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

Greek courtesans - beautiful and savvy by Elisabeth Storrs

Through the female characters in my ‘A Tale of  Ancient Rome’ series, I explore the lives of women in the ancient world. One of my favourite characters is a Cretan courtesan or hetaira (literally translating as a ‘companion’ in Greek) who teaches my naïve Roman female protagonist to compare the cloistered lives of Greek and Roman wives to those of Etruscan women who were afforded independence, education and sexual freedom (See Ancient Girl Power and Sex, Death and Eternal Love).

Greek women in the ancient world were cloistered in the homes of their fathers or husbands and confined to the roles of mothers and housewives. Roman matrons had a similar fate albeit granted status as second-class citizens ie disenfranchised. Their lives were passive and disempowered as encapsulated by the C5th playwright, Sophocles:

‘But now outside my father's house, I am nothing. Yes, I have often looked on women's nature in this regard, that we are nothing. When we reach puberty and can understand, we are thrust and sold away from our ancestral gods and from our parents. Some go to strange men's homes, others to joyless houses, some to hostile. And all this once the first night has yoked us to our husband. We are forced to praise and say that all is well.’

In comparison, hetairai (Greek) or hetaerae (Latin) were professional courtesans in ancient Greece who cultivated their beauty, intelligence and commercial acumen to gain a degree of independence far beyond that allowed to married women and their daughters. A hetaira was not a prostitute (pornos) who sold sex, but a sophisticated, educated and talented companion who wealthy and middle-class men hired to act as a hostess at parties known as symposia. Many were known for their prowess as artists and performers. 

Hetaira and symposiast Kylix 490-480 BCE

Heteirai were reputed to be educated and expected to participate in political discourse with guests. These courtesans were generally foreigners not born in Athens (metics), slaves or freedwoman but were well compensated and able to run businesses which employed entertainers such as musicians, jugglers, dancers, singers and flute girls (who performed sexual favours) to entertain at symposia. However, the world of a hetaira should not be romanticised. As it was usual for them to be supported by upper class protectors with whom they formed intimate liaisons, withdrawal of patronage could adversely affect their security. Furthermore, due to the sexual aspects of their profession, the companions were subject to religious disapproval and lived in a demi-monde subject to male authority. Nevertheless, compared to the lives of most Greek women whose primary purpose was procreation, and who were considered to be chattels to be bought, sold and inherited, the hetairai enjoyed a rare status in the Attic world.

Among the most famous was Aspasia of Miletus (approx. 470-410 BCE), long-time companion of the Athenian politician Pericles. She was a metic and, accordingly, was not allowed to marry an Athenian and had to pay a tax to live in Athens. She bore Pericles a son out of wedlock known as Pericles the Younger. She is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plutarch and other ancient writers whose opinions varied between praising her as a talented rhetorician who was the centre of Athenian intellectual life, or deriding her as a brothel-keeper who procured young girls for her lover.

Aspasia surrounded by Greek philosophers, Michele Corneille the Younger 1670s

The name Aspasia means ‘the desired one’ and, as such, may have been a professional name used when working as a hetaira. She operated a salon and a girl’s school which her detractors claimed were brothels. Pericles’ enemies derided him by asserting Aspasia was the true author of his speeches. In comparison, Socrates felt no shame in stating Aspasia had taught him the art of eloquence (which was also mentioned by Plato in his dialogue Menexenus). Socrates marvelled at her persuasiveness, and credited her with composing the funeral oration Pericles delivered after the first casualties of the Peloponnesian War.

Attacks continued on Aspasia by Pericles’ adversaries. A charge of impiety was brought against her for disrespecting the gods. At her trial, Pericles reputedly spoke in her defence before a court of 1500 jurors leading to Aspasia being exonerated. Three years later, in 429 BCE, Pericles died of the plague but, before his death, allowed a change in the citizenship law to make his half-Athenian son, Pericles the Younger, a citizen and his legitimate heir.

