Ancient Wisdom & New Year’s Resolutions

by Caroline Lawrence

I read ancient authors almost daily and am always surprised by how relevant they are. (Usually!) Here are my ten New Year’s resolutions based on ancient authors, some with links to advice for modern application. Maybe some of them will inspire you, too!

1. Examine Your Life – Socrates (Greek 5th century BC)
Socrates famously said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ The bleak midwinter is the yearly equivalent of four in the morning, when all our fears rise to the surface of consciousness. Don’t push them back down. Take them out and examine them one by one. One way to do this is something like Morning Pages where you write a stream of consciousness first thing. Check out a 3-minute clip HERE.

2. Know Thyself. – Anonymous (Greek 6th century BC)
This slogan was written in Greek on temple of Apollo at Delphi. It’s not entirely sure who first coined it but many philosophers have echoed it ever since. According to Yuval Noah Harari, algorithms already know more about us than we do ourselves. (Watch a revelatory interview with Harari HERE). Until they make the ‘Know Thyself’ app, I’m going to constantly ask myself why I’m taking certain actions from little (online purchases) to big (the nature of my next project). 

3. Let Your Food Be Medicine – Hippocrates (Greek 5th century BC)
The reason we make New Year’s Resolutions now is because of the two weeks of overindulgence we’ve just experienced, telling ourselves ‘It’s the holidays... Let the regime go for a while.’ That’s fine. That’s why winter is a time for feasting. And why Lent is a time for fasting. Two and a half thousand years ago the ‘father of medicine’ urged people to eat for health, but fasts were also part of the ancient health regime. Sometimes a lack of food is good for the body and lets it recover. I started the new year with a ‘diatritos’, a three day fast, and will try to fast for a couple of days each month. HERE is a short introduction to fasting.

4. Withdraw into Yourself as Far as You Can – Seneca (Latin 1st century AD)
Recede in te ipsum, quantum potes. (Letters 7.8) The first century AD Roman Stoic philosopher seemed to be talking about something like meditation or mindfulness. I’m going to try to meditate every day and take stock, even if only for a few minutes. Try a short 3-minute version HERE. 

5. Always Be On Your Guard – Marcus Aurelius (Greek 2nd century AD)
Wise words from the second century AD Stoic philosopher and emperor. The full quote is this. ‘The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, you should always be on your guard.’ (Meditations 7.61) Whether on the streets of London or posting on Twitter, I’m going to try to be alert to danger and let my intuition warn me. 

6. Take Power Naps – Pliny (Latin 1st AD)
He was a most ready sleeper, insomuch that he would sometimes, whilst in the midst of his studies, fall off and then wake up again… [After lunch] he generally took a cold bath, then some light refreshment and a little nap. After this, as if it had been a new day, he studied till supper-time… Pliny Letters 27. As I get older, I am learning to take power naps before they take me. Read Pliny the Younger’s account of his Uncle’s daily routine HERE. 

7. Keep Fit – Juvenal (Latin 1st AD)
Mens sana in corpore sano can be translated as ‘a healthy mental outlook in a fit body’. You don’t have to join a gym or invest in new trainers. We all know the ways to increase daily movement like getting off the tube a stop earlier or taking the stairs instead of a lift. I love walking but my knee is getting a bit stiff so I’ve now started to supplement walking with a short yoga session first thing in the comfort of my own home via YouTube or DVD. My favourite is Rodney Yee. 

8. Hurry Slowly – Augustus via Suetonius (Latin 1st AD)
I do things quickly. Sometimes too quickly. The Roman historian Suetonius, in De vita Caesarum, tells that Augustus deplored rashness in a military commander, thus σπεῦδε βραδέως or festina lente in Latin was one of his favourite sayings. I resolve to be quick but not impulsive. 

9. Treat Others As You Would Like to be Treated – Jesus (Greek 1st AD)
In Matthew 7:12, Jesus states the so-called Golden Rule which he got from Hillel the Elder, a first century BC Jewish sage. We know it in our heads (and hearts) but it goes against the survival instinct of our reptile brain. I had a revelation recently while teaching John Truby’s seven beat plot structure, which includes the Desire and the Opponent. We often consider people as opponents or barriers to things we want, but in God’s eyes it is the people who are important, not the things we want. 

10. Delight Yourself in the LORD... – King David (Hebrew 10th century BC)

...And He will give you the desires of your heart completes the promise. We can be overwhelmed by the suffering and stupidity in the world around us, and be tempted to despair. But we live lives of greater comfort and luxury than almost any generation before us. I am going to count my blessings, say thank you to the Universe and delight myself in God and His creation. For me, this verse from Psalm 37 is the most important resolution of all. 

