, Christmas and Hanukkah lights, swaying in the wind, spread cheer.

For an even bigger contrast, we are mindful of our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, our Antipodes, for whom this is the beginning of summer, as the days grow longer.

The Antipodes as an actual place (in Plato's Timaeus)

It was known since Pythagoras that the Earth was a globe. It is simply not true that people thought the Earth was flat until Columbus proved it otherwise. (That particular canard was started by a work of fiction, Washington Irving's The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), and continued by the dubious work of the anti-religious writer Antoine-Jean Letronne in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834).)

Plato, as he describes it in the Timaeus, conceived of the universe as spherical, with the Earth at its center (and as having a soul). In the Timaeus (more famous today for its myth of Atlantis), he invokes the concept of the Antipodes to explain why there is no actual "up" or "down," since upness and downness depends on where you are standing. "Antipodes" literally means "with opposite feet (to where you are standing)." He is explaining that things are light or heavy not because they fall down but because elements (earth, air, water, fire) are attracted to similar elements, the elements themselves being composed of atoms shaped like different kinds of triangles (Timaeus 63a).

In the Phaedo, Plato described the Earth itself as spherical, resembling, he says, a ball made of different colored strips of leather (Phaedo 110b).

The Antipodes as a state of mind (in Seneca's Epistles)

Seneca the Younger (1st cent. A.D.), in his ironic Epistles, turns the idea of the Antipodes on its head, so to speak, using the term humorously to describe the state of mind of those who pervert the normal scheme of things. He mocks lazy souls who sleep by day and banquet by night (whose minds, he says, are as full of darkness and fog as their lives), gourmands who cultivate flowers out of season or grow orchards on their roofs, and men who wear women's clothes.

Here is the beginning of Seneca's Epistle 122, written as the days grow shorter. The quotation from Vergil is from Georgic 1.250-1, where the context shows that the poet assumes that the Sun, moving around the Earth, alternately illuminates the northern and southern hemispheres. The reference to Cato is not recorded elsewhere.

The day already feels its loss. It has retreated somewhat, yet there is still a generous amount, if one arises, so to speak, with the day itself. One is even more industrious, and better off, if one does not wait for the first light, but wakes it up. He is shameful, who, when the sun is high, lies semi-asleep, and whose watchful time begins in mid-day; and yet for many, this is before their dawn. There are those who reverse the duties of day and night, and do not open their eyes, heavy with yesterday's drunkenness, until night begins to approach. Such is said to be the condition of those whom nature, as Vergil says, has placed contrary to our dwelling place, "and when the Rising Sun with his panting horses has breathed upon us for them the ruddy Evening Star kindles his late-night lamp." But for these people, what is contrary is not their region, but their life. There are in this same city certain antipodes, who, as Cato says, never see either the rising or the setting sun. Do you think they know how to live, who do not even know when to live? And that they fear death, who have buried themselves alive? They are of evil omen, like nocturnal birds... (-Seneca, Epistle 122.1-24)

"Galileo Demonstrating His System," from Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, New York, 1856.

Quotation for November 2009: Inspired by the debate over health care, "A cock for Asclepius"

The constellation Ophiuchus ("The Serpent Bearer"), sometimes identified with the god Asclepius. (Detail from Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, 1856.)

An ancient New Age spa

Imagine a New Age spa, where, after the proper rituals and having bathed in medicinal waters, you go to sleep in a temple inhabited by sacred animals, and dreams direct your cure of all that troubles you.

This month, inspired by the debate in Congress and the media over what kind of health care is best for the nation (and how to pay for it), we discuss the cult of Asclepius (Roman Aesculapius), the ancient god of medicine, whose temples and sacred precincts were popular resorts for the sick, the infirm, and the worried.

Healing dreams in the temple of Asclepius

In Homer, Asclepius is apparently simply another hero, a physician, father of the two doctors Machaon and Podalirius. He was taught his craft by the centaur Chiron. As discussed in Farnell Greek Hero Cults, there is a question of whether Asclepius was a person whom the tradition gradually made into a god, or whether he started as a god who became a hero. He is sometimes portrayed as the son of Apollo. He is associated with snakes (as symbols of rejuvenation because of the way the slough off their skins) and with dogs. One tradition has him transformed into the constellation Ophiuchus, the "Snake-Holder" (see the picture above). By historic times, the cult of physicians called the Asclepiades or "sons of Asclepius" had grown around him (of whom the most famous was Hippocrates of Cos), and his shrines, in which there were often resident snakes (and sometimes sacred dogs), were places of healing. The most famous rites associated with these shrines was the practice of "incubation" or sleeping overnight in the temple, where dreams would dictate the course of treatment. Many cures were reported: sterile women became pregnant, the depressed found their spirits again. At the largest sacred sites, as at Epidaurus (south of Athens), the island of Cos, and Pergamum (in Asia Minor), there were temples, baths, gymnasia, theaters, and other buildings. At Epidaurus, the large theater is still used for performances (see the illustration below).

Asclepius is portrayed holding a staff and a snake, often with the snake wrapped around the staff. The staff with the single snake is used as the symbol for a number of medical associations. (Other medical groups use the alternative staff with two snakes, topped with wings, called the caduceus (Greek kerykion) or herald's staff, associated with Hermes, the Roman Mercury. Hermes' "snakes," however, developed artistically from images of twining shoots of foliage.)

Socrates' "cock for Asclepius"

The most famous (and enigmatic) reference to Asclepius is in Plato's Phaedo, which describes the last day of Socrates, condemned to drink the poison hemlock for "corrupting the youth of Athens" with his weird ideas. Socrates spends the day in his prison cell conversing with his friends, discussing the nature of the soul, reasons against suicide, arguments for reincarnation, and attitudes toward mortality, trying to console the young men for his impending death. By the end of the day, all but Socrates are crying, even the jailer whose duty is to give him the poison, who apologizes profusely for what he is ordered to do. (Socrates, in fact, had practically demanded his own martyrdom, being given a chance to ask for a lesser sentence but refusing to. When asked what punishment he should be given, he answered that he should actually be rewarded, as were Olympic victors, with dining privileges in the prytaneon (town hall)! Fat chance!) Socrates reprimands the men for their behavior — he had sent his wife and other women out of the room precisely because of their womanish crying.

As he dies, Socrates' last words are a request that Crito offer "a cock to Asclepius" which he says he owes. This reference has left commentators scratching their heads for centuries. One interpretation is that the offering is in gratitude for release of his immortal soul from his mortal body. I suggest a more mundane explanation: Socrates has been trying to cheer up his followers by acting as if the whole activity were a perfectly normal medical procedure. Perhaps his request is simply to be interpreted as "Hey, Crito, remember to pay the doctor after this is over." Or maybe (assuming that the Phaedo is a more or less actual report of what happened that day) Socrates actually did remember that he owed a sacrifice to the god for some prior favor. Or, as the poison crept up his body, was his mind just starting to wander? Here, in translation is the ending of the Phaedo:

. . . Apollodorus, who even before this had not ceased weeping, now crying out in bellowing tears and grieving made everyone present break down except Socrates. But he said, "What are you doing, strange people? I, not the least for this reason sent away the women, so that they would not offend thus in their behavior. For I have heard that one must meet one's end in stillness. But keep quiet and be steadfast." And we, hearing him, were ashamed and held our crying. He walked around, and when he said his legs were becoming heavy, he lay on his back (for so the fellow had directed him), and the man who gave him the poison, feeling him, after a while looked at his feet and legs, then pressing his foot hard asked if he felt anything. He said no. And after that he pressed his legs. Then going upward showed that he was cold and stiff. Then he felt himself and said that when the lack of sensation reached the heart, he would be departed. When the coldness began to reach his abdomen, he uncovered himself (for he had covered himself up) and said — and these were his last words &mdash: "O Crito," he said, we owe a cock to Asclepius. "Pay the debt and do not neglect it." "It shall be done," said Crito. "Do you say anything more?" To this question he did not answer, but after a little time he moved and the man uncovered him, and his eyes were fixed. Seeing this, Crito closed his mouth and eyes. That, Echecrates, is how the end of life came about for our friend, a man, as I might say, of all whom I have known, the best and wisest and most just. (- Plato, Phaedo 118a)

Statue of Asclepius, Louvre. The god is holding his staff and is accompanied by a snake. The snake is often depicted as twined around the staff. The staff with (single) twined snake is used as the symbol of a number of medical associations. (Image from Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.)

The theater at Epidaurus. (From Hanns Holdt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Griechenland, 3rd edition, 1928.) Only the theater still stands of the huge sanitorium and spa complex once dedicated to Asclepius.

Quotation for October 2009: For Halloween, Odysseus summons the ghosts of the dead

The realm of Hades. (Adapted from the image of a vase from Canosa in Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.) Hades and Persephone appear in the shrine at the top. Notice Heracles kidnapping the three-headed dog Cerberus at the bottom center and Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill at the bottom left.

Odysseus in the realm of the dead

Perhaps the most extraordinary ghost story of antiquity is Book 11 of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus visits the Land of the Dead. There, he exchanges gossip with lost loved ones, learns the fate of his fellow warriors, meets phantoms of the past, and hears of the future that is in store for him.

Circe, sorceress of Aeaea ("Island of Wails"), who earlier turned Odysseus' men to swine, after a year lets Odysseus and crew leave, but first she tells him he must journey across the Ocean, the great river encircling the world, to the entrance to the home of Hades and Persephone. There he must dig a trench and make sacrifices, but he must not let the phantom dead who throng about him drink the blood (which allows them to communicate) until he has inquired of the soul (psyche) of the great Theban seer Teiresias what his own future holds, for

. . . his mental faculties (phrenes) are intact, for to him alone, though dead, has Persephone granted reason (nóon), and understanding (pepnusthai); all the others dart about as shadows. Homer, Odyssey 10.493-5.

A ghostly stampede around the blood-filled trench

In a shadowy land, where the sun does not shine, Odysseus, following Circe's instructions, stands at the blood-filled trench as the phantoms come, from all walks of life, crying out: brides and youths and worn-out old men, warriors in blood-stained armor, dead young girls "with their hearts new to sorrow." Odysseus feels a pang as he turns away his own mother, Anticleia, whom he last saw alive when he departed for Troy. But he can allow no one to drink the blood before he has inquired of Teiresias, the seer. Teiresias' prophecy being done, he at last lets his mother drink the blood and receives her news from home, but as he tries to embrace her, "she flits away, like a shadow or a dream." He meets famous women, including the mother of Oedipus (here called Epicaste rather than the usual Iocaste or "Jocasta"). He converses with Agamemnon, murdered by his wife, Clytaemnestra, who warns Odysseus not to trust his own wife, though admitting that Penelope is a good woman. He meets Heracles, who is chasing wild game, but it is only his "likeness" (eidolon), for "he himself" enjoys himself among the immortal gods, having Hebe for a wife. He sees the great sinners (as Dante would later do): Tantalus forever grasping at fruit overhead and thirsting for water receding around him, and Sisyphus endlessly rolling his stone uphill.

Achilles: "Better to be a serf on earth than king of all the dead"

Upon meeting the ghost of Achilles, who weeps at seeing him in this nightmare land, Odysseus attempts to cheer him up, contrasting Achilles' heroic fate with his own endless wanderings, but Achilles would rather be a peasant — and be alive. He is happy only when Odysseus tells him that his son, Neoptolemus, lives and is successful in battle. Ajax, on the other hand, still smarting from his loss to Odysseus in the contest for the arms of Achilles, refuses to speak to him. At last, beseiged by crowds of ghosts, Odysseus leaves, afraid that Persephone will send up the monster head of the Gorgon.

Here is part of the conversation with Achilles, who asks what Odysseus is doing in Hades' kingdom:

Thus he spoke, and I addressed him in answer, "O Achilles, son of Peleus, by far the mightiest of the Achaeans, I came in need of Teiresias, if he would tell me some plan, whereby I might reach craggy Ithaca. For I have not yet come close to the Achaean land, nor yet set foot in my own country, but I always have misfortune, but no man has been or shall be more blessed than you, Achilles, before or after. Formerly, when you were alive, we Argives honored you equally with the gods, and now, being here, you rule mightily among the dead, Therefore, do not grieve at having died." Thus I spoke, but he immediately addressed me in answer, "Do not propagandize about death to me, glorious Odysseus. I would rather be a serf, working as a hireling for another, some landless man, with little to live on, than rule over all the dead who have passed away." Homer, Odyssey 11.477-491.

Among the ghosts encountered by Odysseus in the Land of the Dead was that of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. The Lion Gate that we see today at Mycenae dates from a later time, replacing the one from which Agamemnon would have departed for the war, and through which he returned, only to be murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra. (Illustration: The Lion Gate at Mycenae, from Chrestos Tsountas and J. Irving Manatt, The Mycenaean Age, 1897, from a photograph by Professor Colwell.)

Quotation for September 2009: For the beginning of the school year, quotations from Plato and Cicero on education

Raphael, fresco "The School of Athens," in the Stanza della Segnatura, the Vatican (1508-1511). Plato and Aristotle are at the center of the fresco, with Plato pointing toward heaven and the world of Forms, Aristotle pointing toward earth and the world of Things.

The need for a wide education

More than one observer of the academic world has bemoaned the fact that universities, especially graduate schools, have become more and more like trade schools, training students for a narrow proficiency in some skill at which they hope they can get a job. The aim seems to be lost of encouraging students to become well-educated, thoughtful citizens who can think critically about the world around them (and might, incidentally, be better able to change careers when necessary).

Mark Taylor, chairman of the religion department at Columbia University, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, later quoted in the "College Pump" page of Harvard Magazine for July-August 2009, described graduate education as "the Detroit of higher learning," writing

"Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans)."

We are reminded of the old joke, "A specialist is someone who learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing."

Obviously, it is the premise of this page that a knowledge of Classical literature, in all its many subjects, gives us insight into our world today.

Plato and Cicero on career training

Our quotations this month are from Plato and Cicero, the Greek philosopher and the Roman politician, different in many ways, but both seeing the need for a broad education for anyone in training to be a public leader.

Plato, in his Republic (Politeia), laid out an entire curriculum for his Guardians (phylakes), warrior philosophers who were to protect and lead his ideal city-state, both men and women (for he thought that men and women should receive the same education, although he believed that women could never be as capable as men). Plato planned the course of study in excruciating detail. Some of his thoughts and prejudices about music were quoted in the Quotation of the Month for August (stay away from those flutes; they make you soft!). He would begin in youth with music, in which he included literature (which was only to include edifying subjects, not portraying un-guardian-like behavior), then proceed to gynmastics. Later, they would study mathematics and astronomy, which are useful to the soldier in the field, but, more importantly, provide a pattern for understanding the true absolutes that are known not by the senses but by reason alone. In Book 7, he introduces the allegory of the cave, where prisoners know reality only by shadows cast by a fire behind them on a wall before them. They see true reality, illuminated by the real sun, only when they are released from the cave. The well-educated guardians, released from their "cave" of the ordinary world of the senses, see true reality by the light of reason, but must descend back into the cave to lead those who still remain prisoners. The final stage of education for the guardians is in dialectic (dialegesthai "to dialog, discuss, argue"), through which one arrives by logic (logos) and intellect (noêsis) at absolute knowledge, and finally knowledge of absolute good. It is from this culminating stage of education that we quote below.

Cicero's de Oratore (55.B.C.) is much more practical, coming from a writer who was both trial lawyer and politician. He makes the interesting point that a wide education actually makes one better at what seems to be a narrow profession of oratory. The De Oratore is presented as a dialog, supposedly taking place in 91 B.C., between Cicero's predecessor and mentor Crassus (who is Cicero's mouthpiece in the dialog) and several other eminent Romans. Cicero, in his introduction, presents the work as an answer to his brother Quintus, who apparently believed that talent and practical experience were all that was necessary to make either a good lawyer or a good speaker in the Senate. His is the view represented by Crassus' interlocutors in the dialog. Cicero's arguments for a wide education are not utopian, like Plato's, but based on usefulness. In presenting legal arguments, the lawyer must be familiar with all the topics that may come up; the same is true of speaking in the Senate. Beyond that, education (or lack of it) will show, no matter what the topic. In the De Oratore, Cicero covers many techniques (including humor and emotion) that can be used by the orator, and includes a discussion of the uses of Stoic and other philosophy in the pursuit of oratory. From this wide-ranging treatise, we quote some of the dialog ascribed to Crassus on the need for a broad-based training in oratory, which he compares to education in sports and painting.

Excerpt from Plato's Republic And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible. Exactly, he said. Then this is the progress which you call dialectic? True. But the release of the prisoners from chains, and their translation from the shadows to the images and to the light, and the ascent from the underground den to the sun, while in his presence they are vainly trying to look on animals and plants and the light of the sun, but are able to perceive even with their weak eyes the images in the water [which are divine], and are the shadows of true existence (not shadows of images cast by a light of fire, which compared with the sun is only an image) - this power of elevating the highest principle in the soul to the contemplation of that which is best in existence, with which we may compare the raising of that faculty which is the very light of the body to the sight of that which is brightest in the material and visible world - this power is given, as I was saying, by all that study and pursuit of the arts which has been described. Plato, Republic VII.532, translation by B. Jowett, 1892.

Excerpt from Cicero's de Oratore . . . I feel that no one should be numbered among the orators who is not accomplished in all those arts that befit the independent man; for even if we do not actually use them in our speaking, it is nevertheless apparent and obvious whether we are ignorant of these subjects or have been trained in them. Just as ball players do not use the specific skills of gymnastic exercise in the game itself, but their very movements show whether they have learned the arts of the gymnasium or have had no such training; and just as with those who portray something, even if they are not at the moment employing the art of painting, yet it is not hard to see whether they know how to paint or lack this knowledge; thus in our very speeches in the law courts, in the public assembly, and in the Senate, even if the other arts are not expressly brought into play, nevertheless it is easily revealed whether the speaker has simply wallowed around in his declamatory work, or whether he has approached his task of speaking fully instructed in all the liberal arts. Cicero, De Oratore I. XVI. 72-73, translation by C.A.Sowa.

Quotation for August 2009: Inspired by the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, we quote some conservative criticism of the elevating or corrupting influence of music from Plato's Republic and Laws

Party on! A Maenad (a "Crazy") plays the flute in a Dionysiac festival.

Woodstock and Plato

August 2009 marked the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival. Sex, drugs, rock and roll! Woodstock has become a symbol for everything denoted by the term "The Sixties." It was a time of societal upheaval and rebellion, against targets real (Jim Crow segregation, second-class status of women) and perceived (conventional clothes, bland music, conformity in general). Much of the rebellion coalesced around protesting against the war in Vietnam, still a subject of argument today. There were assassinations (John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Lennon), riots, bombings, and bad acid trips. But many good things came out of the period, too, the civil rights movement, women's liberation, the environmental movement. The psychedelic art was imaginative and colorful. In July of 1969, men walked on the moon —but no women, who weren't allowed to be astronauts. It was a liberating time for many, but disorienting and frightening for those who felt safe within the conformity and conservatism of an earlier period. Now we have an African-American president, Barack Obama, and a Puerto Rican woman, Sonia Sotomayor, on the Supreme Court, and again there are those who feel anxiety at an unfamiliar world.

And then there was the music! It was loud, all electric guitars and drums, voices that screamed and incited to licentious behavior!. The men had long hair and the women had no bras. And it sounded best when you were stoned. Today, rock and roll is mainstream, and there is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Very bourgeois.

The Republic and Laws: micromanaging music

In Classical Greece, Plato gave voice to the same concern over the power of music to promote certain kinds of behavior. In both the Republic and the Laws he attempts to micromanage the notes, rhythms, words, and instruments that are to be used in the education of his perfect citizen. We quote below excerpts from both works.

In the Republic, he dismisses the Lydian and Ionian modes, as promoting indolence and softness, but recommends the Dorian and Phrygian modes, as becoming the stern soldier in war and peace, respectively. The worst kind of music is that played on the flute. The flute was considered suitable only for satyrs, prostitutes, and the Maenads ("crazy women," from mainomai, to rage, be mad) who followed after Dionysus in his bacchanals.

In the Laws, a character called The Athenian inveighs against the mixing up of various kinds of music which should be kept separate (hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, etc.). People actually think they can decide for themselves what they think sounds good!

Excerpt from the Republic We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter, that we had no need of lamentation and strains of sorrow? True. And which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow? You are musical, and can tell me. The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor Lydian, and the full-toned or bass Lydian, and such like. These then, I said, must be banished; even to women who have a character to maintain they are of no use, and much less to men. Certainly. In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence are utterly unbecoming the character of our guardians. Utterly unbecoming. And which are the soft or drinking harmonies? The Ionian, he replied, and the Lydian; they are termed `relaxed.' Well, and are these of any military use? Quite the reverse, he replied; and if so the Dorian and the Phrygian are the only ones which you have left. I answered: Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike, to sound the note or accent which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets the blows of fortune with firm step and a determination to endure; and another to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by prayer, or man by instruction and admonition, or on the other hand, when he is expressing his willingness to yield to persuasion or entreaty or admonition, and which represents him when by prudent conduct he has attained his end, not carried away by his success, but acting moderately and wisely under the circumstances, and acquiescing in the event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave. And these, he replied, are the Dorian and Phrygian harmonies of which I was just now speaking. Then, I said, if these and these only are to be used in our songs and melodies, we shall not want multiplicity of notes or a panharmonic scale? I suppose not. Then we shall not maintain the artificers of lyres with three corners and complex scales, or the makers of any other many-stringed curiously-harmonised instruments? Certainly not. But what do you say to flute-makers and flute-players? Would you admit them into our State when you reflect that in this composite use of harmony the flute is worse than all the stringed instruments put together; even the panharmonic music is only an imitation of the flute? Clearly not. There remain then only the lyre and the harp for use in the city, and the shepherds may have a pipe in the country. That is surely the conclusion to be drawn from the argument. The preferring of Apollo and his instruments to Marsyas and his instruments is not at all strange, I said. Not at all, he replied. Plato, Republic III.398-399, translation by B. Jowett, 1892.

Excerpt from the Laws Ath. In the first place, let us speak of the laws about music,-that is to say, such music as then existed,-in order that we may trace the growth of the excess of freedom from the beginning. Now music was early divided among us into certain kinds and manners. One sort consisted of prayers to the Gods, which were called hymns; and there was another and opposite sort called lamentations, and another termed paeans, and another, celebrating the birth of Dionysus, called, I believe,'dithyrambs.' And they used the actual word 'laws,' or nomoi, for another kind of song; and to this they added the term 'citharoedic.' All these and others were duly distinguished, nor were the performers allowed to confuse one style of music with another. And the authority which determined and gave judgment, and punished the disobedient, was not expressed in a hiss, nor in the most unmusical shouts of the multitude, as in our days, nor in applause and clapping of hands. But the directors of public instruction insisted that the spectators should listen in silence to the end; and boys and their tutors, and the multitude in general, were kept quiet by a hint from a stick. Such was the good order which the multitude were willing to observe; they would never have dared to give judgment by noisy cries. And then, as time went on, the poets themselves introduced the reign of vulgar and lawless innovation. They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is just and lawful in music; raging like Bacchanals and possessed with inordinate delights- mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs; imitating the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making one general confusion; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth, and, whether good or bad, can only be judged of rightly by the pleasure of the hearer. And by composing such licentious works, and adding to them words as licentious, they have inspired the multitude with lawlessness and boldness, and made them fancy that they can judge for themselves about melody and song. And in this way the theatres from being mute have become vocal, as though they had understanding of good and bad in music and poetry; and instead of an aristocracy, an evil sort of theatrocracy has grown up. For if the democracy which judged had only consisted of educated persons, no fatal harm would have been done; but in music there first arose the universal conceit of omniscience and general lawlessness; freedom came following afterwards, and men, fancying that they knew what they did not know, had no longer any fear, and the absence of fear begets shamelessness. For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty? Plato, Laws III.700, translation by B. Jowett, 1892.

Bad girl/good girl. "The courtesan and the modest wife," reliefs on the sides of the Ludovisi Throne, Terme Museum, Rome.

Quotation for July 2009: In honor of the astronauts' moon landing, quotations from the Homeric Hymns and Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica, on the moon as goddess and as object of witchcraft.

The moon, in an illustration by Charles Robinson for "What the Moon Saw," by Hans Christian Andersen, in Fairy Tales, translated by Mrs. E. Lucas, 1903.

A voyage to the moon

Forty years ago, two American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, walked on the moon. Since an initial flurry of return trips, no one has journeyed there, and the exploit has receded into the mists of time, and like the historic events of the Trojan War, become a myth. Even at the time, the elements of the heroic Journey theme (as identified in my book Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns) were acted out. As I further pointed out in Ancient Myths in Modern Movies, the astronauts left on the moon a statuette of the Fallen Astronaut, commemorating the astronauts and cosmonauts who died during the space program. It is a representation of the Death of the Substitute, a necessary element of every Journey myth. No one can come back from the Land of the Dead without some loss.

A personal note: I watched the moon landing on a giant screen while sitting with a large crowd on the floor of the Student Union at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, a magic moment. I was attending a six-week Summer Institute on Computers and Classics, an intensive workshop that was seminal for many of us in the field of digital humanities. Now there's another event that should be repeated!

The moon as goddess or as object of witchcraft

In antiquity, no one thought of the Moon as a place to go. Selene, the Moon, and Helios, the Sun, were divinities that drove great teams of horses as they "plowed deep furrows" across the sky. There was no specific cult of Selene among the Greeks (there was, though, a Roman cult of Luna). She was, however, identified with several other goddesses, including Artemis, Eos ("Dawn"), Hecate, and Persephone (the last two being goddesses associated with the Underworld). In the Homeric Hymn to Selene (quoted below) she is described as having wings, an attribute belonging to Eos. The moon was important in sorcery and witchcraft. In Theocritus' Idyll II (which we excerpted in the quotation for July, 2007), the (rather amateurish) witch, attempting to use magic to win back a boyfriend who dumped her, invokes Selene in the refrain "Tell me whence my love came, Lady Selene" (phrazeo meu ton erôth' hothen hiketo, potna Selana). Witches were supposed to be able to draw down the moon, as well as to stop rivers in their course.

