The Iliad’s title, when translated into English, means something close to ‘Troy Story’. This is deceptive, as anyone who reads the poem will know, because the titular city often fades into the background. The Iliad’s primary focus is Achilles and his anger, demonstrated in the very first line:“μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος” - “Sing, Goddess, of Peleiadian Achilles’ wrath”.

Yet the poem, if its primary focus were just Achilles, would be called something like the Achilleid, akin to how the Odyssey is eponymous to its central protagonist. We can read this titling choice as Homer choosing, through Achilles’ anger, to demonstrate a wider story. This is crucial to any reading of the Iliad; it is as much a story of many themes as of many heroes. To me, the most predominant theme, and one ever relevant, is that of κλεος/kleos — a word which we render in English as ‘glory’.

Glory is the driving force of the very plot of Homer’s great work, and the very fuel for the lives of his heroes. Every action they make is to greaten their own glory. Most do not fight specifically for treasure or to kill, though often their greed and bloodlust do act as a secondary drive, but to greaten their name. Though the central conflict of the Iliad revolves around Agamemnon taking Achilles’ war prizes, which may at first seem simply caused by petty greed, this action is unquestionably tied to glory, and its close intertwinement with honour. Materialistically, Agamemnon is bickering with Achilles over war-brides, but the prizes they take from battle are allotted according to their statuses. These statuses are inevitably boosted by glory, and it is dishonourable to go against such. Therefore, when Agamemnon must let Chryseis return to her father, he views it as a slight against his honour and his glory. As the primary speaker who suggested the return of Chryseis was Achilles, Agamemnon then enacts the same slight against him.

The proof that both these men are not driven solely by greed and petty revenge is a little more buried, but the best example comes a lot later. When the oft frustrating Agamemnon finally realises his army will be beaten without Achilles and his Myrmidons, he sends a party of Greek kings to make an offer to Achilles of many great gifts. Initially, we must note that this is certainly not an apology — Agamemnon is certainly too egotistical to stoop to that level — but almost an attempt at bribery. Achilles does not accept, and we can read him almost as taking it as an affront. This response from Achilles removes any doubt that he is solely motivated by accumulating prizes. After all, Agamemnon has offered him much more than he could ever hope to win for himself. Why then does he refuse and resume his lengthy tantrum? Well, Agamemnon has not repaired the assault against his honour, thus it would not be glorious for him to continue fighting in subordination to a king who has slighted him. His honour is at stake, so he cannot be bribed.

Achilles as a character is very interesting to examine, especially when it comes to this heroic aspect of glory. Most other heroes do not have as interesting dynamic when it comes to it as Achilles does. Why is this? Well, a prophecy. Achilles has been informed that, should he choose to fight at Troy, he will die young but he shall live on in glory forever. However, should he choose not to fight, he shall live a long but insignificant life. He, unlike many of the other Greeks, knows his death is certain. But, equally, he gets to choose the certainty of his glory. It is this glory that causes him to fight initially, and it being injured that makes him reconsider. To an extent, he never recovers from such a slight, as it is only the death of his beloved Patroclus that makes him rejoin the fray, albeit also granting him his initial wish of glory in the process.

At first, his motive of glory seems so foreign to us. When we examine the culture in which the Iliad was composed though, it becomes a whole lot more understandable. It is commonly agreed that the Iliad was composed orally, designed to be told by a (likely illiterate) poet. It is a product of the ‘dark ages’, and a tradition of folk storytelling that culminated in Homer’s works. Thus, in an illiterate world, it is incredibly difficult to go down in history. Leaving a lasting legacy is the only way a human can come close to immortality, and in a world without writing it is incredibly difficult to live on beyond your time. This real world problem, likely felt by Homer and his audience, has some subconscious influence on Homer’s heroes. They live in a world of gods, and their easiest way to join the ranks of the immortals is to be remembered forever. Though not a literal promotion to the ranks of Olympus, it is the best most mortals can achieve. This mentality is no doubt a product of the combination of the oral tradition mingling with the incredibly human and sympathetic fear of death being the end. We seem to like a satisfying ending, and often death does not provide us that. However, a song does.

Nowadays, we may initially struggle to relate to Achilles and Homer’s other heroes. Their attitudes to war, to women, their systems of wealth and class, and their practices, are quite distant to us. However, I feel that if we think about their motives and priorities, we may certainly find common ground. The desire to be remembered, to have many know your name, is something still felt widely today. In a world of social media, it can often feel so incredibly hard to be unique and individual. Equally, we can see a million modern day Achilles, people who choose the short and glorious life over the obscure. In a way, our modern culture of trend and disposability seems to promote this more than ever. It is now easier than ever to have your moment in the spotlight, to have your name on everyone’s lips. So, perhaps Achilles’ prophecy is not so irrelevant after all.

Some Updates

You made it to the end! And what’s more, there’s now over 1000 of you subscribed to this newsletter - WOW!

Many of you may have noticed the recent infrequency of posts, for which I can only apologise. Amidst miscellaneous illnesses and university applications, I have rarely found time or motivation to write. However, the new year is coming, hopefully with some exciting changes! First, I will be participating in Archaeological Training. Second, I will hopefully make a return to academia. Thirdly, and most relevantly to you, dear reader, I have plans for this newsletter! I would love to hear your thoughts, on everything from topics you would want covered, to recording audio for my articles, to potential monetisation (do not worry, I plan to keep as much of my writing free as possible), I shall open the discussion to you, dear readers!

Sources

• The Iliad - Homer

• The Odyssey - Homer

• Homer and his Iliad - R.L. Fox

• Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens - R. Waterfield

• The World of Odysseus - M. Finley

Catchphrases from the ancient world often survive the tests of time, often used by the slightly more pretentious, or politicians wishing to imitate their idols. The phrase ‘Alea iacta est’ is one such utterance we see frequently recurring, or at least in its English translation. Said translation is of course ‘The die is cast’. But this phrase has a much more complicated and interesting history than one notices at first glance, full of misquoting and references.

It is bleak early January in Northern Italy and Gaius Julius Caesar stands before the banks of the Rubicon. Behind him stand his loyal generals and sole, waiting for the pivotal moment. He is about to change history, and the chill in the air is not just from the winter breeze. Every legionary is stood in suspense, watching Caesar on his horse. He dismounts, setting a foot in the river, and announces to his troops ‘Alea iacta est’. This is the scene painted by Suetonius, and embellished a little by me. But no doubt this is how the moment is often viewed. Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon is often treated as a turning point in the world, and to some extent it was. But would it really have been all that dramatic?

Political analysis is always easier to do in hindsight, and biographers in the ancient world no doubt had a habit of looking for ‘pivotal moments’. The go-to example that is drilled into every Classics students’ head is the battle of Actium for the emperor Augustus. This was often lorded by Roman writers as the moment Augustus beat Mark Anthony and Cleopatra for good, a moment of glory and triumph, but in reality it was barely even a skirmish. Augustus was not even present at the battle of Actium, and both Anthony and Cleopatra retreated before much fighting was actually done. Nonetheless, this has not stopped it being developed into the story of the Romans by writers like Virgil. Is Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon a similar moment? It is very likely. For a start, the Rubicon itself was not an overly significant landmark. It is barely more than a stream nowadays, and for a very long time we did not even know its exact location. Only in 1933 was a river in the area attributed to be the mythical crossing point. Nor do we know the date of the crossing, and the Romans were incredibly good at recording important dates. However, it is easy to see why such a moment was embellished. The Romans needed a moment that, in retrospect, represented this monuments shift in power and the rise to power of Caesar. Roughly where the Rubicon was crossed is where Caesar entered Italy with his army, violating Roman law. This violation of law was his first true step to becoming dictator, and so it needs an equally dramatic scene attached to it.

The uncertainty of this moment in Roman history is multiplied further by the discrepancies seen in other biographers. Plutarch and Arrian both wrote on the scene, and both claim that Caesar exclaimed in Greek.  Suetonius also states this, though he gives the quote in Latin. Both state an almost identical phrase of ‘Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος’, which translates as ‘Let the die be cast’. Language nerds will immediately notice a small difference here, besides the fact he is quoted in an entirely different language. According to both Plutarch and Arrian, Caesar uses a 3rd person imperative verb, whereas Suetonius’ version has Caesar use a 3rd person indicative. This has led to one of my favourite things: scholarly debate over discrepancies in language! I have no doubt that most readers will not care much for this, so I shall keep it brief. To summarise, it seems widely agreed upon that Suetonius’ version is incorrect, and that it should read ‘Alea iacta esto’, which would then make it much closer to the Greek. The missing ‘o’ could be down to a variety of reasons, the most likely either being manuscript corruption, or a genuine mistake on Suetonius’ behalf. Either way, if you ever hear someone mimicking Caesar, you have my blessing to correct them.

But what did Julius mean by this? Well, that in itself is more interesting than the politics, or at least it is to me. Of course, one could analyse it from his perspective of uncertainty. After all, he is gambling his life and power on this one move. He will either will all or lose all. However, there is a much more interesting side than this: Caesar is quoting the Greek playwright Menander. Menander is widely regarded as the sole pillar of Athenian new comedy (the style of comedy that Shakespeare writes, with all the marriages and mistaken identities and such). Unfortunately, we do not have enough plays by Menander to know for certain. Most of his plays did not last, beyond  a few fragments and a couple almost complete ones. Nonetheless, Suetonius, despite his quoting error, does preserve a testament from Caesar for his love of Menander. He loved his work so much that he wrote a poem about it. Thus, bearing this in mind, can we almost see Caesar’s quote of Menander at such a moment as a joke? And perhaps a joke that was not even supposed to go down in history as such a monuments phrase, but perhaps only ever intended to be whispered to close friends to levitate the nerves?

Finally, I would like to dissect one final interesting point. The word ‘alea’ does not strictly translate to dice, whereas the word ‘κύβος' definitely does. In fact, according to Lewis and Short, alea commonly refers to a specific type of dice game. According to their definition, alea is played with two types of dice: three tesseare and four tali. Tesserae are similar to our modern six-sided dice, even often with the same pips on the faces, and the same word is also used to describe mosaic tiles. Tali however are a form of four-sided dice, but are not pyramid shaped. This is odd, as pyramid shaped dice where in usage in the Mediterranean, as we know thanks to the Royal Game of Ur. However, these tali were cuboid but with two sides smooth, so only four could be landed on, thus resembling and likely evolving from knucklebones, which were also often thrown as a form of gambling game. A talus (singular of tali) is the latin for a knucklebone, and the root of the English talon.

The rest of the rules of the game seem to be based on the score of the dice, but with certain roles having names similar to poker hands. Ironically to Julius, his adopted son Augustus banned the game for all of the year besides Saturnalia, a festival later replaced by Christmas wherein often social norms were reversed and gifts exchanged. This ban didn’t last too long, as the Emperor Claudius later wrote an essay on alea and dice games, which unfortunately is lost. The word alea itself was synonymous with gambling, colloquially being a word for any form of risk, a perfect word for a time of political turmoil.

Sources & Further Reading

• Suetonius - Life of Julius Caesar, Life of Divus Augustus, Life of Divus Claudius

• Plutarch - Life of Pompey

• Arrian - The Civil Wars

• Lewis and Short - Latin Dictionary (preserved via LOGEION)

• Rubicon - Tom Holland

• SPQR - Mary Beard

• Emperor of Rome - Mary Beard

As children, we often dream of finding ancient gold, hidden treasures and relics of people long past. Archaeology is not a field where this happens as often as you would expect, though we love to imagine a roguish, grizzled, Indiana Jones style of ‘excavation’. Meticulous care and patience are required when studying the past — anything destroyed cannot be replaced. Everything on a sight can be valuable, even the soil itself. Archaeology is almost study of context as much as it is a study of objects, as an object without a context is ultimately meaningless. However, it has not always been this way. Not so long ago, when the past was much more obscure, the world of excavation was quite different.

Our story begins with Homer, as most things do if you extrapolate far enough. In his poems, he describes a totally different world, yet one we can mostly map onto modern geography. His Mycenae, Ithaca and Pylos align with ours, and even his mythical locations have a decently established geography (such as the land of the Cyclopes, often imagined to by Sicily). However, up until the mid 1800s, there was a notable exception: nobody knew where to find Troy. This is odd, with it being such a central location to the Greek cultural identity. What’s more, Homer describes it vividly, as though he had been. Around this time, the Victorians were starting to take greater archaeological interest in Greece, though looting would be a more accurate term in many cases. The lifting of the marbles from the Acropolis was fresh in the minds of the upper classes, and, though Greece had passed laws in the wake of it, everyone wanted to be the first to uncover something dramatic and new. A race began, for the wealthy to go down in history like the Greek heroes they idolised, by discovering something exciting.

A fresh approach must be taken, and ancient texts began to be scoured through for any hint of something worth uncovering. Homer was re-examined, and the debate of Troy’s location began. Homer describes Troy as being on the Hellespont, in modern Turkey, by the Scamander river and near two springs. Of course, it must be within viewing distance of the shore, where the Greeks camped. Two key sites cropped up, the desolate Hissarlik and a mound further inland. Hissarlik was known to be the site of the Hellenistic town of Ilion, which was another name for Troy, but the existence of Roman ruins seemed to make it less favourable. The other site was close to two streams, one hot and one cold, which Homer describes. Most Classicists began to favour the latter, but it was not a task for most Classicists, who at that time spent their days cloistered up with their books. No, it was a task for someone unexpected, who dramatically altered our understanding of Mediterranean history.

Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman. He was fluent in 22 languages by the time he died, and had made his fortune in the American gold rush. He had little training in the Classics or Archaeology, rushing his doctorate. He was also a massive egotist, insecure, and incredibly brash. He kept many diaries, constantly switching between German, Greek, Arabic, English or whatever language he felt like at the time. It is in these diaries he tells us that as a boy he dreamed of nothing but finding Troy. This deeply flawed man, by pulling strings and splashing about his wealth, was about to shake up our understanding of the past. Retiring at 36, he set off for the Mediterranean. There, he performed a few illegal test digs in Ithaca, before setting off to visit the Hissarlik site. He returned desperate to begin excavations, confident that he was on the edge of discovering Homer’s mythical city. After a long fight with the Turkish government, he got his permit to dig.

Our primary sources around Schliemann are his diaries, and besides that we know little else about his excavations, besides the results he chose to share. We know he did not own the land. We know the work force was mostly comprised of locals that he paid relatively poorly. We know he had a supervisor from the Turkish government, who was present to permit any funny business and who Schliemann constantly tried to deceive. And finally, we know his brazen and brash personality was an exact twin to his frankly abysmal archaeological methodology. He was desperate to find treasure, specifically from Homer’s time, and cared little for anything from the varied layers he had to plough through. It is often claimed he was reckless enough to use dynamite on the site, though a source for this is lacking. However, it is clear that his archaeological conduct was abysmal, even by the lax standards of the time. His assumption that the Troy he sought was on the lowest strata of earth meant he tore through everything else above, casting it aside. He cared little for pottery or other ‘less valuable’ artefacts, and often contradicted himself on where things where found in his dubious site notes. His quest for gold and glory left the earth damaged, ruining many of the layers of history and casting a trail of destruction.

It is easy to look back on past methods in distain, but even some of his contemporaries viewed his methodology as poor. He is described as ‘digging his trenches as one digs potato fields’. Given that his methodology was met with contempt by Victorians, who often were careless when it came to getting results, shows quite how much was lost. The Smithsonian Magazine claims that Turkish archaeologists are still reeling from the losses to this day. What’s more, one of the layers he tore through is the one that was later hypothesised to be the Homer’s Troy. But none of that mattered to Schliemann, and it mattered little to the masses of the time. They cared most about the gold. The mania surrounding his discoveries was at a fantastic level, as not only had he proven that a mythical city existed, but he had also hit on something much bigger. The Troy uncovered was from the Bronze Age, before any known Greek history at that point. He kickstarted a rethink about civilisation as a whole, especially when, riding the wave of success, he went on to uncover Mycenae. From there, we get the name of the civilisation: Mycenaean.

Schliemann did eventually find gold. In fact, he found quite a lot. Little of that gold went to Turkey, and most wound up in his mansion in Athens. Eventually, the Turkish government sued him for it and he paid them off, though this money was likely of little consequence to him. On his death, the gold went to Berlin. During the second world war, it was lost. It remained lost for about 50 years, before the Pushkin Museum admitted to having it in 1994, though many believed it would never be unearthed again. Nonetheless, the small parts that have been seen since are sometimes refuted, more-so due to Schliemann’s inability to provide providence than due to their disappearance.

