Latin, Greek and the 'Ready Brek glow' by Caroline K. Mackenzie

Some of the best advice I once received was this: find something that gives you that ‘Ready Brek glow’ (do you remember the 1982 advert?), and try to do whatever that may be every day. It will fortify you for life’s ups and downs. Immediately I knew what my Ready Brek equivalent was: time spent teaching Latin and Greek, whether via one-to-one tuition, or in a small group. It is not just the lesson itself which is rewarding, there is genuinely a glow that stays with me for some time afterwards, whatever that particular day has in store.

One of my first textbooks.

 
My tutees range in ages from 8 to 88, and almost every decade in between. Some of them are learning Latin or Greek at school and are working towards a GCSE, IB or A Level examination. Greek, in particular, is often squeezed into the already cramped school timetable so the subject may share the lessons allocated for Latin, or be taught as a lunchtime club. The students who have chosen either or both of these languages have usually had to make a very positive choice to study them, by opting in, rather than there being any curricular requirement (such as there may be for learning a modern foreign language). So the students’ commitment and enthusiasm go a long way in redressing the timetabling challenges their schools may face.

Many teenagers are initially drawn to the Classical languages from their childhood love of Greek mythology and the great stories that are told in both Latin and Greek. Others say they love the logic of the languages, and the challenge of translating a passage, which equates to solving a puzzle. For those who learn Greek, the excitement of a different alphabet can make them feel as if they are in a secret club: the thrill of decoding the symbols into English words is just one of the highlights.

But why do Latin and Greek appeal to so many adults, who have no exams looming, but who wish to master an ancient language just for the sake of it? Much has been written about the benefits of keeping one’s mind active throughout life, using crosswords, number puzzles, etc., so why not learn an ancient language, too? My octogenarian students say it keeps them on their toes and they love translating passages of literature in the original. Another student likened the satisfaction of translating a Latin sentence correctly to having a tidy laundry cupboard. A retiree reported that it felt like a return to childhood and a chance to recapture one’s youth.

 Part of the fun of learning Latin and Greek is discovering connections with English.

Most of all, learning Latin and Greek can be so much fun. Quite apart from the joys of mastering the languages, the stories and accounts that we still have in their original form unlock a whole world from as early as the eighth century BC through Classical Greece and the Roman empire. The poems, historical accounts and even ancient travel guides give an insight into the Greeks’ and Romans’ lives in extraordinary detail, including their hopes and fears: from the food they ate and wine they drank, their homes, families, art, architecture, clothes, pesky politicians, and nosy neighbours, to the big question of mortality and the wish to make one’s life meaningful. These are all human conditions to which we can still relate, sometimes with surprisingly acute similarities. The languages may sometimes be referred to as ‘dead’ but the dialogue started by the people who spoke those languages is very much alive.

Equal to my tutees’ love of learning Latin and Greek is my love of teaching them. My favourite Greek textbook includes (as a nice nod to all the teachers using the book) a practice translation sentence as follows: διδασκω τε και μανθανω (I both teach and learn). The transliteration of the verbs in this sentence are ‘didasko’ (I teach) which gives us ‘didactic’, and ‘manthano’ (I learn) (the root of which is ‘math’) which gives us ‘mathematics’, ‘polymath’, etc.

Without fail, I learn something new in every lesson I teach. I also have the pleasure of witnessing the delight of my students in the moment that they make a connection between Latin and a word or abbreviation which they use daily, e.g. (exempli gratia, for the sake of an example), 7am (ante meridiem, before midday), etc. (et cetera, and the rest). It is also wonderful to experience their animated reaction to a wronged character in Greek tragedy, or to hear their laughter at a joke in an ancient Greek comedy. The jokes still land after all these centuries.

διδασκω τε και μανθανω (I both teach and learn).

Kennedy's Latin primer is one of the first textbooks I ever used when learning Latin and recently one of my students has acquired a second hand copy which has become his vade mecum (literally, 'go with me' - I suppose we might say 'my go-to textbook'). It has a fantastic quote from Cicero, which he pointed out to me just a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing a point of grammar but the quote resonated with me as I think it encapsulates what I have tried to describe in this post:

haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant.
These studies nurture youth, and delight old age.