This month, we have two quotations. The first is the complete Homeric Hymn XXII to Selene (7th cent. B.C.?). This is one of the short Hymns, which does not tell a long story (like the Hymns to Demeter, Apollo, Demeter, and Apollo), but was perhaps used as an introductory song for a longer piece. The second is a description of one of the world's most famous sorceresses, Medea, from the Argonautica of the Alexandrian poet Apollonius Rhodius (3rd cent. B.C.). Medea, in the well-known story, helped Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece; he then married her, and took her home with him. There were many versions, but the one best known to modern playgoers and readers is the one told in Euripides' Medea, in which she kills her own children as revenge against Jason, who abandoned her for another woman, and this is where the modern emphasis lies. But in Hesiod's Theogony, there is no "Other Woman" and no infanticide; Jason and the "daughter of Aeetes" (her actual name not given) have a son Medeus, who is reared by the centaur Chiron, who also tutored both Jason and Achilles. In most versions, she is a witch, possibly a goddess. She renewed the youth of Jason's father, Aeson, by boiling him in herbs (then pretended to do the same for Pelias, but really killed him). We quote below the lines from the Argonautica in which Argos (builder of the ship Argo, in which the Argonauts sailed, and nephew of Medea), describes Medea, whom he thinks will be helpful to Jason. She is depicted with the stereotypical qualities of a well-equipped witch.

The Homeric Hymn to Selene:

Sing of the long-winged Moon, and tell me of her, Muses, sweet-voiced daughters of Zeus son of Kronos, skilled in song. From her immortal head a radiance appears in heaven and pours earthward, and a great beauty arises out of that shining radiance. Air that was unlighted gleams from her golden crown, and her rays are bright as midday whenever, having bathed her beautiful body in the Ocean, and clothing herself in far-shining garments, divine Selene, yoking her arched-necked, gleaming team, hurrying forward drives the beautiful-maned horses, in the evening at mid-month. Then she cuts the greatest furrow and her beams, while she increases, shine brightest from heaven. She appears as a token and a sign to mortals. With her, once the son of Kronos mingled in love and bedchamber. She conceived and gave birth to a daughter, Pandia, of outstanding beauty among the immortal gods. Hail, queen, white-armed goddess, divine Selene, kindly, beautiful-haired. Starting with you, I shall sing of the glories of half-divine men, of whose deeds the bards sing, servants of the Muses, from mouths so lovely. —Homeric Hymn XXXII to Selene

Excerpt from Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica:

. . . There is a girl, brought up in the palace of Aeetes, whom the goddess Hecate taught above all to skillfully handle medicines, as many as are grown on land and in the flowing waters. With them, the breath of unwearied fire is calmed, and she immediately makes stand still the rivers, noisily flowing, and has shackled the stars and the paths of the sacred moon. Of her we thought, as we came here on the path from the palace, if, being her sister, my mother might be able to persuade her to help with our venture. If this is pleasing to yourselves, I shall go back this very day to the house of Aeetes to give a try. Perhaps with the god's help, the trial will be successful. —Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 3.528-539

Selene, on a Roman altar in the Louvre, from Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.

Quotation for June 2009: Inspired by the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, we cite Athena's judgment in favor of Orestes in Aeschylus' Eumenides

The judgment of a wise woman

The abundantly well-qualified Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court, has left her conservative opponents scrambling for some flaw in her character. Judge Sotomayor would not only be one of a minuscule number of women to have served on the Court, she would be its first Latino (or Latina) member. Her foes have fastened on a remark of hers that they claim proves her lack of impartiality and hence unfitness for the position, in which she famously said,

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

Of course, if our life experiences were not brought to bear on all our actions and decisions, there would be little purpose in having any experience at all. Funny that no one ever thought that white male judges might not be influenced by some of their own backgrounds and life's journeys. Come to think of it, if we want a strict, mechanical, robotic interpretation of the law, which would be the same no matter who the judges were, why do we need nine redundant judges in the first place? Actually, Judge Sotomayor's judicial decisions in the lower courts have been quite centrist and non-ideological, not as her opponents would have us believe.

Athena and the Areopagus

We are reminded of the most famous female judge of all, the goddess Athena, as depicted in Aeschylus Eumenides, in which she finds Orestes not guilty in the murder of his mother, Clytaemnestra. Athena, too, did not decide the case in the way that might have been predicted.

In the first two plays of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, the Agamemnon and the Choephoroi (Libation Bearers), Orestes has killed his mother Clytaemnestra in retribution for her murder of his father Agamemnon on his return from the Trojan War. For this matricide, Orestes is pursued by the Furies (Erinyes). In the final play, the Eumenides (Kindly Goddesses), Orestes is told by Apollo's oracle at Delphi to seek justice in Athens. Athena herself undertakes the case, but chooses a jury of wise Athenian citizens, the Council of the Areopagus ("Ares' Hill"), to help her judge Orestes' guilt or innocence, in the very first trial for homicide. Athena's vote is for acquittal, and the trial ends in a tie, acquitting Orestes. In siding with the father' (Agamemnon's) interests rather than the mother's (Clytaemnestra's), Athena cites the fact that "no mother gave her birth," because she was born only of her father, Zeus. The Furies are mollified by being honored henceforth as the Eumenides, the "Kindly Goddesses."

The Council of the Areopagus was a real court in Athens, very ancient and aristocratic, which had special jurisdiction over homicide, but had otherwise lost much of its power by Aeschylus' time. It was, however, much revered by nostalgic conservatives. Athena is literally correct but disingenuous in denying that any mother bore her. In Hesiod's Theogony we learn that she had a mother, Metis ("Good Counsel"), whom Zeus swallowed when she was pregnant with Athena so that she would not bear a son who would depose him, but she would remain inside him to give him advice. The best-known myth has Zeus give birth to Athena from his head (see the illustration above). Here are Athena's words in the Eumenides:

It is my duty now to render the final judgment. I add this my vote, casting it for Orestes. There is no mother who gave birth to me, but I approve the male entirely, except in marriage, with all my heart, and I am strongly on the father's side. Thus I shall not inflict a greater penalty for the death of a wife who killed her husband, the overseer of her house. Orestes wins, even if the decision is by equal votes. Quickly cast out the votes from the urns, all to whom as judges this task has been given. —Aeschylus Eumenides 734-743

Quotation for May 2009: Inspired by the current hysteria about "swine flu," we quote Pindar's impassioned defense against the slur "Boeotian pig."

"Boeotian pig" as an insult

A nasty strain of flu virus has cropped up in many parts of the world, having first been identified in Mexico in a village near a pig farm. Stoked by the media, hungry for sensational stories, a panic of apocalyptic proportions circled the globe with more speed than the disease itself. Fears were raised of a worldwide pandemic killing millions, similar to the devastating flu epidemic of 1918. The disease acquired a popular name: SWINE FLU. While the first outbreak caused a number of deaths, subsequent infections have been, for the most part, no worse than the flu that visits us annually. One reason for the initial virulence may be that both the pig farm and the nearby village were scandalously overcrowded, substandard, and filthy. (Similar conditions caused the severity of the hideous plague at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, where countless refugees were crowded into the city — that epidemic was, of course, not the flu but a different disease.) Public reactions have ranged from obsessive-compulsive to the ridiculous and xenophobic. In some countries, the entire population goes around in (mostly useless) face masks; in others, travel from Mexico and the U.S. is prohibited or restricted. In the U.S., schools are closed to prevent close encounters among students (uselessly, since the young people simply go to sports events or the mall). Most bizarre of all, some people are reported to fear eating pork — or Mexican food!

Pigs have always gotten a bad rap, as dirty or stupid (they are by nature neither), or just plain fat. This month, we look at pigs in ancient Greek literature. Circe turned Odysseus' men into pigs, but the swineherd Eumaeus is Odysseus' faithful ally when he gets home to Ithaca and must battle the evil Suitors. Most egregiously, an entire nation is labeled with the swinely epithet in the the phrase BOEOTIAN PIG, first made known to us, uttered in indignation, by the great lyric poet Pindar, from the Boeotian city of Thebes.

Rivalry of Thebes and Athens

Boeotia is a region in central Greece, north of Attica, with much agricultural land (and in antiquity famous for the delicious eels of Lake Copais, which has since been drained), but with little access to the sea. Of its many towns, the greatest was Thebes, site of some of the most glorious narratives in Greek mythology. Here we find Cadmus, founder of the city, who sowed the dragon's teeth (and who, with his wife Harmonia, became, in old age, a snake). His daughter, Semele, became the mother of Dionysos, but was fried by Zeus' thunderbolt. Another daughter, Agave, driven mad by Dionysos, killed her own son, Pentheus, thinking that he was a lion, a story told by Euripides in his Bacchae. Oedipus, whose family is familiar to us in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, was likewise king of Thebes. It is ironic that the greatest Theban stories come to us in Athenian versions, as do many of our depictions of the national character of Boeotia. Thebes and Athens were sometimes allies, often rivals (Thebes took the Persian side in the Persian Wars), and the Athenian comic poets in particular delighted in describing Boeotians as sluggish, uneducated, caring only about eating, and with a "lack of feeling" (anaesthesia), i.e for the finer things of life. Even today, the term "Boeotian" is used to imply slowness and ignorance.

Actually, Thebes must have been a pretty interesting place. Far from limiting themselves to the Olympian gods, the Thebans had many unusual cults (including the mystery cult of the Kabeiroi), and were open to other philosophic and mystical ideas, such as Pythagoreanism. Women occupied a more important place in Thebes than at Athens, especially in connection with their religious life. (The receptiveness to strange cults is reflected in Euripides' description of Dionysiac madness in the Bacchae.) Boeotians excelled in music, especially in playing the flute, a talent also mocked by the Athenians. Great poets and writers came out of Boeotia, including Hesiod, the contemporary of Homer who composed the Theogony and Works and Days, from Ascra; the poetesses Corinna, from Tanagra, and Myrtis; Plutarch (46 A.D. - after 120 A.D.) philosopher and biographer best known today for his Lives of eminent Greeks and Romans, from Chaeronea; and greatest of all, the lyric poet Pindar, whose home was the only house spared by Alexander the Great when he sacked Thebes.

Pindar's Sixth Olympian

Pindar's Sixth Olympian Ode celebrates the victory in the mule chariot race by a team owned by Hagesias of Syracuse in (perhaps) 472 B.C. These equine athletes are apparently female, as the word for "they" has the feminine form keinai in line 25. We quoted lines from the poem that celebrate the mules' strength and horse-sense in an earlier "Quotation of the Month" for June 2007, to mark the victory of the filly Rags to Riches in the Belmont Stakes.

Below are the lines from Pindar's Sixth Olympian that refute the piggy insult. (Notes: "Aeneas" is the chorus-master, not the Roman hero. The skutale (which I translate as "enciphered dispatch") was a Spartan device, a staff around which a strip of leather was wound diagonally, upon which a message was written. When removed from the staff, the writing was illegible, but when delivered to its destination, it was rewound around a staff of identical diameter, and could be read.)

. . . I have a feeling of a shrill whetstone on my tongue, that steals over me, willing, with beautifully flowing breath [of inspiration]; My mother's mother was a Stymphalian nymph, well-blooming Metope, who bore horse-driving Thebe, whose lovely waters I drink, as I twine for heroic spearmen a colorful song. Now urge your comrades, Aeneas, to celebrate Hera the Maiden, and then to know, by true arguments, if we have escaped the old insult, "Boeotian pig." For you are an upright messenger, an enciphered dispatch [skutale] of the fair-haired Muses, a sweet drinking bowl of resounding songs. . . —Pindar Olympian VI 82-91

Bibliography:

Nancy H. Demand, Thebes in the Fifth Century: Heracles Resurgent, London, 1982.

Rhys Roberts, The Ancient Boeotians: Their Character and Culture and Their Reputation, Cambridge (England), 1895.

Sarantis Symeonoglou, The Topography of Thebes, from the Bronze Age to Modern Times, Princeton, 1985. (The title of this book is disarmingly understated, as this volume comprises a thorough history of the city through all its vicissitudes.)

Columns of the temple of Hera, Olympia. (From Hanns Holdt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Griechenland, 3rd edition, 1928.)

Quotation for April 2009: Ovid, in the Fasti, wonders about the name of the month

The goddess Flora by Hans Thoma (1882, from Thoma: Des Meisters Gemälde in 874 Abbildungen, Stuttgart, 1909).

Why is April called "April"?

The Roman year, ordained by Romulus, originally began with March; April, sacred to Venus, was the second month. King Numa (about 700 B.C.) added two more months, January, sacred to Janus, the god of openings, and February. Ovid, in his Fasti, or Roman Calendar, Book IV, for April, wonders out loud to Venus why April is not named for her, since the month is sacred to her and to her festival. "They say" ( memorant), Ovid tells her (and us), that the name comes from the fact that April "opens" (aperit) the fertility of the earth from its winter frost. But Ovid himself prefers to think that the name comes from the Greek name for Venus, Aphrodite. The debate continues today. In favor of the first idea is the parallel with the modern Greek word for "spring" anoixis ("opening"), but modern scholars also find a derivation from the name Aphrodite possible, perhaps through the Etruscan form of the name, Apru (although the Etruscans themselves called the month "Cabreas"; see Sarolta Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion, 2007).

April is an optimistic month (despite T.S. Eliot calling it "the cruellest"). In 2009, Easter, Passover, and Earth Day all were celebrated in April. In the northeastern U.S., we went from winter-like conditions to summer in a few weeks, with all the growing things and flowers coming up from Mother Gaia.

Venus, giver of fertility and culture

In our quotation of the month, Ovid decries the etymology that denies Venus her month, and celebrates her gifts of love, creation, and civilization:

Where does ill-will not find a way to attack? There are those who would snatch from you the honor of the month, begrudging you, Venus. For, because at that time spring opens all, and the hard severity of the cold recedes, and the pregnant earth lies exposed, they say that April is called that because of the time of opening, which nourishing Venus claims, laying her hand upon it. She indeed deservedly regulates the world's orb; she owns a dominion second to no god. She gives laws to heaven, earth, and the waves that bore her, and through her impetus she preserves every species. She created all the gods (it would be long to enumerate them); she gave their origins to crops and trees. She drew together the rude souls of men and taught them to be joined each with his mate. What creates the race of winged creatures, if not charming pleasure? Nor would cattle come together, if easy love were absent. The fierce ram disputes with his horn against the male, but he also would not harm the forehead of his beloved ewe. The bull, laying aside his fierceness, follows the heifer, he at whom all the mountain valleys, every grove, trembles. The same force preserves whatever lives beneath the broad sea-depths, and fills the waters with innumerable fish. That force first removed from man his wild attire, from it came civilization and the cleanly care of oneself. A lover was the first to sing his wakeful song, in a night denied him, it is said, at the the barred doors, and it was an act of eloquence to plead with the hard-hearted girl, and every man was skilled at pleading his own case. Through the goddess, a thousand arts have been set in motion; from the urge to please, many skills that were previously hidden, have been discovered. Shall anyone despoil the goddess of her title to the second month? Let such madness be far from us. —Ovid Fasti IV.85-116

Quotation for March 2009: Solving the world's crises: Heracles cleans the Augeian stables

Heracles cleaned the stables of King Augeias of Elis by diverting a river through them. (Illustration: View of Hera's temple at Olympia, from an old postcard.)

A Herculean task

A Herculean task, in more than one sense, confronts the Obama administration as it attempts to solve multiple problems and effect multiple reforms in the American economy, infrastructure, and education and health care systems, and as it works to rebuild our position of responsible leadership in the global neighborhood. A sludge of fraud, greed, ignorance, and irresponsibility must be cleaned up, the flow of financial credit unclogged, and public confidence and trust in our public institutions restored.

We are reminded of nothing so much as Heracles' (Hercules') fifth Labor, the cleaning of the Augeian stables.

The Twelve Labors

The Labors of Heracles are described in different versions by many Greek and Roman authors, but a rationalized and comprehensive account is in the Library of Apollodorus (first century B.C. or A.D.?), as follows:

Heracles was driven mad by his stepmother, the goddess Hera, and killed his wife Megara and his children (this incident is placed by Euripides after his Labors in the tragedy Herakles, also called Hercules furens). He went into exile and was purified by Thespius, and inquired of the Oracle at Delphi as to what to do next. The Pythian priestess told him to go to Tiryns and live in servitude to King Eurystheus for twelve years and perform ten labors imposed by him (later increased by Eurystheus to twelve). The twelve Labors were:

1. To bring Eurystheus the skin of the Nemean lion.
2. To kill the Lernaean hydra, which had nine heads (Diodorus and Ovid said one hundred), which kept regrowing, two for one, as they were cut off. Heracles' nephew Iolaus helped by cauterizing the stumps to keep them from resprouting; one head was immortal, so Heracles buried it with a large rock over it. The many-headed Hydra could be another metaphor for our current crises.
3. To bring the Cerynitian hind, which had golden horns, alive to the king.
4. To bring back the Erymanthian boar, alive.
5. To clean out the stables of King Augeias of Elis, who possessed vast herds of cattle, in a single day. (DETAILS BELOW.)
6. To drive away the birds from Stymphalus in Arcadia.
7. To bring back the savage Cretan bull. (After showing the bull to Eurystheus, Heracles let it free, and it later turned up at Marathon in Attica, where it harassed the inhabitants.)
8. To bring back the man-eating mares of Diomedes.
9. To bring the belt of Hippolyte, the Amazon queen. (Because of the meddling of Hera, who caused the Amazons to attack, Heracles ended up killing Hippolyte, an unintended consequence.)
10. To steal the cattle of Geryon.
11. To steal the golden apples of the Hesperides, which were guarded by a dragon. (Among the many side adventures of this Labor, Heracles also shot the eagle that was devouring the liver of Prometheus, releasing Prometheus from his bondage.)
12. To bring back Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Hades. (After showing Cerberus to Eurystheus, Heracles politely returned Cerberus to Hades.)

Heracles performed the original ten Labors in eight years and one month, but Eurystheus imposed another two Labors, disqualifying the Hydra and the Augeian stables, the former, because Heracles had the help of Iolaus, the latter because Heracles was did it for pay.

Cleaning the Augeian stables

Augeias was king of Elis, the district of western Peloponnesos where Olympia is located. He was variously described as the son of the Sun or of Poseidon, and was one of the Argonauts who sailed with Jason. He had vast herds of cattle and sheep, with vast stables to match. Eurystheus commanded Heracles to clean out Augeias' stables in one day, but when Heracles approached Augeias, he said nothing about Eurystheus, and offered to clean the stables in exchange for one tenth of the herd. Heracles diverted the river Alpheus (Apollodorus says the rivers Alpheus and Peneus) through the cattle-yard and cleaned it out. When Augeias learned that Eurystheus had commanded the deed, he refused to pay Heracles, and Eurystheus refused to recognize this exploit among the Labors, as he had performed it for hire. Pindar, in his Olympian Ode X tells how Heracles took revenge on Augeias and his kin, killing them and using the spoils to found the shrine of Olympia and the Olympic games. The official Olympiads begin in 776 B.C., but the discovery of Mycenaean remains at the site lend credence to the belief that Heracles — or somebody! — established the site and the games in very ancient times.

Theocritus Idyll 25 (which may be incomplete and may not be by Theocritus, Syracusan Greek poet of the 3rd century B.C.) describes at great length the arrival of Heracles at the estate of Augeias, through which he is given a "guided tour" by one of the workmen, who then takes him to the king. Here is an excerpt:

Lo, and already the Sun-god's steeds were sloping to westward, Bringing the eventide, and the flocks came up from the pasture Unto the steading-folds; then kine in countless thousands Showed on their forward march like storm-clouds such as are driven Up by the wind of the south or the might of the Thracian north wind — Numberless onward in air these move, for the might of the tempest Rolls on many ahead, and many another behind them Rears its crest.—E'en so comes herd upon herd ever onward. Thronged are the pastures all, and on all ways hasten the cattle Lowing along, and the folds are speedily filled with the oxen Twisted of horn, and the folded sheep lie down in the sheep-pens. Then not a man of the many who stood by the cattle was idle, Lacking a task, but one with smooth thongs fastened a hopple Over their feet and stood close by them to milk, and another Under their mothers set their youngling calves that were thirsting Sore for the rich sweet milk, and another the milk-pail handled. This one curdled a creaming cheese, and the bulls with another Went to a steading apart from the kine, and Augeas noted, Going to every byre, how his wealth was watched by his herdsmen. There with him went his son, and Heracles mighty in counsel Followed along with the king as he moved in the midst of his riches. Theocritus Idyll 25, lines 85-111, translated by James Henry Hallard, Boston: Bibliophile Society, 1905)

The capture of the Cerynitian hind was Heracles' third labor. (Illustration: Heracles capturing the hind, Delphi Museum, from a postcard).

Quotation for February 2009: For the financial meltdown and other follies, wisdom from a Cretan knife

A souvenir knife and sheath from Crete with inscription; close-up of inscription and "map" of Crete. (Photo by J. Sowa.)

Taking a trip into fantasyland

The stock market has crashed, taking investors' life savings. Workers cannot find jobs, and homeowners unable to pay their mortgages are evicted from their foreclosed homes; students have no money for tuition. Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme and others like it defrauded investors of billions of dollars, leaving many charities, community groups, and educational institutions without funds. Meanwhile, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and now Pakistan) drag on and on, draining more resources.

All of these tragedies have one thing in common: the willingness of large numbers of people to live in a fantasy world, following no roadmap of reality. (Some, Cassandra-like, saw the bad news coming but could not stop the folly). Not only was there no Plan B; sometimes there wasn't even a Plan A. Home-buyers took out mortgages they could not afford, thinking that prices could only increase. Banks and mortgage companies made loans (then packaged them and sold them off to other banks), knowing that they could not be repaid but hoped the fun would always last. Investors in Madoff's scheme did not ask how he made his money as long as they could enrich themselves, and Madoff himself thought he could get away with his shenanigans forever. Bush started the war in Iraq with gauzy ideas of destroying Saddam Hussein's (non-existent) WMD's and being greeted by Iraqis with flowers and candies. And Osama bin Laden, whose attacks on America originally set off the war, had equally unrealistic dreams of destroying all of Western secular civilization, while on Wall Street, Western civilization was destroying itself with fantasies of "a new paradigm," where gravity went only one direction — up.

Wisdom on a knife blade

This month, in somewhat of a departure, the quotation is not from ancient Greek but from modern Greek. Years ago, when I was a student in Greece, I bought a knife in Crete, which was very useful on field trips, especially for cutting bread and cheese, and the occasional piece of fruit. It also has engraved upon it a useful little verse, which has many applications. Its homely reminder not to "take a trip with your mind" into daydreams where there is "no road" of reality to follow, literally brings us back to earth, whether the topic is romantic love or untold fame and riches. Better to find a gorgeous road, however rocky, and follow it. If you do not immediately see a road, get a map, or ask for a guide!

The knife is pictured above. Below is the original verse, in transliteration (with the original spacing of nomi-zes), with an English translation:

Mê taxidébês mè tò noú chôrís na blépês drómo kai mê nômí zês pôs tha brês ánthrôpo díchos póno

Don't take a trip with your mind unless you see a road, and don't think that you will find a person without trouble.

Quotation for January 2009: In honor of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Vergil's prediction of a new Golden Age in his Fourth Eclogue

Vergil's idea of Paradise: Dyers will no longer have to dye wool, because sheep will already come in different colors. (Illustration: with multicolored apologies to Hans Thoma (German, 19th century), "Under Olive Trees near Tivoli," 1880, from Thoma: Des Meisters Gemälde in 874 Abbildungen, Stuttgart, 1909.)

A new Golden Age

In the ecstasy surounding the elevation of Barack Obama to the office of President of the United States, it seems impossible that any mortal man (or even a committee of mortal men and women) can deliver on the promise of his astounding victory. The wish list is endless: restoring a shattered economy; rebuilding our decaying infrastructure and (we hope!) catching up with Europe and Japan in high speed rail and transit; healing our urban neighborhoods; bringing peace to the Middle East; protecting the environment and reversing global warming; not to mention restoring America's reputation as a leader, role model, and willing cooperator among the nations of the world.

This month's quotation is from Vergil's 4th Eclogue, the so-called "Messianic" Eclogue. Among the pastoral fantasies of the Eclogues it stands out. It is addressed to Vergil's friend and fellow poet Pollio, who had been elected consul and had helped broker the Treaty of Brundisium between Antony and Octavian which, it seemed, would finally bring peace to the Roman world after decades of civil war. It didn't, of course; Antony, after becoming involved with Cleopatra, was vanquished at Actium in 31 B.C. by Octavian, who became the Emperor Augustus.

A Wonder Child and purple sheep

Vergil envisions a new Golden Age marked by the birth of a marvellous Child, who will grow to great manhood beloved of the gods. Vergil never specifies who this Child is, or who his father is. Is it Pollio? or Antony? or Octavian? Perhaps diplomacy, or caution, persuaded Vergil to be vague. Octavian's newborn, in fact, turned out to be a girl (the notorious Julia). Some Christian writers (who, like Dante, tend to make Vergil a kind of honorary Christian) have seen parallels to Isaiah and insist that Vergil was prophesying the birth of Christ. The poem foretells the return of "the Virgin," but the reference is undoubtedly to Justice, the last of the immortals to leave Earth when men became evil. Vergil's influences include the Sibylline Books, supposed to contain the oracular utterances of the Sibyl of Cumae, Pythagorean philosophy, and perhaps even Jewish Messianic prophecies that were in the air.

Vergil depicts an earthly Paradise, which frankly gets quite silly. Not only does he describe crops that grow by themselves and goats and cattle that come to be milked of their own accord, but he includes the fact that wool will not have to be dyed ("wool will not have to lie about its color") because sheep will obligingly change their own colors to shades of yellow, purple, and vermillion (see my interpretation in the illustration above).

