Classics in Contemporary Culture

Geminae Belli Portae

You've heard of "Generation Z"; you've heard of the "Millenials"...Well, the new term to describe these alternately ambitious and lazy up-and-comers (or not) is the "Janus Generation"...or so argues Jerry Pattengale in Inside Higher Ed. The article begins with a pair of anecdotes:

"Students today are so industrious!" My colleague blurted this after learning students had replaced labels on their water bottles with exact replicas — but with the test answers typed in the ingredients section.

However, another colleague disagreed with any positive attribute for today’s students. She recently summoned a failing Comp 101 student to inquire about his surprisingly excellent final paper. After he repeatedly claimed to have written "every word," she replied, "Then I have just one final question. Young man, exactly when did you have your abortion?" She concluded, "Students today are lazy. For 40 years I’ve caught students copying papers — but at least they had read them first!"

Some further snippets:

Student characteristics that appear as "laziness" to some are categorized as "technologically preoccupied" to others. "Entertainment" for one professor is labeled "sophistication" by another.

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The Janus Generation faced another reality, the coming and going of troops. The two faces of the god Janus had appeared on opposite sides of Rome’s War Gates (or, the Gates of Janus, the god of doorways and beginnings, the namesake of January). Emperors bragged if these gates were shut (time of peace) and not open (time of sending to battle as Janus watched in both directions).

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Janus was also known as the god of doorways and beginnings, and our students need these. From Kohn’s 1993 warning through Jossey-Bass’s recent release, Helping Sophomores Succeed, the key is helping them to find their life calling and sense of purpose. Whether we see the face of laziness or sophistication, nearly all major studies show a student core interested in spirituality and purpose. I have come to conclude that "the dream needs to be stronger than the struggle," and when students commit to causes they deem worthy they are more likely to succeed.

[Thanks to JMM at Classics-L]

Sapphic Songs

Bernard Rands' new vocal setting of fragmentary poems by Sappho, now again, was performed at the University of Chicago's Harris Theatre (in the "Contempo" concert series)--it sounds pretty interesting:

Scored for mezzo-soprano soloist with backing septet, now again draws upon Paul Roche’s translations and free renderings of the few surviving fragmented stanzas of the celebrated yet historically nebulous poet of Lesbos. The score is less a dramatic song cycle than a reflective meditation, painting a spare, melismatic evocation of the broken, elliptical texts.

Yet Rands’ luminous music is consistently compelling and ear-catching, lyrical yet cast with neo-Classical restraint as with the bardic opening for solo harp that introduces the words “Far sweeter-tuned / than a lyre/ Golder than gold / softer than velvet.” Rands adds pointillist dashes of trumpet, flute and percussion amid effective use of an echoing soprano and alto (Amy Conn and Nina Heebink).

Susanne Mentzer proved a fine advocate for this music, her dark-hued voice assaying the leaps and challenges of the restless vocal line and conveying the texts’ sensuality and expressive nuance. Conductor Cliff Colnot brought his usual meticulous preparation and concentrated direction to the score, allowing all the crystalline subtleties to register.

Coming Soon...Romans in Scotland

Slated for release in theatres in 2010 (at least in Russia? [imdb]), The Eagle of the Ninth (based on a 1954 novel) will tell the story of a young centurion who travels through Caledonia, "to confront its savage tribes, make peace with his father's memory, and retrieve the lost legion's golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth..."

Still shots available here...and painful-to-read story of an...er...intimate injury suffered by the leading man here...

Rome Fell? Blame FDR!

Well, not FDR personally, but his pinko socialistic policies, definitely!  So argues Pia Varma in an article [p. 1; p. 2] in Glenn Beck's Fusion magazine...(as reported by MediaMatters).  For example, while considering what brought Rome to the point where Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Varma highlights the importance of the Gracchi:

To make matters worse, in the middle of the Second Century B.C., two brothers with great political ambition came to power. The Gracci [sic] brothers emerged from the Populares Party. They understood that they could gain enormous amounts of political power by making grand promises and using propaganda and charisma to woo the Roman citizens. They promised grain at prices below market and, eventually, for free. They promised to redistribute land, and they put into place sweeping "New Deal" like social reforms, which increased the welfare state. Essentially, you name it, they probably promised it. As a result of these progressive reforms, farmers rushed to live in the cities for their free grain and slaves were freed in order to qualify for the dole.

