Classics in Contemporary Culture

Socratic Dinners in Australia

Helen Madden, of Melbourne, who has been staging Greek drama since 1983, has a new project: weekly Socratic Dinners at the Stork, a pub she owns. The moderator is Stan Van Hooft of Deakin University.

Madden says the sessions are conducted "in the classic style of the ancient philosopher Socrates, in that he would never lecture to people about the meaning of the world, but rather he would draw from them, by questions, their understanding and perceptions".

The first session was on romantic love; on deck: happiness, the limits of tolerance...

Tina Turner on Mel Gibson's Turf

The diva will play a "real" diva--specifically the goddess Shakti--in an upcoming Merchant-Ivory musical called The Goddess. She'll be singing in Sanskrit and...Latin!

[Thanks to Language Log, which got it from Phluzein]

Homosexuality and Civilization

Don't miss the discussion of "Gay Marriage and the Collapse of Empires" over at Classics-L: The main thread starts here, as a request for responses on behalf of a relative, who:

...was told at a dinner party that "Christians oppose homosexual unions in part because they are a precursor to the collapse of civilizations." Greece and Rome are, of course, the preeminent examples.

Another thread is underway starting here...

Not So Deadly, Is It?

Not according to Simon Blackburn's Lust (part of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins), which apparently waxes Platonic (unless this is all from the reviewer's inventive pen):

I think, though, we might agree that lust deserves some special pleading. The boundary between good desire and ugly lust is so crooked and gerrymandered that it does nothing for the reputation of our moral guardians, and hands the devil an easy victory. Consider Plato's argument, in his Symposium, that our erotic feelings towards young boys (which Plato assumes to be universal) are acceptable because, as we grow, we learn that the real object of desire is not young men but rather elderly ones, and our ultimate aim is not pleasure but wisdom. One sees why everyone at the symposium was drunk: they had to be legless to swallow Plato's argument, as the great philosopher clumsily substituted one object for another, until he turned desire on its head and made the squat septuagenarian Socrates the pin-up boy of ancient Athens.

[Nicholas Blincoe, Telegraph]

Decline: All Over the West...

Amotz Asa-El (Jerusalem Post) talks about Europe's recurring nightmare of barbarian invasions, and the EU's current situation, all seen through the lens of Gibbon:

"Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome," wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "the Imperial city which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia."

Yet Rome's pillaging by the barbarian Visigoths, the Vandal conquest of Gaul and Spain, and the Huns' penetration into the Danube basin were but the military culminations of a much more complex decadence. Well before these cataclysms, Roman citizens increasingly evaded military service, thus creating a shortage that was often filled by barbarians; ordinary people were over-taxed; the economy relied much too heavily on slaves; the barbarian invasions condemned many of Rome's cities - originally the empire's social spine - to decline; and the upper class increasingly indulged itself in its wealth rather than get involved in helping the empire to survive.

The current EU's plagues are not unlike Rome's in its twilight: the elite is hedonistic and aloof, the middle classes are over-taxed, the economy is excessively dependent on foreign workers (arguably a modern version of ancient slavery); major cities are increasingly besieged by immigrant slums, and most armies are kept weak.

Not all Europeans like this.

Meanwhile, La Shawn Barber (AmericanDaily) picks up the never-left-sleeping-long trope comparing the U.S. to Rome:

In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, author Edward Gibbon discusses several reasons for the great civilization’s demise, including the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home and the decay of religion.

America has been compared to the Roman Empire in secular and religious ways. Regardless of its ultimate legacy, America is a civilization on the decline. A couple of centuries from now (or sooner), someone will write a book called The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. Historians will lament the loss of a once-great civilization that brought prosperity to the world and tried to make it safer for democracy. The glory that was the United States will lay in ruins, brought down not by terrorists but its own debauchery and complacency.