A Roman moment

At President Obama's inauguration, Chief Justice Roberts got the words wrong in the Oath of Office, whose words are decreed in the Constitution (our sacred document!). Although both he and Mr. Obama eventually recovered and said the correct words, it was later felt necessary, in a private White House ceremony, for them to repeat the entire Oath, to make sure that it was valid. How very Roman! For in Roman religion, the words of ritual had to be letter perfect, or else the entire ceremony had to be repeated. There may be elements of magic in this, as if the words themselves have the power to bring about a result, or perhaps a feeling that an "impurity" in the wording could offend the deity (see W. Warde Fowler in "The Religious Experience of the Roman People," 1911, reissued 1971).

This month's quotation was suggested to me by Marilyn Skinner of the University of Arizona. If anyone has suggestions for future quotations, I'd be glad to hear them.

Here, in translation, are the opening lines of Vergil's 4th Eclogue:

Sicilian Muses, let us sing of somewhat more important matters. Not to everyone do hedges and humble tamarisk bring pleasure, If we sing of woods, let them be woods worthy of a consul. The ultimate era of the Cumaean song now arrives; the great order of the ages is born afresh. now the Virgin returns, and returns too the reign of Saturn; now a new progeny is sent down from high heaven. Do thou, upon the boy with whose birth the iron race shall end and a golden race shall arise over the whole world, look favorably, chaste Lucina; thy Apollo now reigns. Pollio, it is in your consulship that the glory of this age will arrive, and the great months will begin their procession. with you as leader, whatever traces of our crimes remain, made ineffectual, will release the lands from their perpetual terror. He will share the life of the gods, and he will see the gods mingling with the heroes, and he himself will be seen by them, and he will rule a world made peaceful by his father's virtues. But for you, boy, as first small gifts, with no cultivation the earth will pour forth ivy wandering here and there with valerian and lilies mixed with smiling acanthus. The goats themselves will bring home udders distended with milk, and the herds will not fear the mighty lions; your very cradle will burst forth in soft flowers. The serpent will die, and the treacherous poison weed will die. Assyrian balsam will grow everywhere. . . . . . Nor will wool learn to cheat in different colors, but the ram himself in the meadows will change his fleece now to softly ruddy purple, now to crocus yellow. Of its own accord vermillion will clothe the lambs. . . . . . ( - Vergil, Eclogues 4.1-25, 42-45)

Quotation for December 2008: The poet Horace tells us that when it is snowing outside, we should stay in and party

Horace looks out at the snow on nearby hills and decides to stay indoors and have some fun. (Illustration from an edition of Horace.)

The Winter Solstice is here. The days become cold and short, and the winds are howling. What to do? The Roman poet Horace contemplates the snow-covered peak of Mount Soracte (the modern Monte Soratte or Monte Sant' Oreste, about 20 miles north of Rome, across the valley from his Sabine villa), and decides to stay inside and party. Put more logs on the fire, open a jar of good wine, and forget about tomorrow. Or, if you are young, take your lover down to the public square, find a cozy corner, and make out.

Here, in both Latin and English is Horace's Ode, Book I, No. 9:

Vides ut alta stet niue candidum Soracte nec iam sustineant onus siluae laborantes geluque flumina constiterint acuto? Dissolue frigus ligna super foco large reponens atque benignius deprome quadrimum Sabina, o Thaliarche, merum diota. Permitte diuis cetera, qui simul strauere uentos aequore feruido deproeliantis, nec cupressi nec ueteres agitantur orni. Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere, et quem fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro adpone nec dulcis amores sperne, puer, neque tu choreas, donec uirenti canities abest morosa. Nunc et Campus et areae lenesque sub noctem susurri composita repetantur hora, nunc et latentis proditor intumo gratus puellae risus ab angulo pignusque dereptum lacertis aut digito male pertinaci. (Horace, Carmina 1.9)

See how Soracte stands glittering with deep snow, nor can the laboring woods any longer sustain their load, and the rivers stand frozen with the acute cold. Dispel the chill by heaping wood upon the hearth plentifully, and generously draw forth unmixed four-year-old wine from a Sabine jar, O Thaliarchus ["Leader of Festivities"]. Leave all the rest to the gods; for as soon as they have smoothed the winds that on the boiling sea make battle, neither cypresses nor ancient ash-trees are shaken. As for what will be tomorrow, flee from that inquiry, and whatever of days Fortune brings set down as gain, and do not, while a boy, spurn sweet love or dances while grumpy white-haired age is far from your youthful vigor. Now let the Campus Martius and the courtyards be sought, and soft whispers at nightfall at the appointed time; and the pleasing tell-tale laugh of a girl hiding in the deepest corner, and the token snatched from an arm or finger pretending to resist.

"Hebe prepared upon the spot
A jug of purl made piping hot,
Of which she gave each God a sup;
Who sup and blow, and blow and sup."

(Illustration: a comic look at a banquet of the gods, from A Burlesque Translation of Homer, London, 1797.)

Quotation for November 2008, for Thanksgiving: The poet Catullus dedicates a dependable old boat that is to be retired, in thanks for a safe voyage

Illustration: Man sailing a corbita, a small merchant vessel (the name means "basket," probably from its shape), marble relief, ca. 200 A.D., found at Utica, near Carthage, in the British Museum. Image from Wikipedia Commons.

Catullus dedicates a retired ship to the gods

As our Thanksgiving offering, we present a poem by the Roman poet Catullus in which he dedicates a little ship, now resting in retirement, as an offering to the gods in thanks -- both to the gods and to it -- for a safe voyage home from Bithynia on the Black (or "Pontic") Sea. Catullus had served there on the staff of the governor, Memmius, returning in 56 B.C. The ship, a fast phaselus, is described as telling her own story of her birth and exploits.

A phaselus was a slender, fast passenger boat, apparently shaped like a string bean (Greek pháselos, kidney bean). This type of vessel came in different sizes, from small river-going cargo boats to large sea-going ships that could, when necessary, be used as men-of-war. They mostly used their sails, but also used oars, when necessary.

There is some question whether Catullus actually towed his little ship up the Po and Mincio rivers to his beloved home at Sirmio, or whether his offering consisted of a model of the ship. Perhaps we will never know, but it is the ship herself who speaks. (For more on the phaselus and on ancient ships in general, see Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.)

Here, in both Latin and English, is Catullus' evocation of his little ship:

Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites, ait fuisse navium celerrimus, neque ullus natantis impetum trabis nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis opus foret volare sive linteo. et hoc negat minacis Hadriatici negare litus insulasve Cycladas Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum, ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit comata silva; nam Cytorio in iugo loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma. Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer, tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima ait phaselus: ultima ex origine tuo stetisse dicit in cacumine, tuo imbuisse palmulas in aequore, et inde tot per impotentia freta erum tulisse laeva sive dextera vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter simul secundus incidisset in pedem; neque ulla vota litoralibus deis sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mari novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum. sed haec prius fuere: nunc recondita senet quiete seque dedicat tibi, gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris (Catullus, Carmen 4)

That boat, which you see, guests, says that it was the swiftest of ships, nor could it the motion of any piece of floating timber not outdo, whether with its palms [i.e. oars] it had to fly or with linen sails. And it denies that the menacing Adriatic's shore denies this, or the Cycladic islands or noble Rhodes or savage Thrace, or Propontis or the ferocious Pontic gulf, where it, afterwards a boat, was before a leaf-haired forest. For on Mount Cytorus it often whistled with its speaking canopy. Pontic Amastris and boxwood-bearing Cytorus, to you these matters were and are well-known, says the boat. From its earliest origin upon your peak it says it stood, and that in your waters it dipped its palms and thence through so many unbridled straits it carried its master, whether from the left or from the right the breeze would call or whether Jupiter [i.e. the wind] fell evenly upon both sheets, and that no vows were made [i.e. were needed] to the shore gods by it when it came from its most recent sea to this limpid lake. But these things were before. Now hidden, it quietly grows old, and dedicates itself to you, twin Castor and to Castor's twin.

Illustration: Merchant ship, about 500 B.C, from a painted vase found at Vulci in Etruria, in the British Museum. From Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships, 1895.

Quotation for October 2008: The philosopher Seneca salutes the unathletic nerd

Illustration: A foot race, depicted on a Panathenaic amphora in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

It is better to exercise the mind than the body

We are just finishing baseball's World Series, the New York Marathon is about to take place, and the college and professional footbal season is underway. But out-of-shape nerds and couch potatoes can take heart from the words of the philosopher Seneca, who, in a letter to his friend Lucilius, expresses the view that it is more valuable to exercise the mind than the body.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.(?)-65 A.D.) was born in Córdoba, Spain, to a family of the equestrian class, but moved to Rome as a child. His father (also named Lucius Annaeus Seneca) was a well-known rhetorician, some of whose controversiae and suasoriae survive. Seneca the Younger followed the usual political career of an upper class Roman gentleman, but was more attracted to philosophy. He became tutor to the future emperor Nero, and later an influential advisor to Nero when he acceded to the throne. But Nero fell under the influence of more malevolent advisors, and Seneca was implicated in a tenuous charge of complicity in the conspriacy of Piso, and was forced, first to retire, then finally to commit suicide.

Seneca's Epistulae Morales, addressed to Lucilius, date from the end of his life, when he was living in forced retirement. These letters, which are really little essays, cover many aspects of contemporary Roman life. In his writings, Seneca was a practioner of the "pointed" style, with short, pithy, aphoristic sentences, as opposed to the resounding amplitude of the Ciceronian periodic manner. His philosophy belongs to the Stoic school, but is Roman in its emphasis on practical applications of philosophy rather than its theoretical beliefs.

In Letter 15, Seneca counsels against extreme exercise and body-building, as he does against other extremes. We should make time for the soul. He is not against exercise. A little light running, jumping, and light weight-lifting is good. So is the gentle motion of riding in a litter (sort of like a rocking chair?). Likewise, one should exercise the voice, but not by shouting. Live in moderation; life is short. Here, in translation, are the opening lines of Letter 15:

It was the habit of the ancients, preserved until my time, to add to the first words of a letter, "If you are well, I am well." Rightly, we say, "If you philosophize, it is good." That is, precisely, to be well. Without it, the soul is sick; the body, too, even if it has great strength, has only the strength of a mad, frenetic person. Therefore, especially take care of the former kind of health, and give the latter second place. Which will not matter much to you, if you only wish to be healthy. For it is a foolish occupation, my Lucilius, and little fitting to a man of letters, to occupy oneself in exercising one's biceps and enlarging one's neck and firming one's flanks. When your feasting has turned out well and your bulging muscles have grown, you will never equal the strength or weight of a plump bull. Add to that, the soul is squeezed out by the extra burden of the body, and it is less agile. And so, as much as you can, limit your body and make a place for your soul.

Quotation for August-September 2008: A review of the movie WALL-E, a robot love story, and a quotation from Homer's Iliad

"The fantasy of a statue that comes to life is as central a fable as we have. The idea of motion or speech in an inanimate stone is an inescapable possibility, a concept of a sort so basic that we can hardly call it a metaphor. Time and again, we find texts in which the statue that stands immobile in temple or square descends from its pedestal, or speaks out of its silence. Such fantasies are simply part of what we know about statues, and what statues can represent to us..."

(Kenneth Gross, The Dream of the Moving Statue)

Illustrations: Robots old and new: ABOVE: Bronze figures of Minerva and the Bell Ringers, by Antonin Jean Carles, 1895, from the old New York Herald Building. Now restored in Herald Square, the bronze men strike the bell with their mallets every hour; bronze owls once flashed their illuminated eyes at press time. MIDDLE: The Autoperipatetikos, or doll that Walks-by-Itself, patented by Enoch Rice Morrison in 1862. This example is in the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. BELOW: Electro-Man entertaining children at a safety exhibit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the 2003 open house of the Harmon Shops, Croton-Harmon, NY. (Photos by C.A.Sowa).

Moving statues

In The Dream of the Moving Statue (Cornell, 1992), Kenneth Gross, quoted above, examines the aesthetic, psychoanalytic, and historic meanings of images that come to life, and the opposing myths of the metamorphosis of the living person, like Niobe or Lot's Wife, into a statue or inanimate object. Perhaps there are in these fantasies a desire to conquer death and transcend boundaries, perhaps sometimes a fear of retribution, or even a desire to enter oneself into the stability of a stonelike state. Gross's examples range from ancient tales such as that of Pygmalion to more modern stories like Molière's Don Juan and Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman and movies like Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. The statue that comes to life may be oracle or retribution or wish fulfillment, but stories of toys or other inanimate objects that take on a life of their own continue to be a deep-seated human fantasy.

WALL-E, the lovable trash compactor

One of this summer's most popular movies was the animated Pixar film, WALL-E. It is still in a few theaters, but if you can't catch it, rent the DVD! Although billed as a children's movie, the themes treated, concerning the destruction of the environment, the relationship of humans to machines, and the power of love (even betweeen machines!), not to mention the many witty references to other films and stories, give any viewer much food for thought.

WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class), diligent and homely trash compactor, has spent hundreds of years cleaning up the toxic detritus left by human beings. The humans long ago left Earth to live, bloated and idle, like Homer's Lotus-Eaters, in resort-like exile on a space ship, the Axiom, waited upon by hundreds of robot servants. WALL-E's only companion is a cockroach. With childlike curiosity, he collects things that he finds, putting them in a box in his belly, and takes them to his home, a giant shipping container full of spare parts and his beloved junk collection. His finds include a Rubik's cube, a brassiere (which he tries to wear like a mask), and an old VCR tape of Hello Dolly, which he watches over and over. One day, he finds a single plant, growing in an old work boot. The tiny plant is his prized possession. Shortly thereafter, a space shuttle brings a sleek modern robot named EVE, whose name means Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator. Her job is to discover whether Earth, based on the renewed presence of photosynthesis, that is, of plant life, is again livable. WALL-E's awkward, adolescent-like attempts to make friends with EVE are met first with icy disdain, then curiosity, on her part. Then EVE grabs WALL-E's plant with her tractor beam and puts it in her own womb-like belly, and departs on her space shuttle for the humans' mother ship. WALL-E follows her, clinging to the outside of the shuttle.

Where the first half of the film was almost wordless, the second is a slapstick farce in which the dingy and rusty WALL-E tries to evade the army of servant robots who want to clean up the mess that he represents. At last, the Captain of the Axiom, with heroic fortitude, realizes that Earth must be recolonized, and, to the strains of Also Sprach Zarathustra, wrests control from the dictatorial Auto, the autopilot computer, and steers a course for Earth. Happy humans relearn to live in Earth's gravity, and prepare to plant WALL-E's little plant, and many more of them. But WALL-E has been injured, and EVE undertakes to heal him by replacing his burned-out circuit boards. Still he is listless and depressed, until EVE takes his square hand in hers, and the spark of love unites them as the cockroach chirps happily.

WALL-E and R.U.R.

The references are many: In his bug-eyed visage and childlike nature (and his near-death experience), WALL-E instantly evokes the extraterrestrial E.T. The cockroach (they will outlive us all!) reminds us of Jiminy Cricket, the companion of Pinocchio, another toy who comes to life. The cherished plant echoes Saint Exupéry's Little Prince, with his beloved single rose. The Captain's struggle with Auto for control of the space ship parodies the struggle with the computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, right down to the music from Zarathustra.

Perhaps, however, the most interesting antecedent is Karel Čapek's 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which gave us the word "robot." In it, the robots, built to work as slaves for humans, rebel and take over the world, killing all the humans but one, the engineer Alquist. But the robots cannot reproduce themselves, because they do not know the secret of their own manufacture, and all the plans have been destroyed. Nor do they care that when they wear out, they are destroyed, because they have no feelings. But two robots, Primus and Helena, inexplicably fall in love, laughing together and holding hands. When Alquist proposes dissecting Helena to see how she works, Primus cries out that he will die in her place, upon which Helena bursts into tears, and offers to die instead. "We belong to each other," says Primus. Alquist, deeply moved, lets them go, saying "Go Adam, go Eve. The world is yours." By developing emotions, they have become human, the key to repopulating Earth. Like WALL-E and his EVE, they have shown the human beings how to be human.

Homeric androids

Fantasies of robots that come to life are as old as Homer. The Iliad, composed perhaps around 750 B.C., describes the intelligent golden maidservants and self-propelled golden-wheeled tripods that the lame technician god Hephaestus built for himself. For his work at the anvil, Hephaestus also built "twenty bellows in all, blowing upon the melting pots at his command." In the Odyssey, Hephaestus forged immortal gold and silver guard dogs for King Alkinoos of Phaiakia, whose navy also owned a fleet of self-propelled ships. In Hellenistic times, Heron of Alexandria (whose dates are uncertain, but who may have lived in the first century B.C.) actually built dancing mannequins of Dionysos and the Bacchants, powered by water and steam.

In Book 18 of the Iliad, Homer tells how Thetis visits Hephaestus, asking him to make a shield and new armor for her doomed son Achilles. As Hephaestus rises to greet her, Homer depicts the smith's skillful androids. As we see, Hephaestus' golden young servants, "having reason in their hearts," even if they do not have emotions, at least possess a sophisticated form of Artificial Intelligence.

Homer's description of Hephaestus' androids Speaking thus, he rose from his anvil, a monstrous bulk, limping; but underneath him, his thin legs moved nimbly. He placed the bellows away from the fire, and gathered all his tools, with which he worked, into a silver chest. With a sponge he wiped his face all over, and both his hands, and his sturdy neck and his shaggy chest. Putting on a tunic and grasping a thick staff, he went out, limping. But servants moved quickly, supporting their lord, golden figures that looked like living young women. They have reason in their hearts, and voice and strength; from the immortal gods they know how to do handiwork. Supporting their lord, they bustled about... Homer, Iliad 18.410-421

Hephaestus at his forge (Sarcophagus relief, depicted in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.)

Quotation for July 2008: In honor of the man who gave birth to a child, we celebrate the seer Teiresias, who turned into a woman, then back into a man, as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Hera and Zeus, quarreling over who enjoys the greater pleasure, the man or the woman, ask Teiresias, who has enjoyed both experiences. (Illustration: Hera and Zeus, metope from the Doric temple of Hera at Selinus, Sicily. About 465 B.C. Palermo, photo by R. Schoder, S.J.)

A transgendered man in Oregon gives birth to a baby girl

Welcome to the world, little Miss Beatie! Early in July, it was reported that the so-called "pregnant man," Thomas Beatie, had given birth to a healthy baby girl at a hospital in Oregon. Beatie, who was born a woman (and, it has been pointed out, chromosomally still is), underwent gender reassignment to become legally a man, but kept his female organs in order to be able to bear children. His wife, Nancy, has two grown daughters by a previous marriage, but is unable to bear more children because she has had a hysterectomy. The couple used donor sperm and Beatie's own eggs.

Gays, lesbians, and transgendered characters in poetry and mythology

We are all familiar with homosexuality in ancient culture and literature (the term "Greek love" was familiar long before "gay" entered our vocabulary), and the island of Lesbos, Sappho's home, has given its name permanently to gay women (although, of course, not all Lesbians are "lesbians"!). We also know the myth of Zeus, who gave birth to Athena fully grown from the top of his head (after swallowing her mother, Metis, according to Hesiod), and gave birth to Dionysos from his thigh, after he had incinerated the infant god's mother, Semele, with his thunderbolt.

We are less aware that the transgender character can also be found in ancient mythology. The seer Teiresias, however, had this experience, when one encounter with a pair of mating snakes turned him into a woman, but another encounter with the same snakes turned him back into a man.

Teiresias' encounter with the snakes that changed his life

Teiresias, the great blind seer of Thebes, appears as a character in many ancient legends. He plays an important part in the story of Oedipus, and appears in the Odyssey as a shade in the Underworld, where alone among the dead he retains his mental faculties (phrenes and noon), and foretells Odysseus' future. There are different versions of how Teiresias lost his sight and gained the gift of prophecy. In one story, Teiresias, who had been both a man and a woman, is called upon to settle a dispute between Hera and Zeus over which sex enjoys love the most, He takes Zeus's position that the female has the greater pleasure. This angers Hera, who blinds him, but Zeus compensates him with the ability to prophesy the future. Callimachus followed a different version in his Fifth Hymn ("The Bath of Pallas"). In it, Teiresias as a youth sees Athena bathing, but since his mother, the nymph Chariclo, is a favorite of Athena, she does not put him to death, but blinds him, while also making him a prophet.

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, follows the first of these versions. He pictures Jupiter (Zeus) and Juno (Hera) enjoying a Happy Hour of nectar and discussing the relative sexual pleasure of males and females. Remembering Teiresias' experience, they turn to him for his opinion. We translate here Ovid's version of the story. (The allusion to "twice-born Bacchus" is a reference to Dionysos' second birth from Zeus's thigh, and the "fatal oath" refers to Zeus's (now regretted) promise to Semele that he will show himself to her in his true nature -- a thunderbolt!)

While these things were happening on earth because of the fatal oath
and the cradle of twice-born Bacchus remained safe,
they say that Jove, relaxed with nectar, set aside his heavy cares
and made light jokes at leisure with Juno, and said,
"Certainly your pleasure is greater
than that which falls to the lot of the male."
She denied it. They decided to ask the opinion of the learned
Tiresias. Both kinds of love were known to him.

For he had disturbed two large serpents, mating in the green forest,
with a blow from his staff.
From a man, he became, marvellously, a woman
and lived thus for seven autumns. In the eighth, he again
saw the same snakes, and said, "If there is so much power in striking you,
that it changes the fate of the striker into the opposite, now again I shall hit you!" As the snakes were struck,
his former shape returned and the appearance he was born with.

And so the arbiter selected for this joking dispute
confirmed Jove's words. Saturn's daughter [Juno] is said
to have been offended more deeply than was justified
and not in proportion to the matter
and condemned the eyes of the judge to eternal night.
But the omnipotent father (for it is not allowed to any god
to void the deeds of another god), in compensation for lost sight
gave knowledge of the future and lightened the punishment with honor.

Ovid, Metamorphoses III.316-338.

Teiresias' first encounter with the snakes turned him into a woman, the second turned him back into a man.

Quotation for June 2008: for the summer solstice, a tipsy celebrant looks at the heavens in Ovid's Fasti

The constellation of the hunter Orion, with his dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor, in Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, New York, 1856.)

A drunk looks for Orion's belt on the wrong night

Ovid's Fasti or Roman Calendar extends only from January to June. We don't know if he never finished the year, or if the rest of the poem has been lost. His entry for the summer solstice, which falls in June, is short. A drunken man, on his way home from a shrine outside the city (a celebration of some sort?) scans the heavens in vain for Orion's belt, a few days early. (As a note in Frazer's Loeb edition explains, "True morning rising of middle star was on June 21, apparent, July 13. The summer solstice was on June 24."). The constellation of Orion is best seen in winter, when it is one of the most prominent features of the night sky. The three stars of his belt and the sword hanging from it are instantly recognizable. One of the celestial objects in his sword is not a star but a nebula, which appears as a fuzzy blob to the naked eye, but even through simple binoculars, individual tiny stars can be seen forming in a hazy cloud, a mini-Hubble picture of a distant world.

The story of Orion

There are various myths of Orion, the gigantic hunter, with conflicting versions of his life, death, and eventual apotheosis as a constellation. Homer's Calypso depicts him as the dawn goddess Eos' lover, who was killed by Artemis (Odyssey 5.121-4). Calypso cites him as an example of how the gods begrudge goddesses that they mate with mortal men. Another story has him slain by Artemis because he insulted her, or that he was killed by a scorpion sent by the goddess Earth because he boasted that he would kill all the animals. He may have been Boeotian, as there are many legends about him from Boeotia. Other stories connect him with Chios. In any case, he now roams the heavens with his faithful hunting dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor. The prey that he hunts, Taurus the bull and Lepus the hare, are close by. (Scorpio the scorpion is kept far on the other side!)

The tipsy astonomer

Here is Ovid's amateur astronomer:

Lo, a fellow returning, not very sober, from a suburban shrine
shouts the following words at the stars:
"Your belt is hidden, and tomorrow perhaps it will be hidden,
but after that, Orion, it will be visible to me."
But if he were not drunk, he would have said
that the time of the solstice would fall on that same day.

Ovid, Fasti, 6.785-790.

Quotation for May 2008: Inflation, Roman style: Janus complains of the devaluation of the old currency in Ovid's Fasti

A one-as coin with Janus on one side, prow of a ship on the other (in Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899).

Inflation in today's news

Inflation is in the news. Food costs more, affordable housing is difficult to find, medical costs are up, college tuition is prohibitive, the dollar has lost its value internationally, and with gasoline at $4.00 a gallon, you can't go anywhere anyway. (Time to revive train travel!)

Ancient Rome suffered from its own kind of inflation. In early Rome and Latium, the oldest medium of exchange was oxen and sheep (hence the word for property or wealth, pecunia, from pecus "cattle" and our word pecuniary). A later currency consisted of unwrought copper or bronze (aes rude), and then of bronze bars marked with an image or inscription (aes signatum). Rome came late to using actual coins, compared to the Greek and Middle Eastern world. Lydia struck coins of electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) in the 7th century B.C., followed by the silver coins of the Greek cities of Aegina, Corinth, and Chalcis. (Prior to this, the Greeks used iron spits (oboloi) as currency; a handful of six of these was a drachme.)

Rome, however, seems not to have minted real coins until around 300 B.C. The earliest known coin was the copper one-as coin, which originally weighed one Roman pound, or twelve unciae (the word from which our word ounce comes). The obverse bore the image of Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and beginnings, the reverse the image of a ship's prow (see the depiction above). In 269 B.C. Rome opened her first mint, in the temple of Juno Moneta ("the Mindful One"; the epithet gives us, as a result, both the words "money" and "mint"). Silver coins were minted here after the Greek fashion, for the cities and outside trade, copper coins for the rustic countryside. Gold coins, too, were eventually introduced. But the stalwart old copper coins gradually decreased in weight, until they weighed only one uncia, and finally they were no longer minted. Over the course of the Roman republic and then the Empire, the silver and gold coins, too, underwent periodic decreases in weight, followed by periodic reforms.