Classics is not just a study of the Greeks and Romans. The field is so old that figures like Schliemann crop up all the time — disillusioned egotists with big dreams who impacted history in ways we could never predict. Schliemann is also a difficult man to deal with. For a while, thanks to  his discoveries, he was credited as the founding father of Bronze Age studies. Much of his own writing contributed to that, as he focuses more on building a narrative than academic integrity. A similar methodology is seen in the names of his finds, which he dubbed the likes of ‘The Mask of Agamemnon’ or ‘The gold of Priam’ based on little more than his imagination. In spite of his horrendous technique, ego fuelled writing and poor morals, it must be admitted that our understanding of history would be quite different without his excavations. If not for him, a whole myriad of bronze age scholars would not have devoted their time to the field. Also, his usage of Homer as an archaeological source led to a re-evaluation of Homer’s work, who Homer was and the place that oral poetry held in an ancient society. Prior, the poems had been little more than poems, but now we know them to be almost miracles: they were stitched together, improvised art pieces containing a little historical inspiration, performed by an illiterate bard who could memorise thousands upon thousands of lines of poetry. So, we should not idolise men like Schliemann, as scholars often did in his time, but equally we should not despise them. His valuable contributions were made at great cost, and he will likely remain a subject of debate as long as there is history to study. But what can we learn from him? That we should take more care over things and learn from professionals, but also that sometimes revolutionary ideas must come from outside the box, and that we should keep an open mind. Anyone could have found Troy. And after the dust has settled, Schliemann’s name has gone down in history.

A Brief Personal Update

Hello! Thanks for reading! Some of you may have noticed that my newsletters have recently dropped to alternating weeks. I promise this is temporary. I have recently been a little ill, and have just not had the drive to throw myself into research projects, and may also explain any noticeable lack of writing quality in this post or ones prior. However, I intend to get back to weekly posting ASAP! I hope you are all well!

Sources

• The Lost Treasures of Troy, C. Moorehead

• The Bull of Minos, L. Cottrell

• Ilium, H. Schliemann

• Schliemann's Troy—One Hundred Tears After, M. I. Finley

• The Many Myths of the Man Who ‘Discovered’—and Nearly Destroyed—Troy, M. Solly

As the leaves turn brown and the nights draw in, an annual event takes place, a mainstay in my calendar: baking season. All the ingredients of the harvest are fresh in the shops, tv channels are airing the newest season of the Great British Bake-Off (The Great British Baking Show to Americans) and my kitchen is inevitably filled with the intoxicating aroma of cinnamon, and, more often than not, experiments gone awry. I am not good at baking, but I like to try different things. So, I thought I would join my love of the ancient world with my current baking obsession, and try a Roman recipe.

When it comes to the history of food, the Romans have always captured our imagination. Whether it be carbonised bread or fresco dishes in Pompeii, or the elaborate, over-indulgent banquets of the emperors, there is much to explore. Given the horrendous tales we hear of the dining of the rich, from stuffed door-mice to fermented fish, I decided to look for something a bit less absurd. Also, the limits of my willingness to learn about the past do not extend to torturing mice or making my entire house smell like rotting fish, so those were immediately off the menu.

Thankfully for my nose, there are plenty of other options to eat like a Roman. The opulent meals , with exotic dishes and couch-based reclining, do little to represent the day-to-day eating of the average citizen. In fact, most historians believe they were likely to be all show, a formal display of wealth and power, as opposed to a daily routine. How did the average Roman eat then? Well, thankfully we have lots of evidence, both written and physical.

Physical evidence regarding food in the ancient world is often difficult to come by. Food, being an organic substance, does not survive the passage of time well. While it is possible to discern diets through material remains, like animal bones and charred grain often found in Roman sites, the most vivid picture of daily eating we could possibly gain comes from Pompeii. The city, famously coated in a pyroclastic surge from Mt Vesuvius in 79 CE, held a treasure-trove of evidence on daily eating. This can be from buildings, like the bakeries and thermopolia (the ancient equivalent of a snack bar/takeaway) that dot almost every corner of the town, to the rare examples of carbonised fruits and bread, we know that very few city-dwelling Romans actually cooked anything, and mostly ate out. However, in the way of actually recreating Roman food, my search here came to a dead end. Aside from the plain loves of bread, the recipe for which I doubt has changed much in the past 2000 years, there was little I could recreate. I wanted something more interesting.

Thankfully for historians, and people with an absurd delusion of trying Roman food (like myself), the perfect piece of Latin literature survives. The treatise De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture), written by the statesman and farmer Cato the elder, is a treasure-trove of Roman recipes. Yes, thats right, actual Roman recipes! While most of the text is essentially a 2180 year old farming manual (interesting in its own right I suppose), Cato devotes an entire chapter to simple recipes for his farmer-wannabes. The text in itself is also incredibly interesting. It is one of the oldest fully surviving latin texts, to my knowledge the oldest in prose. Furthermore, while widely criticised as not being a particularly well written or interesting read, at least to contemporaries, it does a brilliant job conveying the morals of its writer and Rome at the time. Cato devotes a lot of the text to defending farming, which in its simplicity and tough lifestyle embodies everything moralists of the Roman Republic desired. Besides the recipe I shall examine, there are many more, including for Greek style wine, globi (as explored in my post on 'Honey Tokens') and instructions on traditional rituals for farmers. However, this does not mean his baking skills are any better than my own, it seems.

I decided, with Cato’s limited selection, to select his recipe to make libum. Libum were a kind of cheese-bread, widely regarded by scholars as having ritualistic importance. They could be left at shrines for less important sacrifices, though it would depend on the tastes of the deity in question. Also, they are simple and sounded tasty, being made only from flour, egg, cheese, bay leaves and honey. Well, so I thought. Though widely attested that they were served with honey, I believe this to be a mistake. The recipe Cato gives for libum does not involve honey, but the following two recipes for placenta and spira, another two breads, do use honey. However, the recipe for libum is much simpler, so I decided to go with that instead. Now, having a recipe, I am faced with only two small problems: my poor latin skills (I have always been more interested in Greek) and the recipe itself. Below is the entire recipe:

That is it. 49 words, (69 in English) most of which are not very specific. Even worse, Cato doesn’t specify a lot of things that would be quite useful. For example, he does not specify a cheese. Thankfully, I read a book recently about cheese (I know, I lead a very interesting life), so I did not the mistake of just using the cheese in my fridge. Most Romans did not have the same aged, hard cheese that we would use in most of our bakes or sandwiches nowadays. Chances are, he would be using some kind of softer cheese, possibly sheep’s cheese or goat’s cheese. I decided my best bet would be ricotta, given scholars often agree that would be our closest modern equivalent in terms of flavour and consistency. The next issue is what Cato means by ‘leaves’. Honestly, this stumped me. The latin word of choice, folia, is an equally vague term that refers simply to any sort of leaf. I doubt Cato would just be picking leaves up off the ground, so I decided bay leaves would be my best bet, given that he mentions using them in other recipes, and many other references to libum link them to bay leaves, due to said plant being sacred to Apollo.

There is one further cruciality to note, and that is the Romand pound. This measurement of weight is neither imperial nor metric, and works out at about 11.6 oz or 330g. So, that would be 660g of cheese. I do enjoy cheese, but I did not want to look like a maniac when I walked back from the supermarket, so I decided to half the recipe.

Having made bread before, the recipe itself was relatively simple. The dough does end up really sticky, no matter how much you work it, but for the sake of sticking to the recipe I persisted. Given that I had halved the recipe, I had 1/2 an egg left over, so used the leftovers as a glaze on top of the dough in order to make them look more appealing, and splitting the dough into 4 small loaves in order to help them cook quicker. Besides that, I kept to the original recipe as much as possible. I did encounter another difficulty, which was the temperature and time for which to cook them. Cato has no way of specifying a temperature, but does not even provide me with a state in which to remove them. Therefore, I decided 180 celsius for 30 minutes would suffice.

The libum were disappointing to say the least. I had managed to underbake them, which was the biggest problem. They were nicely done around the edges, but still doughy and a little underbaked in the centre. The flavour was quite bland, though not terrible. I had one completely as is, after they had done cooling, but decided to coat the rest in a mixture of honey, rosemary and salt (2-1-1), all of which would have been available to the Romans. This saved them, and turned them into a delightful treat. If you end up making them for yourself, I would absolutely recommend this. Also, crucially, remove the bay leaf before eating. I almost choked on it.

After the slight disappointment of the first batch, I decided to make a second, much more experimental batch. For this, as per my own tastes, I replaced the ricotta with a blend of mature cheddar and parmesan, then to compensate the missing moisture I added in a splash of milk. The dough for this experiment was noticeably less wet, and much more pleasant to work with and shape. These came out of the oven perfectly done, unlike their ricotta counterparts. I added the same honey mixture on to them, though they were delicious without.

Cato’s recipes were a brilliant learning experience for me, and baking the bread was a fun time. I am, however, left with some questions. Cato was a pretty rich Roman, rising through the ranks of politics. To be frank, I didn’t read much on his political career for this article, but it is pretty obvious he was wealthy. This leads me to wonder, did he actually use the recipes he provides? After all, most wealthy Romans would have slaves running their kitchens. Cato’s contemporaries and farm neighbours state he liked to do a lot of the tough work in the fields himself, so he likely wouldn’t have had time to be baking bread every day too. While I am yet to try his other recipes, many of which contain more detail and complicated steps, perhaps the recipe wasn’t great because Cato himself wasn’t a particularly good cook. Then again, nor am I, and it is delightful that I can eat the same food as the Romans, almost 2200 years later.

Sources

• Cato the Elder - De Agri Cultura

• Cato the Elder - Loeb Classical Library

• Pompeii - Mary Beard

• Pompeii: The New Dig - BBC

Today, I bring you a tale of discovery. One that stems from the oddest of places. We begin with a single line of Greek, turning into a long research tangent, culminating in a discovery off a charming poem and a potential redemption for one of mythology’s worst villains.

This is a simple and sweet line of Greek poetry, which I found endlessly amusing, and I have no idea where I first found it. However, tracing back through my notes in my study of Ancient Greek, I see it recurring again and again. I must have found it amusing, and still do. It is oddly simple yet completely charming, and I do eat a lot of cheese. However, for almost as long as I have been scribbling this line on post-its and notebooks, I have wanted to know where it came from. Thus began my search.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, you can’t just google a random quote of Ancient Greek and expect it to turn up an author or work, at least not with the obscure or odd quotes like this. Thus, my search immediately became much more difficult than it needed to be. So, I put it off to the back of my mind and turned to more relevant things, confident I would return to it sooner or later. I did not have the time or effort to return to it for a while. Though, when I did, I was disappointed I hadn’t much sooner. I was missing out on an incredibly interesting poem.

So, my mysterious line of Greek ended up being a quote from Theocritus’ Idyll 11. Theocritus is not a well known author, and the title of his poem does little to sell it. However, I promise it is more interesting than it sounds. Theocritus was a poet from Sicily, the Italian island that became a Greek colony in the 8th Century BCE. Theocritus himself lived around 300 BCE, which was an odd time for the Mediterranean world. This was a period of transition, as the big powers of the 400s gave way to Macedonian conquest, and the centres of knowledge were moving away from Athens. Theocritus, though a little too early to fall among the Hellenistic poets, paved the way for pastoral poetry, which he is credited with inventing. This is a less dramatic form of poetry than the epic prioritised before it, focusing on country vistas and light-hearted love stories. It became a great favourite of the Romans, influencing Virgil and Horace.

You may not be particularly interested in poems about farming, and admittedly nor am I. If that were all this quote amounted to, I would have given up. However, I promised you cyclopes, and this is where they enter into the story.

Theocritus’ poetry still has a heavy focus on mythology, though admittedly in a less bloody way than most of the poets before him. Idyll 11, the poem in question, focuses on Polyphemus. Greek mythology nerds, or anyone who has read the Odyssey, may be a little confused by this. Polyphemus, in Homer’s poem, was a one-eyed, giant, man-eating, sheep-herding monster. How can such a figure be central to a whimsical poem? Well, I shall tell you.

The main narrative of the poem is far from anything we could picture Homer’s Polyphemus in. He finds himself the centre of a borderline Rom-Com, as the main plot of the poem is his lament over his love. Theocritus’ Polyphemus is thus immediately in stark contrast to the one we know from Homer, and this is used to great dramatic effect. The mythical monster is repurposed as a sort of rural idiot mixed with a bumbling and infantile yet sweet and besotted monster, tropes that appear often in both poetry and film, almost a King Kong or a Lenny from of Mice and Men. He is hopelessly devoted to the nymph Galatea (not to be confused with Galatea, who Pygmalion carves from marble and Aphrodite brings to life, the name of this bizarre Pinocchio is a mere coincidence). This Galatea has little agency in the poem, and disappointingly little to do or say, though she does reject Polyphemus, reasonably so.

A sympathetic portrayal of this figure is not quite what we would expect, given how horrendous he is in Homer. Theocritus’ version resembles this very little, yet he makes sure to remind us subtly that this is the same character. The first meeting of the two is an intentional parody of Odysseus meeting Princess Nausicaa in Book 6 of the Odyssey, yet with the roles reversed. In this, the cleaned Odysseus, (with, as Homer tells us, hair blossoming like a hyacinth) is ogled by the princess, though he is cautious and weary of her given his prior encounters with Calypso and Circe. Theocritus shows Polyphemus in the position of Nausicaa, in love innocently with Galatea, who is picking hyacinths. The repeated hyacinth motif is what ties this together for scholars, as Homer only mentions the flower twice in the Odyssey, this being the stand-out. The duality continues in strides. Nausicaa’s people, so Homer tells us, moved to Phaeacia to flee the cyclopes. Thus, Theocritus mirroring Homer’s scene is deeply ironic.

All this is well and good, but is the quote that actually started this quest at all relevant to the poem and its themes? Unfortunately, I could not find any scholarship on it. Thankfully though, I have my own opinions. Theocritus no doubt intends to make us pity Polyphemus. He is unlucky in love, begging to his mother that she may put in a good word to Galatea for him (this is another conscious mirror of the Odyssey, where Polyphemus begs his father Poseidon to punish Odysseus for blinding him). He shows us this unlucky and childish creature, unfortunate in his romantic errands, but also gives him an out. Though the narrative of the poem leaves Polyphemus loveless, he is consoled by his song and returns to his simple life. This is Theocritus’ moral for the poem, a theme he is very fond of. He is insistent that the best cure (pharmakon in Greek) for love is poetry. Thus, he takes the lovesick Polyphemus, cures him, and allows him to continue on with his satisfying simple life, at least for now. This is the relevance of my quote. His cheese, unlike his unrequited love, shall never abandon him. Perhaps this is a lesson we can all learn. Maybe Theocritus also feels a kinship for the Cyclops too. After all, he refers to him as a ‘fellow country-man’, as the Cyclopes were rumoured to have lived in his native Sicily, as we see in the likes of Virgil.

But wait, things get worse for our poor cyclops. Just as we were beginning to pity him, all of Theocritus’ constant references to the Odyssey come together in our mind. Polyphemus is consoled by his cheese and his sheep, yet we as readers know what is in his future. It is not long before a cunning Greek captain will enter his cave, blind him, steal his sheep, and, most crucially, rob him of his cheese! Alas, poor Polyphemus. He is not cured of his love-sickness for long. Theocritus manages to accidentally turn his relatively comedic love story into an unspoken tragedy. I must not be the only one for whom this has struck a chord, as the characterisation of the bumbling, lovesick Cyclops occurs later in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Ok, I will admit, I may be exaggerating a little. After all, Polyphemus is not pleasant in the Odyssey, and we do not pity him there. There is certainly an argument to be made that Odysseus is not in the right when he enters Polyphemus’ cave, helps himself to cheese and selfishly awaits gifts (see this post for more on the scene in Homer), a small and greedy crime against Greek Xenia (guest friendship). However, Polyphemus does brutally murder several of Odysseus’ men, so we can only feel so much pity when he has his eye poked out by Odysseus. Nonetheless, the stealing of the cheese is an indisputable tragedy, and I cannot help but feel a small twinge of pity for the idiotic cyclops, after Theocritus has humanised him.

In spite of this, the story does not have a great end. We may manage to spare a little sympathy for Homer’s portrayal of the Cyclops, despite his horrendous murder. However, in some versions of the myth, he does not take action that aligns with the sweet and simple image we are given by Theocritus. When we may depart Theocritus’ Polyphemus, he is content after singing out his woes. Theocritus even tells us he has more contentedness than gold, leaving him cured. However, he may not have taken this to heart. Some narratives have him killing Galatea’s lover with a rock. Not all interpretations can end happily I suppose!

Sources

• Idyll XI - Theocritus

• Metamorphoses - Ovid

• The Odyssey - Homer

• Whitaker, Richard. “AIMÉ CÉSAIRE AND THE CYCLOPS OF THEOCRITUS, ‘IDYLL’ 11.” Acta Classica 57 (2014): 246–48.

• Liapis, Vayos. “POLYPHEMUS’ THROBBING ΠΟΔΕΣ: THEOCRITUS IDYLL 11.70–71.” Phoenix 63, no. 1/2 (2009): 156–61.

• Holtsmark, Erling B. “Poetry as Self-Enlightenment: Theocritus 11.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 97 (1966): 253–59.

• Prauscello, Lucia. “A Homeric Echo in Theocritus’ Idyll 11. 25-7: The Cyclops, Nausicaa and the Hyacinths.” The Classical Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2007): 90–96.

• Alan H. F. Griffin. “Unrequited Love: Polyphemus and Galatea in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses.’” Greece & Rome 30, no. 2 (1983): 190–97.

• Newton, Rick M. “Poor Polyphemus: Emotional Ambivalence in ‘Odyssey’ 9 and 17.” The Classical World 76, no. 3 (1983): 137–42.

• Glenn, Justin. “The Polyphemus Myth: Its Origin and Interpretation.” Greece & Rome 25, no. 2 (1978): 141–55.