Gnothi Sauton = Gnothi Seauton = Know Thyself

History and The Greystones Press by Mary Hoffman

Now that Shakespeare Month on the History Girls is over, some of you may be breathing a sigh of relief! But I'm going to crave your indulgence a little further. You see, on 23rd April, the big Shakespeare day, five titles came out with my new independent publishing house, The Greystones Press.

One of the titles, pictured above, was the reason we chose that date. You can read a bit more about that on the piece I wrote for Authors Electric, which by a nice bit of serendipity came out yesterday. Incidentally, I was very happy to write a guest blog for AE, as its creator, Susan Price, is one of our wonderful HG Reserves, and has written many "anytime posts" for me to bank and use when there is a crisis here.

On our launch list, four out of the five titles have an element of history in them. Shakespeare's Ghost is a YA novel with a paranormal twist but it is buttressed by an enormous amount of historical research. Just off the top of my head, this involved:
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
The Globe theatre
The Blackfriars Theatre
The King's Men
King James and his family
Boy players in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre
Acting companies on tour
Elizabethan Fairy and folklore
The Rollwright Stones
Renaissance magic
The Shakespearean stage
Symptoms of the plague etc. etc.

Of course I knew the plays well already - not just those listed above. I wouldn't have tackled a novel about Shakespeare if I hadn't. But I had an early piece of luck about his indoor theatre at Blackfriars. A friend was able to put me in touch with one of the architects working on the Sam Wanamaker theatre at the Globe, who kindly answered all my questions, showed me plans and took me to see the building in progress. It was as close as a modern theatre could be to the no longer extant performing space in Blackfriars that enabled The King's Men to play in winter as well as summer.

Since then I have seen several productions in this gorgeous indoor theatre, including The Winter's Tale and The Tempest this year.

Another of the Greystones Press début titles is the reissue of a novel I originally wrote as YA but which we are now publishing with the subtitle and cover I always wanted:

It was because of David that the History Girls blog was born. The novel was coming out in July 2011 and I was doing a 30-stop blog tour. Then I began to wonder why there wasn't a blog mainly for historical fiction. Maybe there was; if so I couldn't find it.

Of course David required a lot of historical background research too: one of the things that attracted me to the subject was that we knew so much about Michelangelo's famous statue. We have the contract commissioning him to sculpt it, we know the date when his chisel made its first cut; we even have the minutes of the committee meeting which was called to decide where to place the finished "Giant" - a committee whose members included Leonardo da Vinci.

And in the middle there was a great big hole about who the model was or whether there even was one! That sort of situation is pure catnip to a writer of historical fiction and of course I had to learn everything I could about Michelangelo, Renaissance sculpture techniques, Florentine politics, the Medici family, Savonarola and many other things.

Our third title grew out of a blog. Not this one, though the author Katherine Langrish is a History Girl. She had created another blog, in 2009, called Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, with wonderful short essays on fairy and folk tales. I felt these deserved a wider and less ephemeral platform. So we asked Katherine if she would expand some of these posts into a full-length non-fiction book for adults.

It is proving enormously popular and we have already had to reprint, so I think our instincts were sound. Katherine herself had to do an enormous amount of research, which she writes a bit about here.

The fourth title, The Moon, by Jules Cashford had been published in hardback in 2003. It had taken me months to read because after a paragraph or two I had to put the book down and let the material percolate. Every page gave me ideas for books I'd like to write. The only other book I've read that gave me this sensation was Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

So when we were offered the chance to re-issue this book in paperback, it was too tempting to refuse, even though we had said firmly that we were NOT going to publish illustrated books. It has the subtitle "Symbol of transformation" and, we think, a much better cover than the original. The breadth and depth of Jules' knowledge of myth, symbolism and imagery across a range of cultures makes the book a delight.

The brief of the Greystones Press is to publish adult and YA fiction and adult NF "in areas that interest us." These are art, music, literature, mythology, fairy stories and of course history. You can find out more about us at www.greystonespress.com

And in time I hope very much that some of the essays you have read here over the years might be expanded and combined into another book that The Greystones Press could publish.

The Michelangelo Trail by Mary Hoffman

The History Girls blog began nearly four years ago, on 1st July 2011, and had its origin in a desire on my part to let the world know I had written a novel about Michelangelo's sculpture of David. The sitehas grown to be so much more than that but it is quite satisfying to come full circle and write about the new suite of educational materials, based on that novel, that I am going to write for an innovative new company called Time Traveler Tours & Tales.

Photo credit: Jorg Bittner Unner, Creative Commons

The book was a historical novelist's joy to write because it offered the perfect opportunity for fiction. So much was known about this famous figure: we have the contract the sculptor was given, the date he made the first chisel cut, the minutes of the committee meeting to decide where the sculpture was to be displayed (where Leonardo da Vinci was present).