Ovid's Janus complains of the loss of the old coinage

Ovid, in his entry for the month of January in the Fasti, describes his encounter with the weird old god Janus, in a passage of which we quoted a part in the Quotation of the Month for January, 2007. Janus, at first frightening with his strange double face that "alone of the gods, can look at his own back," turns out to be a genial ranconteur. Previously, we quoted his account of the arrival of the god Saturn, exiled from the celestial kingdom by Jupiter. Prior to this story, Janus rails against the devaluation of the old copper coins that bear his image, and their worn-out condition that makes his image unrecognizable! This rant, in turn, is the result of Ovid inquiring about the various kinds of offerings that are brought to Janus at his festival. Dates, figs, and honey are among the offerings, so that the year may be sweet. But money is brought, too, and money is even sweeter than honey! In the time of Saturn, life was simple, whereas now everything must be gold and jewels, and people make money for the sake of making money. We praise the old days, but find today more useful.

(Ironically, as we learn in Vergil's Aeneid, quoted for the Saturnalia in the quotation for December, 2007, the simple age of Saturn was also referred to as the "Golden Age"! These poets should get their stories straight!)

. . . "I see why sweets are given. Tell me also the reason for giving coins,
that no part of your festival escape me."
He laughed, and "How your own age deceives you," he said,
"who think that honey is sweeter than receiving a donation of coins!
Even in the reign of Saturn, I scarcely saw anyone
in whose heart profit was not sweet.
In time, the love of having things, which is now at its height, grew.
Now there is hardly any farther that it can go.
Wealth is now of more value, than in the years of olden times,
when the people were poor, and Rome was new,
when a small hut was large enough for Mars-born Quirinus,
and river sedge provided a humble bed.
Jupiter could scarcely stand upright in his narrow shrine,
and the thunderbolt in Jove's right hand was made of clay.
With foliage they used to ornament the Capitol, which they now ornament with gems,
and the senator used to pasture his own sheep.
Nor was it a shame to take one's peaceful rest on straw
and support one's head on hay.
The praetor gave judgment to the people, merely putting aside his plow,
and it was a crime to own a piece of light silver plate.

But since the Fortune of this place has raised her head,
and Rome has touched the highest gods with her crest,
wealth and the furious desire for wealth have grown,
and when people possess the most, they seek more.
. . .
Only worth is worth anything now; wealth brings honors,
wealth brings friendships; the poor man everywhere lies broken.
And yet you ask if an omen drawn from coin payment is useful,
and why the old coppers delight your palms!
They used to give coppers, now there is a better omen in gold.
Vanquished, the ancient money has given way to the new.
Golden temples delight us also, although we esteem the antique ones;
such majesty is appropriate for the god.
We praise olden days, but find our own times useful.
Yet both customs are worthy of being cultivated."

He concluded his admonitions. With calm speech, as before,
I addressed the god who bears the key:
"I have learned many things, indeed, but why is the figure of a ship
stamped on one side of the copper coin, and a two-headed figure on the other?"
"You could have recognized me in the double image," he said,
"if age had not blurred the workmanship.
That leaves the reason for the boat. By boat the sickle-bearing god [Saturn]
arrived at the Tuscan river, after roaming the globe.
I remember how Saturn was received in this land;
he had been driven by Jupiter from the celestial realms. . ."

(-Ovid, Fasti I.189-236)

Silver and gold Roman coins (in Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.)

Quotation for April 2008: Suggested by the curse buried under Yankee Stadium, a baleful poem by Horace

Relief of three-headed Hekate from Aegina (in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890). Hecate, a goddess associated with the uncanny, the Underworld, and crossroads, was among the divinities invoked in curses.

The Red Sox curse on Yankee Stadium

Early in April, it became known that a construction worker building the new stadium for the New York Yankees baseball team had buried a T-shirt bearing the name of the rival Boston Red Sox in the cement floor of the stadium, in order to put a curse on the Yankees. The worker later confessed that he had buried the shirt under the floor last summer, prophesying that the curse would last 30 years. The Yankee management took the curse seriously, spending $50,000 to dig up the offending garment. When last heard, the jersey was back in Boston, where it will be auctioned off for charity. Ball players are known for being superstitious, but the idea of buried curses has deep roots in Classical culture.

Ancient curse tablets

Curses, often addressed to chthonic (underground) or liminal (boundary) deities, such as Hecate, Persephone, Hermes, or Charon, scratched on lead and pierced with nails have been found at both Greek and Roman sites. Curses or spells may also have been written on materials such as papyrus, wood, or wax, but these are more perishable. A large number of lead curse tablets have been found in Athens. Many of these refer to court cases and are designed to put an evil spell on the opposing litigant. Many have also been found in Roman Britain, especially at the Roman baths in present-day Bath, England, where they tend to be aimed at thieves who stole the bathers' clothes (apparently they didn't have lockers).

We also have what might be called "literary curses." In July, 2007, we quoted a poem by Theocritus, in which a young sorceress uses magic to try to lure back a young man with whom she had a brief affair (or maybe kill him!). Below, we quote one of Horace's Epodes, in which he wishes shipwreck on another poet, named Mevius.

Burying the St. Joseph statue

Good prayers can be buried, too. Some of the buried tablets were spells buried at grave sites to help the dead to their next life, especially if the person died young or died a violent death, and some were love spells.

Today, statues of St. Joseph (patron saint of carpenters, and thus of houses) are buried by homeowners trying to sell their houses. The statue is buried upside down in the yard, then dug up when the house is sold, and displayed in a place of honor in the new home (it is suggested that the statue be buried in a plastic bag so that it doesn't get dirty). St. Joseph statue kits, with statue, plastic bag, and directions for use, are available over the Internet. The statues come in different sizes, but there is apparently no difference in their efficacy. Some real-estate agents are said to keep supplies of these statues to provide for their prospective clients.

Horace's curse upon Mevius

Our quotation of the month is an example of the "literary curse," Horace's ill wishes for a rival poet.

Mevius (who along with another bad poet, Bavius, is immortalized by Vergil's insults in Eclogue 3.90), was apparently an enemy of both Vergil and Horace. No poetry by Mevius or Bavius survives. Mevius was about to embark on a trip to Greece. Horace calls on all the hostile winds (Auster and Notus, the south winds, Eurus, the east wind, and Aquilo, the north wind) to wreck Mevius' ship. He does not call on Zephyrus, the gentle west wind. Horace's ill-omened sendoff (Epode X), translated below, was modeled on a poem by Archilochus.

Under an evil augury the ship departs,
bearing the stinking Mevius.
Auster, may you lash both her sides,
-- remember! -- with horrible waves.
Let black Eurus scatter rigging
and broken oars on the sea turned upside down.
May Aquilo rise up, mighty as when in the high mountains
he breaks the trembling oaks.
May no friendly star appear in the gloomy night
from which sad Orion sets.
Nor let him be borne on a more quiet sea
than was the Greek band of victors,
when Pallas turned her ire from burning Ilium
against Ajax' impious vessel.
O how much toil awaits your sailors,
and for you, yellow pallor
and that non-manly wailing,
and prayers to Jupiter, who turns away,
when the Ionian Sea, bellowing in wet
Notus, wrecks your ship.
But if as fat prey on the curving shore,
stretched out, you bring pleasure to the sea birds,
a libidinous goat will be sacrificed
with a lamb to the Tempest deities.

Mercury (Hermes) in his role as psychopompos, or conductor of the souls of the dead into the Underworld.

Quotation for March 2008: For the"March Madness" basketball championships, Nausicaa and her maidens play ball in the Odyssey

Athenian women filling their water pots at a public fountain and chatting (black-figured water pot (hydria), 6th cent. B.C. Paris, Louvre. (image from Rostovtzeff, History of the Ancient World, after Perrot and Chipiez.)

Festivals and games of March

The month of March 2008 has provided us with many occasions for festivals -- St. Patrick's Day, the celebrations of Purim and of Mohammed's Birthday, the Spring Equinox, and Easter. It also gives us March Madness, the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments. Since Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed in 1972, women's sports, including basketball, have received more prominence, although American women have always found ways to satisfy their desire for athletic competition (as illustrated by the antique picture at the bottom of this item!)

In the Greek and Roman world, many kinds of ball games were played, by men and women, young and old. This month's quotation is from Homer's Odyssey, describing the ball game played by the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa and her handmaidens while their clothes dry on the beach -- setting them up to discover shipwrecked Odysseus in time to aid him on his return home to Ithaca.

Athena stage-manages a rescue for Odysseus

Odysseus has left Calypso's island on a stout raft that Calypso helped him build, but which the angry god Poseidon quickly turns to kindling wood. Buoyed by a magical veil given him by the goddess Ino (who used to be human herself), Odysseus swims to the rocky shore of the island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacians. Naked, covered with brine, and dead tired, he crawls under some bushes to sleep. The goddess Athena, his patron, always clever and vigilant, contrives a way to get him the rest of the way home. She puts a dream into the mind of Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, reminding her that she must wash her clothes, because she can expect soon to get married. Nausicaa coyly asks her father for the mule-chariot, omitting the idea of marriage but saying that she must wash her brothers' clothes. But Alcinous "understands everything" and lets her go. Nausicaa and her attendants take a picnic lunch and wine with them, and Nausicaa (a down-to-earth princess) drives the mule-chariot herself as they take the laundry to the washing-pits by the beach.

After doing the washing -- which they turn into a competition -- and eating lunch, they play a game of ball. Athena again intervenes, making Nausicaa miss her throw and send the ball into the water. The girls shriek, and Odysseus wakes up. A comic scene ensues, as Odysseus, covering his nakedness with a branch, tries to figure out where he is, and whether the girls are nymphs or mortals. Eventually he is invited to wash up and eat something, and Athena "pours charis [beauty and charm] over him," making him incredibly appealing to Nausicaa. Again being coy, Nausicaa insists that he go by himself to ask for the king's aid, rather than accompanying her -- so that gossips won't start rumors about them! Her father again gets the point, and gently scolds her for her silliness. Eventually, Odysseus tells his tale to the Phaeacians and is at last sent back home to Ithaca. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Note on mythic themes

(NOTE: In terms of epic themes, Nausicaa's ball game represents a variation on the theme of "Maidens Dancing and Picking Flowers (Interrupted by a Scary Male Figure)," one of the themes identified in my book Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns.)

Here is the story of Nausicaa's ball game.

But when they came to the beautiful stream of the river,
where the capacious washing troughs were, and plenty of good water
flowed up from beneath them, enough to clean clothes no matter how dirty,
there they unhitched the mules from the wagon,
and drove them beside the eddying river
to graze on the honey-sweet wild grass. From the wagon
they took the clothes in their arms and carried them to the black water,
and trampled them in the pits, speedily competing with each other.
But when they had washed the clothes and cleaned off all the dirt,
they spread them out in a row along the shore of the sea, where
the pebbles were washed cleanest by the waves against the land.
Having bathed and anointed themselves with rich oil,
they took their lunch by the banks of the river,
and waited for the clothes to dry by the rays of the sun.
But after she and her handmaids had enjoyed their food,
they played a game of ball, having thrown off their headgear.
White-armed Nausicaa led in the song.
Just as Artemis the archer roves over the mountains,
along the heights of Taygetus or Erymanthus,
rejoicing in the boars and swift deer,
and with her the country nymphs, daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis
sport with her, and Leto [mother of Artemis] rejoices in her heart,
and she herself holds her head and brow above all the others,
and so is easily recognized, although all are beautiful --
just so the unwed maiden stood out among her attendants.

But when she was ready to go back home,
yoking the mules and folding the beautiful clothes,
then the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, thought of something else,
how Odysseus should wake up and see the fair-faced girl,
and she would lead him to the city of the Phaeacians.
The princess threw the ball to one of her attendants,
but she missed the attendant, and threw the ball into the deep eddy.
They gave a long shout, and godlike Odysseus awoke;
sitting up, he wondered in his heart and mind,
"Oh my, to the land of what men have I come...

(Homer, Odyssey 6.85-119)

Quotation for February 2008: For Valentines' Day, a love poem by Sappho

Sappho's poems celebrate her women friends

Sappho (b. 612 B.C), the great lyric poetess from the island of Lesbos, is known to us only in a few poems preserved in other authors and in fragmentary papyri. From these remains and from glowing opinions of ancient authors, we get an idea of what we are missing: Plato (in the Phaedrus) called her "the tenth Muse." She is known for her passionate love poems to women friends, and has forever bequeathed the name of "lesbian" to all women who love women. There were, of course, other Lesbians who were not "lesbian," including her contemporary and friend, the poet Alcaeus, author of drinking songs, love songs, and odes against tyrants, reflective of the turbulent political times on Lesbos in which both of them lived.

The legend that Sappho threw herself off a cliff into the sea for love of a man named Phaon was apparently invented, but she does seem to have married and had a child. Her greatest affections and emotional attachments, however, were to a group of women friends, who perhaps formed a cult of Aphrodite and the Muses.

"Longinus," in On the Sublime (Peri hypsous; the actual author, probably of the first century A.D, is unknown), quoted the poem by Sappho that we translate below, of which he included, unfortunately, only the first four stanzas. Some lines have been supplemented by papyrus fragments. The poem describes Sappho's jealousy at seeing a man enjoying the favors of a woman whom Sappho adores. She describes in detail the physical symptoms of her emotions -- recognizable to both heterosexuals and homosexuals -- as she "falls to pieces" (to quote the song by Patsy Cline!) upon seeing the object of her desire. Longinus aptly notes that where some authors "attract the listener by their selection of elements, and others do so by the way they pack them together," Sappho "excels in both choosing and combining the most intense and striking symptoms" of love.

Here is Sappho's description:

He seems to me the equal of the gods
that man, who sits across from you,
and, near you as you sweetly speak,
listens to you,

and as you laugh your lovely laugh, a thing that
makes my heart in my breast beat wildly;
for when I see you, even briefly, my voice
refuses to come,

my tongue is broken, and a delicate
fire suddenly runs across my flesh;
there is no sight in my eyes,
and my ears hum;

sweat runs down me, a trembling
seizes me all over, and I am more green
than grass; I am little short of dying,
it would seem.

But all must be endured, since...

Sappho, No. 2 (fragmentary)

Decoration from Longus, Daphnis and Chloe: A Pastoral Romance, English translation, 19th cent., engraving after a design by the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans for an edition of 1718.

Quotation for January 2008: Women warriors in Herodotus, suggested by the candidates in the U.S. presidential election

Illustration: Nos. 17 and 18 (upper), war ship and merchant ship, about 500 B.C, from a painted vase found at Vulci in Etruria, in the British Museum; No 19 (lower), two war ships, about 500 B.C., from a painted vase by Nicosthenes found at Vulci in Etruria, in the Louvre. From Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships, 1895.

Women warriors

With the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, we may have, for the first time, a woman President of the United States, and thus a female Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Ancient literature furnishes us with some colorful and outstanding women leaders, including Vergil's half-mythic Dido, Queen of Carthage; Boudicca, who led a revolt against Roman rule in Britain; and, of course, Cleopatra of Egypt. Herodotus (c. 484-430? B.C.), in his Histories, describes several very able women who led their cities in peace and war, including two queens of Babylon, Semiramis and Nitocris.

Herodotus gives the fullest account of Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, his own native city, which, although at least partially Greek, was at the time a part of the Persian Empire. In his account of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, Artemisia is depicted as giving wise counsel to the Persian king Xerxes, who foolishly rejects her advice. She advises him NOT to attempt a naval battle against the Greeks. He need not take the chance, she says, as he had already taken Athens, thus attaining his principal objective. For, she says, the Greek men "are as superior at sea to your men as men are to women." It would be more advantageous to wait until the Greeks ran out of provisions, or to invade the Peloponnesus and split the Greek coalition. Xerxes, spurning her advice, nevertheless engaged the Greeks at Salamis, off the coast near Athens, causing the destruction of the Persian navy. At Salamis, commanding her own ship, Artemisia fought with valor (if perhaps with questionable ethics, as described in the quotation below). After Xerxes' defeat, she again gave wise counsel, telling him to, as we would say "declare a victory and leave." This time, he takes her advice, retreating to Persia and leaving the fight to the warlike Mardonius, who was to meet his own defeat in the final battle at Plataea, in Boeotia.

Artemisia at Salamis

In the great sea battle of Salamis (480 B.C.), in which the Athenians under Themistocles defeated the Persian navy, Artemisia performed an exploit that was either clever or ruthless, or maybe just fortuitous. Hemmed in by Greek ships on the one side and Persian and allied ships on the other, she rammed and sank one of her own allies. The Greeks thought that hers was a Greek ship that had rammed a Persian and stopped chasing her. Xerxes, on the other hand, assumed she had rammed a Greek, and uttered the famous words, "My men have become women, and my women have have become men."

As for the rest, I cannot accurately describe what part each of the barbarians or Greeks played in the battle. Concerning Artemisia, however, the following incident occurred, because of which she gained an even greater reputation with Xerxes. When the king's situation had turned into complete confusion, Artemisia's ship was pursued by an Attic vessel. Unable to flee (for before her were friendly ships, and her ship happened to be closest to the enemy), she thought of the following plan, which, when carried out, turned out to her advantage.

Pursued by the Attic ship she rammed the ship of an ally, on which were Calyndians and the Calyndian king himself, Damasithymus. Whether she had had some quarrel with this man, while they were still at the Hellespont, I cannot say, or even whether she did this on purpose, or whether it happened by chance that the Calyndian ship got in her way. And so she rammed the ship and sank it, and by good fortune she gained a double benefit. The captain of the Attic trireme, when he saw her ramming the barbarians' ship, thought that Artemisia's ship was either Greek or a barbarian ship that had deserted and was helping his side, and turned away to chase others.

By her actions it happened, on the one hand, that she escaped and was not destroyed, and on the other hand, she was even more highly esteemed by Xerxes. For it is said that the king, who was watching, observed the ship being rammed, and one of the bystanders said, "My Lord, see how well Artemisia is fighting, and that she has sunk one of the enemy's ships?" He asked whether it was truly Artemisia's deed, and they told him that they clearly recognized her ensign. They assumed that the ship that was sunk was an enemy. In addition to her other good luck, it is said that there were no survivors to accuse her. Xerxes is reported to have said, upon being told, "My men have become women, and my women men." That is what they say Xerxes said.

Herodotus Histories VIII.87-88.

Illustration: Nos. 15 and 16, two war ships in action, about 550 B.C., from a painted vase by Aristonophos found at Caere in Etruria, in the New Capitoline Museum at Rome. From Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships, 1895.

Quotation for December 2007: Catullus presents his friend Cornelius (Nepos) with a gift of his poems

Illustration: The Muse Erato (muse of erotic poetry), from a wall-painting from Herculaneum, in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

This is the season of gift-giving, and we offer a poem by the Roman poet Catullus (84-ca.54 B.C.), better known to us as the author of passionate poems to his girlfriend "Lesbia" (real name Clodia). In this poem he presents his collection of poems as a gift to his friend Cornelius, the historian Cornelius Nepos (ca.99-ca.24 B.C.). He thanks the older writer for having looked kindly upon some of his earlier efforts. The patrona Virgo whom he addresses is probably his Muse, although she could be a goddess, perhaps Pallas. Here is the text, in both Latin and English.

Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
Arido modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi, namque tu solebas
Meas aliquid putare nugas,
Iam tum cum ausus es unus Italorum
Omne aeuum tribus explicare chartis
Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli
Qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
Plus uno maneat perenne saeclo.


To whom shall I give this charming little book,
Newly polished with dry pumice?
To you, Cornelius; for you used to
Think my trifles were something,
Even when you, alone of Italians,
Dared write the history of all eras in three papyri,
Learned, by Jupiter, and labored over!
So accept this little book, such as it is,
And may it, O patron virgin,
Remain perennial, for more than one age.

(Catullus, Poem 1)

Illustration: The Muse Clio (muse of history), from a wall-painting from Herculaneum, in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

Quotation for November 2007: Hesiod's advice for fall for the thrifty farmer

Illustration: detail of the so-called "Harvester Vase" from Hagia Triada, Crete. This Minoan vase (ca. 1550 B.C.) is generally supposed to represent a procession of men carrying sheaves of grain.

The farmer gets ready for winter

At this time of year, we think of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and harvest festivals to celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. Hesiod (the Old Curmudgeon!), however, had his mind on more practical matters, such as real estate and personnel decisions.

In his Works and Days (composed ca. 750 B.C., and addressed to his ne'er-do-well brother Perses, who had squandered his patrimony), Hesiod gives advice to the thrifty farmer on how to buy a home, cut wood in season to make plows and other tools, how to care for fallow land so that it will be ready for spring planting, and how to make wise choices for obtaining help around the farm: Get a woman (a slave-woman, NOT a wife!) who can help plow; hire a man of forty years, too old to be distracted; buy two oxen of nine years -- ditto -- still strong, but too mature to fight each other instead of plowing. Make good use of your time. Here are excerpts:

When the strength of the sharp sun abates
its sweaty heat, and mighty Zeus brings
autumn rains, and men's flesh becomes much
lighter -- then indeed the star Sirius
goes above the heads of men born to misery
by day only for a while, but takes more of its share of night --
at that time wood cut with iron is less worm-eaten,
the leaves fall to the ground, and it stops sprouting.
At that time, remember to cut wood, the right work for that season.
Carve out a mortar [for pounding corn] three feet wide, a pestle three cubits long,
and an axle eight feet long, for these are the most fitting [dimensions].
If it is eight feet long, you can also cut a mallet [for breaking up clods] from it.
Cut a wheel-rim of three spans for a wagon ten palms wide.
Hew a supply of bent timbers, and bring home a plow-tree when you find it,
hunting for one on the mountain or in the field,
of holm-oak. For that is the stoutest for oxen to plow with,
whenever Athena's slave, having fixed it in the stock of the plow,
has fastened it with bolts to the pole.
Have two plows ready, working on them at home,
one made all in one piece, the other fitted together; it is much better that way.
If you break one, you can hitch the other to the oxen.
Plow-poles of laurel or elm are most worm-free,
the stock should be of oak, the plow-tree of holm-oak. Get two oxen,
males of nine years, whose strength is not weakened,
having their measure of youth; they are best for working.
They will not fight in the furrow and break the plow
apart, leaving the work undone.
Let a vigorous man of forty follow them,
who gets for his dinner a loaf broken in quarters,
and will pay attention to his work and drive a straight furrow,
not gaping after his comrades, but will keep
his mind on his work. No younger man is better
at sowing the seed and avoiding double-sowing.
A younger man is distracted by the thought of his comrades.

Hesiod, Works and Days ll. 414-447.

Quotation for October 2007: Theophrastus on "The Superstitious Man," for Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos

Illustration: Tableau of skeletons on a boat ride in the Gardens of Xochimilco, Mexico City, for El Dia de los Muertos, purchased in Olvera Street, Los Angeles (photo by C.A. Sowa). See pictures of the real Gardens of Xochimilco, below.

Theophrastus' Characters: "You might be a superstitious man if . . ."

Theophrastus (ca. 370 B.C.-285 B.C.) was a respected philosopher and student of Aristotle who wrote works on such topics as botany, winds and weather, logic and metaphysics, rhetoric and politics. But he is best known today for his little book of Characters, descriptions, often very funny, of an array of character types inhabiting the Athens of his day. The work actually fits into a completely serious kind of philosophy, the division into formal categories of vices, virtues, and emotions, as exemplified by Aristotle's own Ethics. But they also belong to the comic genre, and can remind a modern audience of Jeff Foxworthy's jokes that begin "You might be a redneck if . . ."

The little vignettes of the Characters include such traits as Flattery, Idle Chatter, Boorishness, Obsequiousness, Penny-pinching, Bad Timing, Absent-mindedness, Bad Taste, Arrogance, Cowardice, and Authoritarianism. In honor of Halloween and the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, we present Theophrastus' depiction of Superstition.

The superstitious man is the kind who, having washed his hands and sprinkled himself with water from a shrine, puts a sprig of laurel in his mouth and walks around like that all day. And if a weasel runs across his path, he will not proceed before someone else passes between them, or he throws three stones upon the road. If he sees a snake in his house, he invokes Sabazios, but if it is a holy snake, he immediately builds a hero shrine on that spot.

And when he passes by the stones at the crossroads, shining with oil, he pours olive oil from his flask, and falling on his knees and prostrating himself, departs. And if a mouse eats a hole in a sack of barley, he goes to the theologian to ask what he should do, and if the answer is that he should take the sack to the leatherworker to sew up the hole, he pays no attention, but goes off to perform a expiatory ceremony.

And he is wonderfully likely to purify his house frequently, claiming that Hekate has put a spell on it. And if owls hoot as he walks by, he becomes agitated and says "Athena is great!" before he goes on. And he will not walk upon a memorial or visit a corpse or a woman in childbed, but says it is best for him to not become polluted.

And on the fourth and seventh day of the month, he orders his staff to boil wine, then he goes out to buy myrtle, frankincense, and sacrificial cakes; going back inside he puts wreaths on the Hermaphrodite images all day long.

And whenever he has a dream, he goes around to the dream-interpreter, to the seers, to the diviners of birds,to ask, to which god or goddess he should pray. And every month, he goes to the hierophants of the Mysteries of Orpheus to be initiated, along with his wife, and if she has no spare time, he goes with the wet-nurse and the children. And he would seem to be among those who carefully purify themselves with seawater at the beach. And if he ever sees someone at the crossroads wreathed in garlic, he goes and takes a bath from head to toe, and calling priestesses orders that he be completely purified by the sacrifice of a sea-squill or a dog. And if he sees a madman or an epileptic he shudders and spits into his chest.

Illustrations: Postcards of the real Gardens of Xochimilco, with flower-bedecked boats.