After Pericles’ death, Aspasia was said to have become the companion of his friend Lysicles, whom she helped transform into an Athenian political leader. Lysicles was killed in the campaign of Caria in 428/427 BCE and nothing else is known of Aspasia after that with any certainty.

Aspasia - Roman copy of C5th Greek original

Plutarch accepts Aspasia as a significant figure both politically and intellectually and expresses his admiration for a woman who ‘managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length’ although he also claimed Aspasia held undue influence over Pericles and was ultimately to blame for every mistake he made! Aeschines (a pupil of Socrates) wrote a dialogue ‘Aspasia’ about her, which is now lost save for a few fragments, which seems to have been a favourable portrayal but Aristophanes, the comic poet, generally speaks ill of her. Other later writers, however, such as the rhetorician Quintilian held her in high regard and lectured about her to his students while the satirist, Lucian, called her ‘a woman of wisdom and understanding’.

In modern literature, Aspasia’s reputation has been treated favourably, if not a little too romantically.   In the classical romance, Philothea (1835), Lydia Maria Child, an American abolitionist and novelist, portrays Aspasia a great beauty. Walter Savage Landor’s popular Pericles and Aspasia (1836) presents a work of fictional letters between the two lovers (albeit rife with historical inaccuracies). This work later inspired Gertrude Atherton to publish her equally popular novel The Immortal Marriage (1927), presenting Aspasia as the ‘power behind the throne’ who made Pericles the popular speaker and statesman he was.

Undoubtedly, the range of contradictory portrayals casts a shadow on the historicity of Aspasia's life. Yet what a charismatic and intelligent person she must have been to galvanise so many writers to opine about her over the centuries! Whether she was an intellectual giant or a flagrant companion, no one can dispute Aspasia continues to impress as a woman who gained a foothold in public life denied other women of her time.

 Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome saga, and the co-founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com

Images courtesy of Wikimedia commons and Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Labyrinths and initiations by Elisabeth Storrs

Labyrinths have always been a source of fascination to me. None more so than the famous lair of the Minotaur in ancient Crete. According to Greek myth, this bewildering structure was designed by the inventor Daedalus (father of the doomed Icarus) at the behest of King Minos. The maze was built in the city of Knossos to hold the half man/half bull monster to whom 7 youths and 7 maidens were sacrificed each year as tribute owed by the Athenian King Aegeus to Minos for killing the Cretan king’s son. The minotaur was ultimately slain by Aegeus’ son, Theseus, who was sent as one of the sacrificial youths to Knossos. Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with the prince and assisted him to kill the monster and then escape the labyrinth by giving him a ball of thread to enable him to retrace his path.

Classical pattern, medieval pattern, modern walking labyrinth and hedge maze

A seven course single path design known as ‘unicursal’ became associated with the labyrinth on Cretan coins as early as 430 BC, and became common as a visual depiction of the legendary labyrinth from Roman times onwards. In later religious tradition, large labyrinth designs set into floors were walked and used for private meditation or for therapeutic purposes based on the concept of a pilgrimage from the entrance to the centre where God awaits. In comparison, a maze is a complex pattern with branches and dead ends known as ‘multicursal’ which require a series of choices to be made in order to safely navigate. Medieval garden hedges are a fine example of these.

In the ancient world, the feat of escaping a labyrinth was associated with a triumph of life over death. In some cases, navigating one was seen as a form of initiation where a boy was required to enter as a child and emerge as a man after surviving danger. One such initiation ritual was known as ‘The City of Troy’ in Rome and Etruria.

The City of Troy was a reference to the labyrinth of Crete. Yet what was the connection between the legendary cities of Troy and Knossos? An explanation comes from both archaeological evidence and the poetry of the Roman poet, Vergil.