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The oracle at Delphi was a crucial figure in the Greek world. Though featuring prominently in myth, her prophecies altered the course of greek history. State officials were sent to consult her often, and none more-so than the Spartans, for whom almost every decision had to be sanctified. The institution at Delphi told the future to many, from the average citizen to visiting nobles. But how exactly did her prophecies work?

You likely know the general gist of a visitation to the oracle. In a dark, strongly perfumed room, a maddened lady tells a cryptic rhyme. You, the visitor, probably do not know how to apply the advice she gives you. You then depart, get on with your life, and after time has passed you look back and see that what she told you was an encoded forewarning of events to come. Well, this is the trope at least. We see this everywhere, but especially in the writings of the Greeks and Romans themselves. Whether this be Oedipus, pre-warned that he would marry his mother and kill his father or Aeneas told he would eat his tables by the harpies, an oracle’s prophecies always rely on (sometimes questionable) hindsight.

Arguably, the most famous story of the Delphic oracle, the Pythia, is that of Croesus and the Persians, as told by Herodotus. I shall tell it in brief. Paranoid Croesus visits the oracle. It is the 6th Century, and the Persian empire is looming, stretching itself out towards the Greek world. Croesus wishes to inquire as to if he should submit his kingdom to them without a fight. His kingdom of Lydia, which is western Turkey nowadays, is right on their doorstep and looks to be their next target. The Pythia tells Croesus that if he attacks the Persians, a great kingdom shall fall. Croesus had prior tested the Delphic Oracle with a bunch of questions and deemed her responses to be truthful. Thus, he assumes that the prophecy indicates that Persia shall fall to him. Such hubris is the very factor that fulfils the oracle’s prediction, as the great kingdom to fall happens to be Croesus’ own. He realises this too late, as the Persians destroy Lydia.

Herodotus is not exactly a reliable source, and loves to include stories of dreams and prophecies in his narrative. For the ‘winners’ of his history, they are prophecies interpreted correctly, and vice versa for those who lose. There are many things to criticise about Herodotus (as covered here), but the most crucial to his recording of prophecies is his blatant attempt to moralise history, to turn the hubris or piety of others into a lesson for his readers. We shall take this into account later.

The Delphic Oracle, or rather the temple complex at Delphi where she resided, is well attested as being an ancient and well-revered institution. References to site, or at least an early version, are attested in the Iliad and an origin myth is recorded in the Homeric hymn to Apollo. In this, Apollo slays the mythical snake Python, guardian of Gaia’s oracle at Delphi, thus he takes over as the bestower of prophecies for the site. However, some modern scholars theorise that this myth had more humble origins, suggesting the snake had simply once been a local guardian of a spring, and that the myth was embellished in the 8th Century to match the growing power that Delphi held. Unlike similar oracles, like Zeus’ at Dodona, Delphi was incredibly well situated to receive visitors. Being quite central, and close to major powers like Sparta and Corinth, its fame and influence began to spread across Greece, then the Mediterranean. Wealthier visitors from afar, like the semi-mythical Midas (read this post for more on him), brought influence and treasures.

What would it have been like to visit the oracle and to ask her your questions? As far as we can tell, it was a heavily ritualised process. Your day likely began in a queue, as no doubt there were visitors to Delphi from all over. Then, when you got into the sanctuary, you were expected to be purified and make sacrifices to the gods. Asking the oracle a question was free, but the sacrificial materials were expensive (and conveniently available for purchase then and there). After this, you were allowed entry. You were led into a dark room with a priest of Apollo to act as your liaison. Likely, the room contained some form of theatrics: perfumes or a curtain to hide the oracle. You then addressed your question to the priest. No visitor could talk to the Pythia directly. She, a virgin priestess, sat on a tripod and in a trance, then shouted an answer back at you. It was the job of the priest to interpret her answer and feed it back to you as a hexameter verse, the typical meter of epic poetry. Then, with your cryptic poem received, you left.

This all sounds quite odd to us as modern readers, and it is our initial instinct to want to understand it a bit better from a scientific, psychological, anthropological or religious perspective (or some amalgamation of the lot). So, how exactly did the priestess receive her prophecies? The Greeks believed it was the god himself speaking through her, though some later sources like Plutarch doubt to what extent it was a god. However, all seem to be in agreement that she was in a trance of some kind, and that her words required interpretation - thus they could not be delivered directly to the client. So, let us examine some hypotheses as to what exactly may have driven her seemingly divine profession.

Undoubtedly, the most common opinion is that the priestess was intoxicated by fumes from the earth. This was the dominant theory proposed in the nineteenth century, when scholars decided to take a rational approach to deciphering ancient religion. This aligns neatly with the origin myth of the oracle, with her initially being influenced by Gaia, the goddess that personified the earth itself. Plutarch, our ancient oracle-skeptic, seems to argue a similar hypothesis, which ties into some of the greater themes of hellenistic philosophy involving humours and vapours, which is all a bit lost on me. As recently as 2003, there have been articles in academic journals attempting to prove this, the most recent being de Boer et al. who claimed to have traced two volcanic fault lines in the site and recorded evidence of ethylene and carbon dioxide emissions. Intoxication by either, so they argue, could have caused a trance akin to that described in our ancient sources.

This theory is immensely popular and the work of de Boer et al. was reported on widely, as it caused a minor sensation. There was no doubt mass appeal in their hypothesis and discoveries. However, the science has been much in debate before and after they published their article. Prior to their discoveries, the theory had been written off entirely due to two key factors: the lack of geographic evidence and the lack of medical evidence. Within a few years, the excitement driven by the publishing by de Boer and the team had driven more research. Not only did later research prove that their fault lines were mistakenly located, and could not have been in the sanctuary of the oracle, but doctors had claimed that a concentration of ~70% of this volcanic gas would have been required to cause this intoxication, an absolute improbability given the disproving of a fault line, but not entirely impossible. Further, the initial discovery was relying a bit too heavily on the works of Plutarch, who in the same treatise argued that garlic can stop magnets from working via the same principles that gave the oracle her visions. Perhaps not the best basis on which to ground your geological theories.

Another potential hypothesis is a form of manual intoxication, or, to put it in better English, drugs. Some ancient sources claim that the leaf of the Apolline bay could cause the trance. Evidence of opiate usage in the ancient world is often argued for. However, I have been unable to find any compelling evidence to support this theory, and one amusing anecdote in the service of disproving it. Allegedly, Prof. T. K. Oesterreich, an interesting looking fellow from the turn of the 20th century, consumed large amounts of this leaf and claimed he ‘did not feel any more inspired’. We cannot simply take an anecdote of a man, who appears to be a rather odd fellow from the minimal details I can find on him, as definite evidence to the contrary, but given the almost complete lack of evidence to support this theory, it is perhaps best to leave this one to rest.

A final possible explanation is a bit more boring than the others. This could simply be that the Delphians were quite aware of what they were doing, and that the oracle was either working herself up to appear in a trance or into some kind of odd psychological state. There is decent evidence to claim this frankly boring theory. The Delphians obviously profited massively from the continued function of the Pythia, as foreign dignitaries and important state officials flocked to seek advice, bringing in gold and influence in the cartload. Further, the oracle’s answers seemed to be suspiciously always on the side of whomever seemed the most beneficial to back at the time, which could later be written off as pure ambiguity or misinterpretation if needed. This intentional obscurity is noted even by contemporary sources like Heraclitus, who argues it to be a sign of the division between the mortal and immortal comprehensions of the world. The oracle dwelt in a grey area, in which her answers were neither true or false. However, she always seemed to stick particularly well to religious and political expectations, so perhaps either her or her interpreters had a hand in swaying the words to be a bit closer to what a customer wanted to hear.

To speculate about the oracle is all well and good, but it seems we may never know the truth of her trances. Perhaps that is for the best, as to attempt to analyse her from a purely scientific or psychological perspective is to somewhat miss the point. In a way, the prophecies she gave didn’t exactly matter. What the oracle stood for was more important. A religious institution, but also as a link between the known and the unknown. To travel to her and seek an answer then interpret the advice likely served to help people make their own decisions, then have an explanation if everything went wrong or perfectly. The purpose of the oracle was not to give a right answer, and we will probably never know how she operated. It would ruin the mystery. But also, more crucially, I suppose how she did it was never really the point. She acted as a compeller for human agency, imposing divine sanction onto whatever way you chose to act. Thus, she was an agent of human choice, at least that’s how I see her.

Sources

• Homeric Hymns, tr. M. Rudden

• Herodotus, Histories, tr. A. de Selincourt

• Plutarch, On Oracles, extracts via H. Lloyd-Jones

• de Boer, J.Z. et al. “Questioning the Delphic Oracle.” Scientific American 289, no. 2 (2003): 66–73.

• Lehoux, D. “Drugs and the Delphic Oracle.” The Classical World 101, no. 1 (2007): 41–56.

• Lloyd-Jones, H. “The Delphic Oracle.” Greece & Rome 23, no. 1 (1976): 60–73.

• Kindt, J. “Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography: Herodotus’ Croesus Logos.” Classical Philology 101, no. 1 (2006): 34–51.

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The heroes of the Trojan war are almost all household names nowadays. Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Ajax, and Menelaus pop up in new portrayals left, right and centre, whether it be the likes of Song of Achilles, or Stephen Fry’s Greek Myth series. The Trojans get some share of the spotlight too, but most of that is hogged by Hector and Paris. The Trojan side is filled with equally interesting heroes, and perhaps none more-so than Aeneas.

To discuss Aeneas, we must first cover the odd circumstances of his birth. According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Zeus, was annoyed that Aphrodite held such power over him and the other gods, causing them to fall in love with whomever she wished. Zeus himself was constantly falling in love with mortals (well, lust would be more accurate than love), and instead of deciding to examine why he kept cheating on his wife, he thought it more fitting to blame Aphrodite. Thus, he decided to make her fall in love with a mortal. Descending to Mount Ida, her eyes fell on a young shepherd, Ankhises, and she was head over heels in a heartbeat.

Aphrodite approaches Ankhises in disguise, trying to sleep with him. Despite the fact he sees through the disguise almost instantly, he goes along with it. The next morning, she reveals herself to him as a Goddess, and he likely was not all that surprised. She then takes off in a fit of anger, promising the son fathered by Ankhises will be returned to him in a few years, and that if he dares to mention to anyone that he slept with the goddess of Love herself, he would meet a horrible fate. Despite how angry she seems in the moment, later writers believe she still doted on Ankhises, albeit from afar. Ovid claims she even considered gifting him immortality when given the chance. However, she did fulfil the promise of the horrible fate. Unable to keep the secret, he brags. Thankfully, he is not killed, but is still struck by a lightning bolt leaving him unable to walk properly.

Aphrodite’s son by Ankhises was returned to him as a toddler, as per her wishes. Thankfully for Ankhises, who was now both disabled and a single father, his family offered to help take care of his demigod son. Who was this family? Well, Ankhises just so happened to be a cousin of King Priam of Troy, the very same Priam who fathered Hector and Paris. This does beg the question as to why Ankhises chose to be a shepherd, but clearly this must be a pastime of some sort for Trojan princes, as varying sources tell us that both Paris and Aeneas were shepherds on that very same mountain at different points. I suppose there was little else to do in those days, after all reading and writing had barely been invented yet.

Thus, Aeneas grew up close to the Trojan royal family. We know little more about his time before the war, but he must have had a typical princely upbringing among his many royal cousins. Also, we know he married, his wife’s name being Creusa, and had a son, Ascanius. It is also heavily implied by a certain Roman writer that Ankhises lived with him in the city of Troy, and that he took care of him. When the Trojan war began, Aeneas obviously joined the Trojan side. As a member of the royal family, he took a generalship role, though evidently an insignificant one. Our sole surviving primary source for the Trojan war, the Iliad, puts him in a fight against Diomedes. In this very same book, Diomedes defeats both Ares and Aphrodite, so it is without question that Aeneas is comparatively a minuscule threat. Diomedes defeats him, but he is whisked away by his mother and Apollo to a safe spot before Diomedes can take his life.

Besides occasional skirmishes, Aeneas is not all that relevant to the Trojan War. His moment of glory comes after. He is one of the few who fought and survived, after the Greeks defeat many of his comrades (some, like Sarpedon, even being a son of Zeus).  We could imply from his lack of an explicit death scene that some other myth existed contemporary to the Trojan cycle that attested for his fate, but no such story exists. Rather, no such story exists until the Romans got their hands on him.

Though he had found his way into the Roman foundation story before, we can attribute the fame Aeneas holds today to one author alone: Virgil. Writing in the late 1st century BCE, Virgil takes this relatively minor Trojan prince and reforges him in a compelling epic poem, casting him into a complex, twisting and emotional narrative of fate, gods and tragedy. Virgil’s Aeneid, which I shall be spoiling from this point on, has often fallen under the radar in pop-culture, though for fans of the Iliad and Odyssey I believe it is a fantastic read.

Virgil begins Aeneas’ story in medias res, but I will be following it chronologically and in summary. Beginning where we left off, and skipping the interlude wherein the Trojans bring the horse into the city, Aeneas is visited in a dream by the corpse of Hector, warning him to flee Troy, and telling him his fate is to found a city elsewhere. Aeneas, waking with a shock, steps outside to find his entire city lit up in flames, Greek soldiers running rampant. It is a scene of horror, as Aeneas rushes into battle to help where he can. He witnesses the brutal murder of Priam, supplicating himself to Neoptolemus, and the innumerable other crimes against the Trojan people. He has no other choice but to flee, carrying his injured father and young son. His devotion to both is unquestionably admirable. His wife however is lost in the crowd and chaos, but her ghost tells Aeneas to go on without her.

Setting off, amidst a fleet of the few surviving Trojans, Aeneas becomes obsessed with founding this new city. He tries to found one in Crete, but to no avail. He tries near Thrace, but no luck either. He meets up with Andromache, Hector’s widow, and Helenus, his fellow Troy survivors, who have both been freed from slavery by the murder of Neoptolemus. These two have founded New-Troy, but Aeneas decides not to stay. He must build his own walls. When reading this part of the Aeneid, especially in contrast to the prior massacre we have just read, Aeneas seems almost stroppy and jealous. Nonetheless, he continues wandering until he ends up shipwrecked on the coast of Carthage.

Dido, recently widowed Queen of a newly founded Carthage, greats him warmly. His travels have been tough, though he is yet to lose many people besides his father. He recounts his tale to her over dinner, and she falls for him (though this is mostly his mother’s doing). The two fall in love, and Aeneas starts to believe he can finally stop running. He finally fulfils his wishes of building a city wall, and he is placing bricks to build up Carthage when a visitor finds him.

Mercury (Hermes, but the Roman names must be used from this point on) has arrived with a message from Jupiter (Zeus). Aeneas is not fated to be king of Carthage, and he must leave. He has no idea how to tell Dido, but cannot disobey the gods. In the end, his leaving results in her tragic death, as she cannot bear to be left by him. Aeneas, though saddened, is shockingly unfazed by the death of his second love, though come to think of it he was quite unfazed by the death of the first one. Nonetheless, he sails forth to Italy. After funeral games for his father, and a quick stop to pick up a straggler from Odysseus’ crew, Aeneas reaches Cumae, close to Naples.

Aeneas’ adventures in Italy begin with a trip to the underworld, followed by diplomacy, a hunting accident and then all out war. To keep it simple, a local prince named Turnus is driven mad by Juno (Hera) when Aeneas arrives, as his presence threatens his potential marriage to the princess Lavinia. Lavinia, tragically, has no say in the matter at all. In fact, I do not believe she has a single word of dialogue in the poem. Nonetheless, the conflict is bloody but short. We are given yet more horrifying descriptions of war, to which I can do no justice, and Turnus murders the youth Pallas, for whom Aeneas is responsible. The poem ends on Turnus’ death, where he begs for salvation before Aeneas as his madness fades. Recalling Pallas though, Aeneas shows no mercy. We are left on this climax, and all the implications it leaves.

So, why did I make you read over 1000 words of Aeneas’ story? Well, his character is arguably one of the most interesting of any hero. Unlike most sources from the ancient world, which we assume to be based on pre-existing stories, Virgil is mostly working from the remnants of Homer’s work to spin a whole new founding narrative. We can see this most in Aeneas’ wanderings, which take place after the dust of the Trojan War has already settled. The sun is rising on a new world. Most of the old heroes are dead or retired, and Aeneas is the last of a dying breed.

This is clearly Virgil’s intent for his poem. Aeneas’ depiction, though often flawed, is undoubtedly in stark contrast to the other heroes of myth. He is equally as flawed, but is a lot less self-centred. If anything, he is more of an idealised politician than a hero. However, he is too often a puppet for the gods and fate, a predicament that often feels him feeling a little flat.

Aeneas’ characterisation, and the Aeneid as a whole, are a masterwork when we consider what Virgil is doing. Without going into too much detail on this aspect, the entire poem is clearly a propaganda piece for the Emperor Augustus, yet it is also so much more. Virgil takes the embers of myth, just before they become history, and reignites them for one last inferno. He utilises the scraps left over, building a founding narrative for the city that conquered the world. The Romans often saw themselves as a cultural follow-up to the Greeks, hence why so much of Greek culture is carried across into Roman lives, and Virgil’s poem almost acts as a rewriting of that transition. He ties up the last few of Homer’s loose ends in his process of writing Rome into the narrative of the gods.