So back to that ‘Ready Brek glow’. I love porridge and eat it most days - it is full of nostalgia for me as my Dad used to make it overnight and serve it the Scottish way, with a pinch of salt and definitely no sugar. But if I had to choose between my bowl of steaming oats and teaching an hour of Latin and Greek, you can probably conclude which one will give me the greatest glow.


P.S. (post scriptum) If you are interested in having a little taste of Latin, I shall be giving an online illustrated talk for The Hellenic and Roman Societies on Tuesday 4th November at 7pm, and repeated on Saturday 15th November at 11am. Whether you are a complete beginner or wish to brush up on existing knowledge, you will be very welcome! Please contact me for further details via my website: www.carolinetutor.co.uk

What to Bring to a Saturnalia Feast

Our Saturnalia host, Steve Cockings

by Caroline Lawrence

For many years, my motive for studying Classics and writing historical fiction has been an intense desire to know what it would really have been like in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. So when I was invited to a Saturnalia banquet in Bedford around this time last year, I jumped at the chance. 

Steve Cockings is a re-enactor who loves to collect real and replica artefacts. He is a stickler for detail and has read several early drafts of my books, always coming back with valuable corrections.

Alisa, Simon, Caroline and Elizabeth

Alisa fights in many countries

There were five of us in all. Steve, his wife, gladiatrix Alisa and her husband Simon, also a re-enactor. We all dressed up in Roman garb. Although we didn't recline and there were no frescoes on the walls, we ate recipes from Apicius off real Samian plates with antique Roman spoons to the flickering light of oil-lamps. Roman music played softly in the background and Steve had prepared Saturnalia gifts for each of us: epigrams of the poet Martial, translated into English, written on papyrus, wrapped around a candle and tied with a thin strip of red-dyed leather.  

hard boiled eggs in sauce

The three course meal consisted of:
1) Gustatio (Starter)
• Hard boiled eggs in a sauce of honey, fish sauce, ground pepper, celery seed and chopped almonds.
2) Mensa Prima (Main Course)
• Chicken in Thyme (chicken, ground pepper, thyme, cumin, fennel, mint, rosemary, wine vinegar chopped dates, honey and olive oil)
• Leeks with Celery in a pepper honey sauce.  
• Mushrooms with a Rich Sauce of honey, olive oil, ground pepper and celery seed.
3) Mensa Secunda (Dessert)
• Poached Pears in a sauce of cinnamon, cumin, honey, sweet white wine, olive oil, egg yolks and nutmeg
• Walnut Cake
• Figs, grapes and apples

pears poached in sauce of honey, wine, olive oil and spices

The experience was illuminating in many ways. 

I saw what felt right. 

I saw what was very un-Roman.

I saw what might have been improved. 

It is traditional to give gifts on the Saturnalia. Next time I attend such a dinner I’ll know what gifts to bring. 

a thirsty bronze double-flame oil-lamp

I. Olive oil 
Oil-lamps guzzle oil and need to be refilled fairly often. I took one of my own replica oil-lamps one with a chariot design bought from the British Museum gift shop perhaps a decade ago. I had a piece of twine in it but Steve said it should be plaited linen. The thicker the wick, the brighter the flame. At one point I tried to ‘trim the wick’ with a tiny pair of real Roman tweezers and sent a shower of angry embers onto the linen tablecloth. 

linen wicks

II. Linen wicks
I should have brought some proper linen wicks. You can order them on Amazon, mainly in cotton. They are intended for use with kerosene lamps. 

III. A fan 
Every time a wick was replaced or oil replenished I got a lungful of smoke. A papyrus or silk fan would have discreetly dispersed the offending miasma.  

A loom woven linen napkin from Naples

IV. A napkin
Even using my dual-purpose Roman spoon (one end pointy, one end spoonish), my fingers quickly became very sticky. Most ancient Romans carried a napkin down the front of their tunics. This multi-purpose item can be spread over your clothes to avoid stains, used to wipe mouth and fingers, as a handkerchief for a runny nose and as a personal doggy bag. 

real and replica glass vessels

V. Wine
You need wine to wash down those strange Roman dishes. I bought the cheapest, blackest wine I could find: a £4 bottle of Australian Shiraz from my local Co-op. It was fabulous. 