Tragliatella Vase

In his great epic, The Aeneid, the Roman poet Vergil tells of the wanderings of Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Venus, following the fall of Troy. After fighting to defend the besieged city, Aeneas escaped carrying his father on his shoulders while leading his young son Ascanius (who later came to be called Iulus) to safety. According to Roman tradition, during the funeral games for his grandfather, Ascanius took part in a processional parade or dance called the Game of Troy (Lusus Trojae) while mounted on a horse given to him by the Carthaginian queen Dido. The young prince and his companions performed a complex weaving pattern by riding between and around each other as though threading their way through a labyrinth. Vergil drew a comparison between the tortuous convolutions of the rite to the twisting pathways within the Minotaur’s den at Knossos. He also referred to the manoeuvres of the game as mimicking the ‘Crane Dance’ performed by the youths Theseus saved from the Minotaur. From Vergil’s description it is clear that completing the game involved great skill to avoid injury or death.

The column split apart
As files in the three squadrons all in line
Turned away, cantering left and right; recalled
They wheeled and dipped their lances for a charge.
They entered then on parades and counter-parades,
The two detachments, matched in the arena,
Winding in and out of one another,
And whipped into sham cavalry skirmishes
By baring backs in flight, then whirling round
With leveled points, then patching up a truce
And riding side by side. So intricate
In ancient times on mountainous Crete they say
The Labyrinth, between walls in the dark,
Ran criss-cross a bewildering thousand ways
Devised by guile, a maze insoluable,
Breaking down every clue to the way out.
So intricate the drill of Trojan boys
Who wove the patterns of their prancing horses,
Figured, in sport, retreats and skirmishes                

(Aeneid, V. 5.580–593 Translation by Robert Fitzgerald)

Vergil conjured the image of the Lusus Trojae when writing in the 1st century CE, but there is archaeological evidence of its existence dating from the late C7th BCE. The Tragliatella Vase discovered near the Etruscan city of Caere (modern Cerveteri) depicts two horsemen emerging from a spiral marked with the word ‘Truia’. A line of marching warriors is also displayed on the wine jug which seems to suggest that the vase portrays a military ceremony similar to the one of legend. As the Romans were heavily influenced by the Etruscans, it is plausible that the equestrian ceremony that was later referred to by Vergil was in fact an Etruscan tradition.

Detail Tragliatella Vase City of Troy design

The Game of Troy was ‘revived’ by Julius Caesar who claimed to be a descendant of Iulus (Ascanius) and was performed by the young sons of high ranking families. It was not associated with any particular religious festival and was conducted at funeral games and in military triumphs. Suetonius and Tacitus also wrote of the Lusus Trojae which appears to have become more of a military review by the time of Nero.

With my love of all things Etruscan, I found the etchings on the humble Tragliatella Vase intriguing enough to inspire me to include an episode in my book The Golden Dice: A Tale of Ancient Rome involving the Troy Game. Yet what strikes me most about the Lusus Trojae is how legend, poetry and history are intertwined and held fast by a strong thread from two epic stories that inspired three great civilisations: Etruria, Greece and Rome. 

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the Tales of Ancient Rome saga. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com  

Images are courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Elusive Search for Dionysus by Elisabeth Storrs

My two great passions are writing and history. Melding them together provides me with an opportunity to escape from the worries of the everyday while venturing into the ancient societies of the Romans, Etruscans and Greeks. The exercise of trying to understand the emotions and plights of my characters is both exacting and rewarding. Sitting at my desk in 21st century Australia, I’m required to delve into the psyches of 4th century BCE women who survived in a masculine culture as the possessions of men, and whose worth was measured in how many warrior sons they could bear.

The novels in my Tales of Ancient Rome saga describe the ten year siege between the early Republican Rome and the Etruscan city of Veii. These cities lay only twelve miles apart, separated by the Tiber River, but their societies were so opposite in their culture and beliefs that you could travel from a world similar to the Dark Ages to somewhere akin to the Renaissance simply by crossing a strip of water. 