Quotation for September 2007: Tacitus on good generals vs. bad emperors, suggested by the war in Iraq

Illustration: "Storming of a Besieged City," from Caesar's Commentaries, ed. Francis W. Kelsey, 1918.

Can good generals serve under bad emperors?

This September, we saw General David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq, defend (mostly) President Bush's position on the Mideast war, as he walked the thin line between honest portrayal of the continuing mayhem and collapse of civil authority in Iraq and his duty (as he saw it) not to undercut his boss's insistence that the war is a "success" and that the U.S. is "marching to victory." Both liberals and conservatives have tended to see General Petraeus as a kind of savior, a competent and realistic military leader who would vindicate their position, either to end the war (liberals) or "win" it (conservatives). Liberals, in particular, have been vocal in their outrage that Petraeus did not flat-out repudiate the president's muddled policy. By seeming to be a tool of the conservatives' propaganda, Petraeus is in danger of joining the list of fallen idols, along with General Colin Powell before him.

The Roman historian and politician Tacitus (55?-after 115 A.D.) struggled with the same issues, as he expressed most poignantly in his biography of his father-in-law Agricola, whose "caving in" to the demands of the Emperor Domitian he defends as indicative of his courteous and practical nature. Tacitus is best known for his Annals and Histories, which chronicled events of the Roman Empire from Augustus to his own time. He was married to the daughter of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, one of Rome's most able generals, under whom the Roman armies pacified most of Britain. (Whether this was a good or a bad thing depends, of course, on one's point of view. Boudicca's brave revolt against Rome had just been put down when Agricola arrived, and Tacitus even has one of the British leaders say "To robbery, killing, and plunder they [the Romans] give the false name of empire; where they make solitude, they call it peace" -- Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.)

The general Agricola and the emperor Domitian

Agricola had the misfortune to be governor of Britain under the Emperor Domitian, famous as one of the most cruel and capricious of Rome's rulers. While some of Domitian's excesses may or may not have been exaggerated (the gossipy Suetonius says that the young emperor spent hours shut up in his room stabbing flies), he was apparently quick to murder enemies, of whom he made many, especially among the senatorial class, whose power he curtailed. He had good reason to fear; he was eventually assassinated by conspirators who included his own wife. Agricola was among those whose popularity he feared, and the general was recalled from Britain. He was in line to be made proconsul of either Africa or Asia, but was persuaded (by not-so-veiled threats) to "request to be excused" so that he could "retire to a life of quiet and leisure." Agricola died in 93 A.D.

Tacitus survived into the more benign reigns of Nerva and Trajan, and gained the honors denied to his father-in-law, becoming proconsul of Asia toward the end of his life. His eulogy of Agricola was written in 98. A translation of a portion of Tacitus' Agricola follows. The phrase "empty boasts of liberty" refers to the nostalgic (and unrealistic, in Tacitus' opinion) desire of some for a return to the long-gone Roman Republic.

The year had now arrived, in which [Agricola] was eligible to obtain by lot the proconsulate of either Africa or Asia, and as Civica had lately been murdered [C. Vetulenus Civica Cerealis, proconsul of Asia, executed by Domitian for treason], Agricola did not lack a warning nor Domitian a precedent. Certain persons approached him, well-acquainted with the deliberations of the Emperor, to ask Agricola, as if on their own initiative, whether he intended to go to the province. At first, hiding their purpose, they praised a life of quiet and leisure, then they offered their help in case he sought approval of a request to be excused, then finally, no longer hiding their purpose, by persuading and at the same time terrifying him, they forced him to come before Domitian. The Emperor, prepared in his hypocrisy and assuming an air of arrogance, listened to his prayers that he might be excused, and when he had granted the request, allowed himself to be thanked, nor did he blush at the ill will contained in such a favor. But he did not give to Agricola the proconsular salary which he himself had granted to some governors, either offended at its not having been requested, or from conscience, lest he be seen to have bought the refusal that he had commanded.

It is human nature to hate the man whom you have injured. But Domitian's nature, hasty to anger and, because it was kept hidden, all the more implacable, was softened nevertheless by Agricola's moderation and prudence, because he did not provoke both fame and fate by stubbornness or by empty boasts of liberty. Let them know, whose habit it is to admire illegal conduct, that it is possible for great men to live under evil emperors, and that obedience and modesty, if joined with industry and vigor, can attain that point of renown, which most men, by following a dangerous career, of no use to the republic but ending in an ostentatious death, have achieved as their glory.

(Tacitus De vita Iulii Agricolae ch. 42)

Illustration: Roman soldiers, with their packs suspended from staffs on their backs, from Caesar's Gallic War, Books I-IV, ed. James B. Greenough, 1904.

Quotation for August 2007: Horace's "Journey to Brundisium" on the Appian Way, part of the ancient Roman "Interstate Highway System"

Illustration: Horace (on the right) with Maecenas (center) and Augustus (seated, on the left). From a wall painting found in the palace of Augustus on the Palatine.

Roman roads connected the Roman world

The tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis has made us aware of the importance of the infrastructure, especially the roads and bridges, that connect the far-flung parts of the United States. The Roman roads, well-engineered and paved, served the same purpose in the Roman Republic and later in the Roman Empire. Like the American Interstate highway system, the Roman roads were originally built for military purposes, designed primarily to move troops efficiently where they were needed. Like the Interstates, they also became conduits of commerce and of the dominant civilization. An unfortunate feature of the Interstate highway system is that a road in California looks just like a road in Pennsylvania or New York, with the same kind of rest stops operated by similar conglomerates. They are disconnected from their local context, but have had the further effect of bringing change and uniformity to the local culture itself.

The Roman roads were, in some ways, more like the old Route 66 (or the even older Lincoln Highway) than the limited-access Interstates, being more intimately tied to their local environment. Accommodations and amenities varied with the location and the temper of the inhabitants. Horace has left us with an account of a two-week journey that he made, perhaps in 37 B.C., from Rome to Brundisium, to attend a meeting between Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus) and Antony, which was also attended by Maecenas, the influential Roman who was the patron of both Horace and Vergil. The story is told in Satires Book 1.5.

Horace's bad trip on the Appian Way

The first part of the journey, which we quote below, was begun along the Appian Way, then continued by canal through the Pontine Marshes. On this Vacation from Hell, voyagers on the mule-drawn boat are kept awake by swamp bugs and the shouting of drunken boatmen, in scenes reminiscent of the old Erie Canal. In later parts of the tale, the travelers suffer various vicissitudes, including a cook nearly burning down the dining room at an inn. Horace makes an ill-fated attempt to have sex with a girl, who fails to show up for their date. Horace falls asleep and awakes with an embarrassing wet dream. (This passage is expurgated from older textbooks!) All eventually arrive, thankfully, at Brundisium. Here, translated from the Latin, are verses 1-24:

Leaving great Rome, Aricia received me
at a modest inn. My companion was Heliodorus
by far the most learned of Greeks. Thence to Forum Appii
crammed with boatmen and malicious hucksters.
This journey we lazily divided in two, for those more highly girded
a one-day trip; the Appian Way is less painful if taken slowly.
There, because of the water, which was terrible, I
declared war on my belly, waiting with little equanimity
for my companions, who were supping. Now night prepared
to draw its shadows across the land and pour forth the constellations about the heavens.
Then slave boys start to argue with boatmen and boatmen with
slave boys: "Land your boat here!" "You've loaded three hundred!" "Hey
that's enough!" While the fare is collected, while the mule is harnessed,
a whole hour goes by. Evil gnats and swamp frogs
keep sleep away, while the drunk worthless boatman
and the mule-driver vie in singing of their
absent girlfriends. At last the driver wearies and begins
to fall asleep, and the indolent boatman ties the
traces of the mule to a rock, letting it graze, and lies there snoring.
It was daylight, when we felt the boat not
moving, until a hotheaded fellow leaped up
and beat the head and loins of both mule and boatman
with a willow cudgel. We barely landed finally at the fourth hour (10 o'clock).

Illustration: a portion of the Appian Way, from Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, 1898.

Quotation for July 2007: Theocritus provides an ancient example of magic, in honor of the Harry Potter movie and book.

(Illustration: An early twentieth century conception of a sorceress burning offerings in a tripod, as a shadowy moon floats above. From The Idylls and Epigrams of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, issued by The Bibliophile Society, 1905.)

Magic, ritual, and religion

This July, the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix opened, with the final volume of J.K. Rowling's epic of the young wizard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, appearing later in the month. Magic was very much a part of the ancient world, and we offer an example of ancient magic by Theocritus, from his Idyll II, known as Pharmakeutria, or The Sorceress.

Magic is generally distinguished from religion, although the rituals practiced by many religions have a magical element to them. Magic comprises the use of spells, drugs, herbs, human and animal body parts, incantations, etc., all of which are supposed to influence events. The influence may be over nature (such as the weather) or human behavior (such as falling in love). Magic has been compared to science, in that the same action is always supposed to produce exactly the same result. Magic may be sympathetic, where one action produces another that is similar, as when herbs are thrown in the fire to make someone "burn" with love, or it may be contagious, where something belonging to the victim of a spell, like a strand of hair or clothing, is used.

In Homer, the great sorceress is Circe, who with her drugs and magic wand, transforms Odysseus' companions into pigs (she later is persuaded to un-pigify them). The god Hermes, also a practitioner of magic, saves Odysseus from the same fate by giving him the herb called "moly." Circe, falling in love with Odysseus, entertains him for a year, at the end of which she gives him the spells to call up the spirits of the dead and visit the Underworld. In myth and tragedy, the most famous sorceress is Medea, who puts her spells at the service of Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece, leading to her ill-starred love affair with the hero of the Argonauts. Thessalian witches were especially known for their ability to draw down the moon from the heavens.

Theocritus, born in Syracuse perhaps around 310 B.C., is known for his Idylls. The word eidullion means "little image" or vignette. These poems, in the Dorian dialect, are mostly on pastoral subjects, and were the model for Vergil's Eclogues. But Idyll II is on an urban subject. A young woman named Simaitha has fallen for a young man, Delphis, whom she has seen walking from the gymnasium, "glistening like the moon." She, sick with love, invites him to her house, where he says he has already loved her from afar. (Liar!) They "Do the Big Thing" (eprachthê ta megista) and she becomes a "non-virgin" (aparthenon). Now he never comes around, and she hears that he has a new love -- perhaps male, perhaps female. She uses magic to try to woo him back (or if that doesn't work, to kill him!).

Simaitha uses both sympathetic and contagious magic. With the help of her maid, Thestylis, she burns bay leaves in the fire to make Delphis burn with love, but she also adds a piece of fringe from his cloak. She pours libations and utters spells. She turns a magic wheel (called an iugx, after the bird (the wryneck) that witches traditionally bound to the wheel) to draw Delphis to her, providing the refrain of the poem: "Iugx, draw thou that man to my house" (iugx, helke tu tênon emon poti dôma ton andra). In the middle section of the poem, where Simaitha recounts her sad story, she uses another refrain, addressed to Selene, the Moon, "Tell me whence my love came, Lady Selene" (phrazeo meu ton erôth' hothen hiketo, potna Selana). Here are selections from the opening and closing verses of the poem:

Verses 1-42 (Beginning: she will spellbind him)

Where are my bay leaves? Come, Thestylis, where are my love charms?
Crown the bowl with the finest crimson sheeps' wool
so that I may compel with my sacrifices the cruel dear man
who, the wretch, has not come here for twelve days,
nor does he know whether I am dead or alive,
nor, strange man, has he knocked on my door.
Indeed Love and Aphrodite have left, taking his swift thoughts with them.
I shall go to Timagetus' wrestling school
tomorrow, so that I can see him and blame him for how he treats me.
But for now I will bind him with offerings. So, Selene,
shine beautifully. To you I shall sing, gentle spirit,
and for chthonian Hekate, before whom dogs tremble
as she walks among the tombs of the dead and the black blood.
Hail, frightful Hekate, accompany me
as I make a medicine no less potent than that of Circe
or of Medea or golden-haired Perimede.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Barley is consumed first in the fire. Come, sprinkle it,
Thestylis. Foolish girl, where have your wits flown?
Have I become for you abominable and an object of scorn?
Sprinkle it, saying "I sprinkle the bones of Delphis."

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Delphis has caused me grief; so I against Delphis burn
the bay leaves. And as the bay crackles, bursting suddenly
into flame and burning up, so that we see not even the ash,
so let it waste away Delphis' flesh in its fires.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

As I melt this puppet with the help of the deity,
may Myndian Delphis melt with love.
and as the bronze wheel spins by the power of Aphrodite,
may he spin around towards my door.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Now I sacrifice the bran. But you, Artemis, can move
the adamant in Hades and all else that is immovable.
Thestylis! For us the dogs are howling about the city!
The Goddess is at the crossroads. Quickly sound the bronze cymbals!

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

Lo, the sea is still, and the winds are still
but the grief in my heart is not still.
For him I am all on fire, who made poor me
instead of a wife, into a bad girl and a non-virgin.

Iugx, draw thou that man to my house.

. . .

Verses 159-166 (Conclusion: but if that doesn't work, she'll kill him! Or not.)

. . .

Now with these love-charms I will spellbind him. But if he
causes me pain, then by the Fates he will knock on the gates of Hades.
For I tell you I keep such evil drugs in a basket,
Mistress Moon, having learned their use from an Assyrian stranger.
But fare thee well, and turn your team toward the Ocean,
Lady. I shall bear my longing as I have promised.
Farewell, Selene of the shining face, and farewell all the other
stars that follow the chariot of the carefree Night.

(Illustration: from The Idylls and Epigrams of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, issued by The Bibliophile Society, 1905.)

Quotation for June 2007: A team of mules wins the Olympic contest, providing a mythic journey in Pindar's victory ode

(Illustration: a procession, with horse chariot, from a vase painting. Lithograph by de Bineteau, ca. 1840.)

A filly wins the Belmont

The filly, Rags to Riches, won the Belmont Stakes on June 9, 2007, the first female horse to win this race since 1905. We celebrate this event with a passage from Pindar's Sixth Olympian Ode, composed for the winning team, apparently female, in a mule race.

The Greeks raced both horses and mules. Pindar's Sixth Olympian celebrates the victory of a mule chariot owned by Hagesias of Syracuse, probably in 472 B.C. The poet asks the victorious mules to take him on a mythical time-journey to the ancestors of the winner. The mules would appear to be female. While the word for mule, hêmionos (literally "half-ass"!) can be either male or female, grammatically feminine words are used to describe them (keinai gar ex allân "they above all others").

Employing his usual verbal alchemy, Pindar takes us from the sweaty physical environment of the athletic contest into a magical world of gods and goddesses, of enchanted meadows and helpful snakes. The mules themselves, strong and dependable, become mythic animals, leading us on the path of song. We meet the nymph Pitane, beloved of Poseidon, who gives birth to Evadne, then we learn of Evadne herself, loved by Apollo, who amid colors of silver, dark blue, yellow, and violet, bears Iamos ("Violet"), who becomes progenitor of the Iamidai, a clan of seers, from whom Hagesias is ultimately descended. And so, as usual in Pindar, a long and enchanting road brings us back, once again to Hagesias, Olympia, and the victory celebration.

. . . O Phintis, now yoke for me the strength of the mules
Quickly, that we may set our chariot upon the clear and open road,
And I may arrive at the origins of our heroes.
For they, above all others, know how to lead us upon that path,
having won the crown at Olympia.
Now we must throw wide for them the gates of song.
For we must betake ourselves on time to Pitane beside the ford of Eurotas, this very day --

Pitane, who mingling in love with Poseidon, son of Kronos, is said
to have given birth to the child Evadne, of the violet tresses,
hiding her maidenly birth-pangs in her bosom's folds.
In the ordained month, she sent her attendants to give the babe
into the care of the hero son of Eilatus,
who ruled over the Arcadians at Phaisane,
and was allotted his home on the Alpheus.
Raised there, the girl [Evadne] first enjoyed with Apollo sweet Aphrodite's gifts . . .

. . . Laying down her purple-woven girdle
and her silver pitcher, in a dark blue thicket
she [Evadne] bore a boy whose mind was god-inspired.
Golden-haired Apollo sent to her Eileithuia [goddess of childbirth] of gentle counsel, and the Fates.

There came from her womb, through sweet pangs, Iamos,
immediately into the light. In pain,
she left him on the ground. Two grey-eyed serpents,
by the decision of the gods, nourished him with blameless
venom -- the honey of bees. . .

. . . He was hidden among the rushes in the impenetrable thicket,
his delicate body bathed in the light of yellow and deep-purple
violets [ion]; whence his mother declared that he would be known for all time
by that immortal name [Iamos]. . .

Pindar, Olympian Ode VI vv. 22-57

Quotation for May 2007: Hermes, son of Maia, steals Apollo's cattle and plays other tricks (from the Homeric Hymn to Hermes)

Hermes steals Apollo's cattle, on a Caeretan hydria in the Louvre. Photo by R. Schoder, S.J., as reproduced in C.A. Sowa, Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns, Bolchazy-Carducci, 1984.

A trickster god sends a storm

The quotation for May is unusually late, due to the fact that some trickster god visited a severe storm on our part of Westchester County, downing trees, power lines, and phone lines, as well as gutters, siding, and roof shingles. Evangelical preachers like Jerry Falwell think that disasters like the 9/11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina are signs of God's wrath at a decadent society, doubtless relying on Old Testament parallels, but Homer and Odysseus could tell you that violent storms, lightning strikes, earthquakes, and famines are caused by the anger and feuding of such gods and goddesses as Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Demeter. This month's quotation is about a trickster god, Hermes, who was also a god of invention and messenger of the gods. It tells of his birth as son of the goddess Maia, "May."

Ovid's three explanations for the name of the month of May

Ovid, in his Fasti (Bk. V vv.1-110), provides three explanations of the name of the month of May. He asks the Muses for their opinion, and three of them give differing explanations (a sort of quirky Judgment of Paris, but here the contest is not to judge who is most beautiful, but who has the best information). Polyhymnia's tale connects the name to that of Maiestas, the goddess of Majesty. Urania disagrees, saying that the name derives from the reverence paid to the maiores, or elders. Calliope traces the name to that of Maia, one of the Pleiades, daughters of Pleione and Atlas, who became the mother of "him who hastens his journey through the air on winged foot" (i.e. Mercury, the Greek Hermes). Actually, they are all right, in a sense. The Roman goddess Maia, also called Maiesta, was a nature divinity associated with the god Volcanus; the name comes from the same root, meaning "growth" or "increase," as magnus, maior, maiestas, etc. Her name became confused with that of the Greek Maia (whose name may simply mean "mother" or "nurse"), the mother of Hermes, about whom the well-known myths are told, as in the Homeric Hymn IV to Hermes.

Hermes' exciting first day of life

The Hymn to Hermes begins with the god's birth as son of Maia and Zeus, and proceeds to the god's earliest exploits, on the day that he was born. A true Wunderkind, "Born at dawn, he played the lyre at noon, / and at evening stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo." Both trickster and inventor, like Prometheus or the American Indian Coyote, he "makes the tortoise a singer" by turning her shell into a lyre. He steals his half-brother Apollo's cattle by driving them backwards and disguising his own footprints with wicker sandals, to conceal their true direction. Apollo finds out, of course, but the brothers are reconciled at the end, when Hermes hands over the lyre to Apollo to be his instrument. Ever resourceful, Hermes invents a new instrument for himself, the Pan-pipes. Here are the opening lines of the Hymn.

Sing, Muse, of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia,
guardian of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,
the luck-bringing messenger of the immortals, whom Maia bore,
the beautiful-haired nymph, mingling in love with Zeus,
-- a shy maiden, she avoided the crowd of immortal gods,
living in a shady cave, where the son of Cronus
would lie with the beautiful-haired nymph in deepest night,
while sweet sleep held Hera of the white forearms,
and he hid from immortal gods and mortal men.
But when the intention of great Zeus was fulfilled,
and her tenth month was fixed in the heavens,
a babe was delivered into the light and noteworthy things happened.
She bore a son of many wiles, of cunning flattery,
a robber, a driver of cattle, a bringer of dreams,
a spy at night, a watcher at the door, who would soon
exhibit famous deeds among the immortal gods.
Born at dawn, he played the lyre at noon,
and at evening stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo
on the fourth day of the month, on which lady Maia bore him.

Homeric Hymn IV to Hermes vv. 1-19.

Quotation for April 2007: Daphne turns into a laurel tree in Ovid's Metamorphoses, for Arbor Day

There is a solemnity, a repose about the great trees, and the restless, ceaseless stirring of the small ones is full of mystery. So self-evident are they, so close at hand that we almost find ourselves in danger of becoming oblivious to their presence. They never intrude upon the attention; they rather pursue indomitably their own way. As landmarks of history many trees have been revered; traditions and superstitions have clustered about them while in mute eloquence they have answered the people's expectations. In England, to-day, there are oaks standing that knew the ground before its conquest by the Romans. Nothing is grander than are trees. Nothing gives of its best more freely to man. And to each one there is an individuality which having once been observed may be traced into the folk-lore of nations.

(from Alice Lounsberry, A Guide to the Trees, 1900)

Illustration: The Vale of Tempe, in Thessaly, northern Greece, frequented by Apollo and the Muses, home of Daphne, the nymph who became a laurel tree, as depicted in an old postcard.

Arbor Day, which has been celebrated since 1872, is devoted to the planting and nurturing of trees. National Arbor Day occurs on the last Friday in April, which this year falls on April 27. Not only does it promote the growing of trees for their usefulness -- to provide shade and windbreaks, to hold the soil, for fuel and building materials, as aesthetic design elements -- but like Earth Day (April 22, founded in 1970), it promotes awareness of the need to preserve the environment, and like Easter and Passover, it has the symbolic meaning of the resurgence of life over forces that would diminish it.

Daphne, fleeing Apollo, is turned into a laurel tree

Our quotation again comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which last month's story of how old King Kadmos and his wife, Harmonia, were transformed into benevolent snakes, also came. It tells the story of Daphne, the nymph beloved by Apollo, who was turned, in answer to her prayer, into a laurel tree.

Apollo and Cupid fell into an argument when Apollo saw the boy Cupid wielding a bow and arrow, which are more properly "a man's weapons." Cupid, in anger, shoots Apollo with an arrow that makes him fall in love, but shoots an arrow that makes the recipient reject love into Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, deity of the river that flows through the Vale of Tempe, a wild gorge in Thessaly. His speed outdoes her ability to flee, and she prays to her river god father to change her shape, whereupon she becomes a laurel tree. He still loves her, and promises to wear her leaves as his crown.

Since Ovid is Roman, although telling a Greek story, he has Apollo foretell that her leaves will also be worn by Roman generals, and that the laurel tree will guard the house of Augustus! As a matter of fact, two laurel trees actually stood on either side of the doors of Augustus' palace. In the quotation below, Apollo is also called by two of his other names, "Phoebus" and "Paean."

. . .
Just as the Gallic greyhound sees a hare in an empty field,
and with his paws pursues his prey, while it seeks safety,
(the one, seeming to close in, hopes that now! now!
he has made the catch, and grazes the foot-soles with extended snout,
while the other is uncertain whether it is already caught,
and snatches itself from the very bite, escaping the muzzle that touches it)
-- just so are the god and the maiden: he made swift by hope, she by fear.
But he who follows, aided by the wings of love,
is swifter, and denies her rest, hanging over the back of the fleeing maid
and breathing on the hair spread about her neck.
With her strength used up, she grew pale,
and, overcome by the labor of her rapid flight, looking upon Peneus' waves,
"Father," she said, "Help me. If rivers have divine powers,
change me, make me lose this beauty that made me too desirable!"

Scarcely is her prayer finished, than a heavy torpor occupies her limbs,
and her breast is encircled by thin bark.
Her hair grows into foliage, her arms into branches;
her foot, lately so swift, is stuck in sluggish roots.
The tree-canopy covers her face; only her radiant beauty remains.

Even like this, Phoebus loves her; with his right hand on her trunk
he feels her heart still beat beneath the new bark,
and, embracing with his arms her branches as if they were her limbs,
he kisses the wood. But the wood shrinks from his kisses.
To her the god says, "Since you cannot be my wife,
you will be my tree. My hair will always be garlanded with you,
so will my lyre, and my quiver, o laurel.
You will accompany the Roman generals, when the joyful voices
proclaim the triumph and the Capitol beholds the long processions.
At the doorposts of Augustus you will stand before the gates
as a faithful guardian, and you will watch over the oak-wreath that adorns them.
And just as my head is always young with its uncut hair,
may you also bear the honor of perpetual leaves."

Paean had finished; the laurel nodded with her newly made branches,
and her tree-canopy, like a head, seemed to move in assent.
. . .

Ovid, Metamorphoses I.533-567.

Leaves of the white oak, from A Guide to the Trees by Alice Lounsberry, illustration by Mrs. Ellis Rowan, 1900.

Quotation for March 2007: some friendly snakes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, for St. Patrick's Day and the beginning of Spring

The constellation Ophiouchus ("The Serpent Bearer"), sometimes identified with the god Asclepius. Illustration: detail from Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, 1856.

Snakes in the woods and in myth

It is spring, and all sorts of living things are stirring in the trees and grass: birds, insects, mammals large and small, and in most places -- except Ireland -- snakes.

St. Patrick is supposed to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. However, according to the National Zoo Web site, Ireland (along with New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and Anarctica) never had snakes to begin with. These places were either under water or surrounded by water at the time snakes were developing in other parts of the world, and the myth of St. Patrick has more to do with symbolism associating snakes with paganism, which Patrick also set out to subdue.

In non-Christian civilizations, including the Classical lands of Greece, Rome and also Egypt, snakes were venerated, especially as chthonian (underground) spirits, sometimes portrayed as malevolent dragons, but often as bringers of health and renewal. Snakes "renew" themselves by shedding their skin, and rising from underground, represent restoration from death. Athena wore the protective vest called the aegis, made from goatskin (Greek aix, aigos "goat") trimmed with an edging of snakes. Snakes are associated with Asclepius, the god of healing, who was sometimes represented by a sacred snake. The herald's staff entwined with snakes (Latin caduceus, Greek kerykion) was an attribute of Hermes (Mercury), the snakes having developed out of an earlier representation of shoots of foliage. Asclepius also bears a snake-wrapped staff, and the caduceus has become the recognized symbol of medicine.