VI. A replica beaker or jug  
In Roman times it was considered barbaric to drink wine neat. What with watering down the wine, you need as many beakers and jugs as possible. 

Saturnalia scene from The Roman Mysteries TV series

VII. Pillei 
Professor Llewelyn Morgan, an illustrious Oxford Latinist, saw my tweets and asked, ‘Where are your pillei?!’ And he’s right. We should be wearing the conical hats that show we are free from the usual restrictions. A real pilleum would have been made of coloured wool or felt. For a cheap one buy a Santa hat at Poundland and take off the fake fur trim. After all, the origin of Santa hats are the Saturnalia. 

clay figurines of girls dicing

VIII. Dice
I should have brought dice. They can make everything fun. Roll the dice to see who gets the real Samian ware plate. Roll the dice to see who gets the antique Roman spoon. Roll the dice to see who gets the last poached pear in a sauce of honey, cinnamon and olive oil. 

CD of Roman Music

IX. Music
Ideally a live performance of lyre, tambourine, pan-pipes and aulos. But re-imagined Roman music will do nicely. Our host was playing the very well-researched CD Musica Romana Pugnate on a vintage boom box hidden behind a tapestry. But you could play tunes curated by Armand D'Angour as well, easily found on YouTube. 

X. Epigrams of Martial 
It is my personal theory that these were the origins of the mottoes in Christmas crackers. A little two-line poem that also served as a gift tag. Ideally on papyrus in both Latin and English.

Epigram of Martial on papyrus

And speaking of Martial, here is one of his Saturnalia poems: 

Unctis falciferi senis diebus
regnator quibus imperat fritillus
versu ludere non laborioso
permittis, puto, pilleata Roma. 

In these well-oiled days of scythe-bearing Saturn
When the dice box is king of all
I pray that all you cap-wearing Romans
Will permit me some playful poems... 

(Martial XI.6)

BLUE vs GREEN. Passion and politics in the Roman circus.....

What did Nero and Caligula have in common, besides being murderous megalomaniacs? Both were ardent Greens. In Constantinople some 500 years later, Justinian and his wife Theodora were passionate Blues.

The Blues and Greens were two of the factions in chariot racing, who were supported by the populace in huge numbers. Along with their less celebrated rivals, the Reds and Whites, they provoked violent passions and the occasional riot in a tradition stretching from the late republic until the Twelfth Century AD. This is an extraordinary tale of sporting rivalry.

I first became aware of the Blues and Greens when researching my first, dead-in-a-drawer novel set in 6th century Constantinople. In this era, the violence from the racing factions spilled onto the streets: there were riots and massacres that make our football hooligans seem like benevolent pixies.
Now I am back again, but five centuries earlier. How important were the Blues and Greens in the early Empire - how prevalent, and how destructive?

Chariot racing, according to Roman legend, was introduced by Romulus. According to archaeology, it was most likely borrowed Etruria - and the Etruscans borrowed from the Greeks. In the Greek tradition, wealthy men effectively sponsored chariots in the Games, accruing great honour. In Rome, it was fashionable int he early Republic for aristocrats to race their own teams. Historian Elizabeth Rawson argues that at some point after the fifth century BC, the state began to pay horse-breeders to raise horses for the races.

Rawson argues that is it possible that it was about this time that the four factions emerged; effectively four different stables which paid for the chariots, horses and charioteers, perhaps from the ever increasing prize-money.

Charior racing was hugely popular. Ovid, in his Weinstein-ish poetry about how to pick up women, makes it clear that men and women sat together - close packed in narrow rows. The Circus Maximus could hold - it is argued - a staggering 150,000 race fans. Imagine the noise as the Blues passed the meta (the turning post) in the final round, beating the Greens back to a sullen second.  I am reminded of attending a baseball game in America. The distances involved meant there were no rival fans. For someone used to British football and rugby grounds the atmosphere was weirdly leaden. Supporting any sport becomes more interesting when you are vested - somehow, anyhow - in the competitors.

Augustus - who cannily never let his preferences be known  - understood the power of the Circus. He renovated and expanded the Circus, and sat his family on a large collective bench so that they could be seen to be first among equal citizens. As Andrew Feldherr points out, he chose the cliffs overhanging the circus to build his palace; the architectural symbol of the new order.