For some reason, the Roman Empire only lasted 200 years, according to this article, and yet it also survived to be destroyed again, I guess, by Diocletian:

Roman Emperors, such as Diocletian, began grasping at straws: regulating industry and trade, nationalizing businesses and fixing prices and wages. However, despite all the concerns from the more rational members of the Senate, Rome continued to collapse. Cicero had even warned, "The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome becomes bankrupt."

Ah, only Cicero didn't...

The peroration:

So there you have it, the breakdown of the Roman Republic (and maybe the breakdown of the American Republic) in a nutshell. We've modeled our government after Rome, we looked at the writings of Roman philosophers like Cicero and Cato to create our Constitution, we got terms like "senate" and "citizen" from Latin. We even designed our nation's capital after Roman architecture. And, in a way, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and others gave us the ultimate "mulligan" when they founded America. But they also warned us of what happened to Rome and urged us not to go in the same direction. And what did we do? Like sheep and cowards, we didn't listen, didn't learn from past mistakes and, eager for security and temporary quick fixes, have been voting ourselves back into bondage ever since.

American, wake up! We don't want to be Rome! Let's not forget that this shining city on a hill ultimately burned down with Nero fiddling away!

As our leaders in Washington stand at the bank of the Rubicon, ready to cross, we must remember Cassius's wise words in Julius Caesar when he said, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings."

Too much to respond to, but the creepiest aspect is that (am I wrong here?) the last bit sounds like a call to assassination...Yikes!

Drat!

I can't believe it:  Just realized I was one-upped...by a blog called, not CCC, but CCCC!  And of course, this realization made me go out and find the CCCCC...Depressing...Oops, I need some Classical Content.  Roman numerals!  Feel free to refer to this blog as the "300" blog in future...

Vergilian Heresy: A Cautionary Tale

An old post at Classico & Moderno (in Italian) puts me in mind of Medieval "demonization" (literally, as Nico Narsi points out) of Classical culture and literature, in the tradition of Jerome's dream, where he was accused of being a Ciceronian, not a Christian.  The story--about how a certain Vilgard was treated to a vision of demons in the form of Vergil, Horace and Juvenal, and was subsequently condemned to death for heresy (circa 970)--comes to us from one Ralph the Bald (Rodulfus Glaber):

A certain man named Vilgard occupied himself with more eagerness than constancy in literary studies, for it was always the Italian habit to pursue these to the neglect of the other arts.  Then one night when, puffed up with pride in the knowledge of his art, he had begun to reveal himself to be more stupid than wise, demons in the likeness of the poets Vergil, Horace, and Juvenal appeared to him, pretending thanks for the loving study which he devoted to the contents of their books and for serving as their happy herald to posterity.  They promised him, moreover, that he would soon share their renown.  Corrupted by these devilish deceptions, he began pompously to teach many things contrary to holy faith and made the assertion that the words of the poets deserved belief in all instances.  But he was at last discovered to be a heretic and was condemned by Peter, archbishop of that city [Ravenna].

Many others holding this noxious doctrine were discovered throughout Italy, and they too died by sword and pyre. Indeed, at this same period, some went forth from the island of Sardinia--which usually teems with this sort of folk--to infect the people of Spain, but they were exterminated by the Catholics...

[In Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 73]

So, once again, if you're feeling distressed about the marginalization of Classics in the modern era...repeat again with me, "At least it's not the dark ages!" Actually, I'm more intrigued by the fact that this "heresy" was found to be so pervasive in the "dark ages," and especially that Sardinia was a hotbed of Virgiliolatry.

An Ancient Osama?

Adrienne Mayor's new book is about the "terror" of the Roman world -- Mithradates VI of Pontus -- the focus and leader of anti-Roman sentiment in Asia Minor and beyond, the orchestrator of a massacre of 80,000 Romans and Italians, who struggled on and evaded capture or killing for quite a long time.  As is well known, "he died old..."  Mayor has a piece at HNN to give a brief account and connect Mithradates to the troubles of the present...Here's an excerpt:

The ensuing Mithradatic Wars dragged on for decades, with some of the biggest battles and highest casualties in all antiquity. A pioneer in asymmetrical, unconventional tactics, Mithradates’ fighting style perplexed the experienced Roman troops, luring them deeper into barren landscapes, and leading to mutinies, fragging, and desertions. Rome’s top generals won battle after battle, but failed to lay their hands on Mithradates. His uncanny ability to elude capture unnerved the Romans. Despite crushing defeats, Mithradates easily recruited new armies and allies. Today, US military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan dread this phenomenon, called the “Tet Offensive effect,” in which an enemy gains support and morale in spite of massive defeat. “Somehow,” exclaimed the Roman statesman Cicero, “Mithradates accomplished more by being defeated than if he had been victorious!”