Kadmos, founder of Thebes, and his wife Harmonia (daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, that is, "War" and "Love") in old age were turned into snakes. Kadmos, son of Agenor, king of Tyre, was sent, when young, to search for his sister Europa, abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull. Arriving in Greece, he was told by the Delphic Oracle to follow a cow and found a city where it lay down. In Boeotia (the name suggests bous, "cow"), he founded a settlement. He killed the dragon guarding a spring and sowed its teeth, from which sprang up warriors, most of whom killed each other off. The remaining five became the founding nobility of the city of Thebes. Kadmos married Harmonia and gave birth to an ill-starred family. Their daughter Semele became mother of the god Dionysos by Zeus's lethal thunderbolt, a story told in the February Quotation of the Month, which remains below. Their daughter Agave, driven mad by Dionysos as a result of his mistreatment by her son, King Pentheus, killed her son, thinking that he was a lion (also told below). Their daughter Ino, also driven mad (in another long story involving the Golden Fleece), leaped off a cliff into the sea, together with her son Melicertes. Ino and Melicertes were both turned into sea-gods (Leucothea and Palaemon). Kadmos, long since retired as king, and Harmonia, leave Thebes, and feeling guilt at having started it all by killing the dragon, are themselves turned into snakes. Ovid's telling of this story is the Quotation of the Month.

Cadmus and Harmonia in old age become benevolent snakes

Our quotation comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses (tales of people who turned into other things -- animals, flowers, trees, etc.). His telling of the story of Cadmus (Greek Kadmos) and Harmonia, turning, at the end of their long and honored lives, into snakes, shows Ovid's characteristic combination of the silly and the poignant:

The son of Agenor did not know that his daughter and little grandson
were sea gods. Overcome by grief, by a long series of misfortunes,
and by the many signs and prodigies that he saw,
the founder left his city, as if the fortune of the place,
and not his own, oppressed him, and after long wanderings
he reached the borders of Illyria, his wife fleeing with him.
Weighed down with age and misfortunes, they consider
and go over the original fate of their house:
"Could it be that the serpent pierced by my spear was sacred"
said Cadmus, "when, having set out from Sidon,
I sowed the viper's teeth upon the earth, a new seed?
If this is what the gods care to avenge with such sure anger,
may I, I pray, as a snake, be stretched out upon my long belly."

He finished speaking, and as a snake, was extended upon his long belly.
He felt scales grow on his hardened skin
and his black body become variegated with blue spots.
He fell forward on his breast, and his legs, fused together,
little by little were attentuated into a smooth point.
His arms still remained; his remaining arms he stretched out,
and, tears flowing from his still human face,
"Come here, my wife, come, miserable one!" he said,
"While something is left of me, touch me,
take my hand, while it is a hand, while a snake does not take up all of me!"
He wanted to say more, but his tongue suddenly
was split in two, nor, as he spoke, did words
avail him, and every time he contrived to utter a complaint,
he hissed; this is the voice that Nature left him.

Striking her naked breast with her hand, his wife cried out,
"Cadmus, stay, unhappy one, and tear yourself from this monstrosity!
Cadmus, what is this? Where is your foot? Where are your shoulders and hands
and your color and appearance, and, as I speak, everything?
Why do you gods not change me into a snake as well?"
She finished speaking. He licked his wife's face
and slid between her dear breasts, as if she would recognize him there,
and embraced her, seeking the well-known neck.
Those who were present (their companions were there) were terrified,
but she stroked the slippery neck of the crested serpent,
and suddenly there were two snakes, and with intertwining folds they slid,
until they sought the refuge of the nearby woods.
Now, too, they neither flee from human beings nor wound them,
peaceful serpents, remembering what they once were.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.563-603)

And so they slither off into the grass, just a pair of old snakes, guardians of the garden . . .

Cadmus slaying the dragon, in a vase painting. (From Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890).

Quotation for February 2007, from Euripides' Bacchae, for Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras and Dionysos

New Orleans' spirit is embodied in its Mardi Gras. While New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are STILL not repaired or rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina (shame, shame, shame of a nation!), those who regard the city as a national treasure can continue to send support and cheer as the Saints ALMOST make it to the SuperBowl and Mardi Gras continues to express the city's unquenchable spirit of music and joy.

The rites of Dionysos (or Bacchus) are an ancient analog of Mardi Gras. The illustration above shows a Bacchic parade, with a satyr playing the double flute and participants flourishing the thyrsus, a staff wound with ivy and vines and topped with a pine cone.

The quotation this month is from Euripides' Bacchae. The chorus of Bacchantes, or women acolytes of Dionysos, sing of the joys of their rites of dance and song. They are depicted as having followed him from Mount Tmolus in Lydia to Thebes in Greece, where the play takes place.

Religion of ecstasy and emotion

Dionysos was a god of ecstatic and emotional religion, different from the more stately cults of other Greek gods. The word "ecstasy" (ekstasis) means "a standing apart," or being "beside oneself." It refers to a trance state, which may be reached by wild dancing or by madness, in which one may actually become unconscious or see visions. The cult appealed to both sexes, but particularly to women. Its female votaries, or Bacchantes, were also called "Maenads" (Mainades or "madwomen"). The origins of Dionysos are unknown, but the cult may have come originally from Thrace, via Macedonia, to the north of Greece. His other name, Baccchus, on the other hand, is Lydian. In Euripides, we find him associated with the cult of Cybele, the Anatolian Great Mother goddess. The god was believed to be able to change his appearance, sometimes to that of a wild animal. Masks were sometimes worn by the dancers, though these were apparently human masks. Dionysos was also the god of wine, but that is only part of the story. Great festivals of Dionysos, eventually "domesticated" and civilized, became part of the fabric of classical Greece, and were the origin of the great Athenian comedy and tragedy, the most important celebration being the Great Dionysia, in early spring. Euripides' Bacchae would have been produced at one of these festivals.

The Bacchae and a more primitive religion

The Bacchae (written after a visit by Euripides to King Archelaos of Macedonia), reveals the savage dark side of the Dionysiac religion. Dionysos is the son of Semele, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes, by Zeus, who came to Semele in the form of a thunderbolt, which both impregnated and killed her. King Pentheus, son of Agave, another daughter of Cadmus, now rules Thebes (Cadmus is now retired). Pentheus, along with Cadmus' other daughters, Ino and Autonoe, have been disrespecting Dionysos, casting doubt on his divinity and attempting to jail his followers, who are dancing in the mountains. Dionysos takes revenge by driving the Theban women mad, and persuading Pentheus to go to the mountains to spy on them. His mother, Agave, tears him apart, thinking that he is a lion. The episode in which Agave realizes that she has killed her own son is one of the great tragic scenes.

Song of the Bacchantes

Coming from the Asian land,
leaving sacred Tmolus, I hasten to perform
the sweet labor of the Roaring One,
the toil that is not toilsome,
shouting in honor of Bacchus.
Who is in the way? Who is in the way? Who?
Indoors, too, let all stand aside,
and let each, pure of mouth, speak propitiously.
For it is in the customary way that
I shall always celebrate Dionysos.

O blessed, who favored by fortune,
knowing the mystery rites of the gods,
keeps his life pure and
merges his soul into the Bacchic revel,
and reverencing the rites
of the Great Mother Cybele,
while shaking the thyrsus
and crowned with ivy,
serves Dionysos.

. . .

O go forth, Bacchantes,
go forth, Bacchantes,
with the glitter of gold-bearing Tmolus
sing of Dionysos
accompanied by loud-roaring drums,
with "hurrah's" glorifying the "God of Hurrahs"
in Phrygian cries and shouts,
when the holy melodious flute
sounds its holy playful noise, suited
to those roaming madly to the mountain, to the mountain!
Happily, then, like a foal
with its mother in the pasture,
the Bacchante, with her leaping, moves her swift-footed limbs.

(-Euripides, Bacchae vv. 64-167)

Quotations for January 2007, from Ovid: Janus opens the year

Janus is a very old and weird Italian god. Divinity of beginnings and entrances, he is depicted with two faces, facing forwards and backwards. The name is related to ianua "door," and probably to ire "to go." He had a temple in the Forum, which served as a ceremonial gate, with two opposite entrances, which were open in time of war, shut in time of peace. The month of January is his month.

Ovid, in his Fasti or Year's Calendar, of course begins with January. The poet is musing on Janus and his strange form, when Janus himself appears, terrifying Ovid:

But what god am I to say you are, biform Janus?
For Greece has no god like you.
Tell me the reason, why alone among the celestial gods,
you see both what is behind your back and what is in front?
While I was turning this around in my mind, tablets in hand,
the house seemed to become brighter than it was before.
Then sacred Janus, astonishing in his two-headed form,
suddenly presented his double face to my eyes.
I was terrified, and I felt my hair stiffen with fear.

(-Ovid, Fasti I.89-97)

But Janus tells Ovid not to be afraid, and in fact turns out to be quite the comic as he takes Ovid around and explains various rites and customs to him.

Among other anecdotes, Janus tells how Saturn, hiding from Jupiter, was received into Italy in Janus' reign, a story that we presented for December as Vergil retells it in the Aeneid (we have left December's selection below). Janus (or rather, Ovid!) tells pretty much the same story of Saturn's utopian age as Vergil, but with a cheerful cynicism that sets it apart from Vergil's earnest official version. ("Why, even in Saturn's reign I scarcely saw a man who did not love sweet lucre!")

Times change, Janus says, but on the subject of the new, fancy gold coinage, he makes the wisecrack that his own biform visage on an old simple copper coin is almost unrecognizable with age. The old coin also depicts the arrival of Saturn.

. . . He concluded his admonitions. With calm speech, as before,
I addressed the god who bears the key:
"I have learned many things, indeed, but why is the figure of a ship
stamped on one side of the copper coin, and a two-headed figure on the other?"
"You could have recognized me in the double image," he said,
"if age had not blurred the workmanship.
That leaves the reason for the boat. By boat the sickle-bearing god [Saturn]
arrived at the Tuscan river, after roaming the globe.
I remember how Saturn was received in this land;
he had been driven by Jupiter from the celestial realms.
From that time, the name "Saturnian" remained long as the people's name.
The land was also called "Latium" from the god's lying hidden [latente].
But an honorable posterity pictured a ship on the copper coin,
commemorating the arrival of the god as their guest.
I myself inhabited the ground whose left side is brushed
by the placid wave of sandy Tiber.
Here, where now Rome is, uncut woods stood green,
and all this land was pasture for a few cattle.
My citadel was this hill, which in common parlance
the present age calls by my name, the Janiculum.
I reigned at the time when earth could suffer gods,
and divinities intermingled in human abodes.
The crimes of mortals had not yet put Justice to flight
(she was the last of the celestials to leave the earth) . . ."

(-Ovid, Fasti I.227-246)

Quotations for December 2006, from Catullus and Vergil, for the Saturnalia

The remains of Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, view from the Capitoline Hill. The Temple of Castor and Pollux (three remaining columns) is on the right. (From an old postcard.)

Saturn, the ancient and mysterious god

The Saturnalia, one of the precursors of Christmas, was celebrated at Rome on December 17, in honor of the god Saturn. It was known for great jollity. Slaves were treated as equals of their masters, and gifts were exchanged, especially little pottery figurines called sigillaria.

Saturn was a very ancient god, whose origins are clouded in enigma. One theory connects his name with the Latin satus "sowing," on the assumption that his festival celebrates the end of the fall planting. There was a Roman belief that Saturn was a Greek import (identified with Kronos). He was believed to have come to Latium in the reign of the god Janus, fleeing from the wrath of Jupiter, and that he brought agriculture and civilization to the Latins, who afterwards worshipped him as a god. Another theory holds that Saturn was of Etruscan origin. The temple of Saturn, located at the western end of the Forum, just below the Capitol, was one of the most ancient temples in the Forum, although the temple whose columns we see today is late, perhaps built after the fire of 284 A.D. (see the illustrations at the top and bottom of this entry).

The Golden Age

In Vergil's Aeneid, King Evander, himself an exile from Arcadia, shows Aeneas, just arrived in Italy from Troy, the future site of Rome. (Evander's own settlement is called Pallanteum, which Vergil manages to connect with the name of the Palatine Hill.) Evander describes the arrival of Saturn, whose reign was the mythic Golden Age:

Then King Evander, founder of the Roman citadel, spoke:
"The indigenous Fauns and Nymphs inhabited these woods,
and a race of men born from the trunks of the hardy oak.
They had no customs, no civilization; they did not know
how to yoke oxen or acquire wealth or save what they produced,
but the fruit of trees and the difficult livelihood of hunting nourished them.
It was Saturn who first came from heavenly Olympus,
fleeing the weapons of Jupiter, an exile who had lost his kingdom.
He united this race, untutored and dispersed among the high mountains,
gave them laws, and chose that the place be called Latium,
because it was on these shores that he had safely lain hidden [latuisset].
"Golden" is the name given to the age in which he ruled.
Thus he reigned in placid peace,
until, little by little, an inferior age of another color,
and the madness of war and greed for possessions succeeded it. . ."

(Vergil, Aeneid 8.312-327)

The Roman Forum, another view, looking toward the Capitoline Hill, with the columns of the Temple of Saturn in the middle, toward the back. The columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux are on the left. (From an old postcard, before 1907).

Quotation for November 2006, from Horace, for Veterans' Day

Roman soldiers, illustrations from Caesars' Commentaries, ed. Francis W. Kelsey, 1918.

This month's quotation is an ode on courage and patriotism by the Roman poet Horace (65-8 B.C.). It is appropriate for Veterans' Day (November 11), when we honor the soldiers of our country, past and present. The most famous words of the ode, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country") are inscribed over the west entrance to the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery.

Angustam amice pauperiem pati robustus acri militia puer condiscat et Parthos ferocis vexet eques metuendus hasta vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat in rebus. illum ex moenibus hosticis matrona bellantis tyranni prospiciens et adulta virgo suspiret: "eheu, ne rudis agminum sponsus lacessat regius asperum tactu leonem, quem cruenta per medias rapit ira caedes." dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, mors et fugacem persequitur virum, nec parcit imbellis iuventae poplitibus timodove tergo. Virtus, repulsae nescia sordidae, intaminatis fulget honoribus, nec sumit aut ponit secures arbitrio popularis aurae. Virtus, recludens immeritis mori caelum, negata temptat iter via, coetusque vulgares et udam spernit humum fugiente pinna. est et fideli tuta silentio merces: vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum volgarit arcanae, sub isdem sit trabibus fragilemque mecum solvat phaselon; saepe Diespiter neglectus incesto addidit integrum, raro antecedentem scelestum deseruit pede Poena claudo.

Let the youth, hardened by stern military service, learn willingly to endure the straits of deprivation and let him, as a horseman feared for his lance, harass the fierce Parthians, and may he live his life beneath the open sky in perilous situations. Looking out at him from the enemy battlements, the lady consort of the warring tyrant and the grown maiden might sigh, "Alas, let not our royal bridegroom, inexperienced in the movements of the army provoke the lion, fierce to the touch, whom rage for blood propels through the midst of the slaughter." It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country, but death also pursues the man who flees, nor does it spare the knees and timid backs of unwarlike youths. Virtue, unknowing of sordid defeat, gleams with unsullied [public] honors and neither assumes nor sets aside the [official's] axes according to the breezes of popular opinion. Virtue, opening the heavens for those who do not deserve to die, makes its way by a path denied to others, spurning the vulgar crowd and the damp earth on fleeting wing. There is a sure reward for faithful silence, too. I shall forbid the man who has divulged the rites of arcane Ceres to abide beneath the same roof or unmoor a fragile boat with me. Often Jupiter, when offended, has involved the innocent with the guilty, but rarely does Punishment desert the scoundrel, though he has a head start, and she proceeds with halting gait. (- Horace, Odes, III.2)

The grave of my ancestor Silas Angier (1737-1808), Revolutionary War veteran, in the cemetery in Fitzwilliam, NH. The gravestone is modern, probably replacing an original stone, now vanished. Some of his other descendants are in the background. (Photo by C.A. Sowa.)

Quotation for October, 2006: the rainy stars of the Hyades in autumn, from Hesiod's Works and Days

The constellations of Orion and Taurus, showing the Hyades and Pleiades in the head and shoulders of the bull, detail from Burritt's Geography of the Heavens, 1856.

This month's quotation is from Hesiod's advice to farmers in the Works and Days, suggested by a stretch of soggy, rainy weather that has beset the Northeast following a blazingly clear Columbus Day weekend.

The Pleiades and Hyades are star clusters in the constellation Taurus. Their setting in late October or early November were seen as signs of rain. In mythology, the seven Pleiades and five Hyades (actually, there are many more, but most are not visible without a telescope) were nymphs, daughters of Atlas. The Hyades were portrayed as the nurses of Dionysos, or in another myth, as the brothers of Hyas, who was killed while hunting, and who cried themselves to death. The name "Hyades" probably comes from the Greek verb huo "to rain" (though the Romans thought it came from the (also Greek) hus "pig," translating the name as suculae "the Piglets.") The name "Pleiades" may be related to the verb pleo "to sail," though Hesiod's advice indicates that the Pleiades at this time herald anything but good sailing. In the Mediterranean lands, as in the American Southwest, the rainy season (and thus the growing season) begins in November and extends into the springtime.

When the Pleaides and Hyades and strong Orion
begin to set, then be mindful of ploughing
in good season. Then the year's work is put away beneath the earth.

But if a desire for stormy seafaring seizes you,
when the Pleaides, fleeing strong mighty Orion,
plunge into the misty sea,
then blasts of all kinds of winds rage.
And then you should no longer have ships on the wine-dark sea,
but remember to work the earth, as I bid you.

"Rocks of the Strophades," engraving from H.W. Williams, Select Views in Greece, 1827.

Quotation for September, 2006: The god Pluto, his planet, and his dog

Statue of the god Hades (Pluto) with his dog Cerberus, in the Villa Borghese, in an illustration from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890. In this depiction, Cerberus has only one head, not his usual three (contrast the illustration below).

Astronomers, with more snobbery than common sense, have decided that the ninth planet, Pluto, is not a planet at all, but something called a "dwarf planet." Now it seems that, since a person like the actor Peter Dinklage, who is a dwarf (and who was great in "The Station Agent") is very much a person, a dwarf planet is still a planet. Pluto is round and orbits the sun, which fits the description of a planet. It has a weird orbit, and if we want to be politically correct, perhaps we should call it a "differently abled planet," or a "special planet." In fact, several other "dwarf planets" have been identified. Let diversity reign. Astrology (which admittedly is more folklore than science) tells us that Pluto is important to the horoscopes of people born under the sign of Scorpio. I, as a Scorpio, therefore take the situation very personally. In any case, despite some hysteria from fans of Pluto, Pluto has not died. Like the Disney bloodhound of the same name, it still faithfully patrols the outer reaches of the solar system.

Pluto the planet was discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, and was named for the Greek god Pluto. The name was given by Venetia Phair, who was then an 11- year-old Oxford schoolgirl. Ms. Phair (née Burney), now 87, still lives in Surrey, England. Her great uncle Henry Madan, as it happens, gave names to Phobos and Deimos ("Fear and Terror"), the moons of Mars, the planet named for the god of War. Pluto, Mickey Mouse's dog, was named for the planet, not the other way around. The dog motif is appropriate (see below).

Pluto is the god of the Underworld, also known as Hades (in Greek mythology, Hades is the name of the god, not the Underworld itself, which is denoted by the possessive Haidou, "Hades' [place]"). He is the brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Demeter. He is famous for kidnapping Persephone, daughter of Demeter, to be his consort in the Underworld. The name Pluto (Plouton) probably comes from the word ploutos "wealth," and is sometimes explained as "giver of wealth," for the precious metals and crops that originate beneath the earth. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Prometheus, chained to a rock by Zeus for giving fire to man, is visited by the maiden Io, as she races past him. Io, a girlfriend of Zeus, has been turned by him into a cow and is pestered by a gadfly, courtesy of Hera, Zeus's jealous wife. Prometheus foretells to Io her future wanderings, including the following warning:

. . . [Beware of] the one-eyed army of the
Arimaspians, who ride on horses, and who live by the gold-flowing
stream of Pluto . . .

(- Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound lines 104-106)

But Plato, in his Cratylus, in which he proposes many etymologies, some perhaps correct, some incorrect, thought it likely to be an apotropaic ("turning away [evil]") name, used to avoid uttering the real name of an abhorred entity. In the same way, many European languages (including English) call the bear by some name ("bear," "bruin") that means "the brown one," instead of the Indo-European word for the animal, which is preserved in the Greek arktos (a word that survives in the English "Arctic," for the constellation of the Great Bear). Actually, if the name Hades means "the Unseen One" or "He who Makes Invisible," this name too could be a way to avoid saying the name of Death, or Thanatos.

. . . Pluto gives wealth (ploutos), and his name means the giver of wealth, which comes out of the earth beneath. People in general appear to imagine that the term Hades is connected with the invisible (aeides); and so they are led by their fears to call the God Pluto instead.

(- Plato, Cratylus 403a, Jowett translation)

Pluto's mascot is Cerberus, the fierce dog usually depicted with three heads (Hesiod, in the Theogony, gives him fifty heads!) Cerberus was friendly to all who entered the Underworld, but attacked and bit anyone attempting to leave. Heracles, as one of his Twelve Labors, brought Cerberus up from the Underworld, as illustrated by the vase painting shown below. Our last quotation is from Euripides' Alcestis. Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, is fated to die, but the god Apollo makes a deal with Death (Thanatos) that Admetus can live if he finds a substitute to die for him. All of Admetus' friends, and even his parents, refuse, but his beloved wife Alcestis agrees to die, and Admetus selfishly accepts. In this quotation, he addresses his departed wife, comparing his plight to that of the singer Orpheus, who charmed the spirits of the Underworld into releasing his dead wife, Eurydice, only to lose her when she looked back. Euripides' play ends happily, when Heracles restores Alcestis to her husband. But before this happy ending, Admetus laments:

. . . But if I had the tongue and melody of Orpheus,
so that, calling with hymns upon Demeter's daughter and her husband,
I could bring you back from Hades' house,
I would descend, and neither Pluto's dog
nor Charon with his oar, guide of souls,
would hold me back, before I brought your life once more to light.

(- Euripides, Alcestis lines 357-362)

Detail of a vase painting, Heracles and Cerberus, from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie.

Quotation for August, 2006: the god Pan and the Persians at Marathon, from Herodotos' Histories

The Persian Wars

The Persians, now known as the Iranians, are in the news again today. In antiquity, too, tensions arose between the Persians and their European neighbors over control of the eastern Mediterranean. In the early fifth century B.C. these tensions spilled over into the "Persian Wars" between the Greek states, led by Athens and Sparta, against the incursions of the Persians, first under Darius, then climactically, under Xerxes. The first part of fifth century Greek history was dominated by the Persian Wars, the last part by the Peloponnesian War between the Greek states (Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies) with an intervening period of relative peace -- and Athenian expansionism -- in between.

The battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) was the climactic battle of the first phase of the war, in which a large Persian force under Darius was defeated by an outnumbered force of Athenians and Plataeans, through an exercise of superior tactics and strategy. The second phase of the war was the larger invasion by Darius' son Xerxes. In the second phase, in the battle for the northern pass at Thermopylae ("Hot Gates," for its sulphur springs) in 480 B.C., it was the Spartans who won immortality by their bravery, leaving as their epitaph (in which the Spartans are called by their other name of Lacedaemonians) the following:

O stranger, go tell the Lacedaemonians that
we lie fallen here, obedient to their commands.

The Battle of Marathon

The Battle of Marathon did not end the Persian Wars, but it established the prestige and self-confidence of Athens, and it became part of mythology, both ancient and modern. Before the battle, the Athenians sent to Sparta, who was then their ally, for reinforcements. They sent a professional courier, a fast runner named Pheidippides (more correctly "Philippides"), who covered the 150 miles between Athens and Sparta in a remarkable two days. The Spartans were unable to send troops in time for the battle, but Pheidippides reported that as he ran through Arcadia he met the half man-half goat god Pan, who wanted the Athenians to pay him greater worship and promised in return to help them. The Athenians did build him a shrine, and Pan was said to have caused a panic -- the terror caused by Pan -- among the Persians.

After the victory at Marathon, the Athenians may have dispatched another messenger to carry the news to Athens. This man, whose identity is unknown, is often confused with Pheidippides. In any case, the Athenian army was mostly intent on marching back to Athens to head off another attack by the Persians, whose ships were seen sailing off toward the now undefended city. The Persians sailed away, and the mythic run of the nameless messenger is commemorated in the modern "marathon" of 26 miles 385 yards, the approximate distance between the beachhead at Marathon and Athens.

The truth about Pheidippides (he survived! -- and there were two different messengers!)

Pheidippides probably was not the messenger who delivered the news from Marathon to Athens (this would have been a short run for a man of his endurance), and he didn't drop dead afterward. That melodramatic touch (and the confusion between the two couriers) was a fiction perpetrated by the Victorian poet Robert Browning, whose version unfortunately survives in modern retellings. While the Battle of Marathon was a historic turning point, we should not forget the actual feat of the real Pheidippides in his run to Sparta, and his magical encounter with the weird woodland god Pan. There is more about Pan, and his ability to cause panic, in the quotation of the month for July, which is repeated below.