And in the middle a great big hole. Who was the model for this, probably the most famous sculpture in the world? Or was there even a model at all? Maybe this David sprang from the imagination of the sculptor, who, it is worth remembering, was twenty-six years old when he asked the Operai del Duomo for the old block of Carrara marble that two previous artists had abandoned and which just lay about for forty years  in a building behind the Duomo in Florence for people to trip over.

My first visit to Florence was at the end of my first year at university, when I spent a month there. It was probably the most influential four weeks of my life, directing my interests and enthusiasms from then on. I already knew I preferred Michelangelo to Leonardo but this sojourn, in a pensione overlooking Piazza San Lorenzo, confirmed it.

In my new project I'll be devising an app to take readers on a tour of the city visiting "hotspots" connected with the sculpture and the sculptor. And it occurred to me that readers of the History Girls blog might like an expanded version of my list - a sort of "print out and keep" guide to which works of art by Michelangelo you can see in the city I have now visited so many times I have  lost count.

Bronze of Michelangelo's head by Daniele di Volterra

• Casa Buonarroti Michelangelo never lived here but it houses two early works: the bas reliefs of The Madonna of the Stairs and The Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths.

• The area behind Brunelleschi’s Dome on the Duomo (now the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo). This is where the workshop was where Michelangelo made the David statue. On the day it was moved from there to the Piazza della Signoria the doorway had to be broken down to allow the giant statue to be trundled out. It took three days to move it to its final position.

• Santa Croce church. Michelangelo is buried there (under a hideous tomb by Vasari) and lived near there. His mother is also buried there.

• Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine (Oltr’arno). The frescoes by Masaccio (Big Tom). It was here that Michelangelo’s nose was broken by Pietro Torrigiani when they were both teenagers and protégés of Lorenzo de’ Medici and were sent there to sketch the frescoes. (You can see the broken nose quite clearly in Volterra's bronze above.)

• Piazza della Signoria The David statue was here for hundreds of years. Also this is where Savonarola had his Bonfires of the Vanities and where he was executed.Michelangelo and several of his brothers were followers of Savonarola.

• San Marco convent Michelangelo’s older brother Lionardo was a friar there, as was Savonarola. It houses great art by Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio etc.

• The Bargello for Davids by Donatello and Verocchio (Leonardo’s teacher) and Michelangelo’s Pitti Tondo, Brutus, Bacchus etc.

Brutus

• Palazzo Medici Riccardi Where Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo de’ Medici.

 

• Santo Spirito, Oltr’arno. Where Michelangelo dissected bodies. His wooden crucifix (the earliest recorded work) is in the Sacristy.

• Piazza Santa Trinita Where Michelangelo had his very public argument with Leonardo. 

• The Medici Chapels behind San Lorenzo church. Michelangelo designed the tombs for two of the de' Medici family. His statues of them are flanked by Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day.

• The Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo. This and the magnificent staircase to it were designed by Michelangelo.

• The Uffizi houses the Sacred Family painting by Michelangelo.

• And of course. The Accademia where the original David now stands. But don't neglect to look at the slaves/prisoners and St. Matthew who line the gallery leading up to David.

Photo credit: Jorg Bittner Unner, Creative Commons

On my first visit to Florence, I and some other students, none of us studying Art, managed to blag our way into the Casa Buonarroti, which was in restauro at the time and saw the two reliefs and the very touching little wooden crucifix, now in Santo Spirito, which was waiting to be authenticated. None of us was in any doubt.

On my last visit, a year ago, Sarah Towle of Time Traveler Tours and Tales and I went to the Medici Chapels at San Lorenzo and looked through the door leading to the underground hiding place that the sculptor used on a visit to the city, long after he had made the David. It is not open to the public but the whitewashed walls are covered with his drawings.

Michelangelo's relationship with Florence was fraught. As a protegé of Lorenzo de' Medici (the "Magnificent"), he was loyal to the family, but after Lorenzo's death became a Republican. Florence itself had an on/off love affair with the powerful de' Medici family, expelling them and welcoming them back more than once.

My relationship with Florence and Michelangelo has undergone no such upheavals. I can't wait to work with Sarah Towle to bring this Renaissance sculpture to life for 21st century children and teenagers. You can read more about the project below.

But in the meantime, if you are going to Florence this summer, do follow the Michelangelo Trail. I'm only sorry I won't be doing it with you!


Time Traveler Tours & Tales Campaign

July's Competition winners

Here are the winners of the ten books in the first History Girls book Giveaway:

5 copies of Wolf Blood by N.M.Browne:

Moira - Jack Russell
Emily - whippet
I Care for You. XX - bat
Carola Huttmann - The Cunning Little Vixen
Sally - cat.