Dancing Maenad, 27 BCE

In the era in which my books are set, Roman women were restricted to hearth and home in a rigid, insular and self-righteous culture. In comparison, the sophisticated Etruscans (known as the Rasenna) afforded independence, education and sexual freedom to females well beyond the constraints of cloistered Greek women or second class Roman matrons. Learning of such strikingly diverse societies in close proximity gave me the idea of exploring the differences between the pleasure-seeking people of Etruria and those of the austere emergent Rome. And so I created the story of Caecilia, a young Roman ‘treaty bride’, who is wed to an enemy Etruscan nobleman to seal a tenuous truce. At first she struggles with conflicting moralities, determined to remain true to Roman virtues as she lives among the sinful Etruscans. However, both her husband and his society’s freedoms seduce her. When war is declared at the end of the first book, The Wedding Shroud, she must choose between Rome and duty or Veii and love. In the second book, The Golden Dice, she grapples with living as an alien amid her former enemy as she strives to prove her loyalty to her adopted city. In the third book, Call to Juno, Caecilia realises survival depends on seeking her birthplace’s destruction. She also faces the final hurdle of converting to being wholly Etruscan by forsaking her Roman religious beliefs for those of her husband’s people.

The pantheons of the Romans and Etruscans contained equivalent divine counterparts. This did not mean their religions were the same. Roman faith and law were established in custom. There were no holy texts apart from the sacred verses contained in the Sibylline Books. In contrast, the Etruscans developed a sophisticated system of beliefs that were enshrined in a codex known as the Etrusca Disciplina. It consisted of various scriptures which established rules relating to prophecy and the afterlife. Indeed, the Etruscans raised the art of divination to a science, believing that they could defer destiny through observing the rigorous rites of their Book of Fate. They also believed in the concept of the ‘Beyond’ where a deceased’s soul remained intact and would feast with their ancestors. Achieving this salvation was obtained through following a death cult involving human sacrifice. Dionysiac worship, with its concept of rebirth, was also an alternative avenue to eternal life. This was in direct contrast to the early Romans’ belief in the Di Manes or ‘Good Ones’ who were a conglomerate of spirits who existed underground and needed to be appeased to prevent them from rising up en masse to torment the living. In other words, there were no individual souls in the Roman afterlife, or hope of resurrection.

My research into the Etruscans (which extended for over fifteen years) proved extremely challenging. The quandary of an historical novelist who writes about ancient times is the ‘elasticity’ of sources – the further you go back in time the more putative the history becomes. I was at pains to consult academics, archaeologists and historians to try to elicit answers to fill the ‘gaps’ in the evidence. What I ultimately concluded was that Etruscan and early Roman history is subject to considerable supposition from the experts and so offers the possibility for a writer to hypothesize. 

Etruscan couple, Tomb of the Shields

Despite this authorial licence, I was frustrated by the lack of certainty about Etruscan religious practices. I craved an answer as to the true nature of Rasennan worship to enable Caecilia to determine whether she should relinquish her belief in a soulless Roman afterlife or be reborn through orgiastic rites she finds both morally and physically confronting. I was able to obtain secondary sources which explored the Etrusca Disciplina, the death cult, and human sacrifice, but the nature of Dionysiac worship in Etruscan society remained elusive – particularly my quest to determine if the Rasenna believed in the wild Dionysism of the Greeks or instead observed a less intense form of the cult. (Please note that the Roman Bacchus was not yet worshipped during the period in which my novels are set). My problem was compounded by the fact that, although recent archaeological digs are revealing more about the Etruscans, their civilization is often dubbed ‘mysterious’ because none of their literature has survived other than the remnants of ritual texts. Consequently, most of our knowledge comes from accounts recorded by historians many centuries after Etruria’s demise. In effect, the conquerors of Etruria wrote about Etruscan history with all the bigotries of the victor over the vanquished. Some of these records are ‘fragments’ from contemporary travellers to Etruscan cities which were quoted by later ancient historians. These Greek commentators (who came from a society that repressed women) described the licentiousness and opulence of the Etruscans and the wickedness of their wives. One notorious example is Theopompus of Chios, a C4th BCE Greek historian, who expressed his shock at the profligacy of the Etruscans. He wrote, among other scurrilous observations, that his hosts had open intercourse with prostitutes, courtesans, boys, and even wives at their banquets. Furthermore, ‘They make love and disport themselves, occasionally within view of each other, but more often they surround their beds with screens, made of interwoven branches over which they spread their mantles’. The validity of such fragments is often criticized by modern historians because of their authors’ prejudices but the gossip does raise the possibility some Rassena may have, indeed, led flagrant sex lives.