Aeneas began life as just another name. If not for Virgil, he likely would have just been a footnote, a product of the gods’ mischief and just another Trojan captain to be defeated. Virgil takes the generic hero we see in just a few pages of Homer, and gives him something all of his own. He serves so many purposes, not only in a compelling narrative. He acts as both a critique and glorification of Augustus, who at the time was the recently crowned ruler of most of the known world (though I admit I have touched on very little of the propagandistic and political aspects of the poem). But to me, what is most interesting about Aeneas is how he became this. Many mythological figures take their roots in reality, like Midas, as I covered here, but Aeneas is a truly rare example of the exact opposite. He existed beforehand, though in a generic fashion, and was spun into an entirely new narrative. He is a projection of Roman anxiety and pride, and thus serves as one of the earliest mythical retellings. It is remarkable how Virgil builds us a character on so little, working within the frameworks of the pre-existing mythology and constructing a new narrative without stepping on the works of any of the storytellers who came before him. Thus, I think we can forgive Aeneas some of his flaws. After all, for hundreds of years he had no story to tell at all.

Sources:

• The Aeneid, Virgil tr. David Raeburn

• The Aeneid, Virgil tr. Robert Fagles

• Metamorphoses, Ovid tr. David West

• The Homeric Hymns, tr. Michael Crudden

• Aeneas and the Roman Hero, R. D. Williams

• Rubicon, Tom Holland (for political research on the rise of Augustus, which I did not end up using)

• Age of Augustus, ed. A Cooley (see note on source above)

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Heroes are a central part of the western cultural canon. We have our heroes in everyday life, and create new ones in our stories. Every generation has figures that they can get behind, those whose stories are deeply embedded in their minds. Whether this be the likes of Sherlock Holmes, modern superheroes, or the more reserved protagonist of a novel or romance, the figures we follow shape our dreams, and in turn reflect the ideals of our society.

No time in history is more famous for its heroes than Ancient Greece. Theseus, Odysseus, Achilles and Herakles (or Hercules to the Romans) would be just a few that spring to mind, but the lists are extensive, and the scale of each’s adventure is varied. Heroes from Greek myth found their origin in Epic, the poetic style of wandering bards and fireside stories. Their strength, courage, daring and cunning were to be marvelled at by children and adults alike, in an era of incredibly limited literacy. The Greek Archaic period, following after the fall of the Bronze Age palaces, was the time that such stories flourished and spread.

No doubt inspired by the crumbling, haunting remains left behind by their ancestors, the Greeks spun tales of brave warrior kings, rich cities and evil monsters. We can often see myths of heroes stride the line between fact and fiction. Places often remain familiar to a greek audience (and to scholars), but often the heroes are larger than life. Plus, it goes without saying that the monsters they often face are frequently unrealistic, and the meddling of the gods too.

There is debate as to quite how much these myths are grounded in history. Archaeologists in the late 19th century, especially Heinrich Schliemann, followed works like the Iliad to find remains that seem to align with the poetic vision. Even in antiquity itself, travellers like Pausanias frequently referred to sites in their mythical basis, and (as previously covered in this article) historians like Herodotus often accepted myth as history. Despite this, to take poems at their word is unwise, especially from a historical perspective. But what we can do is examine their heroes, who can tell us much more.

When we examine heroes of this age in general, we can infer a lot of valuable information about social values and the lives people lived, especially when we compare with contemporary sources. When it comes to examining our heroes, we notice first that they are all kings, or at least of noble blood. Secondly, a grand majority are male (Atalanta being the most notable exception), and all contain a talent that sets them apart. Most are insanely strong or fast. Many are gifted with cunning, bravery or intelligence. Almost all have divine favour, or at least try to maintain it (often leading to their downfall). And what do they all seek? Well the specifics vary, but above all it seems to be everlasting glory.

The politics of Archaic Greece only seem to survive to us in broad strokes, as we have very few written sources. In broad sweeps though, it seems that there is mass founding (or re-founding) of poles or city-states, typically under a monarchy. Though many of these monarchies dissolve into oligarchy, it seems that this political climate was rife for the hero stories we see. As I have mentioned, though the Phoenician alphabet was introduced in this period, literacy was minimal. Thus, the only true way to be remembered was to have your feats sung. There was not much good in wealth if nobody knew your name. Thus, we see a heavy emphasis on kleos (glory, sharing a root with kudos) in the heroes’ motives. This makes sense surely, that themes of being remembered and praised for eternity would be incredibly prevalent in the stories, when that was the only way to leave a mark on the world?

It seems this theme dominates greek culture for a long time (though to what extent, we cannot truly know). If we are solely examining the heroes of epic poetry, there is little else to go off after Homer for about 500 years. We must jump forth to Alexandria, then to Rhodes, as we follow in the footsteps of Apollonius. This poet and scholar began his career in Hellenistic Alexandria, a contemporary of Callimachus (see this article). Rising eventually to the rank of chief of collections the library at Alexandria (a dream position that I would take in a heartbeat), he is best known to us for his poem the Argonautica. Echoing Homer, this short epic poem follows Jason and his crew of fellow heroes, on their quest to recapture the Golden Fleece from Aeetes.

The crew of heroes themselves fall well within what we expect from our previous encounters in Greek myth, especially if they have already had prior appearances in poems. Jason, though, seems an exception. Though supposedly the leader of the group, he does not seem to excel in any particular way. Unlike the Homeric model of hero we have seen thus far, he does not rush into battle for glory, nor perform many feats of strength and cunning. In fact, he seems to leave most of the work to his crew, or to Medea, whom he somehow charms, despite her arguably being too cool for him in every respect (yes, she only falls for him through the trickery of the gods, I am aware. I just believe she could have done better). So, the new model of Hellenistic hero almost seems less heroic. Perhaps, this shows a movement of myth to reflect the more current ideals in the social order. After all, in the wake of Alexander the Great and all the petty squabbling kings he left behind, it seems almost impossible to strive for personal glory. Groups of people survive better through co-operation than individual glory nowadays, and Apollonius seems to reflect that. Hellenistic art shows this as a running theme too, especially in statues, as it starts to focus less on the heroics of the past and more on realistic features. Plus, at the time Apollonius is writing, there is a small town across the Mediterranean whose Republic will gradually conquer the known world. So, maybe Apollonius’ figure of Jason, who utilises the strengths of those under his command instead of doing everything himself, seems to have hit the nail directly on the head for the changing times.

The aforementioned little town, situated on the Tiber, is the next stop on our journey through epic poetry. If we jump forward another hundred years, we find the dust just settling as this once insignificant town, Rome, has conquered most of the known world. Then, the oligarchic Republic tore itself apart, until it eventually stitched itself together under Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. In the wake of the turmoil of Civil War, a young poet rises into the ranks and becomes a literary star. Virgil, who began his work by writing poems about the countryside, devotes what will be the rest of his life to an epic poem in praise of the new emperor. This is of course the Aeneid.

Virgil’s Aeneid is a poem that one could spend a lifetime dissecting and examining. This is not to say that any of the poems I have discussed up to this point lack depth either, but there is just something about the Aeneid that makes it a delight to study. Virgil’s Aeneas is an amalgamation of all the heroes that have come before him, taking from each what will best help build his character. He is brave and mighty, like the Homeric heroes, tearing his way through battlefields and desiring nothing more than to found a new dynasty. However, he is also deeply human like Apollonius’ Jason, if not more-so. He cares deeply for his fellow survivors of the burning of Troy, for his son, his father and many more besides. Plus, unlike the other heroes, he is one we know must be based on a real person. At the end of the day, the poem is a piece of propaganda for Augustus, published posthumously at Augustus’ command. Thus, Aeneas is not just a hero in the Homeric sense, but takes on ideals of a Roman statesman. He is pious and devoted, the son of a goddess, yet also deeply flawed and human. From the very first moment we meet him, he wishes he had died like Hector in Troy, yet he has the strength and devotion to see through the mythical founding of the Roman people.

By no means are any of the heroes that come before Aeneas one-note, but through the various epic poems that survive, we can see not only a building on what has come before, but also a change in approach and ideals. We can almost track through time what each hero represented, and how an audience connected with them. We are still able to relate to many, yet what they stand for is a testament to the time of their creation. Yet they are still ever open to interpretation and reimagining, and so they sit unchanging until the time comes. It is at this point that I must draw this week’s newsletter to a close, though I have barely scratched the surface of each. However, I would like this article to be an overview, or a starting point. I would like to lay out a promise, that in the coming weeks I shall explore the character and nature of some of these heroes in more detail, delving deeper into each and what they stand for. No doubt this has not satisfied your curiosity, but at the very least I hope your interest has been piqued.

Some Sources and Further Reading

• The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer (various translations, and the introductory commentary from each translator is particularly valuable)

• The Voyage of Argo, Apollonius of Rhodes (E. V. Rieu’s introduction was of great use writing this piece, and his defence of Apollonius’ poem is compelling)

• The Aeneid, Virgil (again, I have consulted various translations over the past few years. I favour David Raeburn’s, though Sarah Ruden’s is great. Robert Fagles’ translation is great to listen to also)

• Aeneas and The Roman Hero, R. D. Williams

• Art and Myth in Ancient Greece, T. H. Carpenter

• Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, R. Waterfield (this was consulted for the political climates at the time of each poem’s writing, as it provides a pretty great overview)

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The ancient Mediterranean is often regarded as an area of mass invention and innovation throughout the Archaic and Classical eras. New ideas, philosophies and political concepts were trialled, new sciences established and fundamentals of human learning were cemented into the western canon. Out of all to have sprung from this, one stands out alone as a product of sheer chance and fortune. Theatre, as invented by the Greeks, could only ever exist in its current form due to the circumstances of its invention.

Scholars seem to agree that theatre took root in oral storytelling. Though this culture was not unique to Ancient Greece, it was certainly influential to the entire course of western history. Often, religious ceremonies included processions of chanting and singing by choruses. It is widely theorised that a bard or speechmaker telling a story with a chorus singing and dancing was the earliest form of theatre as we know it. This then evolved with the addition of another speaker, so the two could take turns performing a well known myth. Thus, the stage was set.

When we look at ancient drama, we primarily look at it through the lens of Athens. Though after its birth it spread like wildfire, it is often viewed that the unique conditions of Athenian democracy (which was in progress at a similar time) allowed the two to bounce and build off each other. Plays were typically performed in the Athenian Dionysia, the festival of Dionysus, in a competition format. A majority of the citizen body would have attended, both with it being a key religious festival in the calendar and an entertaining spectacle. All plays were written, performed and funded by the citizen body, and the judges for each competition were selected by lot.

Thus, we can start to see how democracy helped to boost the success of theatre. It allowed for mass citizen participation in a religious event, which was typically restricted to just priests. While citizens may have been in a crowd or a procession, they were essentially just passive watchers. However, in a theatrical performance, the average citizen could be playing a role in front of a majority of the city (more than likely in the chorus than actually on stage). And those watching likely felt more involved too, as they got to watch and judge their fellow citizens act out three dramas in the company of most of the citizen body.

The link between greek theatre and democracy is not just directed in this way, but the two were symbiotic. As one flourished, so did the other. A major power of a performance was that of the writer to tell almost any story they wished. Such went hand in hand with the democratic practices of Athens, wherein every citizen had the right to speak at the assembly. However, unlike in an assembly, the playwrights had much more power. Their audience were captive, and could not argue back to quite the same extent. However, ideas on show were also free from the ties of allegiance and aims at mass appeal, as any idea could be presented should the playwright chose.

The structure of a Greek tragedy is relatively formulaic. Most take a pre-existing mythical narrative, typically beginning close to the downfall of heroes and heroines, and play out their stories. We can assume that most of these myths, if not all, were known by the audience, and this assumption is crucial to the effectiveness of them. For the audience’s knowledge of the stories gives a playwright the ability to reframe and recontextualise them to suit their purposes. With the audience knowing the key beats of a story, it was then not the story itself that had an effect on them but what the playwright chose to change.

Greek tragedians, through this batch of stories in the popular psyche, could then explore whatever they chose, often reutilising the same characters in totally different ways. For example, both Euripides and Aeschylus wrote plays about Orestes. Aeschylus’ Oresteia covers the fall of the house of Agamemnon across three plays, with the murder of Agamemnon taking place in the first and the consequences sprawling out across the remaining two. By the climax of the final play of the trilogy, The Eumenides/The Furies, we are treated to a debate between the titular furies, Athena and Apollo over the justice of Orestes’ actions.

Orestes has by this point murdered his mother and her lover in revenge for murdering his father. This action, the murder of a relative, was divinely sanctioned by Apollo but despised by the furies as a blood crime. Thus Athena, with a jury of Athenian citizens, uses the democratic power of the Athenian legal system to determine whom justice favours. The votes are equal on either side, so Athena steps in and casts the final vote in favour of Orestes and Apollo, thus both divinely sanctioning his actions and indicating that the justice of the Athenian people is also divinely sanctioned.

Euripides’ Orestes also follows Orestes after his murder of his mother in revenge for the murder of his father. However, the conflict is much more down to earth. He chooses to approach it from a much more human perspective, exploring the fallout amongst the surviving relatives. Menelaus and Helen, each a sibling to one of Orestes’ parents, as well as Helen’s father Tyndareus all in their own time show up to speak their thoughts on justice, both divine and human. On paper, they each cover similar dramatic beats, but the more human and downbeat emotion of Euripides’ play separates it from Aeschylus’. This is because the two are both inherently tied to the politics of their time. Aeschylus, writing in the early 400s BCE, is celebrating democracy. Athens was revelling in the height of democratic power, not long ago re-established by Cleisthenes. Euripides however writes at a period of political turmoil, with Sparta and Athens teetering on the edge of tearing the greek world apart. In the years since Aeschylus, the Athenian democracy has grown too greedy, and has frequently been led in the wrong direction by demagogues. Thus, both writers wish to spread different messages to their audiences through the same story, and have the chance to do so with almost all the Athenian population in one place.

Media is, and always has been, a tool for politics in one way or another. Rarely though is it so directly involved as theatre was to the Athenians. Nowadays, it would be almost impossible to pull off a feat like this. The changing of the times and the way we consume media has become individualised. What we watch, read and hear is so personalised and capitalised upon that we are no longer gathered together. Our isolation through technology prevents our ability to open our eyes to new perspectives and to gather as a community to all consider the same issues together. It is rare that I discuss anything modern in my articles, and even rarer that I discuss politics. When discussing Greek Tragedy, it would be more typical of me to cover the intrinsically human emotions that it touches upon, the power it still holds over us today.

The relationship between ancient theatre and ancient democracy is incredibly interesting, and neither could have flourished to the same extent without the other. As much as I would like to argue that we should strive for something similar nowadays, the restrictions and flaws on ancient democracy are too prominent. We do not know if women or enslaved people could attend shows, but we know for a fact that Athenian citizenship was too restrictive for either to vote. The tools of a democracy like this, such as theatre, can only have such a strong effect when you can gather a majority of the population together in one place. Nowadays, this is not feasible, and nor am I a qualified person to suggest a modern alternative. However, it is always important to consider the role theatre played in Athenian democracy, because the stories we tell each other can still work to a similar effect. The debate around media literacy is inescapable nowadays, and as is the epidemic of loneliness caused by technology and social media. This piece has been about media literacy all along. Over time, Greek Tragedy led to Shakespeare, Opera, Movies, TV, Musicals, YouTube Videos. The media we consume is always political, always made with intent. It is impossible for each individual to retell the same story in the same way. That is the power of human expression, and we should keep that in mind. It is how we choose to tell stories that we should devote our attention to, as well as the stories themselves. Our stories have a greater impact than we can ever truly estimate.

Thanks for reading! This post was part experimental, and part a therapeutic experience. Given the turmoil of modern politics, what with the recent election in the Uk and the upcoming one in the USA, alongside the constant debate over media literacy online, I felt a bit overwhelmed and had to put some thoughts into words. If this is not the sort of post you expect me to write, I apologise (though I hope you find it interesting nonetheless). I will be back to normal by next week. And I know a lot of people are mostly on substack to escape the hell that is the modern political climate, in which case I beg your forgiveness again for bringing it right back to you.

Sources

• The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, Cambridge University Press

• Waterfield, R. Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, Oxford University Press

• Euripides, Orestes

• Aeschylus, The Oresteia

This rant was also partially inspired by watching Alexander Avila’s Hamilton and The Death of the Obama Era. I would strongly recommend this for an explanation of stagecraft and politics in the modern day, and how all media is still intensely intertwined with politics.

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The biggest problem faced when studying the lives of people in the past is the rarity of literature about everyday life. What they assume to be normal is often what we wish to learn about. Any texts we can get our hands on have either been carefully selected and edited over thousands of years, or survive by sheer chance. Occasionally, collections of letters survive, like those of Pliny the Younger or Cicero. However, no groups are affected more by the selection processes of time and chance than those whose voices struggled to be heard, especially women.

In the late 1980s, amongst the grey and green of the Northern English hills, a series of revolutionary and fantastic discoveries were made. The Roman fort of Vindolanda, just south of the infamous Hadrian’s wall, is not the sort of place one expects to discover Roman writings. Those sort of discoveries are typically made in Egypt or Syria, where the arid desert sands protect papyri fragments from decay. However, the mud and soil of this site was fortunately perfect for preserving something very different: wooden writing tablets.