There is some doubt as to whether all four factions had a long history before Augustus began to incorporate the myths and iconography of the Circus into the elaborate mythical buttressing of his
regime.

Tertullian, writing in the third century AD, says that there were originally only two factions - red and white. This is disputed by modern historians.

Alan Cameron, in his seminal book on this topic, Circus Factions, argues that Tertullian's version is just one tradition, and that all the later versions are ripe with mythology and wish-fulfillment. Cameron argues that the origins of the Blues and Greens go far back in to the Republic - exactly when, we do not know.

Blues and Green became the major colours quickly, dominating the sources. Cameron argues that the precise relationship between the Blues and Greens on the one hand, and Red and White on the other, remains a puzzle. One version of the significance of the colours holds that they represent the four seasons - but as Cameron points out, this notion is part of later mythologising by Roman antiquarians.

There have been various theories propounded as to whether the support for different factions was related to anything specific - class or religion, in particular. In late antiquity it has been surmised that one faction denoted one specific view of the nature of Christ.

Cameron argues that there is very little evidence of these distinctions. "The truth is that Blues hated Greens, not because they were lower class or heretics, but simply because they were Greens."

I can understand the temptation to ascribe social or religious leanings to one side or another; it seems absurd to hate for no more reason than the colour of a charioteer's tunic. But I have been to football derby matches - a number of them. I have seen little to match the vitriol and hatred between fans of Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. Unlike the other great football rivalries there is little to divide the fans - Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester have their religious splits; Barcelona its political ones.

But in Sheffield, an owl hates a blade just because he's a blade. Just as a Blue hates a Green just because.

Circus Maximus

Even as Rome descended into its late Antiquity malaise, chariot racing remained central to the City. In Decline and Fall, Gibbon says of 5th Century Romans that they "still considered the circus as their home, their temple and the seat of the republic."

In Constantinople, meanwhile, the factions became central to the Empire's politics. Who you supported came to matter politically; and the violent uprisings of the factions became a live political issue. Cameron makes strong arguments for the reasons why the rivalry between factions spiralled through the centuries to erupt in riots and murders in the 6th century: He points to the factionalisation of other areas of public spectacle, like the theatre.

But with a novelist's head, and not a historian's, it strikes me that there is another factor at play - all that history! Imagine the weight of it, stretching over an unimaginable 1500 years or so. And this the type of history that clings so tightly to a myth that the two are indistinguishable. The generations of forefathers who were Blue or Green. Who took their Blueness or Greenness from Rome and into the provinces. From Rome to that spit of land at the edge of Asia. Being Blue or Green stops needing a meaning when the weight of history and myth and family presses its colour violently upon your soul.

Antonia Senior

What does ‘Roman’ mean to you? by Alison Morton

Signifer, National Roman
Legion Museum, Carleon

Traditionally, Rome was founded in 753 BC. It grew into one of the largest empires in the ancient world with roughly 20% of the world’s population and an area of 6.5 million square kilometres at its height.

 Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the western part of the empire broke up in the 5th century, giving way to the pre-mediaeval ‘Dark Ages’ of Europe. Only Italy, Dalmatia, an isolated part of northern France and parts of Mauretania remained under Roman or Roman shared rule. The last western emperor Romulus Augustulus, abdicated in AD 476, kneeling in the dirt to Odoacer, who styled himself King of Italy.

The western Roman state existed for 1229 years. Although development has moved at rocket speed in recent years, a simple comparison would be from AD 680 to AD 1909 – what a lot of history that covers!

 Popular but not always accurate, depictions include plays like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Anthony and Cleopatra, feature films like ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’, ‘The Robe’, ‘Gladiator’ and series such as ‘I, Claudius’ and HBO’s ‘Rome’. Visual depictions often stay in the public’s eye more firmly than images conjured up by books. However, we have every sort of fictional account from humorous with grim undertones such as Lindsey Davis’s Falco series to gritty campaigning and power grabs by inter alia Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane and Douglas Jackson.

But over more than a millennium, what really symbolises 'Roman' for us?
Do we go back to Romulus, founder and first king of Rome 753-717 BC?

From an altar found at Ostia Antica –
The discovery of Romulus and Remus

Or do these pottery heads found on the Capitoline Hill in Rome and dating from 6th century BC tribal societies indicate the essential Romans?