Herodotos' account of Philippides (Pheidippides)

Here is the description in Herodotos of Philippides' encounter with Pan:

And first, while they were still in the city [before leaving for Marathon to do battle with the approaching Persians], the generals sent to Sparta a messenger, Philippides, an Athenian, a professional long-distance courier (hemerodromos, "day-runner"). According to Philippides himself, as he reported to the Athenians on his return, when he was near Mount Parthenium, above Tegea, the god Pan accosted him. Philippides said that Pan shouted out his name, and told him to ask the Athenians why they paid him no attention, when he was kindly disposed toward them and had helped them, and would help them again in the future. And so the Athenians, when their affairs were once again in good order, since they believed in the truth of the report, founded a shrine to Pan under the Acropolis, and celebrate him, in accord with his request, with yearly sacrifices and a torch race.

Herodotos Histories Book 6, 105

Quotation for July, 2006, for a summer afternoon, a warning about Pan from Theocritus' Idyll I

Statue of the god Pan, from Seyffert's A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1899.

Watch out for Pan at mid-day!

In the heat of summer, we find it convenient to emulate the Mediterraneans in taking a rest in the noonday heat, rising later to resume our work or leisure. It is a wise idea for another reason, for at that time the god Pan relaxes from hunting, and he becomes angry if disturbed. The word panic literally describes the terror that this weird woodland god can inspire. The Homeric Hymn XIX to Pan (ca. 750 B.C.) tells of his birth in Arcadia as son of the god Hermes and a nymph ("daughter of Dryops" -- the name means "Oak-face," obviously a forest divinity). The infant Pan is born with goat's feet, horns, a propensity for laughing and making noise -- and a full beard! His nurse runs away in horror, but his father Hermes, a trickster god himself who played practical jokes the same day that he was born (Homeric Hymn IV to Hermes), is delighted. Typically of the folk-etymologies of the Hymns, the poem connects the god's name with the word pan meaning "all," because he brought pleasure to all the gods. More likely, the name is related to the word for "pasture," indicative of his country roots. His chosen instrument is the Pan-pipe.

Theocritus (3rd century B.C.), from Syracuse in Sicily, wrote bucolic or pastoral poetry in a much later era, using the Doric dialect of Greek. His rustic Idylls were later the inspiration for Vergil's Eclogues. His first Idyll is a conversation between a shepherd and a goatherd. The shepherd, Thyrsus, asks the goatherd to play something on his syrinx, or Pan-pipe. But the goatherd refuses, for it is noon, and Pan will be annoyed. So instead, the shepherd recounts the story of how the herdsman Daphnis died, driven to death by Aphrodite when he spurned her attempt to make him fall in love. Below is an excerpt from the beginning of the poem:

Thyrsis (a shepherd):

Sweet is the whispering, O goatherd, of yon pine,
that makes music beside the springs. Sweetly, too,
you play your pipes. Second only to Pan, you shall win the prize.
If he wins the horned he-goat, you shall take the she-goat.
But if he takes the she-goat as a prize, to you will fall
the kid. The she-kid's meat is good, before it is old enough to milk.

. . .

I beg you, by the Nymphs, I beg you, goatherd, sit here,
by this steep hillock and the tamarisk tree,
and play your pipes. I, meanwhile, will tend your goats.

Goatherd:

It is not allowed, O shepherd, it is not allowed at noontime
to play the pipes. We fear Pan. For at that time he rests,
weary, from hunting. He is mean,
and bitter anger sits always in his nostrils.
But, Thyrsis, you know how to sing of the suffering of Daphnis,
for you approach most closely to the bucolic Muses.
Let us sit down under this elm, opposite Priapus
and the Fountain-nymphs, where the Shepherd's Seat
and the oak trees are. If you sing
as you once sang in competition with Chromis of Libya,
I will give you three milkings of a goat that has born twins
-- yet while having two kids, she can fill two extra pails --
and I will give you, besides, a deep drinking cup . . .

(-Theocritus, Idyll I, vv. 1-27, translated by C.A. Sowa)

"The Great God Pan," wood carving by Christine Cooper Angier, ca. 1935.

Quotation for June, 2006, from Book 6 of Ovid's Fasti ("The Roman Calendar")

Statue of Juno in the Vatican, from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

Our quotation for June is from Ovid's Fasti ("The Roman Calendar"). It is an excerpt from a conversation the poet has with the goddess Juno, who claims that the month of June was named for her. The goddess is in a bad mood. She is jealous over the love affairs of her husband Jupiter (Jove); she refers to Maia, goddess mother of Mercury by Jupiter, as "a concubine." She is also still smarting over the choice by Trojan Prince Paris, son of King Priam, of Venus over both her and Minerva in the famous beauty contest. Venus rewarded Paris with Helen of Troy, leading to the Trojan War. Juno wants Ovid (and the world) to know how important she is and how widely worshipped she is not just in Rome but in other Italian towns. But Ovid and Juno are joined by two other goddesses, both of whom claim that the month was named for them.

In this passage, Ovid parodies many things (he was, after all, the author of the tongue-in-cheek Amores and Ars Amatoria). He parodies the Prologue to Hesiod of Ascra's Theogony, in which Hesiod, "the teacher of plowing" (a reference to his other poem, The Works and Days) meets the Muses, who teach him to sing. Parodying the Muses' warning that "We know how to tell many lies that are like reality, but we also know, when we wish, how to speak the truth," Ovid tells us "I shall sing the truth, but some will say I lied." He also makes the incestuous relations within the family of the gods seem sublimely silly as Juno describes her relationship to Jupiter -- both wife and sister; she can't decide which makes her prouder!

We quote below the beginning of Juno's rant. She is countered by the goddess Juventas ("Youth," in Greek Hebe), wife of Hercules, who says that June was named for her, and by Concord, who claims that the name of June honors the joining (or junction) between the Italian kingdoms of Tatius and Quirinus.

Ovid wisely does not decide between his three goddesses, avoiding the mistake of Paris. For, he says, two goddesses can destroy more than one goddess can bestow.

This month, too, has a name whose origins are in doubt.
I will lay them all out; you may choose the one you like.
I shall sing the truth; but some will say I lied,
thinking that no deities were ever seen by a mortal.
There is a god within us; when it stirs us, we become warm.
This impetus contains the seeds of sacred inspiration.
It is particularly right for me to see the faces of the gods,
whether because I am a bard, or because I sing of sacred things.
There is a grove, dense with trees, a place remote
from any voice, except for the obstreperous noise of water.
There I was wondering what were the origins of the month just begun,
and was meditating on its name.
Lo, I saw the goddesses, not those whom the teacher of plowing
saw, when he followed the Ascraean sheep,
nor those whom the son of Priam judged in the valleys of watery Ida.
One of them, nevertheless, was one of these.
Of them there was one, who was the sister of her husband.
It was she (I recognized her!) who stands in Jove's citadel.
I trembled, and betrayed my feelings by my silent pallor.
Then the goddess removed the fear she had herself caused.
For she said, "O bard, founder of the Roman year,
who have dared to relate great things in slender meters,
you created for yourself the right to see the celestial divine spirit,
when it pleased you to treat the festivals in your verses.
But lest you be ignorant and be led astray by the error of the multitude,
June takes its name from my name.
It is something to have married Jove, and to be Jove's sister.
I don't know if I am prouder of him as brother, or as husband.
If my ancestry is considered, I was the first child to make Saturn
a father, being Saturn's first fated offspring.
Rome was once known as Saturnia, after my father;
for this was the first land he came to after heaven.
If it is the marriage bed that counts, I am called wife of the Thunderer,
and my temple is joined to that of Tarpeian Jove.
If they could give the name of [Jove's] concubine to the month of May,
is there something wrong with giving me a like honor? . . .
. . .

(-Ovid, Fasti, Book 6, vv. 1-36, translated by C.A. Sowa)

Quotation for May, 2006, for Memorial Day: from Pericles' Funeral Oration in Thucydides' Peloponnesian War

The Parthenon after a rare snowstorm, photo by C.A. Sowa.

On May 29, we celebrate Memorial Day, when we honor those who have died in war. The quotation for this month contains excerpts from Pericles' Funeral Oration, delivered in memory of fallen Athenians, as recreated by Thucydides in his history of the Peloponnesian War.

Pericles, the great Athenian leader, gave his oration in 431 B.C. at the end of the first year of the war, which was fought between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies. In the first part of the speech, Pericles extols the virtues of Athens, and presents a gleaming portrait of his city's view of herself, with her democracy, her bravery, and her material success. Athens is the model for every city -- the educator of all Hellas and of the world.

Sadly, little more than a year later, Pericles was dead of the plague that gripped Athens, overcrowded with refugees who streamed into the city from the countryside. The war itself ground on for another twenty years, bringing strife and political turmoil both within and without Athens, and marked by faction and misguided military adventures. Sparta technically won the war, but Athens survived as a cultural center, giving us the likes of Plato and Aristotle. Athens, of course, is still very much there today, the capital of modern Hellas, a vibrant European city, whose inhabitants still speak (with a few minor changes in pronunciation) the language of Homer and Plato.

...Summing up, I say that the whole city [of Athens] is the school of Greece. To me it seems that among us each man, under the most varied circumstances and with only himself to depend on, is most able to offer himself with grace and versatility. And that this is no boast in words for the moment, but the truth of deeds, is shown by the power of the city, acquired by these habits. For it alone among cities of today comes to the contest greater than its reputation, and alone offers no reason for shame to an enemy because of who has defeated him, nor any sense of blame among its citizens that they are ruled by those not worthy...

...And so these men died in a manner befitting the city. You who survive must pray that your resolve have a safer outcome, while determining to be no less bold against the enemy. Do not be moved only by words, when you contemplate the advantages derived from defending the city, although one might well expound at length even to you who are knowledgeable, but gazing every day upon the city's greatness, become her lovers, and when she seems glorious to you, reflect that it was by daring, by knowing what was necessary, and by their sense of honor that these men obtained all this; and even when they failed in some attempt, they did not think it right to deprive the city of their valor, rather offering it to her as the best contribution they could make. For having given their lives in common, they individually received the renown that never grows old, and a distinguished tomb, not the one in which they lie, but the one in which their fame, ever-remembered, remains upon every occasion that it is commemorated in word or deed. For famous heroes have the entire earth as their tomb; not only do inscriptions on columns in their own land declare their deeds, but even in foreign lands an unwritten memorial dwells not in material form but within the thoughts of all...

(-Thucydides, from the Funeral Oration of Pericles, in Book II of The Peloponnesian War, translated by C.A. Sowa)

Quotations for April, 2006, for Earth Day: Gaia in Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Gaia

The goddess Gaia, rising from the ground, hands the child Erichthonios ("Born of the (Athenian) soil") to Athena, as serpent-tailed King Kekrops looks on, from Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1890.

April brings us occasions of rebirth and celebration. Easter falls this year on April 16 and Passover extends from April 13-19. Earth Day is celebrated on April 22.

We present two quotations for Earth Day, translations of an excerpt from Hesiod's Theogony and of the complete Homeric Hymn XXX to Earth, Mother of All.

In Hesiod's Theogony (ca. 750 B.C.), Gaia (Earth) is the second oldest divinity, outranked in age only by Chaos. We should remark that Chaos, in Hesiod's cosmogony, is not an undifferentiated mass of primordial matter but a distinct entity, a place ("The Yawning Chasm") whose location is unclear, but is possibly underneath the Earth. Chaos is also a goddess, who gave birth to Night, who in turn gave birth to Day. Gaia herself gave birth to Ouranos (Heaven), the Hills, and the Sea. Ouranos becomes the husband of Gaia. Hesiod begins his cosmogony thus:

Yea verily, first Chaos came into being, but next came
broad-breasted Gaia, the unshakeable foundation of all ...

(Hesiod Theogony ll. 116-117)

With Ouranos as her husband, Gaia became ultimately the mother or ancestress of many gods and goddesses, including Olympians like Zeus and Hera, as well as nymphs, monsters, and strange critters such as the one-eyed Cyclopes and the mighty Hundred-Hands. During the course of the Theogony's more than one thousand verses, Gaia participates actively in the politicking and internecine strife of the gods, as well as helping to sort out their relationships.

The Homeric Hymns are anonymous poems from about the same time as Hesiod and Homer, but sunnier than Hesiod, lacking his weirdness. Unlike the longer Hymns, which tell complete myths, the Homeric Hymn XXX to Earth, Mother of All is one of the shorter invocations. Here, Gaia is the "eldest" of all beings, and the giver of all good things to mankind. The final tag line "But I will remember you and another song, also" is found (with variations) at the end of many of the Hymns. In his parting greeting, the singer of this song is careful to ask the goddess for his idea of the good life -- a prosperous career as a bard!

Gaia, mother of all, I shall sing of you, the well-founded,
the eldest, who feeds all things that are upon the earth,
both those that go upon the divine earth and upon the sea
and those that fly; all these are fed from your wealth.
From you, men become goodly in their children and goodly in their harvests,
Mistress, and it is yours to give the means of life and to take it away
from mortal men. He is fortunate, whom in your heart
you freely honor. He has everything in abundance,
his life-bearing farmland is heavy with harvest, and in his fields
he prospers in cattle, and his house is filled with fine things.
Such men rule with good laws over their city of beautiful women
and great wealth and riches accompany them.
Their sons exult in youthful high spirits
and their daughters disporting themselves in flower-bedecked dances
skip with high-spirited hearts in the soft flowers of the meadow.
Such are those whom you honor, majestic goddess, ungrudging spirit.

Hail, mother of the gods, wife of starry Ouranos,
freely grant me a heart-pleasing livelihood in exchange for this song.
But I will remember you and another song, also.

(Homeric Hymn XXX to Earth, Mother of All, ll. 1-19)

World spirit and fantastic sea horses, woodcarving by Christine Cooper Angier (my Mom!), ca. 1935.

Quotation for March, 2006, from Ovid's Fasti: Mars, father of Romulus and Remus

Ruins of temple of Mars Ultor ("Mars the Avenger"), from Rodolfo Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, 1898.

Beware the Ides of March! Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 B.C.

March was the third month of the Roman calendar of Caesar's time, as it is of ours. However, March was apparently the first month of the most archaic Roman calendar, which consisted of just ten months, with an unnamed period in winter between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

March is named for the god Mars. Most famous as the Roman god of war (identified with the Greek god Ares), Mars also had agricultural connections as protector of the fertility of the herds and fields. It is not certain which functions are the oldest. His sacred animals were the wolf and the woodpecker. The emperor Augustus built a temple to Mars Ultor ("Mars the Avenger") in the middle of his new forum Augustum (see the picture above).

Ovid, in his Fasti, or "Roman Calendar," begins Book 3 (March) with the story of Romulus and Remus, founders of the city of Rome, who were twin sons of Mars by the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia. In the legend, the twins were thrown in the river by King Amulius of Alba Longa, who had deposed his brother King Numitor, father of Silvia. But they washed up on shore, where they were suckled by a she-wolf and fed by a woodpecker who brought them food. They were found and raised by a herdsman and his wife. Their identities were eventually known, and they killed Amulius and made Numitor king again. They left Alba Longa and founded their own city of Rome, where Remus insulted Romulus by leaping over Romulus' new walls, and was killed by Romulus. After a long reign, Romulus vanished mysteriously in a storm and became the god Quirinus.

Our quotation begins with Ovid's invocation of Mars and the description of Mars's stolen sexual pleasure with Silvia, whom he rapes while she sleeps, and her prophetic dream.

While the episode reads like a Playboy fantasy (and although the portraits of Vesta "covered their eyes" and the altar "trembled" when Silvia gave birth), Silvia herself appears relatively unscathed and propriety is maintained by the fact that Romulus and Remus will be the means of her father Numitor's revenge upon his brother Amulius, and will become the founders of Rome.

Warlike Mars, come near, lay aside your shield and spear for a little while,
and loose from its helmet your shining hair.
Perhaps you might ask, what has Mars to do with a poet?
From you, the month about which I sing takes its name.
You yourself see that fierce wars are waged by Minerva's hands;
is she less at leisure for the liberal arts?
After the example of Pallas, take time to put aside
your spear; you will find something to do unarmed.
Then, too, you were unarmed, when a Roman priestess
took your fancy, that you might give your great seed to this city.

Silvia the Vestal (for why not start with her?)
went at early morning for water to wash the holy objects.
She came to the sloping bank by a gentle path,
and set down the earthenware pitcher from atop her head.
Tired, she sat upon the ground, receiving the breezes upon her open
breast, and rearranged her disheveled hair.
While she was sitting, the shady willows and the singing birds
made her sleepy, as did the soft murmur of the water.
Seductive repose stole over her vanquished eyes,
and her hand, made languid, dropped from her chin.
Mars, seeing her, desired what he saw, and possessed what he desired,
but his theft went undetected, thanks to his divine powers.
Sleep left her, and she lay heavily pregnant, for already within her
womb was the founder of the Roman city.
Languid she arose, nor did she know why she arose languid,
and leaning on a tree she uttered these words:
"May it be useful and fortunate, what I just saw in a dream,
or was it too vivid for a dream?
I was present at the fires of Ilium, when from my hair
the woolen fillet fell before the sacred hearth.
Thence, wondrous to behold, two palm trees rose side by side;
of these, one was taller than the other,
and with its heavy boughs it spread a cover over the entire world
and touched the highest stars with its canopy of foliage.
Behold! my uncle was striking the trees with an axe!
I was terrified at the warning, and my heart pulsed with fear.
A woodpecker, Mars's bird, and a she-wolf fought to defend the tree trunks;
because of them, both palms were safe."
She finished speaking, and lifted the full pitcher with diminished strength;
she had filled it while she recounted her vision.
Meanwhile, as Remus grew, and Quirinus grew,
her belly swelled with the celestial burden.
. . .

Ovid, Fasti 3.1-42.

Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf, Capitoline Museum.

Quotations for January-February 2006: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Black History Month

Colossal statues of Amenhotep III in Egypt, identified as the famous "singing statues" of Memnon, King of Ethiopia, son of the Dawn goddess Eos. (Illustration in W.H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, 1894-1897.)

On January 16, 2006, we observed the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and February is Black History Month. Black Africans were well known to the Greeks and Romans, and they appear in Classical literature and art both as subjects and as writers and artists themselves.

Homer knew the Ethiopians as a semi-mythical people, in whose company the gods enjoyed lavish banquets. One of these banquets is alluded to in Iliad 1.423-426. Achilles, smarting at the taking of the girl Briseis from him by his commander, the Greek King Agamemnon, begs his mother, the sea-goddess Thetis, to ask Zeus to help the Trojans, to punish Agamemnon for his lack of respect for himself, "the best of the Achaeans." Thetis replies that she will ask Zeus's help, as soon as he returns, but that he is presently away from Olympus,

for Zeus went yesterday to the Ocean, to the blameless Aethiopians,
for a banquet, and all the gods followed with him.
But on the twelfth day he will come back to Olympus,
and then I will go to Zeus's house with the bronze threshold
and, clasping his knees in prayer, I think that I can persuade him.

In Iliad 23.205-207, the funeral pyre of Patroklos fails to burn, and the messenger Iris goes to the Winds to ask them to blow to ignite the fire. She finds all the winds at the home of the West Wind, Zephyros, enjoying a feast, which they invite her to join. But she, having delivered her message, declines because of a prior engagement, saying,

"I can't sit down, for I am going back to the streams of Ocean,
to the land of the Aethiopians, where they are sacrificing hecatombs
to the immortals, that I may share in the sacrificial banquet."

In the Odyssey, too, the god Poseidon is depicted as receiving sacrifices of bulls and rams from the Ethiopians (Odyssey 1.22-25) (here we see the common confusion in the use of the name "Ethiopian" (the name means "burnt-face") to refer to dark-skinned people extending from Africa to India, as seen in Homer's reference to the Ethiopians being "divided into two, some at the setting sun, some at the rising"). On a more human plane, Menelaos, describing his own wanderings on the way home from Troy, tells of the places he visited, including Phoenicia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya. On a still more personal note, Odysseus himself, still in disguise on his return to Ithaka, is describing Odysseus (really himself!), whom he claims to have "met," to the faithful Penelope. In Odyssey 19.244-248, he describes Odysseus' Black herald Eurybates (the name means "wide-stepping"):

And there was a herald, a little older than he,
round in his shoulders, of black complexion, wooly-headed;
Eurybates was his name. Odysseus honored him above his other
companions, because his thoughts were in harmony with his.

An entire lost epic from the time of Homer, the Aithiopis, as well as several lost plays, were devoted to the legend of Memnon, son of the dawn goddess Eos and the the Trojan prince Tithonos. Memnon was king of Ethiopia and fought on the Trojan side in the Trojan War. He was slain by Achilles, but was made immortal by Zeus. In Egypt, he was identified with Amenhotep III (reigned ca. 1411-1375 B.C.), whose colossal statues near Thebes gave a ringing tone when they were struck by the rising sun, an event thought to be Memnon's greeting to his mother, Eos (see illustration above).

References to Africans in Classical Greek theater include, among several others, Aeschylus' Suppliants, where the fifty sons of Aegyptus are described as having black limbs that stand out from their white robes. In art, there many depictions of Negro faces and figures in vase paintings and sculptures. An outstanding potter/vase painter, Amasis (several of whose signed vases still exist -- see the illustration at the foot of this item), shared a name with an Egyptian pharoah, and, according to Prof. Frank M. Snowden, Jr. (see reference below), may well have been black African.

At Rome, in Vergil's second Eclogue, the shepherd Corydon is pining for a boy named Alexis, the favorite of his master. Unable to win Alexis over, Corydon yet advises the boy that he can be better off (Eclogue II ll. 14-18):

Wouldn't it be better to put up with the gloomy anger of Amaryllis
and her arrogant haughtiness? Or with Menalcas,
although he is black, and although you are fair?
O beautiful boy, do not trust too much in your complexion:
white privet flowers fall, but black blueberries are gathered.

The Roman playwright Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, ca. 195-159 BC.) wrote comedies of character and manners that contrasted with the more slapstick qualities of the other great Roman comic playwright, Plautus; it is Terence who gave us the line

I am a human being; I consider no human matter to be alien to me.

Terence was said to have been born at Carthage and brought to Rome as a slave. Having been educated and set free by his master, he gained entrance to Roman society, and his daughter is said to have married a Roman knight. (It should be noted that slavery in antiquity was not associated with any particular race, but with which people happened to be conquered. At Rome, where slaves might be Asians, Africans, Jews, Syrians, Greeks, Germans, Gauls, or others, slaves were often better educated than their masters, and were frequently put in charge of educating their masters' children.)

Many more references to Blacks in the ancient world can be found in Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Blacks in Antiquity, Harvard University Press, 1970.

Signed vase painting by the Athenian potter/painter Amasis (6th cent. B.C.), depicting Athena and Poseidon. The two figures are labeled ATHENAIA and POSEIDON. The inscription down the middle reads AMASIS MEPOIESEN ("Amasis made me"). Amasis may well have been African. (Illustration from a lithograph by Kaeppelin et Cie., ca. 1840.)

A quotation about sacred trees (from Horace) for the Winter Solstice, Christmas, and other winter holidays, December 2005

Photo by C.A. Sowa

Trees are sacred in many religions. Evergreens, especially in our northern climate, are cherished for their green needles that remain, with their message of survival, when all else is bare and snow-covered. The "Christmas Tree" of Christians is a continuation of the old custom. (By the way, the German "O Tannenbaum" does NOT mean "O Christmas Tree" but "O Fir Tree." English, unfortunately, does not have a two-syllable word for "fir" or "pine" to translate the German Tanne. The words O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,/ wie treu sind deine Blätter!/ Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,/ Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit is correctly translated "O fir tree, O fir tree/ how true are your leaves!/ You are green not only in summertime,/ no, also in winter, although it snows.") The majestic, mysterious fir tree is aptly associated with Christmas, one of many festivals that occur at the time of the Winter Solstice. It is a bringer of hope at the time of the shortest day, when the sun and its warmth seem farthest away. The birth of a baby under harsh circumstances, as Jesus' birth is depicted, is likewise a hopeful sign. A similar optimistic message in conveyed by the festival of Hanukkah, celebrating the miraculously burning lights, which, with only enough oil to last one day, burned for eight days. Even the much-maligned "commercialism" of the holiday season is a sign of optimism and energy -- and for merchants and vendors, a chance to make up for a dismal year. Mercury, god of commerce and communication, flourishes.

Oak trees have also been revered, and many myths have grown around them. In Dodona in Greece, the grove of oaks sacred to Zeus was consulted as an oracle. The oaks spoke, and Zeus made his will known through the whisperings of their leaves.

In our quotation of the month, the Roman poet Horace dedicates a pine tree at his Sabine farm to Diana, with the promise of a yearly sacrifice of a boar (the Roman version of our holiday pork roast!). He celebrates Diana as the protector of young women in childbirth, and calls her triformis, "triple-formed" -- Diana on earth, Luna in the sky, and Hecate in the Underworld. Below is his poem, in the original Latin and in translation.

Montium custos nemorumque, Virgo,
quae laborantes utero puellas
ter vocata audis adimisque leto,
Diva Triformis,

imminens villae tua pinus esto,
quam per exactos ego laetus annos
verris obliquum meditantis ictum
sanguine donem.

______________________________________________________

Guardian of mountains and groves, Virgin
who hears the prayers of girls laboring in childbirth,
when thrice they call you, and rescues them from death,
Triform Goddess,

Let this pine tree hanging over my villa be yours.
To it gladly at each year's end
may I offer the blood of a young boar practicing his sideways thrusts
as a sacrifice.

--Horace Odes III.22

Photo by C.A. Sowa.

A quotation (from Ovid) and some pictures for Halloween and Thanksgiving, November 2005

Toy church and skeleton girl for the Dia de los Muertos (purchased in Olvera Street, Los Angeles), photo by C.A. Sowa.

November is bracketed by two holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. While in their modern form they are distinctly American, both have roots that go back to old festivals of the dead and of the harvest. Halloween, among other origins, can be traced to the Celtic festival of Samhain, celebrating the return of the herds from pasture, but involving the return of the dead to revisit their homes. It also included rites of harvest and the reaping of the last sheaf, as well as rituals connected with fire and divination. In Mexico and in Mexican communities in the U.S., November 1 and 2 (All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day) are celebrated as the Dia de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead"), which combine Catholic, Aztec, and other Mexican Native customs, celebrated with pastries, candies, and little toy scenes in the shape of skeletons disporting themselves. Family members hold picnics at the cemetery, so that dead family members can enjoy them, too.