After decimating Mithradates’ forces, the frustrated Romans saw their prey slip away, rescued by pirates, sheltered by his allies, hiding out in rugged terrain, escaping over secret mountain passes—and then surging back with new armies. Mithradates was never short of cash: even when losing battles he paid his soldiers in gold, in contrast to the Roman legionnaires who had to live on whatever they could loot.

In the First Mithradatic War, Sulla defeated Mithradates’ forces in Greece, then declared his mission accomplished, letting Mithradates off with a paltry fine. Taking advantage of his victory, Sulla rushed back to Rome, already in the throes of bloody civil war. Seizing power as Dictator, Sulla oversaw the dismantling of the Roman Republic.

Sulla’s failure to pursue Mithradates allowed Rome’s eastern Hannibal to come back even stronger. Mithradates’ smashing victory in the Second Mithradatic War gave him control of the seas, dominated by his pirate allies, who now manned a thousand swift ships.

...

Ultimately, betrayed by one of his sons, Mithradates, lost his kingdom and his life, in 63 BCE. But the Romans also lost something precious—government by “the Senate and the People (SPQR).” The Republic never recovered from the Mithradatic Wars.

Thucydides Revisited

John Timpane, of the Philadelphia Enquirer, reviews Donald Kagan's Thucydides:  The Reinvention of History -- in a nutshell, he agrees with the characterization of Thucydides but not with that of the Peloponnesian War, partly with a view to the lessons we should not be learning from history...  He takes issue primarily with the idea that the Athenians were 

But now hear the real reason Kagan dislikes Pericles' strategy: it "ran directly against the grain of Greek tradition, in which willingness to fight, bravery, and steadfastness in battle were essential characteristics of the free man and the citizen." Fight, if ye be men! Only when Athens got good and tough, he writes, did it hold on and "almost" achieve victory.

I don't buy that "almost" at all, which brings up another weak point. The real reason Athens lost everything, the real reason Pericles' strategy didn't work, is that it could never have worked. Nothing could. As Kagan shows, the 1,000 or so independent city-states of the ancient Greek world made up a massive, quivering, unstable network of contrariwise alliances - think the Cold War multiplied by 100. Even at best, Athens and Sparta both were occupied in mopping up rebellions, betrayals, troop requests from faraway cities. It's as if the United States had not one Vietnam but 30.

Pericles died of the plague in 429, two years into the wars. And as Kagan himself writes:

By summer 427, most of the conditions that would make possible an Athenian defeat more than twenty years later were already at hand: Athens was short of money, part of its empire was in revolt, the undefended coastal cities of Asia Minor were ready to rebel, and Persia stood poised to join the war against Athens.

Quite. Athens could never have won, not even "almost," in a world like that, and it didn't, collapsing in 407. Sparta didn't last too much longer, fading from supremacy by 362. These wars sapped both victor and loser.

Most of all, I lament Kagan's too-credulous celebration of the Athenian democracy. Rightly do we value Athens as distant grandparent of our democratic experiment, and Kagan is right: Athens was the boldest, strongest, most inclusive, most successful democracy in early history. Much to be admired.

But much more than 2,400 years separates us from the Athenian voters. As J.W. Mackail once wrote, ancient Greece is "rather a witch-goddess, only half-human, but also half-divine." Athens was both unlike its era and like, combining the heights of human aspiration and plain, flat savagery.

Interestingly, there seems to be evidence of ongoing editing...In the review as picked up by some other papers, the second paragraph above contains a funny solecism: "...As Kagan shows, the 1,000 or so poloi of the ancient Greek world made up a massive, quivering, unstable network of contrariwise alliances - think the Cold War multiplied by 100." This was corrected at the main paper, but not before other papers had received it...On the other hand, "Myteline" was not fixed...