Maybe the ‘great’ Marcus Furius Camillus c. 446 – 365 BC Roman general and statesman who defeated the Etruscans at Veii in 396 BC and expelled Brennus and his Gauls in 390 BC. But patrician to his core, he stoutly resisted granting the plebian representatives rights until 367 BC during a further war against the Gauls when he negotiated a compromise which united the two orders.

Triumph of Furius Camillus

Francesco Salviati (1510–1563)

Perhaps the influential Cornelia Africana, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, mother of the political reforming brothers, the Gracchi. She died at age 90 in 100 BC, and was remembered by the Romans as an exemplar of womanly virtue by saying she needed no other jewels than her children.

Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi
Angelica Kaufmann (1741-1807)

Or this soldier from the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, known as the “Census frieze”, circa 122 BC?

Maybe Augustus 63 BC – AD 14, the first Roman emperor, founder of the Julio-Claudians; power grabber and great reformer. He certainly ensured his image was disseminated throughout the Roman Empire during his lifetime which has left us plenty of evidence of his existence.

The Meroë head 27-25 BC
Photo courtesy of the British Museum

Or his influential and clever wife, Livia, or staunch friend Agrippa, the builder, general and administrator?

Statue, Museum of Roman Civilisation, Rome

The Plinii, Elder and Younger, polymaths, scientists, narrators of the minutiae of Roman life?

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 which has sent us so many poignant messages from Pompeii and Herculaneum into the present?

Domestic items from Pompeii, Naples Museum

Or perhaps Eurysaces, an eccentric baker, who made a fortune out of the grain trade who was introduced to us by Mary Beard?

Does Claudia Severa’s birthday dinner invitation to Lepidina testified by the Vindolanda tablets resonate with us today as we email that invitation to some friends for next Saturday night?

Or perhaps Constantine the Great AD 272 – 337, the first emperor to convert to Christianity?

Capitoline Museum, Rome

And there’s Flavius Stilichio, the half Vandal general who was magister utriusque militiae (commander-in-chief) of West Roman forces AD 395–408.

From an ivory diptych c. 395AD,Monza Cathedral
(Sometimes attributed to Aetius)

Perhaps Galla Placidia (AD 392 – 450), daughter of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, Regent for Emperor Valentinian III from 423 until his majority in 437, and a major force in Roman politics for most of her life. She was consort to Ataulf, King of the Goths from 414 until his death in 415, and Empress consort to Constantius III from 417 until his death in 422.

Galla Placidia medallion, minted, Ravenna c.425AD
Bibliothèque Nationale de France

And near the end, Emperor Majorian AD 457-461 who was one of the last emperors to make a concerted effort to restore the Western Roman Empire. Possessing little more than Italy, Dalmatia, and some territory in northern Gaul, Majorian campaigned rigorously for three years against the Empire’s enemies.

Gold coin of Majorian in full military kit

Late Antiquity was a very different place from the days of Romulus and Remus, but people very much regarded themselves as Romans. Indeed some vestiges of Roman ruled lands such as the Domain of Soissons persisted almost until the end of the fifth century  And of course the Roman church, the systems of government, law and administration persisted for further centuries.

What does the word “Roman” conjure up for you?

-------------

Alison Morton's latest book in the Roma Nova thriller series, RETALIO, is available from the usual retailers as ebook or paperback.

www.alison-morton.com

Time Travel in Rome's Piazza Navona

On the day this blog is due I will be in Rome, being a writer-in-residence to kids at St Stephen's High School. So I thought I’d dig up a suitable post from my Roman Mysteries Travel Guide. When in Rome, try a little Time Travel. Here’s how to do it in Rome’s Piazza Navona! Caroline Lawrence

A Top Fan took my advice... and loved it!

Sit in at an outdoor table of the Tre Scanlini in Piazza Navona as the afternoon is cooling into evening. Order a tartuffo. Tartufo is Italian for ‘truffle’. But this is no fungus; it’s a triple chocolate ice-cream treat. It will be expensive. That doesn’t matter. You will never forget this experience. 