5 copies of David by Mary Hoffman:

Elen C for the Magritte men
Aliya Whiteley for Whistler's Mother
Matt for Munch's Scream
Maryom for Jane Avril at the Moulin Rouge
Whispering Words for Rodin's Thinker

Could the above 10  winners please send their land addresses to Emma Bradshaw:

emma.bradshawATbloomsbury.com, replacing AT with the @ symbol, as soon as possible?

Well done everyone! Watch out for a new competition on 31st August and don't forget there is still time to win a signed copy of Katherine Roberts' The Cleopatra Curse (see the Competitions page)

Competition giveaway!

Please look at the Competitions page for July's giveaway of David and Wolf Blood.

Leave your answers as comments on this post and we'll get back to you at the end of the first week in August.

Wolf Blood by N.M.Browne

David by Mary Hoffman

What if?

I am in the odd position of being both host and guest today, at least partially, since The History Girls is a stop on my Blog Tour for David. So I suppose I should welcome me!

But actually I'd rather thank the blog for giving me a spot to write about writing and to say how much I've enjoyed everyone else's blogposts so far.

And to mention that History Girl Michelle Lovric is appearing on The Book Show tonight, more4 channel at 7.30pm where they will be discussing her remarkable adult novel, The Book of Human Skin. If you don't catch it tonight or don't have that Channel, we believe it will be repeated next Saturday afternoon on Channel 4 at 2.15pm.

And now to my favourite kind of fantasy, the "what if" one. I have just seen two Shakespeare History plays - Henry 1V, parts one and two, Peter Hall Company, Bath and the return journey was full of 'what if" discussions:

What if the Black Prince hadn't died? Or Richard 11 had produced a son? Or been content to let Bolingbroke inherit John of Gaunt's title and wealth? They are endless and endlessly fascinating.

My most recent historical novel had a classic beginning: an upfront undisputed historical fact, a vast hinterland of unknowns, a sprinkling of speculation and a daydreamer for an author.

All fiction begins with a “what if?” and mine was “what if a young man looking just like that famous statue walked into the city of Florence in 1501 – what would happen next?”

And once I’d had that idea, the rest was relatively easy. No-one knows anything about the model for David, or even if there was one. Frederick Hartt suggested in 1987 that the musculature on the statue, with the overdeveloped right arm, could indicate a stonemason; that was all.

I put that together with the known fact that Michelangelo had been wet-nursed by a stonecutter’s wife in Settignano, where his father had a farm, and I had the first outline of a plot. If Gabriele was the sculptor’s “milk brother” then their fraternal closeness could get me out of the problem that Michelangelo might otherwise fancy his handsome model, which was not the novel I wanted to write.

Researching the period with books bought in the UK and Italy, reading academic articles online, consulting texts in the Bodleian and Taylorian and borrowing others from the wonderful London Library, of which I’m a member, I was able to create a timeline stretching before and after the intense three and a half year period featured in the novel.

So it was all there: Savonarola and the Bonfire of the Vanities, the overthrow of the de’ Medici family, the military rise of Cesare Borgia, art patronage and the presence in the city of Leonardo, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio and the pattern of artistic rivalry.

All I had to do was make the characters come alive, imagine my Gabriele as a full personality and give him some erotic and political entanglements and voilà! (or rather eccolo!) – I had my plot. 

Of course, you don’t stand aloof and say, “I’ll invent this character and use that historical figure.” You create and remove exactly as much as you need to as you go through the novel.

Here’s a little example: I knew that the statue of David was stoned on the first night it was moved from the workshop to the Piazza della Signoria. (It took four days to trundle it) so I deduced that the stone-throwers were pro-Mediceans who saw David as a dangerous symbol of Republicanism. In a footnote to a journal article I was reading about a quite different aspect of Michelangelo's life, I found the names of four young men suspected of or arrested for this act of vandalism. One of them was a Gherardini.

Now this was the family name of Lisa del Giocondo – the woman known better to the world as Mona Lisa. After some fruitless research to see if I could trace a connection, I just made him a cousin to Leonardo’s sitter and had him playing the recorder to keep her entertained while her portrait was being painted.

I also made him and the other three named Florentines young members of the pro-Medicean group that Gabriele infiltrates as a spy. A tiny detail but I know it’s there and I know it made the book for me at least feel more authentic.

And if I’m lucky, I find something like that when I am working on any historical novel. But I think it’s important to play fair and say in a historical note what you’ve invented and what taken from known history. Otherwise the reader is left wondering - and misinformed.