The ancient Roman world was peopled with many kinds of ghosts, appeased at various festivals. The Parentalia (13-21 February) honored the dead of each family. The Lares were also, apparently, spirits of dead family members, associated with crossroads, honored at the festival of the Compitalia, but a Lar familiaris also had a shrine with the Penates, or gods of the pantry, within each house. Larvae (spectres) were scarier, as were Lemures (ghosts). The Lemuria (9, 11, 13 May), a ritual for feeding and propiating the angry and sinister lemures, is described by Ovid, in the passage translated below.

Illustration from Rodolfo Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, 1898.

A ritual of the Lemuria is described by Ovid in the Fasti ("The Yearly Calendar," in which, unfortunately, only the first six months are described). Black beans are thrown behind the back for the ghosts to pick up.

After that, when Hesperus has thrice revealed his lovely face,
and thrice the defeated stars have given place to Phoebus,
there will be the rites of the ancient religion, the nocturnal Lemuria:
They will provide sacrifices to the silent shades.
The year was once shorter, and men did not yet know pious February,
nor did you, leader of the months, bi-form Janus, exist.
Yet they brought their gifts to the ashes of the dead,
and the grandson paid his respects at the tomb where his grandfather was buried.
The month was May, for the maiores [ancestors] named,
which even now preserves part of the old custom.
When it is midnight, offering silence to sleep,
and the dog and the colorful birds have become still,
he who is mindful of the old rite and fearing of the gods
arises (his twinned feet wear no bindings),
and he gives a sign, holding his thumb in the middle of his closed fingers,
lest an insubstantial shade meet him, while he remains silent.
When he has washed his hands pure in the waters of a spring,
he turns and, first taking some black beans,
averts his face and throws them; as he throws them, "I let these go"
he says; "with these beans, I redeem myself and mine."
He says this nine times and does not look back. The shade is thought
to gather the beans and follow behind, with no one looking.
The man again touches the water, and sounds the Temesan bronze,
and asks the shade to leave his house.
When he has said nine times "Ancestral spirits, leave,"
he looks back, and considers the rites to have been performed undefiled.

Ovid, Fasti 5.421 ff.

For Thanksgiving, I reproduce the cover and three other pages from a delightful antique souvenir book, Souvenir of Dakota: The Artesian Wells, by Mrs. A.J. Dickinson, illustrated by Nelle B. Lockwood, both of Chamberlain, South Dakota, 1898. The text begins: On the dim silent prairie where brown grasses shiver, /And loneliness broods like a mystical spell, /There bursts on our vision a beautiful river, /Thrown up from the depths of a wonderful well. These words are illustrated by a wraithlike fountain spurting from the plain. The narrative includes such verses as Oh water, bright water, we see through thy prism /A vast panorama surpassingly grand: /We see the fulfillment of hopes and of wishes, /Good tidings of joy to this beautiful land. /We see through thy prism the gleaming and glancing /Of acres on acres of ripening wheat; /And we hear in thy music the songs of the reapers, /Who gather the food that the multitudes eat.

Photos by C.A. Sowa.

A quotation (from Horace) in honor of Columbus Day: on the courage of the sea voyager, October 2005

In October (traditionally on October 12, but now on the closest Monday), we celebrate the voyage of Columbus and the pride of the Italian people. While the journey, as with most historic events, was ambiguous in its results and meaning, and Columbus, of course, didn't "discover" the New World at all (it had already been discovered, and people were living in it), the skill and bravery of Columbus and his men and of all the early explorers, and of all who voyage upon the sea, is undeniable.

This month's quotation is translated from an ode by Horace dedicated to his friend the poet Vergil, who was about to embark on a trip to Greece. The distance between Greece and Italy seems short by today's standards, but storms can come up suddenly on the Mediterranean. Although one leaves port on a deceptively calm day, as I can attest from personal experience, one's small ship can be suddenly be tossed about by seemingly capricious gods. At such a time, passengers once prayed to Zeus or Jupiter; now they pray to the Virgin Mary.

(Explanation of names (some of which are Greek, although the poem itself is in Latin): African: the "south-west" wind; Aquilonian: the "north" wind; Hyades (Greek: "the Rainy Ones"): a cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus, thought to bring rain at the season of their morning setting (in November); Notus: the "south" wind; Acroceraunia (Greek: "Thunder Heights"): a rocky promontory in Epirus, Greece, jutting into the Ionian Sea.)

...
He was girt with oak and triple bronze
around his breast, who first entrusted his fragile ship
to the ferocious sea,
and did not fear the violent African winds

battling against the Aquilonian blasts,
nor feared the gloomy Hyades and the rage of Notus,
than whom there is no mightier arbiter of the Adriatic,
whether he wishes to raise or calm the straits.

What approach of Death did he fear,
who gazed with dry eyes upon the swimming monsters,
who saw the turbulent sea and
those infamous cliffs, Acroceraunia?

In vain did the foreseeing god cut off
the lands from each other by the dissociating Ocean,
if, nonetheless, impious ships
leap across depths that were never meant to be touched.
...

Horace, Odes Book I, iii lines 9-24

A quotation suggested by Hurricane Katrina and the ruins of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (from Juvenal's Satires), September 2005

Codrus, the poor man who lost everything, owned a little statuette of a centaur, like the bronze one pictured above.

As we watched Hurricane Katrina and the breaking of the levees, and the subsequent agony of New Orleans and the Gulf coast, once again we saw how the poor are left to drown but the wealthy are enriched even beyond their previous lifestyle. President Bush gleefully described the opportunity afforded his crony, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, by the destruction of (one of his) houses:

"Out of the rubble of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

A quotation springs to mind from the Roman satirist Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, ca. 60-140 A.D.). In his Third Satire, Juvenal describes a chaotic urban world of fires, muggings, building collapses, and corrupt leaders that could just as well be today's news. In the excerpt translated below, the disaster is a pair of fires that consume a tenement and a mansion. The poor man, Codrus, loses "all the nothing that he owned," but the wealthy Persicus has rich friends who rush to rebuild his house. Persicus is represented as "childless," that is, without heirs, so his hangers-on hope to be named in his will. Just so, today's rich and powerful trade favors with each other.

...Codrus had a bed too short even for the dwarf Procula, and six little jugs,
the ornament of his sideboard. Under it was a small
drinking cup, and reclining beneath the same marble was [a statuette of the centaur] Chiron.
An elderly wicker chest contained some Greek booklets,
where barbarian mice gnawed at the divine poems.
Codrus had nothing. Who denies it? And yet,
poor man, he lost all of that nothing. But the final
climax of his misery is that, while he is naked and begging for scraps,
no one will help him with food, no one helps with hospitality or shelter.
But if the great mansion [built by] Asturicus has fallen, the matrons are dishevelled in mourning,
the nobles dress in black, and the magistrate postpones his court cases.
Then we groan over the accidents of the city, then we loathe the fire.
The blaze still rages, but already someone runs up to donate marble
and to contribute to the rebuilding fund. One man donates dazzling naked statues,
another a masterpiece by [the painter] Euphranor or [the sculptor] Polyclitus;
a lady contributes ancient ornaments plundered from the temples of Asian gods,
another man gives books and bookcases with a statue of Minerva in the middle,
another a bushel of silver. Persicus [the owner] replaces his loss with more and better things.
Most elegant of childless men, he is with good reason already
suspected of having set fire to his own house...

Juvenal, Satire 3, lines 203-222

A quotation for the dog days of summer (from Hesiod's Works and Days), August 2005

Sirius, the Dog Star, shines over the sweltering heat of summer, giving its name to the Dog Days of July and August. Hesiod (ca. 750 B.C.), the Old Curmudgeon of Greek epic poetry, thought the hot summer weather made women sexy and men weak. In his Works and Days, an excerpt of which appears below in translation, he recommends that a man enjoy his lunch and a jug of wine behind a shady rock, presumably to get away from those sex-crazed women.

When the artichoke blooms and the shrill cicada,
sitting in a tree, pours out its clear song
continually from beneath its wings, in the season of exhausting summer,
then the goats are fattest and the wine is best,
women are most sex-crazed and men are
weakest, because Sirius dries up the head and knees,
and the skin is dry from the heat. But at that time
let there be the shade of a rock and wine from Biblis,
and barley bread made with milk drained from goats
and meat of a heifer fed in the woods that has not yet calved,
and of firstborn kids. Drink the fiery wine, too,
while sitting in the shade, when you have satisfied your heart with food.
Then turning your face toward the strongly blowing Zephyr,
from an ever-flowing spring that runs mud-free,
pour three libations of water, but make a fourth libation of wine.

Hesiod, Works and Days lines 582-596

A patriotic quotation (from Livy's Roman histories), July 2005

The Founding Fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, et al. are our models for conducting our American Republic. The Founding Fathers, of course, not having themselves to look to as examples, turned to ancient Rome as their model. In particular, they were impressed by Cincinnatus, whom legend said was called from his farm to lead his nation in war, and who, after victory, returned to his simple life.

In the early days of the Roman Republic, Rome was still consolidating her power against the surrounding tribes. Among the most important rivals were the Sabines, the Aequi, and the Volsci. In about 460 B.C., a Roman force under the consul Lucius Minucius was cut off and surrounded by the Aequian enemy on Mount Algidus. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a former consul, was called out of semi-retirement to assume the title of dictator and to lead a relief force. Under Cincinnatus' leadership, the Romans, in a short but decisive battle, rescued their brethern and defeated the Aequi. After the battle, Cincinnatus laid down his dictatorship and returned to private life.

The story of Cincinnatus was embroidered and expanded by the Roman annalists, so that it is sometimes difficult to disentangle fact from fiction (for example, he may or may not have held a second dictatorship). He is an ambiguous role model for American democracy for another reason: As a member of the patrician class, which held a stranglehold on wealth and power in Rome, he strongly opposed any measure that would extend power to the rising plebeian class!

George Washington, who was called out of retirement to become president, and, after serving two terms, retired again, was called an American Cincinnatus. The Society of the Cincinnati was founded by officers of the American Revolutionary army in 1783, and the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, was named for the Society of the Cincinnati. For the record, the original name of Cincinnati was also (semi-)classical; it was called Losantiville, for "town opposite the mouth of the Licking River!"

Below is the account of Cincinnatus (in Latin and English) as given in the Roman histories of Livy (59 B.C.-17 A.D.):

Livy's original (translation follows below)

...dictatoremque dici placeret qui rem perculsam restitueret, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus consensu omnium dicitur.

Operae pretium est audire qui omnia prae divitiis humana spernunt neque honori magno locum neque virtuti putant esse, nisi ubi effuse afluant opes. Spes unica imperii populi Romani L. Quinctius trans Tiberim, contra eum ipsum locum ubi nunc navalia sunt, quattuor iugerum colebat agrum, quae prata Quinctia vocantur. Ibi ab legatis -- seu fossam fodiens palae innixus seu cum araret, operi certe, id quod constat, agresti intentus -- salute data in vicem redditaque rogatus ut, quod bene verteret ipsi reique publicae, togatus mandata senatus audiret, admiratus rogitansque "satin salve"?" togam propere e tugurio proferre uxorem Raciliam iubet. Qua simul absterso pulvere ac sudore velatus processit, dictatorem eum legati gratulantes consalutant, in urben vocant, qui terror sit in exercitu exponunt.

...

...Quinctius sexto decimo die dictatura in sex menses accepta se abdicavit.

(Livy, Book III.xxvi.6-10, xxix.7)

---

Translation

...a decision was made [by the Senate] to appoint a dictator to restore [Rome's] ruined fortunes, and Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was named by universal consent.

It is a story worth hearing, by anyone who spurns all human qualities except wealth, and who finds no place for great honor or virtue, unless riches flow copiously from it. The sole hope of the empire of the Roman people, Lucius Quinctius, was cultivating a field of four iugera [about three acres], on the other side of the Tiber, right across from the place where the dockyards now are. There -- whether he was digging a ditch as he leaned on his spade, or plowing, it is generally agreed that he was intent on some farm work -- he was greeted by the delegates and greeted them in return. They then asked him (and might it turn out well for himself and for the Republic!) to put on his toga and hear the mandate of the Senate. He, amazed, asked "Is all well," and bade his wife Racilia to quickly bring his toga from the cottage. When he had put it on, after wiping off the dust and sweat, he came forth, and the delegates, congratulating him and saluting him as dictator, explained the terrifying situation of the army...

[There follows an account of Cincinnatus' decisive battle and victory, as well as of the plebeians' misgivings at giving him so much power.]

...On the sixteenth day, Quinctius resigned from the dictatorship to which he had been appointed for six months.

A quotation (from Horace) for the start of vacation, June 2005

June brings the end of the school year. For some, this means graduation and the start of a first full-time job. For others, it brings summer school or a summer job. For many, it means a vacation, whether long or short, a respite from the tedium of winter. This month's quotation is a translation of the first and last verses of an ode by the Latin poet Horace (65-8 B.C.). It is addressed to a "Vergilius," who may have been Horace's famous contemporary, the poet Vergil. In it, he invites his friend to share a drink of wine and forget, if for a little while, the cares of life.

Zephyr breezes, companions of spring that calm the sea,
blow from Thrace to swell the sails;
the meadows are no longer frozen, nor do the rivers roar,
swollen with winter ice...

...Lay aside your objections and your eagerness to make money;
remember, while you can, how close are Death's dark fires,
and mingle your business plans with a little foolishness;
it is sweet to be silly on occasion.

Horace, Odes IV.12, lines 1-4, 25-28

Quotation (from Pindar) in honor of the Kentucky Derby, May 2005

Illustration: horse with frog jockey; this drawing and the one below by Christine Cooper Angier, ca. 1980 (for Mother's Day, I offer a couple of my Mom's animal pictures)

The ancient Olympic Games included not just track and field events, but also horse racing and chariot racing. (The modern Olympics, too, have some equestrian sports). Yet it is only a little exaggeration to call the Kentucky Derby (run this year on May 7) the true Olympics of horse racing. Then, as now, kings, princes, and wealthy aristocrats entered horses in the contest.

Pindar (518-438 B.C) composed victory odes for many Olympic winners in various events, as well as for the victors in other athletic festivals less well-remembered today -- the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games. The musical accompaniment to these odes is, of course, now lost, but we still have Pindar's glorious, ringing words. Here, in translation, are the opening lines of his Olympian Ode I, composed for King Hieron of Syracuse, whose horse Pherenikos ("Bringer of Victory") won the horse race in 476 B.C., as he was "speeding, unspurred" along the banks of the Alpheus River at Olympia (also called "Pisa" in this poem, for the surrounding district).

Water is the noblest element, and gold shines
like blazing fire in the night, beyond other lordly wealth.
But if you desire to sing
of games, o my heart,
do not look by day for any star more warmth-giving than the sun,
shining in the empty sky,
nor shall we proclaim another contest more excellent than Olympia...
...But now take the Dorian lyre down from its peg,
if the glory of Pisa and of Pherenikos
has placed your mind in the sweetest mood.
For he sped beside the river Alpheus,
yielding his great body to the race unspurred,
and brought to victorious power his master,
the chariot-fighting king of Syracuse...

Pindar, Olympian Ode I, lines 1-23

Quotation for Tax Preparation Season (Hesiod), April 2005

April is tax month. Once again, our attention is called to the fact that while some people collect much ill-gotten wealth while doing little work, those who work the hardest often seem to gain the least. Our quotation of the month comes from Hesiod's Works and Days. Hesiod was approximately contemporary with Homer (ca. 750 B.C.), but his home, far removed from the heroic world of the Iliad and Odyssey, was the hardscrabble farmland of Ascra, in Boeotia. Hesiod addressed his homilies on farming and hard work and other folk wisdom to his ne'er-do-well brother Perses, who had cheated Hesiod by bribing the corrupt local lords to give him the larger share of their inheritance, then wasted his share.

Hesiod describes the Two Strifes. One kind of strife is bad, and leads to war. The other is good, and is the healthy competition that leads men to earn honest wealth.

Indeed, there was not just one kind of Strife, but upon the earth
there are two. A man would praise the one when he comes to know her;
the other is to be censured; for they differ in temper.
The one fosters evil war and battle,
-- cruel one! No mortal loves her, but by necessity,
through the will of the gods men pay honor to this grievous Strife.
But the other was first-born of dark Night,
and Zeus the son of Kronos, on his high throne, dwelling in the aether,
set her in the roots of the earth; she is much better for men.
She awakens even the shiftless man to work.
For a man desires to work when he sees another who is
rich, who is eager to plow and to plant,
and to put his house in order. And neighbor competes with neighbor,
hurrying after wealth. This is a good Strife for mortals.
And potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman,
and beggar envies beggar and singer envies singer.

Hesiod,Works and Days lines 11-26

And again, Hesiod says,

If your heart within you desires wealth,
do these things, and work work upon work!

Hesiod,Works and Days lines 381-382

Quotations for the Spring Equinox (Vergil, Tibullus, Walter Pater), March, 2005

(Illustration: decoration from Longus, Daphnis and Chloe: A Pastoral Romance, English translation, 19th cent.; engraving of 1763.)

In primis venerare deos, atque annua magnae
sacra refer Cereri laetis operatus in herbis
extremae sub casum hiemis, iam vere sereno.

(In particular, venerate the gods, and offer the yearly sacrifice
to great Ceres, performing her rites in the flourishing grass,
at the very end of winter, in the fair spring.)

Vergil, Georgic I, vv. 338-340, tr. C.A. Sowa.

This is the time of Easter, of the first day of spring--the Vernal Equinox--and of St. Patrick's Day. Pale Male and Lola, the red-tailed hawks whose acrobatics have for several years enchanted New Yorkers, once again are caring for eggs in their nest on a twelfth-floor cornice high above Fifth Avenue, across from Central Park. Pale Male, always the gentleman, brings offerings of pigeons to his lady-love. The exuberant limestone acanthus carvings surrounding the birds' home echoes the arrival of greenery and new life.

In ancient Roman times, this was the season of the rustic celebration of the Ambarvalia, when animals to be sacrificed were led around the boundaries of each farm, to ensure the fertility of the fields. This is the ritual referred to by Vergil in the quotation from the First Georgic quoted above.

Walter Pater, Victorian essayist and critic, wrote his novel Marius the Epicurean as a fictional recreation of the life of a young Roman. At the beginning of the novel, Marius is celebrating the Ambarvalia on his ancestral estate (by the end of the novel, however, he has become a Christian). In the first chapter, Pater, quoting Tibullus (ca. 55-19 B.C). evokes the mystery of a natural world alive with inhabiting spirits. (The translation from Tibullus is mine; Pater gave only the Latin.)

"[T]he religion of Numa," as people loved to fancy, lingered on with little change amid the pastoral life... Glimpses of such a survival we may catch below the merely artificial attitudes of Latin pastoral poetry; in Tibullus especially, who has preserved for us many poetic details of old Roman religious usage.

At mihi contingat patrios celebrare Penates,
Reddereque antiquo menstrua thura Lari:

[May it be my lot to honor the ancestral household spirits
And to offer, each month, incense to the ancient domestic god.]

...A religion of usages and sentiment rather than of facts and belief, and attached to very definite things and places--the oak of immemorial age, the rock on the heath fashioned by weather as if by some dim human art, the shadowy grove of ilex, passing into which one exclaimed involuntarily, in consecrated phrase, Deity is in this Place! Numen Inest!--it was in natural harmony with the temper of a quiet people amid the spectacle of rural life, like that simpler faith between man and man, which Tibullus expressly connects with the period when, with an inexpensive worship, the old wooden gods had been still pressed for room in their homely little shrines.

The quotation from Tibullus is from Book I, No. 3, ll.33-34; Pater could well have quoted another of Tibullus' elegies, Book II, No. 1, an actual (poetic) description of the Ambarvalia.

Quotation for Valentine's Day (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite), February, 2005

(Illustration: a chapter headpiece for Longus, Daphnis and Chloe: A Pastoral Romance, English translation, 19th cent., engraving after a design by the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans for an edition of 1718.)

SEX AND THE MOUNTAIN: Aphrodite, goddess of sexual desire and fertility, hastening to seduce Anchises on Mount Ida, causes the wild forest animals to mate as she passes them

In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (a poem dating from perhaps shortly after Homer himself), Aphrodite, the "golden goddess" (polychrusos) makes everyone, including gods, mortals, and all the creatures of the land and sea, fall in love. Only the goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia are immune to her snares. Even Zeus, king of the gods, has been led astray by her many times. But Aphrodite herself has never been in love. Zeus takes revenge by making her fall in love with the Trojan prince Anchises, whom she seduces as he tends cattle on a mountain top. Shamed by loss of the power which she had wielded by remaining above the fray, she nevertheless becomes the mother of a mighty son, the hero Aeneas. He, in turn, was to become even more famous in Roman times, as the founder of Rome in Vergil's Aeneid.

[Zeus] put sweet desire for Anchises in her heart;
Anchises was, at the time, on the steep mountain slopes of many-fountained Ida
tending cattle, looking, in build and stature, like the immortal gods.
When laughter-loving Aphrodite saw him,
she fell in love, and a terrible desire seized her senses.
Going to Cyprus, she entered her incense-fragrant temple
in Paphos, where she has a sacred precinct and a fragrant altar.
Going in, she closed the shining doors;
there, the Graces bathed her and anointed her with heavenly oil,
such as lies upon the bodies of the immortal gods,
ambrosial and sweet, which she had by her.
Clothing herself entirely in beautiful garments
and ornamented in gold, laughter-loving Aphrodite
rushed to Troy, leaving fragrant Cyprus,
quickly making her journey high among the clouds.
She came to many-fountained Ida, mother of wild beasts,
and went straight across the mountain to the farmstead.
After her came gray wolves, fawning upon her, and flashing-eyed lions,
bears, and swift leopards ravenous for deer.
She, seeing them, was happy in her heart,
and put desire in their breasts; at the same time
they all started mating, two by two, in their shady abodes.

(-Homeric Hymn V to Aphrodite, vv. 53-74, tr. C.A. Sowa)

Quotations for the Winter Solstice (Catullus and Hesiod), December-January, 2004-5

Winter is for celebrating -- and for doing indoor work!

The Saturnalia, the ancient festival of Saturn, was celebrated in Rome on December 17. Presents were exchanged, slaves were treated as equals of their masters, and freedom and jollity prevailed.

Saturnalibus, optimo dierum!

On the Saturnalia, best of days!

(-Catullus 14.15)

Another, more wintry view (in attitude as well as season) of this time of year is presented by the Boeotian Hesiod, who cautions the good farmer to use the indoor time well in taking care of household matters.

Pass by the seat at the bronze-smith's forge and the warm lodging-house
in winter, when the cold keeps a man from work --
for then the resolute man can be of great help to his household --
lest the hardship of winter overtake you, along with poverty,
and you massage a swollen foot with a shrunken hand.
Many are the mischievous thoughts that occur to the idle man,
who waits for a vain hope, lacking a means of livelihood.
....
Avoid the month of Lenaion [December-January] -- evil days,
all of them fit to flay an ox! -- and the frosts which arise, painful,
upon the earth when Boreas the North Wind blows;
who, blowing through horse-breeding Thrace upon the wide sea,
makes it heave, and the earth and the woods howl;
falling upon many high-crowned oaks and thick pines
in the mountain glens, Boreas brings them to the bounteous ground;
then the entire immense wood roars,
and the wild beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs,
even those whose hide is covered with fur;
chill as he is, he blows through them, although they are shaggy-breasted.
....

(-Hesiod,Works and Days, vv. 493-514)

Election Special Quotation (Aristophanes), Nov. 2, 2004

"The Bloviating Politico..."

By Zeus, I too dreamed! It seemed the goddess Athena herself
Came down from the Acropolis, with an owl perched on her shoulder;
She poured divine ambrosia over your head from a jar, O Good Citizen,
But over the head of the Blustering Politician she poured garlic pickle!

Aristophanes, Knights, 1092-1095.

The Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (ca.448-ca.380 B.C.) has become particularly famous in our era for his anti-war play Lysistrata, in which the women refuse to have sex with their husbands until they stop making war. But as this quotation shows, he lampooned politics in his other plays as well, proving that he knew as well as we do the Bloviating Politico.

"Doublespeak" and propaganda (Thucydides), October, 2004

"Words changed their meaning..."

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries..... Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first. The cause of these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.....

Thucydides, Histories III.82 (Crawley translation)

"Doublespeak," the deliberate twisting of words to make them mean "something they ain't," didn't begin with George Orwell and 1984. (In fact, Orwell didn't even use the word that is frequently attributed to him, although he did coin "Newspeak" and "Duckspeak.") Nor did the practice begin with recent and current wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq or with modern political campaigns. Thucydides (471?-400? B.C.) was writing about the Peloponnesian War between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies, in which he participated. During the fifth century B.C., Athens morphed from a democracy into the Athenian Empire, overextending her forces and ambitions. Athens reached a tragic low point in the disastrous expedition against Syracuse, eventually losing the war.

Lament for soldiers who have died in war (Aeschylus), September, 2004

"Ares the moneychanger of the bodies of soldiers..."

Ares the moneychanger of bodies,
holding the scales in the battle of the spear,
from the fires of Ilium
sends back to loved ones the heavy
much-wept dust, filling
with ashes instead of men
the well-laid out funeral urns.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 438-444

These words, translated from the Greek, are from one of the great choral odes in the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.). Ares, the god of war, is the great moneychanger, exchanging men for dust. The war was the ten year-long Trojan War, from which Agamemnon returned, only to be murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra.

The quotation is particularly apropos, since, as of this week, over 1000 U.S. soldiers, hundreds of coalition forces, and over 20,000 Iraquis have died in what seems to be an exit-less war in Iraq.

Copyright © 2004, Cora Angier Sowa. All rights reserved.

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