As you wait for your tartuffo to arrive, look at the shape of the

Piazza Navona. Does it remind you of anything? It used to be a race-course for chariots, like the Circus Maximus, only smaller. It was built by the Emperor Domitian, Titus’s younger brother. Where the people are walking (and where you are sitting!) used to be the race course, with chariots driving at breakneck speed. Imagine four-house chariots driving there now – from your left to your right, and trampling all the unsuspecting tourists! 

The central part of the Piazza Navona – with its obelisk and fountains – would have been much thinner in the first century AD, about the width of the base of the obelisk. That was the central barrier of the racecourse, called the ‘spina’ or the ‘euripus’. The fountains are too wide and wouldn’t have been there in Roman times, but parts of the euripus would have been filled with water for the sparsores, the boys who sprinkled the track with water to keep the dust down. Instead of the big fountains at either end, imagine bronze cones, each about as tall as a cypress tree. Those cones were called metae, and they were the turning posts. This is where all the worst crashes occurred, as charioteers made a 180 turn at great speed. 

The chariots weren’t wooden chariots like the ones in Ben-Hur. Those were ceremonial chariots, used for solemn processions. Racing chariots were probably not much more than a wicker basket on wheels, designed to be as light and fast as possible. Imagine driving a basket on wheels behind four powerful stallions going at breakneck speed.

You have the reins wrapped around your waist, to keep your hands free to use the whip or tweak a particular rein. But if you are thrown out of your chariot you will be pulled along the sandy racetrack. Charioteers were given a knife in their belt to cut themselves free of the reins if they were thrown out of the chariot. Imagine trying to cut through eight thick leather straps as you are dragged along the sandy track with horses thundering past on your right and left, their hooves only inches away! Whew!

Your tartuffo should have arrived by now. You deserve it. As you savour the triple chocolate, remind yourself that chocolate was unknown to the Romans. Poor Romans. But wait, they had chariot races and we don’t. Which would you rather have: chocolate or chariot races? 

Now look at some of the Roman men and women walking in the Piazza. Imagine them dressed in tunics and sandals. Imagine the women in stolas and pallas. You can easily see which Roman men would have been patricians or senators. And you can easily spot the rustic farmers and peasants. That beautiful female street-sweeper must be a slave from Germania. And that big muscular youth, showing off to his friends, is probably a gladiator. That man with the thinning hair and the wire-rimmed glasses is the spitting image of Cicero. 

One mystery I have never been able to solve is this: What did Italian men do with their hands before cigarettes and mobile phones were invented? 

Author of the million-selling Roman Mysteries, Caroline Lawrence is now writing the Roman Quests, a series set in Rome and Roman Britain in the final years of the volatile Emperor Domitian, who had a caffé named after him.

Devotion by Louisa Young

Photo credit: Sarah Lee

It seems strange to welcome Louisa Young as our June guest. Until very recently and from the beginning she has been a full time History Girls and has only recently stepped back a bit to the role of Reserve, so we shall hear from her again.

Louisa Young is the author of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (HarperCollins), set between 1908 and 1919, a story of love, death and the origins of maxillo-facial reconstructive surgery in World War One. The sequel, The Heroes' Return, was published by Borough Press in 2014. She has also written The Book of the Heart (Flamingo), a cultural history of that most emblematic organ, and A Great Task of Happiness (republished 2012), a biography of her grandmother the sculptor Kathleen Scott, widow of Captain Scott of the Antarctic. Her first novel, Babylove, was listed for the Orange Prize.
  As half of Zizou Corder she has co-written five children's novels with her daughter, including the Lionboy trilogy, which is published in 36 languages.
 
She read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, and lives in London, where she has written the second sequel to My Dear I Wanted to Tell You. Called Devotion, it deals with a long neglected aspect of WW2 in Italy and is another highly recommended read.


Welcome "back," Louisa!

A long long time ago I sat with an American friend of my dad’s, a photographer and art historian, who has lived in Rome since the late 1940s. When I was a child he lived in a house on the Tiber Island, which to me, then and now, was and is the most romantic place in the world. Now, it is all rather well-organised:

 When I first went, it wasn’t quite like this: 

with boats and mud, so that you could believe the legend of it being built on the bones of Tarquin the Superb, the tyrant whose body was thrown into the river in 510BC. The shape, boat-like, was first re-inforced in the First Century: slabs of marble gave it a prow and a stern, commemorating the boat which brought a statue of the healing god Aesculapius and one of his holy snakes from Greece, after an outbreak of plague in 293 BC. The snake apparently leapt off the boat and swam to the island, which was seen as a sign that this was the best place to build Aesculapius's temple, and after that came the hospitals which are still there. Of course an island is always a good place for a hospital, specially when diseases are infectious. A carving of the Aesculapian rod and snake are still visible on the rock at the prow.