Organic materials from antiquity are rare, and this site held more than had ever been found from Roman Britain before. There was of course all the stuff you would expect from a site like this: supply documents, tent scraps, official communications, reports, et cetera - I am sure these are all very interesting to the right person. However, as well as all this, they also found women’s shoes, children’s socks, and letters from civilian residents at the site. This is fascinating, and contributed massively to our understandings of Roman settlement, as well as the lives of normal people in the ancient world.

There is one sole letter from the many found that struck a chord with me. It is, in many ways, one of the most valuable and rare artefacts found on the site, if not in Britain as a whole. The letter in question does not reveal any hidden information about emperors, religion, military strategy or anything that would have been deemed of consequence upon its composition. It was, to its writer, nothing more than a birthday invitation.

The invitation is brief and serviceable, but the words exude charm and emotion. Claudia Severa, the celebrant, names the intended recipient Lepidina as sister, begging her to come to her birthday on the Ides of September. This would be the 11th of September. We do not know the relationship between these two women, sister could be a literal connection or just indicate the closeness of their friendship. Claudia then eloquently phrases how much better the day would be with Lepidina present, before expressing the wishes of her husband (likely stationed at a nearby fort) and son, in inquiring after Lepidina’s husband (we know from other writings that he was captain at this fort). She then signs off with her well wishes.

This piece is short and touching, but the most important discovery doesn’t just come from the words written. The entire letter is written in latin cursive, but the last sentence, where Claudia signs off with her love to Lepidina, is in a noticeably different hand. It was very common practice in the ancient world to have a scribe (normally enslaved) to write up letters.

Sending letters or messages, especially over distance, was an inherently elite practice. Those with less money likely could not afford to learn to write, though literacy was decently high in the Roman world when compared to even as recent as the 1600s. However, literacy rates amongst women have always been an unknown. We know for a fact that a decent amount of wealthy women could read, and quite a few composed poetry (tragically none survives, to my knowledge). However, it is often assumed that most were just dictating to a scribe. Claudia’s letter blows this expectation out of the water, as she has signed it herself.

The expectations held prior about the education of Roman women was thus blown out of the water, so to speak. To discuss why, we must try to imagine the world in which she is writing. The letter has been dated to ~100CE, around the same time as the construction of the fort at Vindolanda. We know Claudia was writing from within the settlement there, thus she must have been attached to the immediate family of a high ranking officer within the fort. Though Roman towns often sprang up in the decades after a fort’s construction, Vindolanda at this time was still just a wooden outpost on the soggy northern frontier. This is not to diminish her husband’s status, but he then cannot have been overly high ranking. So she, a moderately well-off woman in the rain-soaked hills of the furthest reaches of empire, could compose elegant latin and write cursive. The only reason most of the letter is done by scribe must be because she had those resources at her disposal, not, as commonly assumed with other works by ancient women, that she had no ability to write it herself.

Claudia’s handwriting is the oldest known latin written by a woman, and one of the few documents we have from antiquity written by a woman’s hand. Selpicia Lepidina, the recipient, was also the recipient of a few other letters found at the site. From them, we know the names of a few other non-military personnel in the local area, showing a network of civilians socialising, writing and caring for each other.

Claudia’s invite has even more implications than just her own literacy, especially in light of the rest of Lepidina’s letter stash. A Roman citizen, married to a solider, typically did not follow him out on expedition. Thus, Roman presence in the area was not to conquer and go home, as we often imagine. They were there to stay. Claudia’s husband had dragged her and her, presumably young, son along with him. This, along with the countless shoes and scraps found at Vindolanda, shows a much more domestic presence than the term fort typically invokes. Within a few years of its founding, it must have resembled a domestic presence in the area as well as a military one. This is the side of history often missed in popular depictions of Roman Empire. The soldiers were not fighting automatons, they were people with families and loved ones. Those families cared for each other and, as demonstrated by the mention in Claudia’s letter, inquired after each other whenever they could.

Human nature does not cease, no matter the distance in time or location. Claudia’s presence at Vindolanda, and her delight at the thought of celebrating her birthday with her friend, is a beautiful reminder of this. It is easy to get lost in the indefensible atrocities of the Roman Army when studying ancient history, in fact it is one of the few factors I aim to veer away from, so we can often forget the individual people it affects. The soldiers and their families, possibly thousands of miles away from home, were still living a life. What’s more, Claudia draws back the shroud of time for a moment to give us a glimpse into a life we rarely get to see, that of the women caught all up in this. And not just any woman, but one that seems happy and content, living her best in the beautiful hills of Northern England, and celebrating her birthday in the company of those she loved.

Post Scriptum

Writing this post struck me quite deeply. I visited this site frequently as a child, as my family is relatively local to the area. Furthermore, the ides of September is close to my own birthday! This post is written as I am trying to put off the existential dread of entering my 20s. So hopefully together we can celebrate Claudia’s birthday, as this post is scheduled to go out a few days before what would have been approximately her 1944-1964th.

Sources and Wider Reading:

• Roman Inscriptions of Britain, https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabVindol291#translation

• Bahn, Paul G. “Letters from a Roman Garrison.” Archaeology 45, no. 1 (1992): 60–65.

• Pearce, John. “Archaeology, Writing Tablets and Literacy in Roman Britain.” Gallia 61 (2004): 43–51.

• Hallett, Judith P. “Ancient Roman Women’s Writings: Sub Specie XXV Annorum.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26, no. 1 (2007): 61–65.

• Adcock, F. E. “Women in Roman Life and Letters.” Greece & Rome 14, no. 40 (1945): 1–11.

• Vindolanda Trust - not really a citation, but a site well worth the visit and an organisation worth supporting

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Pictures of scenes in Greek Mythology give us a wonderful insight into the ancient world and how the Greeks themselves pictured the heroes of the stories passed down to us. Whether this be through statues, carvings, reliefs or frescoes, some of which are considered the greatest pieces of art of all time, we are given a crucial insight into how to view mythology. However, most of these art forms do not play a role in daily life. In fact, they are especially rare outside of temples, palaces or dwellings of the rich. However, these mythical scenes did trickle their way into the lives of every-day folk via the humble vase.

Outside of marble columns, the ochre and black of a classical vase is a distinctive icon. This is for good reason too - they were widely available and thus have spread everywhere the Greeks did. Not only that, they were accessible and practical. Most vases we have surviving today take forms we recognise, whether for storage, drinking or mixing wine. Like fine china was to the victorians, decorated vases were a sign of taste and self-expression. This manifests especially in the scenes depicted, ranging from excerpts of famous tales to religious ceremony.

It is rare we get an insight to the everyday of a hero. Typically, the casual day-to-day does not make for a good story, especially when contrasted to the feats and daring do we see performed. Who would choose to hear of how Achilles spends his free time, when contrasted to the tragic glory of his life on the battlefield? Well, it turns out there was a market for that. Though the prior mentioned scenes of religious life and heroism seem to dominate Greek art, there seems to be a niche popularity for domestic scenes too. Thus, we are lead onto today’s topic: one of the most fascinating and distinctive of these, an amphora by Exekias.

This beautiful amphora depicts a moment of serenity in the Trojan war. Achilles and Ajax, two of the mightiest warriors on the Greek side, take a moment to play a board game. According to the labels painted above the figures, Achilles is winning the game by 4 points to 3. Of course, the figures do not look particularly at ease. Both are fully decked out in battle gear, ready to rush at the Trojans in an instance, with their spears forming a beautiful triangular symmetry. Furthermore, both have their heel raised on one foot and are leaning forward in anticipation; this is clearly an intense game we are watching.

This endearing scene is not one we have any surviving source for. Likely, it was either the invention of a commissioner or of the painter Exekias. Though not directly attested, we can see some important themes from surviving epics present here. Ajax is losing to Achilles, who is often described as the best of the Greeks. Perhaps this is an echo of the infamous scene of Ajax’ suicide after he fails to earn the armour of Achilles, thus failing to succeed him in death? Exekias did paint this very scene on another vase. Or perhaps it is just a demonstration of a friendly bout between two warrior kings in a moment of downtime?

The date of manufacture of this vase is crucial to our interpretation of it. Scholars widely agree that it was painted between 540 and 520 BCE. The painter Exekias, who has signed this piece with the phrase Ἐχεκιας ἐποιησε - ‘Exekias made [me/this]’, has at least 14 other signed works from this period, and many other attributed ones. His works seem to have been popular across tow main locations: Athens and Etruria (Northern pre-Roman Italy). Given that this vase resides in the Vatican Museum, it was likely found in Etruria, though no provenance is listed.

This spread of distribution indicates an appreciation of Exekias’ mastery of vase-painting. His work outshines many in his style. Furthermore, he is painting quite early for the sort of design he uses. After the fall of popularity of Geometric vases in the 6th Century BCE (we covered an early example here), the Black Figure vase rose to popularity. This was later replaced in popularity by the infamous Red Figure style around 100 years later. Considering the pretty recent downfall of Geometric decoration, Exekias seems to have mastered the relatively new style quite early on. The details in the hair and armour, as well as the layout of the scene, are frankly breathtaking. No wonder Exekias is considered a master by scholars. He likely was in antiquity too, given how far this vase must of travelled, and that this design was copied over 150 times.

Less iconic yet no less great is the reverse design of this vase. It shows the Dioscuri, the divine twins Castor and Pollux, riding and taming dogs. These twins, brothers of Helen of Troy (née of Sparta) did not fight in the Trojan War, having died before it even began. Seen as all the faces of a vase often share some thematic or narrative link, this is initially puzzling. The only tie between these two scenes must be the inherent domesticity that is so present in both. They show heroes at leisure, even if this is merely a temporary leisure for Achilles and Ajax. This vase, if owned by an Etruscan, was likely owned for show. No doubt the owner wished to have a link between themselves and the acts and heroes shown. Perhaps they were a fan of board games and of their animals, and thus wanted a showy conversation piece to reflect this in a heroic narrative?

Despite the fantastic artwork on this vase, I was left with a singular question whenever I looked at it: what game are Achilles and Ajax playing? The answer is unfortunately that we do not know. However, that never stops us from taking an educated guess. I am secretly a big fan of board games, so I decided to dig into this.

There are a variety of opinions on what exactly this game could be. We do not know as much as we would like about gaming habits in the ancient world, as writing on them is uncommon. Suetonius is reputed to have written an entire treaty on board games, and the emperor Claudius similarly on dice games, yet unfortunately neither survive. Game pieces and dice are not too rare in archaeological excavation, but the boards themselves are a lot more perishable and thus are significantly rarer. However, even if all the pieces were to be found for a game, we still would not know the rules. Imagine trying to figure out the rules of chess without any help or writing!

That being said, scholarly research into ancient board games is not as rare as one would expect. A consensus seems to be that they are playing a game similar to Backgammon. This would make sense, given that games of this kind have existed for millennia. The oldest surviving board game, the Game of Ur from Mesopotamia in ~3000BCE, is remarkably similar to the modern surviving backgammon. All in all, it is likely that they were playing a game along these lines.

There is one final thing of note to this vase which I feel must be mentioned. There is another piece of text on it which reads Ὀνετοριδες καλος - ‘Onetorides [is] beautiful’. It is incredibly difficult to tell why this is included. One likely explanation is that this is a vase dedicated to a lover, akin to how Victorians and Edwardians inscribed the names of loved ones in books they were gifting. All in all, this adds a sweet dimension to this already stunning artwork.

Sources and Wider Reading:

• Carpenter, T.H. Art and Myth in Ancient Greece, (Thames and Hudson)

• Boardman, J. Black Figure Vases, (Thames and Hudoson)

• Brouwers, J. Heroes at Play, Ancient World Magazine https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/ancient-greek-heroes-play/

• Finkel, I Tom Scott vs Irving Finkel: The Royal Game of Ur (British Museum Official Youtube Channel)

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The food scene in Athens is amazing, no tourist can be in doubt of that. When I was fortunate to visit the city myself, any time not spent marvelling at museums was used wandering the streets in search of the next treat. Frequently, I found myself drawn time and time again to a modestly sized, brightly decorated and ever busy shop just off Monastiraki Square. They only sold one thing: Loukoumades.

Loukoumades, sometimes called Lokma, are a delightful treat. A cousin of the donut, they consist of a portion of round balls of dough, deep fried in oil. Traditionally, they are covered in honey and cinnamon, though the variety of sweet and savoury topping available is expansive. No matter what I had on them, they were delicious. Tourists and locals alike must agree, as the dish has varieties across the Mediterranean, each with their own meaning and significance. It is often claimed they date back to the Olympic Games, as a prize given to winners.

You will find this fact stated everywhere, from food blogs to TikToks, documentaries to recipes. The shop itself, titled Lukumades after the one dish they serve, boldly displays it on their website and in their marketing material. There is one thing you should never do in the view of a classicist with too much time on their hands, and that is defining the origin of your baked good in the ancient world. One day, after craving loukoumades for a while, I decided to do a little digging myself. So sit back, grab your honey snacks, and let us go on a journey.

Determining the diet of the ancient Greeks has always been a struggle. Our knowledge stems mostly from the writing of the wealthy, or from archaeological evidence of remains. Thus, it is already certain that tracking these treats through time will be rocky, and may lead us nowhere. Thankfully, this is a rare case where we have written sources cited. I cannot explain how much relief I felt, when the advertising material for Lukumades and many food blogs all pointed me in one direction: Callimachus.

Callimachus was an ancient poet, writing in the Hellenistic period (3rd century BCE), and based in Alexandria. Though his surviving work is mostly just fragments, it is easy to see his influence. He is mostly famous for his epigrams, short poems in a strict metre, and his now lost philosophy which went on to inspire the likes of Horace. He is also famous for something else, that being his catalogue of the library of Alexandria. This librarian, poet, philosopher and polymath is the first step on our journey. Most writing on loukoumades claim he is the first source from antiquity to mention them, though few give us a clue as to where in his works this is, and even fewer give a quote. By fewer, I mean one. Even worse, it seems to be misattributed.

The only direct links I could find were the following: a claim that he referred to them as ‘honey tokens’, a suggestion the poem in question was titled ‘the Vigil’, and another claim that he called them charisioi - ‘of thanksgiving’. Not much to go on. I decided to start with the charisioi lead, as that seemed the most promising. As the word is uncommon, it could be searched in a lexicon database. This provided me a direct link to a fragment, but alas it was an irrelevant one. The word is not used in that context to describe any form of sweet treat. But the lexicon also claimed it was used by an ‘Ar’ - likely referring to Aristotle and we will come back to this later.

The next course of action was to find a poem by Callimachus titled ‘the Vigil’. This proved difficult, but not fruitless. The results were an epigram titled ‘Pannuchis’, which translates roughly as ‘the all-nighter’ or ‘the Vigil’. Below is my translation:

A success, so it seems. We have reference to a honey cake, πυραμοῦντα, which is close to what we were looking for. But what is a Kottabos contest? It doesn’t sound like an Olympic sport. Well, that is because it isn’t. Kottabos was a game played in symposia, ancient drinking parties, wherein the participants flicked drops of liquid from their cups at a target. This certainly matches the vibe of the poem, more a nighttime drunken revelry than an athletic event. Nonetheless, we still find reference to honey cakes as a prize, which is not insignificant.

Further digging through the works of Callimachus lead me to his poem Aeita, which is his epic spanning multiple topics. A disreputable source seemed to loosely claim what I was searching for was somewhere in the many fragments. I looked, but found nothing more relevant here.1

So, now we have reached the end of that thread, it is time to pull on another. You may recall a few paragraphs ago I said we would return to the potential involvement of Aristotle. This was the path I intended to pursue next. Some of the blogs I started on claimed he too referenced loukoumades at the Olympics, and the link of him using the word ‘charisioi’ in the context of a sort of cake may be reference we need. Unfortunately, this path led only to a definitive maybe. Aristotle wrote a lot. In fact, that is an understatement. Aristotle wrote a lot. He covered everything. Logic, literary theory, rhetoric, fish breeding, elephants, olympic victors, you name it. I, dear reader, am only human. The reference in question claimed to be part of his treaty on Rhetoric. Scouring through I found no reference to honey treats despite several discussions of prizes in the Olympics and beyond.

That may seem like an end to our journey, but it is most certainly not. Half the reason I called it quits on chasing an illusory Aristotle fragment was that I had a backup. When in doubt on ancient food customs, there is one text to turn to. The Gastronomy of Archestratus, written in Sicily,  preserved in fragments via quotes, is a holy grail for ancient food culture. Thankfully, some of the surviving remnants had the information I so craved.

Buried below a reference to a treaty on Egyptian Human Sacrifice customs (I do not know the context, nor is my Ancient Greek good enough to translate most of the context), I found references aplenty to round dough balls, fried in oil. Served with honey and sesame seed, dried fruit or occasionally meat in a holy ritual, I cannot confirm these are the loukoumades we were looking for but the resemblance is striking.

We have established for certain that the loukoumades, or at least ancestors of the modern treats, were eaten by the Greeks. Half of the brief now fulfilled, we can turn to the Olympic side of things. It was common practice in the Classical period for winners of Olympic victory to receive little in the way of prizes beyond a wreath and glory. Some cities, like in the modern events, provided monetary rewards for victors. The mystery does not seem as simple as a platter of steaming hot loukoumades being served at the podium. But we can piece together what evidence there may be.