Fantasia: My Little Flying Horses

Pop Classics has a nice run-down of the Pastoral Symphony section of Disney's Fantasia (or, as a commenter nicely puts it, the "Disneyfication of the modern reception of the Romantic reception of the Roman reception of Greek mythology"), encompassing My Little Pony, race relations, and Charles Dickens.  The conclusion:

A lot of this sequence relies on the 'cuteness' factor, so how much you like it will depend on how you feel about 'cute' things, while the gender and racial aspects and distinctly disturbing. I still love it, though - it puts a sense of magic and wonder into Greek mythology that isn't always found, and the Greek pastoral motifs of Pan, satyrs, pan pipes and the creatures of the countryside fit the Pastoral Symphony perfectly. And it was really good inspiration for My Little Pony games...

Graveyard of Empires...Or Cauldron of Civilizations?

It's a little late for the "fact-check" on this one, but it's always been slightly irritating that when the perils of Western military involvement in Afghanistan are being discussed, Alexander the Great is usually cited as the earliest example for the ungovernability and instability of the region...the earliest instance of Afghanistan as the "graveyard of empires"...True, Alexander's empire did not long survive the conqueror's death, but then again, that does not really say anything about Bactria's resistance to foreign occupation.  One might as well take the same time period as a lesson about the resistance of Greeks to foreign conquest, or the resistance of glory-seeking military commanders to being governed by other glory-seeking military commanders...

A recent article in Victoria's Times-Colonist [thanks to rogueclassicism] provides a somewhat more detailed account of the efforts of colonization that continued past Alexander's death:

...Alexander established or re-established cities bearing his name across the lands through which he marched. One of those Alexandrias we know today as Kandahar.

...

Some of his Greek warriors settled there, and established theatres and wine-houses. Greek-style democracy, with its freedoms, took hold in some cities where peace could be assured and the honour of defeated enemies could be trusted....

(Along with some bizarre statements that betray a lack of understanding of history, especially considering that the focus is supposed to be Afghanistan here:  "Alexander's order, of course, didn't survive long after his death. His empire was broken up; Greek-style democracy where it existed was stamped out eventually by Roman conquerors"--and some material that could provide grist for a discussion of "glory" vs. "honor" in ancient and modern times:  "It wasn't honour that forced George W. Bush as commander-in-chief to send American troops to Afghanistan, and it's not honour that has forced Barack Obama to reinforce them. Terror started this enterprise; fear keeps it going.")

But the real "sticks-in-the-craw" misunderstanding is that no one ever seems to know about the Greco-Bactrian kingdom that existed long after Alexander himself...even though material about it is freely available on the internet:

When the dust of revolt settled in 312 BCE, Bactria was part of the Hellenistic empire belonging to one of Alexander's generals by the name of Seleucus. Though part of the Seleucid Empire, Bactria experienced some degree of sovereignty with its own governor and it had a strong economy of its own, even minting local coins.

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As more cities were founded, the Greek population of Bactria grew. Waves of immigration from the Mediterranean filled the new urban centres, which closely resembled those of Greece proper. Though a frontier, Afghanistan was not wilderness.

...

The strong local economy of Bactria eventually allowed a local governor, Diodotus, to take the power of rule. He proclaimed himself king of Bactria circa 250 BCE, though it is uncertain if he did so by buying himself an army of revolutionaries or by simply controlling enough wealth that the descendents of Seleucus did not wish to anger him by protesting.

Out of unstable conditions and the ambitions of powerful men emerged thus the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. And in that state of flux the kingdom remained for its entire century of existence.

Thus, certainly a region that enjoyed and prized local autonomy, but not one that was simply a place where Greek / Macedonian imperialistic efforts were doomed to failure.  For more, see F. L. Holt, Thundering Zeus:  the Making of Hellenistic Bactria (1999)--from which a few sentences are particularly apt:

Yet this state came to rival in size and significance all others of its day, including Antigonid Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Attalid Pergamon...The thought of great Greek cities in those sandy wastes boggles the modern mind, but in antiquity this diverse land yielded through irrigation a myriad of grains, grapes, pistachios, and other products...Through bitter winters and blazing summers, generations of adventurous Greeks won their living from this land...Bactria therefore exemplifies fully the character and achievement of the Hellenistic Age, that remarkable but risky legacy of Alexander's last breath at Babylon.

But that's less of a cautionary tale, I guess...