The stairs in our friend’s house were made of white marble, and if you looked out the window at the back the river tumbled and rushed below. We ate fried artichokes, and the grownups drank gin and It (Italian vermouth i.e. martini) and we could nip and talk to the strange post with four heads on it, or try to climb into the hospital grounds so we could do a proper circumnavigation of the island. Alas he moved, later, to a flat in a palazzo in Sant’Angelo, known as Piazza Tartaruga, Piazza Turtle, because of the little turtles balanced on the bowl of its central fountain. But that was a lovely flat too.

Someone - my father? - pointed out to me in a neighbouring street - via della Reginella - how the building behind the palazzo, thought the same height, contained five floors, where the palazzo had three. The apartments in that building had lower ceilings, smaller windows, more occupants. This, I learned, was where the edge of the Jewish Ghetto had been. Big-roomed palazzo outside the gate; many-floored lodgings inside. It is too narrow a street to photograph this, but here is the street in 1944:

And here is the street now, four cobbles replaced and named in honour of Grazia di Segni, born 1889
Giuditta Spizzichino, born 1922, Ada Spizzichino born 1915, and Rossana Calò, who was two years old. They were all arrested on October 16 1943,  deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

Our friend the photographer told me a story about a room in a flat just outside where the ghetto walls had been, a room with no windows, discovered by a new tenant in the 1960s. The tenant asked the landlord about it, what it was, and after some trouble and pursuit of the matter received the answer that ‘This was where the Jews hid during the Nazi occupation’. He was surprised, as he knew the family concerned had been devoted Fascists. Why would they have been hiding Jewish people?

‘Oh, they were hiding the Fascist Jews.’

Like many people, I have had a tendency to look at history from where I am, rather than from where people were at the time. 'Fascist Jews’, in the 21st century, seems a nonsense, impossible. But from 1920 there were Fascist Jews: immigrants from eastern Europe determined to prove their nationalistic loyalty to their new home country, communities in the west and the south who had been in Italy for hundreds of years but still felt it best in the interests of self-preservation to go along with the flow of public opinion, and in Rome a community which was there before Julius Caesar, before Christianity, before the split of Jewry into Sephardi and Ashkenazi even. It is the oldest Jewish community in the diaspora.

Remember what a  mess Italy was after WW1? Remember the Russian Revolution, and how utterly terrifying that was? Remember D’Annunzio and his lances, and how useless the government was? Remember how Italy as a country was not yet fifty years old, and how the walls of the Roman Ghetto only came down in 1888 - not even thirty years earlier?  Now, we know exactly why Mussolini was a terrible, terrible idea. Then, they didn’t know. And Jewish families had no special gift of seeing the future, and all the more historical reasons to be nervous.

Which all added up, for me, to the setting for a novel.

It’s called Devotion, and it’s out on June 2, published  by Borough Press. It continues the story that started in WW1 in My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, moving things on to the next generation. Tom, the English boy, loves his Roman Jewish cousin Nenna. Nenna loves her father, Aldo. And Aldo loves Mussolini. The moral? Be careful what you devote yourself to.

Rome at Christmas, by Carol Drinkwater

I am in Rome. I usually make the ‘pilgrimage’ at some point during the run-up to Christmas. The street illuminations are magnificent, the shopping is deliciously decadent and hectic and the Irish Catholic child in me thrills at St Peter’s Church and Square decked out in all its Nativity glory. Except that this year the crib is not ready. It looks like a building site. When I asked one of the volunteers keeping the flow of tourists moving when they expect it to be on display, she said they had high hopes it will be completed by the end of this week, which will be past Christmas Day. It rather confirms the cliché image of Italian punctuality.