Starting off, honey in the Greek diet was viewed as sacred, often used as a flavouring for bread in rituals. The Olympics were a religious practice, held in honour of Zeus. A ritualistic honey-doughball doesn’t sound unrealistic. Next, we know for a fact that feasts were often held for victors. Sometimes the champions were even showered in fruits when crowned. Finally, though prizes were scarce at the Classical Olympics, we can infer from records of archaic contests and references in the likes of Homer that the act of giving lavish prizes may once have been a significant part of a contest like these games. So, were loukoumades served at the ancient Olympics? We can give a definitive, strong maybe as an answer.

It is often disappointing when we cannot reach definitive conclusions when researching the ancient world. More often than not, we simply lack anything in the way of evidence. With that in mind, a strong possibility of something like our hypothesis being true is as close as we may ever get to an answer. It may sting, but we can still dream. Loukoumades being important is a lovely thought, though at the end of the day it doesn’t change how nice they taste. The shops may keep peddling the message of their ancient roots, and I will keep looking forward to the day I get to taste them again. And now, with hours of research into their past, I think I am craving them even more. Plus, there is a lesson in all this. Perhaps it doesn’t matter how much we mythologise the things we enjoy. Perhaps they were little more than a snack for a drinks party. But isn’t it a fun thought, picturing an ancient athlete or drunken philosopher revelling in their victory enjoying the same delicacy that we can still enjoy today?

Thanks for reading this absurd research tangent, and I apologise that the results were not more definitive. I am a little disappointed that I couldn’t find a definite result. However, I want to thank for the inspiration to write a piece about ancient food, and for those interested here is a recipe for loukoumades that looks authentic. If you try making them, or have them in Athens, let me know your thoughts!

Sources and Wider Reading:

• Pannychis, Callimachus

• Rhetoric, Aristotle

• Faulkner, N., A Visitor’s guide to the Ancient Olympics

• Gastronomy, Archestratus

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Herodotus is the father of history, or that is the title we often bestow upon him. Anyone wishing to learn about Greek history via the Greeks themselves is handed his ‘Histories’. His works are entertaining, insightful and full of fantastic and delightful tangents. He towers among some of the greatest non-fiction writers in the world, his work untouchable on its pedestal. Only the likes of his near-contemporary Thucydides is heralded as coming even close in cruciality for our understanding of the ancient world. Academics often idolise him, but can we even trust him?

History is an evolving art, and we often look at Herodotus as the ‘inventor’. Often, this sort of attribution is a pitfall common to human nature. We want a name and a story for things, we like to picture an individual with a motive and a vision. Nowhere is this behaviour more common than in Greek history. Whenever they can, writers tie a concept, event or idea to a big name, hero or god. This can be seen with the likes of drama, where big names such as Aeschylus added in the concept of a third actor, and a figure named Thespis (who’s name gives us the modern term Thespian) is credited with the entire concept. No doubt this sensationalisation of founding finds root in oral history, the primary method of the spread of information just before Herodotus and the relatively recent (re)introduction of writing.

‘In what way is this relevant to Herodotus’ trustworthiness?’ you are no doubt wondering. I believe  this concept of attribution to a big name is a major factor in Herodotus’ title as the father of history. We can definitely say he is not the first to display inquiry into the past, so calling him the first historian is a generous oversimplification. Prior to Herodotus, other early writers in the Greek world were taking note of genealogy and geography, such as the obscure Hekataios. Herodotus is even theorised to use and even refute some of Hekataios’ work in his Histories, which may be one of the earliest examples of scholarly citations and shade. Genealogy and geography were important elements of the aforementioned oral history so common in the Greek world. Knowing the decent of your neighbours was important to understanding who they were, and determining the ‘civilised’ from the ‘barbarian’, as the greeks would have termed them. Plus, this kind of gathering of information is not unique to Greek thinkers, as Babylonians and Persians alike are reported to keep historical records. To call Herodotus the father of history is to centre history on the Greek world.

However, while his title of ‘the father of history’ may be in refute, his title as historian should certainly not be. Often, the public image of a historian is one of objectivity. Herodotus is often far from objective. However, the true power of historians is that of inquiry. This is seen no better than in the title of Herodotus’ works: ἱστορία. Though often translated as ‘history’, the meaning is ‘a learning via inquiry’ or just plainly ‘inquiries’. Herodotus is not the first to attempt to record events, but he is one of the first examples of someone analysing them.

A key consideration with anyone writing at any point in time is the potential biases they may have, and the potential cultural differences they may take for granted. If we are to question Herodotus’ trustworthiness, we must take into account how he deals with them. After all, he is writing at a time when literacy is very low, in a world of prejudice and divide. He is also writing in a world where myth and truth lay intertwined, where gods and heroes of equal relevance to living, breathing people.

Some scholars have argued that the Greeks did not question the heroic past and myths of origin. Commonly cited examples are Plato, claiming in his Republic that Homer’s works are slanderous of heroes and gods as though they were historical figures, and Herodotus’ writings, like his pondering of the kidnappings of Helen, Io and Europa in his opening.

This is often held against early historians as a critique, though I believe we can use it as a defence of their methods. For example, Herodotus discusses Heracles quite a lot. Though we know Heracles is a mythical figure, he is not to the Greeks at this time. Herodotus therefore does not question his existence when met with tales about him, but he frequently scrutinises the contents of the tales. With regards to human based biases, which are again crucial given the intrinsic xenophobia in much ancient culture, many scholars take the stance that Herodotus is not too influenced by culture when judging evidence. Seen as he was born in Anatolia, near the borders of the Persian Empire, and spent a large portion of his live travelling, he seems rather fond of exploring and documenting the world. His chapters on Egypt are ones I often find myself revisiting. Of course, he writes almost completely as an outsider and assuming himself to be the more civilised, but often he has a genuine curiosity and excitement that sets him apart.

In no way does any of this mean we should take his opinions without a second thought. History is always written by the victors, and this crucial factor is evident in what Herodotus chooses to record. He has a very obvious sway towards Athens and its democracy, praising the citizens for their defeats of the Persians in the Persian War. It is very clear to see what side he takes, though not all of his works focus on the war between Greeks and Persians. But to say Herodotus is alone here would be a mistake. If we do not consider the biases of authors, ancient or modern, we fall into a trap of dangerous thinking. This is a behaviour exhibited by even Herodotus himself, when he jots his own thoughts on the accounts he receives from those he questions. If would be wise of us to treat his work with a similar level of scrutiny, and it is charming to imagine him encouraging this.

When it comes to looking at the past, written accounts are always scarce. For the time at which he writes, Herodotus’ works are remarkable. Very often, he is our soul written source, and his only competitor is archaeology itself. Thankfully, both tread very different ground. When researching Herodotus, I initially intended to pit him against archaeology. To do so would have been a mistake.  Though sometimes at odds, they both intertwine to help form our current view of the past. Herodotus tells us about the grand sweeps of history, the big names and battles. Archaeology lets us fill in the gaps, find the lives of the ordinary citizens through their remnants. Even when they are at odds, it does not discredit Herodotus’ view entirely. It merely gives us an insight into how things would have been viewed by a living, breathing citizen of the Mediterranean. When Herodotus tells us about giant ants or gryphons, it is a delightful insight into the world which we cannot piece together from the material remains.

Whether we should trust Herodotus is a tricky question. There are many things he could get wrong, and many things we know he does. But this does not change whether we should read Herodotus, because we certainly should. History is an ever-evolving art, one in which the diversity of viewpoints can do nothing but benefit the greater understanding of the past. In that respect, Herodotus is simply one of the earliest in the longest discussion known to mankind, our discussion of our own past.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Herodotus, Histories tr. A. Selincourt

• Waterfield, R. Creators, Conquerors and Citizens

• Meiggs, R. The Struggle For Greece

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Every now and then, a post on Pompeiian graffiti gains traction on the internet. Normally, it ends up on my feed. This is not only because the algorithms have pinpointed my taste better than I probably ever could, but also because I, like many others, find some of this graffiti to be amusing, and incredibly touching.

You may know the sorts posts I am talking about, though like many I have tried to discuss them with, I don’t doubt they are more niche than I assume. To summarise, they typically include a translated, curated list of some of the more funny and touching highlights.

The writings scrawled across the walls of Pompeii vary in purpose and authorship, as you would expect. Some are political slogans, some lovesick poetry as above, some advertisements, some crude messages or insults, and some word games, and some references to ancient literature. They are almost all unique, in varying hands, made at varying times and dotted in some of the most unexpected places. They are in no way dissimilar to what you may find in a modern town.

This is their beauty, though it is often an odd sort. Of course, some of the graffiti is brilliant in isolation, like the poetry and jokes. But they are all combined in a brilliant, joined, contextual beauty - that of humanity. It is easy to look at the past and see the barbarity, the big names or the various differences. It is pieces like these that remind us that, deep down at least, we have not changed much. It is easy to look back to the past and see the people who lived it to be something other, but to do so is wrong. The past is a mirror, and Pompeiian graffiti should remind us of that.

When looking at some of the examples, I find myself at an inexplicable loss for words. The one I have picked out above is one that hit me the hardest. It is carved in the gladiator barracks and, though hard to tell the sentiment, the simplicity of the statement feels so resonant. It is impossible to know the person who wrote it, but haven’t we all felt the same sense of achievement and pride when we have baked something, crafting it with our own hands? The only difference is that now, instead of carving our joy on the wall, we would post it on social media, or rejoice in the victory of creation by texting a friend. I baked bread the other day too, my friend from the past.

The various drawings and carvings left on the walls can tell us so much more about the people living in Pompeii than we expect, and by doing so they only break our heart further knowing the way the city met its end. None do this more than those we presume were left by children. Crude stick figure drawings of gladiators, doodles and word games don’t look too dissimilar to the sort of stuff I find in the back of my own old schoolbooks. One that resonated with me is the one above, a drawing of a maze with the caption Labyrinthus. Hic habitat Minotaurus. In English: ‘The Labyrinth. Here lives the Minotaur’. Not only does this prove a familiarity with Greek mythology, but also that it was present in the imagination.

From all the Pompeii graffiti, anyone who has used Tumblr is probably most familiar with the ‘Gaius and Aulus’ inscription. This is the one that inspired me to write, after it almost brought me to tears upon reading again. No doubt I am not alone, as these two lines alone have inspired memes, posts and even fan-fiction (I have not read it, and am afraid to do so). People have theorised much about the authors of this inscription, to the point that it has feasibly worked its way into databases of LGBTQ sources from Ancient Rome. I will not comment any further on this, as I can find no scholarship on the matter, but it is a heartwarming if overly optimistic sentiment.

The resonation of these inscriptions, especially that of Gaius and Aulus, is so innately human. All of these people, though long dead, have left a mark on the world. They all are remembered, in some manner, which is a rarity from antiquity for the average citizens. But it is also one of our innate aspirations, or so I believe. After all, we can see this behaviour everywhere. A viking carved his name on the Hagia Sophia, claiming boldly to the world that ‘Halfdan wrote these runes’. Lovers scratch their initials in walls the world over. As I researched this article, a man had just gotten in trouble for carving his own name on a wall in Pompeii, joining the masses of citizens who did so many years ago (please do not do follow his example, it is morally wrong and illegal). Is it not this motivation to be remembered, to live on long past our time, that drives so many artists, writers, scientists and innovators? So, how different were these Pompeiians to us after all?

If You Want To Know Their Names

When I planned this article in my head, it was supposed to end there. This was never supposed to be more than an essay about the eternal condition of humanity, our struggle with the march of time and our brief glimmer of existence. However, my research took a twist that I never could have seen coming, and one that I doubt many people know.

When I was searching through the various databases of Pompeiian graffiti and wall carvings, I found an image of the Gaius and Aulus inscription. My latin abilities, and my skills to read latin epigraphy, are limited, but even so I couldn’t help noticing something odd.

The latin should read hic fuimus cari duo nos sine fine sodales. / nomina si quaeris, Caius et Aulus erant. Gaius would have been spelt Caius, due to the lack of a G in the alphabet at the time. See if you can spot the names of Gaius and Aulus in the image above. The C and A should be easy to spot, surely? Most of the rest of the words are legible, but the text seems to cut off at ‘and their names were…’. Fading and damage to inscriptions over time is not something unusual, especially at a site like Pompeii. With so many tourists and so much exposed to the air, things will inevitably crumble. So, I decided to see if I could find any older illustrations of the inscription. This is where things took a turn.

I decided to do more digging, rummaging through obscure databases and reading ancient articles. No matter where I looked, this one image was the only one that kept cropping up. Eventually, I found an article discussing the excavations from Pompeii in 1912. There was a small mention of the inscription, and nothing published before seemed to ever mention it. This was it. However the archaeologists described the inscription was how it must have been when it was unearthed that year.

“Tantalising in its mutation”. The words stung. I was shocked, though there was still some hope. The archaeologists may not have found the text in a complete state, but they are clever. There are ways to piece together incomplete inscriptions, whether it be by cross-referencing them with others, or examining the walls to see if there are even the faintest traces. Or so I hoped that was the case. Disheartened, but still fuelled by the last dregs of my optimism, I kept looking.

I found nothing besides evidence to the contrary. Looking back over some other articles referencing the inscription, I saw a sign that my hunt was all for nothing. Lacunas, better known as gaps in texts, are typically marked by either ( ) or [ ], with writing in the brackets replacing the lost text. Sometimes writing in the brackets is something we know for certain, but often it is just a guess. The articles and papers referencing the text read like this:  nomina si [quaeris, Caius et Aulus erant]. In translation: ‘We two dear men, friends forever, were here. (If you want to know) their names (were Gaius and Aulus)’.

So why are the names Gaius and Aulus in these texts? Well the lines follow a pattern of verse known as elegiac couplets. These little poems, only two lines, were very common in the Roman Empire. Their main use was for sentimental purposes, typically love poems, but the metre can be altered to make them poems about grief by cutting the last line short. This is symbolic, like the ending of a life before its time. You start the poem expecting a joyous ending, and your expectations are cut short when the poem is.

Gaius and Aulus complete this metre, that is why those names were chosen. Their addition gives the poem its happy ending, but we can never know for certain if those are the names that belong there. In a cruel twist of fate, the damage of time has removed their names, cutting short their happy ending. The inscription cannot be dated. It isn’t unreasonable to theorise that the eruption of Vesuvius cut it short, like the poem itself.

To those reading this, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. I am here. You are here. Let us rejoice in that.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Mary Beard, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (Profile, London, 2008)

• A. E. Cooley and M. G. L. Cooley, Pompeii, a Sourcebook (Routledge, London, 2004)

• George H. Chase, “Archaeology in 1912. Part II.” The Classical Journal 9, no. 3 (1913): 102–10

• Jerry Toner, “The Writing’s on the Wall: Reading Roman Graffiti” Antigone Journal (2009)

• Pompeii in Pictures, J. and B. Dunn

Hello and Welcome to another Dropout Classicist Newsletter! Today, I am covering Midas and the surprising history of his golden touch. If you enjoyed this, and want to read more on Ancient History and Mythology, please consider subscribing!

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King Midas is a figure known to children the world over. His tale is a staple of books of Greek mythology. Whats more, the moral of his story is simple and easy, and a lesson all children should learn: do not be too greedy, and always think of the consequences. This tale though holds some shocking depth, history and hilarity, that we often miss in the modern retellings.

The most well known and best surviving example of the story of Midas comes from Ovid, the infamous witty poet in the era of Augustus. In his Metamorphoses, he lays out the bones of the tale we know, in his elegant way.

We begin on in medias res on Dionysus, who has just punished some of his followers for the brutal murder of Orpheus. Annoyed, the god of Wine wants nothing more than to drink and party away his frustrations. He rejoins his party of revelling followers, and finds one missing. Silenus, Dionysus’ tutor and adopted father, has wandered off somewhere. We discover that he has found his way to Phrygia, into the rose gardens of King Midas. Midas is initiated in Dionysus’ party cult too, so he recognises Silenus and throws him a 10 day non-stop feast, clearly a very rich man.

Midas then delivers him back to Dionysus. Though sometimes cruel, Dionysus can be equally as kind and so offers Midas anything he wants. Midas choses to turn anything he touches to gold, and Dionysus is disappointed. He grants him his wish nonetheless. Midas is ecstatic, turning branches and mud to gold on his walk home. But he quickly discovers he cannot eat his bread, nor drink his wine. Contrary to popular belief, Ovid does not make Midas turn his daughter to gold. The tone of this poem is not tragic, and often closer to silly. In desperation, he calls out to Dionysus. The god takes pity on him, and tells him he can wash out the gold in the nearest river. Midas rushes to do this, and the gold seeps into the ground.

Ovid does not leave Midas there though, he has further antics planned for him. After the whole gold incident, Midas is understandably traumatised by wealth. We rejoin him in a form of semi-exile, as he traipses through wild woodlands, worshiping the god Pan. Suddenly, he hears distant, divine music. Pan and Apollo are having a music contest by the nearby Mount Tmolus. Apollo plays his lyre, Pan plays his eponymous pipes and the mountain itself judges. Midas stumbles into this scene, entranced. The mountain eventually declares Apollo the winner, unsurprisingly. After all, Apollo’s other famous music contest in myth involved a satyr being flayed alive, so it is best to keep the god of music happy. Midas clearly wasn’t aware of this though, and declares that Pan should have won. Apollo must have been in a good mood though. He only curses Midas with having the ears of a donkey, as opposed to murdering him in a horrible way.