Yet the world view of the Etruscans is not totally opaque. An insight can be gained by decoding their paintings, sculpture, furniture and votive statuettes. Yet the portrayal of the sexes in funerary art poses a further conundrum. Men and women are depicted in loving embraces that extend through a spectrum from tender and modest spousal devotion to erotic, and sometimes, pornographic coupling. So what were Etruscan women like? Faithful or wanton? Or both? Did they indulge in manic sexual worship or was their adoration of the wine god tempered?

Tomb of the Leopards Etruscan Banqueting Scene

If the primary sources were almost non-existent on the Etruscan Dionysus (known as Fufluns), modern secondary sources were just as scarce. The internet provided a tantalising glimpse of an American journal article by Larissa Bonfante, and one Italian essay by Giovanni Colonna. As I live in Australia, it was not possible to access out of print copies from our library system. And so I reached across the ether by adding a comment on Dr Bonfante’s Facebook page without any expectation of a reply. Six months later she contacted me on Academia to say she had uploaded the article to that site. And the eminent Etruscologist, Iefke van Kampen, was kind enough to obtain the Colonna essay for me. Alas, I don’t read Italian but the virtual world once again came to the rescue when I located an enthusiastic student on Upwork to translate it for me.

What was the result of my success in tracking down these obscure sources? Inconclusive. The historians’ analyses were fascinating but not definitive. Funerary art depicting symposium scenes of Etruscan women and men enjoying a world of wine and music are interpreted as evidence that inebriation connects participants to the ‘otherness’ of a divine dimension. Hedonism is therefore linked to the concept of exorcising death in a celebration of a passage to the afterlife. But this more decorous ‘Dionysism without Dionysus’ also sits side by side with Etruscan representations of maenads and satyrs (attendants in the wine god’s retinue) on bronzes, vases and sculptures that hint at more frenzied orphic mysteries reputed to include maenads eating raw flesh (omophagia) and flagellating novitiates.  I learned, however, that because the Dionysiac cult granted equality to women, slaves and foreigners, the Greeks invented a gruesome mythology to discourage this subversion of the social order. Such legends included the ‘Dying God’ driving mothers to tear apart their children and his opponents suffering the most horrendous retribution. This made it absolutely clear to me that there is a difference between mythology and cult which can cloud the truth as to the actual rituals that were followed. The use of the term ‘The Mysteries’ is very apt.

So how did I finally solve my dilemma concerning my character’s internal conflict? Did Caecilia decide to accept that the infidelity involved in communing with Fufluns was a sacred act? Was her desire to attain eternal life greater than her fear of dark, ecstatic worship? I’m afraid the answer will only be given to those who choose to read Call to Juno – A Tale of Ancient Rome.

As for connecting across the ether, I was thrilled when Iefke van Kampen asked to use the dialogue of my characters to voice an audio-visual exhibition of votive statues in her museum. As a result ‘Saga Storrs’ is now on show at the Museo dell’Agro Veientana outside Veio near Rome – a wonderful, passionate collaboration of writing and history.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the Tales of Ancient Rome saga. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com  

Images are courtesy of the MET project, Skira Colour Studio and Museo Dell'agro Veientano.