Propaganda: Caracalla, Stalin, Bush

Maxwell Anderson (ArtNewsOnline) comments on the images cultivated by politicians and emperors, as he describes a bust of Caracalla:

Modern-day campaign commercials seek to portray politicians in a variety of lights. A solitary sculpture can register only one point of view, and in this case, the subject is seen as an accomplished soldier, watching over the borders of a restless empire, perhaps less self-assured than determined to prevail. While the formula is repeated in dozens of surviving examples—in portraits in the round, reliefs, bronzes, gems, coins, and other media—this one stands out as among the most virtuosic in the sure quality of the carving. The psychology of this tormented man—in our mind’s eye, we overlay the humorless grimaces of warriors throughout human history—is at once open to us and impenetrable. To a Roman of Caracalla’s time, the image would have been as intimidating as Uncle Joe’s statuary in 1930s Russia and probably the object of as much distrust.

Novel Form of Time Travel

In Household Gods, a novel by Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr--published in 2000 but recently recommended by a librarian from Coquitlam (B.C. [Canada]):

Nicole Gunther-Perrin, a youngish L.A. lawyer and divorced single mother of two small children, is having a really bad week: Her ex-husband is far behind on child support payments, she's passed over for partner at her law firm for no good reason and her children's daycare centre suddenly closes. She fantasizes about supposedly simpler times and wakes up the next morning in what turns out to be a city of the Roman Empire. Unlike in many other time-slip stories, where time travelers quickly submerge themselves in the events of the periods in which they land, this heroine never seems to lose touch with her 21st century persona. She often compares her "new" circumstances with modern conditions, thereby making the book more about our own time than the Roman Empire.

Aramaic and Latin

Clyde Haberman (NYTimes) ponders the different fates of the two languages used in the script of Mel Gibson's The Passion...thus, The Passion plus the "resurgence of Latin"!

[UPDATE (2/28): See discussion at Classics-L, starting here (mostly about the use of Latin, the ethnic origin of the Roman soldiers, etc.); also recent discussion (start here) on that forum about the article (on which I posted on 1/24) in which Father Fulco (Gibson's language consultant) defended his choice of ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation as "artistic"...]

Good Friends, Good Health

Lisa Fitterman (Montreal Gazette) points out that:

...even back in ancient Greece, the philosopher Epicurus noted "of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is friendship."

But how can you take someone (Ms. Fitterman, not Epicurus) seriously who refers to the significant other as "He Who Must Obey"?

Nuts to the New Roman Empire!

In the continuing genre of "put some words connected to ancient Rome into a mix with words relating to your pet peeves about the world and see what comes out"--here's this, from "cameron" at the Joplin Independent [oops--spoke too soon about "words connected to ancient Rome"--NB the satrapies]:

Defeating the Empire

The increasingly rapid slide of the United States into a New Roman Empire over the past 40 years, has had many facets. Like Rome, we've shut down our industry and farms. Like Rome, we've turned the bulk of the world into satrapies, providing us with goods produced with slave labor. Like Rome, we've engaged in innumerable military actions to keep "order."

But most distressing and damaging, has been the fact that our citizens have become like degenerate Romans, obsessed with entertainment and consumption, and living for the moment. It's not for nothing that the sports stadiums of today are now beginning to rival in size, those of the Roman Empire.

But, just as the citizen has become the prop of the Empire, so the revolt of the citizen can pull the props out from under it. If you, the citizen, refuse to enter the Colosseum, and watch the spectacles; if you refuse to tolerate politics as bloodsport; if you demand instead a political process dominated by intelligent debate and deliberation--this Roman Empire can be laid low.

The fundamental difference between an empire and a republic, after all, is the way in which the individual man or woman living in it, defines him or herself. If someone believes he is nothing but a beast, he will accept being treated as one--up to the very point of slaughter. If a person insists on seeing himself as a human being, with the dignity befitting an individual made in the image of the Creator, then no matter how poorly he or she is treated, that person will have the potential to topple the oppressor.

YOU hold the key to getting politics out of the Roman Colosseum. Use your right while you can.