Midas returns home, hiding his new ears in a turban. He bides away the months, keeping them disguised from all. Eventually though, he needs a haircut, and visits his barber. The barber finds this hilarious, but is sworn to secrecy under his king. Eventually, the secret weighs on him too much. He has to let it out, so he whispers it to reeds on the riverbank. It is picked up by the wind, and soon everyone knows.

Midas is undoubtedly funny. He works in Ovid’s poem as a palette cleanser, a pleasant interlude between brutal punishments and tragic deaths. However, the character of Midas is much more interesting than that. Besides being a goldmine for comedy, he also owned literal goldmines.

Greek mythology is fascinating because it is often rooted in reality, serving to explain nature, dynasties and the world itself. Midas is one of the rare examples where we know the actual historical figure that the character is based on.

In the 8th century BCE, Phrygia was under the rule of a people known as the Mushki. According to written records, we know they had a king in this time named Mita, hellenised as Midas. Surviving tablets from the Hittites, a people whose empire covered a lot of the land to the south of Phrygia, contain references and even letters to this king. He is widely acknowledged by early Greek historians, with Herodotus even claiming to have visited the tomb of a Midas. There may even have been two or more Midases, with one being cited to be from around 1200BCE.

So, how did this real king find his way into the myths of the Greeks? Our knowledge of the actual history of the real Midas is a little shaky, but we know that the land of Phrygia was a major exporter of gold. Whats more, Gordion, the capital city of Phrygia, has clear evidence of very wealthy burials around the time of the later Midas. The final fact we have is that the historical Midas was said to drink poison upon his lands being conquered at the end of the 8th Century.

At first, it seems we can piece together very little connection between the mythological and historical, until we start to look at other sources of the myth. We see references to Midas crop up across literature, from Plato to Aristophanes, as being synonymous with a rich man. Aristophanes jokes that ‘if we could capture the god of wealth, everyone would be a Midas’.

The first written source we have for the myth itself comes from Aristotle. In his Politics, he makes uses the tale we have laid out above as an anecdote for his claim that no matter how rich a man is, he still needs to eat. Aristotle’s Midas has one key difference though: instead of Dionysus saving the day, he dies from starvation.

This crucial difference in the myth has provided the missing link for some scholars in connecting these two figures. It is hypothesised by Lynne Roller that, somewhere in the 400 years since the historical figure, the death by poison has been replaced by death by starvation caused by his gold. After all, this ties together very neatly in a moral and many Greek writers loved preserving historical narratives purely for their morals. The involvement of Dionysus can easily be explained too, as Anatolia and Phrygia have always had very strong links with his cult.

The tale, neither the mythological nor historical one, does not stop there. Another common myth associated with Midas is that he questioned Silenus for the meaning of life. This is a very common image on pottery, especially on drinking cups. This myth predates any written account we have, going back as early as 560BCE. How did this one come about? In Herodotus’ references to Midas, he claims that he was ‘the first barbarian known to us’.

The Greeks had a very ‘them versus us’ view to the outside world, and thus any non-Greek speakers were termed βαρβαροι - literally ‘those that go blah blah’. Ignoring the mildly comic onomatopoeia of the word, it led to a lot of hostility for non-Greeks in the ancient world. Midas is viewed as a slight exception to this by Herodotus, or so it seems. He claims that the vastly wealthy king made a visit to the Oracle at Delphi, and left massive gifts. Thus, he earned some respect from Herodotus, and presumably the rest of the Greek world.

But what does this have to do with the myth of Silenus and the meaning of life? Well, despite being a drunk old man, Silenus is often considered a symbol of wisdom. After all, who better to pose the question of the meaning of life to than your drunk friends? Socrates is often compared to Silenus in Plato’s Symposium, in both looks and wisdom. So, Midas asks this wise but drunk Greek for advice. This is theorised to be representative of Midas’ attempts to ‘learn’ from the Greeks, by asking their wise man the wrong questions. Though a mildly xenophobic depiction of a foreigner getting it a bit wrong, it is possible to see how a visiting royal with no knowledge of customs could be mythologised like this.

Thus, we have a lot of the factors coming together. Midas’ golden touch is the explanation for the wealth of himself and his kingdom. His comedic personality may come from his lack of customary understanding. His ties to Dionysus come from his land. As for the donkey’s ears, these are hard to explain. The best reasoning most scholars can find is the link between donkeys and Dionysus.

Ovid’s version of Midas takes all these elements and spins them together into one, cohesive myth. In his genius way, he takes this complicated and varied story and streamlines it to the one we have laid out. In doing so, he unknowingly sets it in stone for all poets following him. And equally unknowingly, he preserves the name and wealth of a Phrygian king from 700 years before his time as a silly king with too much money.

In a way, the story of Midas makes me smile. Of course, this is likely what Ovid intended. He was not a poet who could be serious for too long. Thus, Midas serves as a little comic interlude, a wink and a nudge to keep it from all getting too dark. But Midas is lucky, in a way. He incurs the wrath of two gods, to walk away only with a fear of gold and a pair of donkey ears. Most kings get torn to pieces by their own mother, their own hunting dogs, a thunderbolt or something similar. But also, unbeknownst to Ovid, his silly king was a real man. A real man who will stand the test of time, preserved for generations and generations of others. Money cannot buy happiness, but it accidentally bought this man eternal glory, at the cost of forever being seen as a bumbling idiot.

Sources and Further Reading

• Metamorphoses, Ovid tr. David Raeburn

• The Greek Myths, Robert Graves

• Roller, Lynn E. “The Legend of Midas.” Classical Antiquity, vol. 2, no. 2, 1983, pp. 299–313.

• Berndt-Ersöz, Susanne. “The Chronology and Historical Context of Midas.” Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte, vol. 57, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–37.

• Sayce, A. H. “Midas of Phrygia.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1, 1931, pp. 135–38.

Welcome to another Dropout Classicist post! I felt uninspired, took a week off, then started re-examining my own relationships to creativity through ancient poetry (nothing out of the ordinary).

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Abandoned by Inspiration

This piece started when I decided to take a week off. I was feeling a little tired and running low on ideas, so I decided to go away for the week, read and recapture my creativity. I packed my suitcase, stuffed my rucksack with books, and hopped on a train to the Lakes.

The Lake District has always been a hotspot for writers seeking to spark ideas, especially the romantic poets. What better place to rekindle my own inspiration? And what better place to sit and read than the dramatic hills? I had brought my copy of Hesiod with me too.

Hesiod is a fantastic poet. A shepherd in the foothills of Mount Helicon, he claims to have been taught by the Muses themselves to sing and compose. Nature and divine creativity are vital themes in his works, so no poet could have been more thematically appropriate to my own journey.

Every artist has their muse, so we are told. Homer opens the Iliad, the cornerstone of western literature, addressing a muse, most likely Kalliope who is the muse of Epic, before he even mentions the name of Achilles. He does address her as θεα - goddess - though we know it is her.

Though one of the first, Homer is not the last to invoke the muses. In fact, their invocation in poetry has deep roots in the religion of the early Greeks.

Ancient Religion

The Homeric Hymns, a set of songs attributed to Homer, are one of the best surviving examples we have of early Greek religious practices. Each is in praise to a god or goddess, and tells us a story relating to them. It is from these hymns that we have the oldest version of the kidnapping of Persephone and the birth of Hermes. These hymns follow a specific structure, which helps us get a better idea of how they operate. They begin with an invocation, introducing the subject deity. This is followed by a story, some spanning up to 25 verses. Finally, a farewell to the god in question, and a wish for their grace.

The introductory verses of these hymns often invoke the muses, and it is from this that we can piece together their place in the pantheon. Often they are called upon in prayers for other gods to act as a sort of intermediary. They are the ones delivering the song, fully formed, to the mouth of the singer. Very rarely do we see an entire hymn devoted to just the muses, but their presence is unmistakable in many others. We see this in Homer’s invocation too, he asks for the song to be delivered to him, and several times returns to invoking her when he needs to recall long lists of names. I find it insanely beautiful that the Ancient Greeks believed their art was this linked to these goddesses. What creative cannot relate? There is something magical about an idea, one that strikes you when you least expect. No wonder we picture it to be divine.

Whats more, it is easier to understand this divinity when you have to go without it. In my week off, it was this divine inspiration I was hunting for, hoping it would strike me as if sent from above. My time offline was amazing, but inspiration didn’t come flooding back to me like I hoped. I got back as creatively starved as I left.

The Poet

Our word ‘poet’ comes from the Ancient Greek ποιητης. In its transition through time to our language, it loses a lot of beautiful context. The word is linked to ποιεω which means either ‘I make’ or ‘I do’. Thus, a poet is a maker, a creator, a person of action. The poet instantiates, channeling the divine to bring something into the world. A poet is a craftsman, one constantly at work.

This idea of toil, of the artist having to construct and revise, felt somewhat at odds to me when I was hunting for inspiration. How could the Greeks view their song as both a divine gift and a mortal creation? It felt almost counterintuitive to me. Yet, while I read Hesiod’s splendid verses amongst hills as dramatic as his own Helicon, I felt abandoned, deserted by the divine.

When I returned home, I was spiritually still in the same place I had started in. Perhaps I had been looking at it all wrong. It was then that I decided to re-examine this link between the toil of the poet and the holiness of the song. I sat and I thought. Then it hit me. I had been looking at my creativity all wrong.

As a non-fiction writer, I have often found it almost pretentious to call myself a ‘creative’. I did not see the divine in things, I was not inspired to create worlds and stories from nothing. But, in re-examining my drive to write, I had a little revelation. I needed to put in work. Waiting for inspiration to strike me was like waiting to win the lottery without even buying a ticket. I needed to write, to use my brain again to jostle it back into gear. Perhaps this realisation was long overdue. Perhaps there are other writers who are shaking their heads in disappointment at me for not thinking about this sooner. To me though, it felt powerful.

It had been there all along, if I had only known to look for it. The distinction in Greek between the divine nature of inspiration and the manual work of the poet, the dichotomy that confused me, was the very ingredient I was missing. The work of the artist is to find that divinity, it is always there if you know where to look. Yes, it is sometimes incredibly difficult, but inspiration is for anyone and comes from anywhere.

Now, looking back, I am starting to re-evaluate my own work. Sure, I am not spinning tales or striking emotions like the brilliant fiction writers. But that surge of excitement I feel when I look at these ancient works, when I write about obscure pottery or literature, was that divinity I was searching for all along. My muses were whatever I chose. Maybe it was even the divinity felt by Hesiod, when he kept his flocks on Mount Helicon. The power to see the divine in things was not taken from me. It was a tool I had forgotten to sharpen. While I hadn’t clambered out of that void of despair, and ideas were not leaping fully formed into my head, I didn’t feel quite so stuck. Am I still not feeling overly inspired? Yes. But will that stop me writing? No. After all, it may not be my magnum opus, but I wrote this. That is certainly something.

Post Scriptum

Yes, this post is late. I do apologise. Hopefully, the reasons why are self explanatory. I took a week off and came back with less ideas than I left. I will be resuming weekly newsletters though!

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The artefact in question is a rather unassuming cup. At first glance, it may be hard to see why it is so special. It is dated between 730-725, and is decorated as we would expect for that time period. After the fall of the Bronze Age, Greek pottery took a couple steps in a more abstract direction. Stepping away from depictions of nature, like the octopus vase I covered here, the geometric style came about. Often, this style is contrasted with the later figure vases (the pop culture image of a greek vase) and the earlier Mycenaean pottery, then immediately brushed aside as an intermediary and rudimentary step back. This is an unfair assessment, as the simplistic geometry holds its own in aesthetic. Furthermore, it is important to remember that this era of Greek history was typically brushed aside too, as it was not Athens that dominated trade and culture, but Corinth. Our cup in question falls into a subset of geometric, known as Late Geometric.

This does not explain why there is so much Greek pottery so far from Greece itself. For that, we must turn to history. In the 9th and 8th centuries BCE, the Greek city states were just beginning to find their feet in the landscape of the Mediterranean. This meant a lot of trading and settling. At this point in time, we see a lot of Greek colonies and influences start to spread, especially in Italy and modern day Croatia. One such site, Neapolis, is now modern day Naples. This lead to the terming ‘magna Graecia’ (big Greece) for the widespread settling.

The gulf of Naples was bustling with this kind of economic and social exchange. Though inhabited since at least the Bronze Age, the island of Ischia was home to a settlement of Greeks, at least so we theorise. It is hard to pin down what exactly a colony is, because to define a Greek colony we must first define Greekness, which is not the place for me to do. Semantics aside, the site of Pithekousia has a lot of evidence of such interaction. A settlement seems to have been founded in the time period we are looking at, and there is plenty of Late Geometric pottery found in the local grave sites. We can confirm that there must have been cultural interaction between mainland Greece and this site, and scholars strongly believe a large population of those Greeks made their homes there. This fits our picture of the area nicely, as there are many such similar sites popping up around the same time.

So, this cup holds some importance as it is part of a trend of mass movement and exploration. It is part of a shift in the world, a reaching out of a blossoming city state. It shows the early signs of maritime trade starting to form, and the spread of art between the interactions of cultures. But why have I singled out this cup? Well, the cup represents something more than just a purchase. In a way, it shows Greek tradition spreading. This style of cup, a krater is common at a symposium which is a staple in upper class Greek life. It shows not just that the residents were buying Greek things, but also Greek ideas were spreading too. But there are many better preserved and arguably prettier cups in the same pottery style, so why this one?

The cup, as interesting as it is, may have been relegated to just another find, if it weren’t for the inscription it contains. The words etched into the cup are, without a doubt, utterly fascinating. The greek written on the cup reads right to left in entirety, which is likely utterly unique. Greek inscriptions tend to read left to right, like in English, though often early ones alternate left to right, then right to left on the following line. This is known as boustrophedon which translates to ‘as the ox turns’, reminiscent of the path a plough takes in a field.

The direction of the writing is incredibly interesting, because scholars do not seem to know why it reads contrary to almost every greek inscription. Even as far back as linear B, the writing system used by the Greeks before the alphabet, words were written left to right. Whats more, the inscription contains rather interesting punctuation, which I promise is not as boring as it sounds. The text uses a ‘:’ symbol to indicate something, as it often appears between words. However, it does not appear between every word, thus cannot represent a space. My best guess is that it is used for a pause, as the text is written in a poetic meter.

What then does the inscription actually say? There is some debate regarding the reconstruction of the text, as parts are missing due to the fragmentation of the cup. For the first time in this series, I have provided my own translation, based on a reliable reconstruction of the text1. So, it reads:

I am the Nestor’s cup, pleasant to drink from.

And whomever would drink from this cup,

Desire of beautifully crowned Aphrodite will seize him at once.

Many Classicists have immediately jumped to the conclusion that this must be a reference to Book 11 of the Iliad. Within the middle of this section, Nestor sits down for a cup of wine amidst the battle. The scene is iconic, and rather amusing from a modern perspective. Hecamede provides the drink for Nestor, setting out the table in a ritualistic fashion. First she pulls a table towards Nestor and his guests, beautifully described. She then places a basket in front of him, which we are told contains onions, honey and barley. Homer informs us that this eclectic selection is ‘a relish for the drink’. It does however get weirder. We are given a glorious description of the cup and a little of its backstory, Homer claiming that only Nestor is strong enough to lift the golden goblet. Then, Hecamede fills it with wine, grates goats cheese over the top, and scatters barley in it.

The recipe Homer gives us certainly sounds interesting, and does not sound very appetising. I would love to read a paper by a scholar who has given it a go. Ignoring that, the grandeur of the scene is undoubtable. So, if the cup inscription is in reference to this, it has many implications for the poem and cup alike. For the poem it could tell us that it had been composed prior to the date of this cup, if the owner of the cup truly was familiar with the text. In the long debates over putting a date on the composition, this is a vital piece to consider. Could we then conclude that the owner of this cup was familiar with the Iliad from wandering bards telling the tale? Or, further, had the Iliad been written down by this point? The inscription on the cup is not strong enough evidence alone for either, but vital in the consideration of both. Unfortunately, we can conclude neither, though the theories alone are fascinating.

As for the implications for the cup itself, the debate from scholars is equally as unresolved. Many believe that it must be some form of joke. After all, this cup is not some mighty golden heroic goblet, just a standard pottery drinking vessel. So is it a deliberate over-exaggeration, likening the cup and thus its owner to a hero? Is it perhaps linking Nestor to Aphrodite, a goddess commonly associated with attractive younger heroes, and thus creating an amusing contrast? We cannot know for certain, but it is commonly acknowledged by scholars that there is something at play here. Is this maybe a very early version of an ironic coffee mug, such as the ones you might get a relative for Christmas? This is a delightful thought, even if it is not certain.