I brought my 91-year-old mother this year, a dyed-in-the-wool Irish Catholic who never misses Mass and believes firmly in the infallibility of the Pope. As we stepped outside the great church, the largest religious building in the world, erected over the tomb of the Apostle Peter who was the first of an unbroken line of Popes, into the December sunshine, we stood gazing out across St Peter’s circular piazza with its towering Christmas tree and obelisk (taken by Caligula from Heliopolis in Egypt).

The Vatican City is an independent state, a walled enclave of 44 hectares, situated within the city of Rome. It counts approximately 840 inhabitants, including thirty female Vatican passport holders, which makes it the smallest internationally recognised independent state, both in size and population, in the world. Its monarch is the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. It is an independent economy, a free city in its own right with its own armed guards. Since the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, security has been more vigilant. As well as the traditional halberd and sword, these men now carry guns.

                                                               Papal  Swiss Guard at Vatican

There is no charge to enter St Peter’s Basilica but one does pay to visit the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. There is at least one bookshop – very well stocked with history and religious material, tourist mementos, postcards and Vatican stamps. The funds accrued from the sale of ticket entries and publications are, apparently, what keep Vatican City solvent. Its currency is the euro.

What surprised me was to learn that the Vatican City State only came into existence in 1929. I had assumed it would have been created during the period of Risorgimento or the Unification of Italy, which began in 1815 and was completed in 1871 when Rome was declared the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. However, the role of the Catholic Church including the Pope’s status within Italy was disputed for 58 years until an agreement was finally reached and signed in February 1929 becoming effective in June of that same year. The signatories were the Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, representing the King and the Cardinal Secretary of State on behalf of Pope Pius XI. According to the signed treaty, the Holy See has “full ownership, exclusive dominion, sovereign authority and jurisdiction over its city-state”.

In 1984, UNESCO declared the Vatican City State a World Heritage Site.

Its genius and beauty were created by Michelangelo, Bernini, Raphael to name but three amongst many including the greatest Renaissance architects. It is considered to be a continuous artistic creation as well as the seat of Christendom. This is why I return again and again. To Rome, the Eternal City, yes, and to the Vatican City because there is always something to discover, to celebrate, to marvel at. The long queues to reach the Sistine Chapel, a Holy Grail of a journey, rewarded at its end by that ceiling which never fails to astound, to leave me silenced with wonder. I will never forget the first time I lifted my gaze upwards and saw that reach, those fingers, that look between the two figures and a frisson ran through me which never lessens no matter how many visits I make.

Or St Peter’s Baldachin, the sculpted bronze canopy that stands 95 feet tall beneath the basilica’s dome and over the spot where St Peter is buried. Yesterday, there was almost no one in front of the baldachin when I reached it. I had the view of its dark towering presence all to myself – my mother was resting, perched on a great marble plinth nearby because all the seats in the church had been removed.

I took a breath and momentarily closed my eyes. Somewhere in a remote corner of the building a Gregorian chant was being sung, possibly a recording   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0 and then I glanced upwards at the dome. Michelangelo's work, his vision, but he died before it was completed. Still, he dedicated seventeen years of his life to this building. It humbles me to reflect on this fact.

Yesterday was the first time I have ever been in the basilica when no mass was taking place. Usually there are several going on all at once with priests crossing the marble floors in twos – one to say mass and one to serve – intent on one of many altars. My habit is usually to walk from my hotel in Prati, attend the first mass of the day which is performed at 7am. At this time of day, particularly in winter, there is rarely more than a handful of attendees. After mass, when I leave the church, day is breaking. I always take a moment outside to watch the sun rising up beyond the hills of Rome, breaking in golden streams across the colonnades and ruins of this immortal place.
The surrounding beauty, a combination of man-made and natural, swells up within me like an injection of warm liquid, leaving me drunk with joy and the knowledge that, in spite of everything, life is blessed, magnificent.

Beyond this, I rush about the city, seeing friends, choosing new leather shoes and handbag, eating plateloads of pasta, drinking Prosecco, buying panettone, huge chunks of fresh crumbly Parmesan before making one last stop at the Trevi Fountain. One euro tossed in the gushing water to guarantee my return, although it has been out of action for a while due to renovations. Next time, I might make the climb up to St Peter's cupola and see the city from this aerial viewpoint, which in over forty years' of visits, I have never done.


Happy holidays one and all. May 2016 bring some peace and sanity to our troubled, angry world. 

www.caroldrinkwater.com