There are plenty of other readings of the cup and its inscription. Another incredibly interesting view is that it may be a ‘magical’ item. Some scholars have argued that the metre of the inscription links to those found on ‘curse’ inscriptions, such as fragments of pottery left as offerings. This was a common practice, inscribing things on bits of pot and leaving them in a religious context, especially for the Romans. Many such items have been found throughout the Mediterranean, with inscriptions as petty as ‘curse the man who stole my cloak’ to anything much more serious. So, if we read it in this context, could this perhaps be a cup intended to bring love? This is certainly a stance that could be argued, and like the coffee mug idea is something we could see happening. Though a little more foreign to us, it isn’t a wild thought to suppose this cup might have been used for a ‘love potion’. Perhaps sold to its owner by a dodgy salesman preying upon insecurity, promising his wares would bring his customer luck in the dating scene, maybe even adding a heroic twist via Nestor’s name to build the reputation of it? Again, we cannot know for certain, but this is another thought that adds a layer of humanity to the find.

So, where does this leave us? The inscription on the cup could easily be put down to a variety of interpretations, each fascinating. The cup has value to Homeric scholars, those studying humour in the ancient world, and those interested in folk superstition. No matter your reading of the vase, it is nonetheless fascinating to imagine its purpose. Whether we picture it owned by a fanboy of Nestor, perhaps given as a comedic gift to a Homeric fanatic, or bought by someone lovesick and a little gullible, it is undoubtedly a fascinating and enchanting find.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Watkins, Calvert. “Observations on the ‘Nestor’s Cup’ Inscription.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80 (1976): 25–40.

• West, Stephanie. “Nestor’s Bewitching Cup.” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 101 (1994): 9–15.

• DeVries, Keith. “Eighth-Century Corinthian Pottery: Evidence for the Dates of Greek Settlement in the West.” Corinth 20 (2003): 141–56.

• Jeffery, L.H. The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C. (1963). Oxford University Press.

• Faraone, Christopher A. “Taking the ‘Nestor’s Cup Inscription’ Seriously: Erotic Magic and Conditional Curses in the Earliest Inscribed Hexameters” Classical Antiquity 15 (1996): 77–112

• Homer, Iliad tr. Fagles, R, Penguin Classics (1990): 317

This episode from the Odyssey beyond famous, spreading beyond the poem itself to infiltrate the corners of the popular psyche. Talk to almost anyone about the the goatherd Eumaeus, Aeolus’ many sons and daughters, or many other episodes from the Odyssey and you will be met with a blank, befuddled stare. Well at least in my experience anyway. But the island of the Cyclops? That one has received some very enthusiastic replies. No doubt mostly from the many storybook retellings and the inclusion in Percy Jackson, but nonetheless it sticks with people.

Would you be surprised then, if I told you that this section contains a hidden secret, a little gem buried in the verse from over 2000 years ago? One that has been forgotten in the drifts of time and known only to the sort of people who read the explanatory notes in the back of Penguin Classics books? Well, as one of those readers of the explanatory notes, I believe this gem needs to be publicised, put on full display and cherished. What exactly am I on about? A pun. Well, maybe more than one.

One of the most horrible things about translation is the amount of detail that it can lose. In the original Homeric Greek, Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name is Οὒτις. This is presented as a name. However, it means ‘no-one’, coming from the joining of οὒ (no/none) + τις (the indefinite article, or ‘someone). The common translation then, nobody, makes sense. To keep the play on words in the original language, it is possible in English to do something similar with ‘Norman’ and ‘no-man’. This, while a little clumsy, is quite adequate as far as translations go. Typically if you can preserve a play on words when translating from an ancient to a modern language, that is seen as a win. But, unfortunately, the difficulty comes later.

Jumping forward in the story, Odysseus and his men have blinded the Cyclops with a sharpened stake of wood (ouch). Then, the Cyclops runs outside and shouts to his neighbours, for which I shall fill in our translation to aid the pun. “Help, Norman is attacking me!” And his fellow Cyclopes reply “Well, if No Man is attacking you, then we don’t need to help you!”. It seems our translation of the pun has worked its magic here. But wait, that isn’t quite right. The neighbour Cyclopes do not reply with oὒτις as per earlier, but μήτις. Functionally, this means the same thing (μή also means no/none). But a following pun is lost as a consequence.

The word μήτις may seem familiar to those with a little background knowledge in Greek Mythology. Metis, the goddess of cunning, is spelt almost exactly the same in Ancient Greek. In turn, she gives her name to the art she practices, so cunning is μῆτις. This is almost identical to our alternate spelling of nobody. Odysseus, who is narrating this part, exclaims of his cunning (metis) at this trick, repeating the word the other Cyclopes had just used a couple lines before. Tragically, the joke is lost on us. A small joke then seems to just be a brag in English, and we lose a little bit of character from the poem.

In the grand scheme of translating a massive work such as the Odyssey, this is a minor detail. The works of great translators of Homer are feats of glory, like the heroes they make accessible to thousands. A pun like this cannot work in English, at least not in a way yet discovered. Should we mourn it? The first half of the joke still works, and this is the half that adds to the plot. But still, something is lost. Humour in these massive poems is a scarce and lovely delight, and losing it is a shame. After all, it reminds us of the skill and wit of the Greeks, even amongst a poem of bloodshed, emotion and suffering. This is something that translators often have to face, and why scholars advocate reading things in their original languages. Unfortunately, this is not practical nor conceivable for a majority of people. It is silly and perhaps a little condescending to expect people to devote hours to a very difficult language just to gather small details like this, when incredible translators like Robert Fagles, Emily Wilson, E.V. Rieu, Richard Lattimore and so many others have rendered the poem in beautiful English.

It is a little depressing sometimes studying translation, especially ancient texts. Perhaps I should not be getting so down over a single untranslatable joke, but often it makes me question how much else we have lost. How many little details go unsaid because we cannot find a way to say them. Instead, I will end on a high note. Typically, translators of the Odyssey do not attempt to translate the metis play on words, and only do the nobody part. However, in her excellent and critically acclaimed translation, Emily Wilson does. It is just a small nod, likely even unnoticed by most who were not already in the know, but it is something.

Thank you very much for reading this post! This article is to celebrate The Dropout Classicist hitting 50 subscribers on Substack, and there will be a second article coming later this week before I resume weekly posting. I am incredibly grateful. If you are reading this, feel free to leave a like or share this post if you know someone who might enjoy it!

Preservation is something that concerns me a lot. As a child, I used to hoard rocks and shells. I suppose I was fascinated by their individuality, that if I did not look after them then nobody would. But I was also an avid reader, and still am. As I developed my academic interests into the ancient world, my hoarding turned to my books. I sit and write this under my shelves of carefully curated literature and history. It is the older books that have always fascinated me, the ones with history. Notes in the margin from previous owners, stamps from long closed bookshops, leather-bound covers no longer in print, you know the ordeal.

So, when my mind started turning over Vallejo’s book, a thought struck me. Couldn’t I do more? I had a pile of damaged, nearly unreadable books sitting on my desk that I was afraid to throw away. Perhaps it was my duty to try to preserve them, like the Greek, Roman and Medieval scribes who copied them through the generations until they ended up in my room. Sure, they were mass-market paperbacks. Maybe they were always designed to fall apart. But they were unique, a piece of history, so I set about to do something about it.

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The only way books could survive in the ancient world is if people loved them enough to copy them. There was no official publishing, and most of the texts passed down to us today have been copied over and over by generations of scribes, or survived by rare chance.

Even by ancient standards, the idea of collecting and preserving texts came pretty late, despite this scarcity. We often see Aristotle credited as one of the first librarians, at least in the classical world. Aristotle was a known collector, and he wrote on everything he collected. The Lykeion of Aristotle, or Lyceum as it is now known, was the site upon which he gathered a mass wealth of books, along with teaching and lecturing. Further, it seemed he gathered and sifted through things seemingly for fun. He had a reputation for it, as he is often written as collecting fables and tidbits of information. This reputation even earned him commissions for work, like organising the lists of Olympic victors (yes, really). It seems we owe a lot to him. I cant help but love how intrinsically human this picture of him makes collecting look.

And so, in turn, some of this delight for knowledge and its preservation found its way to his pupils. It just so happened that one of these pupils decided to conquer almost everything he could find. Alexander had a respect for written works, especially that of Homer. So the stories say, he kept an annotated copy of the Iliad gifted to him by Aristotle with his belongings on all his campaigns, taking Achilles’ rage with him from India to Egypt. By some turn of fate, whether through Alexander himself directly or by one of his generals, one of the new cities founded in his name was devoted to Aristotle’s vision of the preservation of knowledge.

The library of Alexandria is undoubtedly something that springs to mind whenever books in the ancient world are discussed. The next link in the chain of preserving knowledge and writing, and the one we still think of to this day. Over 200 years from its founding, the library of Alexandria still had the power to inspire the likes of Julius Caesar and his fellow Romans. Contrary to popular belief, it is very unlikely they burnt the library down. More feasibly, it is likely a warehouse was destroyed in the burning of Alexandria and not the library itself, which continues to be referenced by later writers. It is the library of Alexandria that Irene Vallejo opens her book on, and thus the cause of this tangent. The first pages paint the picture of a messenger for the library, tasked to seek out new books and bring them for the pharaoh, risking lives for new knowledge.

This is a somewhat romantic image, and likely a little distorted from the truth, but it struck me nonetheless. Risking life and limb for knowledge is not something we can easily reckon with nowadays. In the information age, we have more works at our fingertips than the Greeks and Romans could dream of. We have our own Alexandria, and we can access anything we want in a heartbeat. But will it last? After all, the library may have been a marvel, but it still didn’t stop thousands of texts being lost in the march of time.

The Herculaneum papyri have struck a similar chord with me. They seem to have been all over the news recently, and are undoubtedly one of the most exciting areas of Classics to date. In the 1700s, the Villa of the Papyri (it was not called this prior to this discovery) was found to contain over 1000 papyri scrolls, carbonised and preserved in the ash. This is the only full library to survive from antiquity, by sheer chance. Whats more, thanks to fancy technology that I can’t quite wrap my head around yet, we are now able to read them. I have followed the discoveries with a childlike amount of excitement, and remember the glee I felt when they deciphered the first word (purple). The study of these papyri started really heating up around the same time I started reading Irene Vallejo’s book, with the most recent news being a full deciphering of the final words of Plato. All this sort of catalysed something that seemed to have been buried in me all along.

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Writing is precious. Books are precious. We can easily take their accessibility for granted. The printing press and mass market of books means that I can buy almost any work whenever I desire. This has not satisfied my inner hoarder. If anything, it made me crave more. I would never wish to live in a time where books were scarce, but it made me feel as if I were missing a true appreciation for what I had. The journey each text has had through time to arrive on my shelf could never be as profound as it was in history. There is no way to capture the feeling of borrowing a scroll off a friend, copying it and studying it deep into the night to create your own. And why would I even want that?

Most of my books are bought second hand. Many have details in the margins from unknown readers, notes from people I will never know. And many were in a sorry condition, with me likely to be their final owner. So, back to my question. Couldn’t I do more? Yes. I could. That was the moment I decided to learn how to bind books.

I have never been particularly good at arts and crafts, and it sure was a struggle on the first attempt. I watched hours of YouTube tutorials, read hundreds of words of guides and forums. I decided to risk it on a tattered and broken copy of a Greek Grammar book, something I had long ago bought a replacement for but couldn’t bring myself to throw away. It hurt at first, tearing off the old paperback cover and disassembling the spine. After a couple hours of work though, and many more waiting for it to dry, I couldn’t have been more please.

I had done it. I had made a fully functioning hardback. Sure, it wasn’t neat or professional, but it was beyond usable. I had revived a book, brought it back from the dead. Addicted, I made another. I repaired an ancient paperback that had travelled all the way from Athens. I fixed up a spare copy of an analysis of Homer. I made my well worn copy of Medea into a Penguin Clothbound Classics imitation. I was hooked on preserving history, saving my unusable or unreadable volumes and breathing new life into them.

Reflecting on this, I find that my desire to preserve and gather is likely what drives me to the classical world. There is so much we have lost in history, and so much that generations have dedicated themselves to preserving. Often, it feels like this is at odds with the world we live in nowadays, and it bothers me. With the rise of streaming and online content, we no longer own most of the stuff we enjoy. With the digitisation of photo and video, our precious memories can be deleted in an instant. And with social media algorithms, and the rise of AI, things often feels so deeply impersonal.

Maybe it shouldn’t, but it scares me. Changing with the times isn’t so bad, but I have begun to find so much joy in real things in the age of disposability. Curating and repairing my books almost feels as though I too am contributing to their preservation and to their history. When I do this, I like to think of Aristotle, scribbling down his notes in his library. I think too of Alexander, pouring over his Iliad in distant lands. And the unknown owner of the Villa of the Papyri, admiring the shelves of works that he prides himself on collecting.

Thank you for reading this essay! It was a bit more personal and not as educational as what I usually write. Part of why I write about the Classical World is because I love how human things can be, and sometimes that means I end up doing a lot of self reflection. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed reading it and I may end up doing some more personal pieces in the future!

The Country Mouse’s friend, the Town Mouse, is visiting him and brags of the delights of the city, complaining of the toil and boring diet of the countryside. Enchanted by the visions of wealth, the Country Mouse decides to visit the Town Mouse to experience this luxury, only to find that the price of delicious cheese, breadcrumbs and fruits is the perils of the house and its polecat (the ancient Greeks kept polecats instead of cats to keep out pests). Thus, the Country Mouse heads home, afraid of the city and wishing he had never left his homely life of grain and barely.

The tale undoubtedly had resonance in its time. Likely written in the middle of the 6th Century, Aesop was widely circulated as a teacher of good morality, like Hesiod. Similarly to Hesiod, he shows a devotion to nature and simple living, with Hesiod writing an entire poem on farming and living rurally. Greece at this time was climbing its way up in the world, with city states like Athens starting to take the forms we recognise today. Hesiod and Aesop, while widely celebrated, clearly represented a link to a more simplistic past that was starting to fade. As Greek trade conquered the Mediterranean, city life became seen as the peak of civilisation.

By the end of the 1st Century BCE, over 500 years after Aesop, one city stood towering over the Mediterranean. Rome, with its first Emperor emerging from the ashes of a series of bloody civil wars, stood alone as conqueror. Horace, a poet who lived through the last years of this turmoil and into a new age of peace (or so the Romans called it), turned to the past for some inspiration. The Country Mouse resonated with him, and so he decided to include a rewrite of the fable as one of his Satires. Doing so, he illustrated not only that the popularity of Aesop had not faded over time, but that the morals he taught had not either.

One of my biggest weaknesses in the realm of Classics is Roman Political History. I have always preferred to study the poets, but no matter what the political history is always crucial to get a true understanding, So, what are the circumstances that make Horace’s retelling so interesting? Well firstly, the Emperor Augustus. His regime stood for a return to morality and tradition. No doubt an attempt at propaganda to disguise his rise to power, it nonetheless was exactly what his people wanted. Most of them had never known a year free from infighting, war and blood spilled on Roman soil. Furthermore, most of the soldiers fighting in the civil wars had just been given farms. The people wanted peace and quiet, their leader saw this and their poets reflected this.

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Virgil, a contemporary and likely a friend of Horace, is one of the best examples of the exhaustion felt by the population. His earliest work, Eclogues, makes an almost direct reference to this contempt, with two characters discussing their annoyance at having their land seized to be given to veterans, as there were too many. His Georgics, written later, takes up the mantle left by Hesiod, as he devotes the entire poem to farming and the countryside. This direct callback to a contemporary of Aesop provides a nice link to Horace’s version of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, but also shows a reflective, nostalgic atmosphere established in the end of the civil war. The people didn’t care much for the disputes of power grabbing aristocrats, they just wanted to get out of the city that caused all this trouble. Life was becoming a bit much for them, it was time to dial it back a bit and settle to the simple consistency of living day-to-day.

This new attitude, a sort of desire for minimalism and self-sufficiency, was bolstered by the ever-rising popularity of stoicism in the Roman Empire. No matter your thoughts on the modern version, stoicism had mass appeal to the Romans. Almost all of them had suffered mass tragedy, and the powerful people who had gotten them into the mess were commonly associated with extravagance and excess. This return to simplicity, control and tradition aligned very well with the stoic attitude. By becoming master of one’s emotion, and by freeing oneself from unnecessary indulgence, it promised a happiness and satisfaction that felt very achievable. Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, makes reference to this very fable in his Meditations, reinforcing the stoic reading. The Romans, likely helped by Horace’s retelling, turned to what Aesop had been saying all along.

The Town Mouse and Country Mouse was not written as a stoic doctrine, though the Romans show us its could certainly be read in that way. Approaching it from a modern perspective, it is impossible not to associate it with Cottagecore. This internet aesthetic celebrates a similar return to simplicity and countryside. Foraging, baking, pressing flours and growing your own food all fall under this ideal. On a surface level, it shows very strong similarities to the Roman principles. In the digital age, we often long for peace and tangibility. The online world feels so impersonal, hyper consumerist and gripping our attention, and the countryside feels so much more manageable and friendly. In a way, we echo this same ideal the Romans felt. We long to get away from the mess we find ourselves in.

It is important to remember that this is likely not what Aesop wanted us to see in his fable. Often, in the original text at least (and not in the version given to children), his tales are shows of cruelty and malice. Nonetheless, I feel this reading holds a lot of value, especially in the world we live. We do not have to become stoics, but it is lovely to glimpse a very human desire to escape to a life of peace and quiet.