Classics in Contemporary Culture

Hyping Hypatia

Alejandro Amenabar's  film about Hypatia, Agora, is opening in the US -- if anyone notices a film about Late Antique Alexandria and its mix of religion and violence, the movie is certain to evoke Pavlovian culture-war reactions from all and sundry...In any case, here's an interview with the star, Rachel Weisz, stressing the theme of opposition to religious intolerance / fundamentalism, and noting (?!) that basically ancient science and acting are interchangeable -- neither one involves telescopes (I know: Totally unfair!):

"What's remarkable is that everything she was doing was imaginary because she was working in the time before the telescope. Everything she was figuring out, she was doing with her imagination. There was some math to back it up - but what she did was imagine things. Which is what I do for a living as well."

And here's a thoughtful essay by Nathan Schneider, generally against the portrayal offered, although appreciative of the lack of sex / the contrast with (e.g.) HBO's Rome series. In particular, some interesting final thoughts:

The best-developed character in Agora, held as a foil against the street riots, is the sky. Amenábar used a starscape calibrated to look exactly as it would have in antiquity, accounting for axial precession. Several times he juxtaposes the stars’ stillness, and the Earth’s roundness, with the chaos below. Like a good Platonist, Hypatia was obsessed with the stars, which Plato and Aristotle held to be demigods, eternal as the universe and its Prime Mover. Contemplating of their order and their perfection is where her philosophy lurked. Unfortunately, other Platonic legacies mar her contemplation in Agora: an obsession with the circle, which blinds her to the elliptical motion of the planets, together with sitting atop a society predicated on slavery and gross inequity.

The Christians turn out to be even worse astronomers, but they do get some things right. The Parabalani—a band of the patriarch’s bodyguards that Agora implicates in Hypatia’s murder—were actually a fellowship chosen from among the poor, principally to serve the poor. They tended to the sick and buried the dead, risking infection in the process. Between violent mob scenes, the movie does at least give a glimpse of what brought so many in the vast Alexandrian underclasses to wear the sign of the cross: bread, freedom, and the good news of the Beatitudes. Hypatia’s slave Davus is, to her, only a slave, albeit a clever one; among Christians, he learns that feeding the hungry is better than fattening the full.

In any case, it's clear that any discussion will be a fruitful venue for centuries of cultural anxieties and antagonisms to be aired willy nilly...

Deus ex machina vs. Anime

An essay on io9.com--disturbed over the use of God or other supernatural forces in bringing recent television series to a close (Lost, Battlestar Galactica)--compares Aeschylus' Oresteia and Aristotle to the experience of writing anime:

These stories come from an inherently conservative point of view: everyone has a place to stand and a part to play, and attempts to step outside those boundaries can only result in pain and suffering. You'll notice that stories about God commonly involve triumph over the self, not triumph over an oppressive regime - Arjuna never once thinks that he should share his riches with the lower castes, or that he'll unseat the monarchy once he wins the battle. Doing so would overturn the "natural" order of his environment. Arjuna's kingdom, once he wins it, will continue to rely on slavery to sustain itself - because that's how Krishna wants it. God's role in these stories is a conservator, one who might snip off poisoned buds or gently nudge humans in one direction or another in attempt to preserve that which is good and right, without radically altering anything. God conserves the status quo, and we're supposed to take comfort in that: a place for everyone, and everyone in their place.

Recent American television finales have embraced this logic. The endings of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Battlestar Galactica, and LOST all involve a divine figure returning balance to an earthly equation by repeating an ancient pattern. The Avatar achieves his final state and the four nations again live in harmony. Humans create Cylons, battle Cylons, and become Cylons. The Island calls people in need of personal change, gives it to them, then lets them go (to Heaven) before calling another group. All of this has happened before, and will happen again. The pattern doesn't change, it simply repeats.

Another word for "repetition" is "letdown."

As far back as Aristotle, critics and audiences have measured the quality of a story by (among other things) whether it has a discernible beginning, middle, and end. Things must change. The characters must be in a different place than before, and the audience must feel for them. Traditionally, this comes about as a result of the character making a choice or taking an action that has consequences, and then suffering through them. Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia so that his ships might sail to Troy, and Clytemnestra retaliates by murdering him. Hamlet refuses to kill Claudius when he has the chance, and he (and everyone else) dies. Rochester lies to Jane about his marriage, and loses her. Meursault kills the Arab, then awaits his execution. Consequences follow actions. Stories progress. Circumstances change. Characters grow.

But lately on American television, they haven't. Lately, all tension has been drained from their actions, and all opportunities for choice have been robbed from them by fate. Does it matter that humans created Cylons? Not really. They did it because God wanted them to. Does it matter that the Losties all had issues with their parents that they needed to overcome before they could be whole? Nah. They were all in Purgatory, anyhow. Does it matter that Aang had lost access to the Avatar State? No - apparently stray rocks can unblock his chakra. (That's right, kids: Aang works like the Millennium Falcon - a well-placed punch can bring his circuits back online.)

Late Antiquity in Film: Constantine and the Cross

The other day, I watched Constantine and the Cross (Costantino il Grande), a 1962 Italian screen version of the story of Constantine...Hmm...what to say about it?  As you might guess from the era, it's similar in some ways to the overdubbed, dime-a-dozen sword & sandal films about Hercules etc., but it does stand out as somewhat better.  The quality of the DVD was not particularly high, and there was the requisite "In Hoc Signo Vinces" moment--very much a traditionalist, pro-Constantine version of the story...No labarum that I saw, though.

Pro-Constantine:  For example, the plot accepts as fact the idea that Maximian tried to kill Constantine but was forestalled by the substitution of someone else in Constantine's bed--after which Maximian killed himself--rather than some more nefarious / ruthless construction of the rising leader's actions...

Not exactly the historical Constantine overall...but not pure fantasy either.  Some bending of history for dramatic purposes:  Constantine's first contact with Christians apparently is when he asks one of the Christians on trial some questions...and it turns out that the Christian in question is really his mother!  Eusebius, by contrast, reports that Constantine converted Helena to Christianity--but of course, Eusebius definitely has a dog in the fight...

From Philip Sawyer's online review of the movie--an excerpt:

As Italian epics go, this is diverting and occasionally thought-provoking. Some scenes are impressive, mainly because of the widescreen framing, but the direction by Lionello De Felice can only be described as serviceable. The sets are quite spectacular, and I would not be surprised if most of them were real historical locations rather than studio creations. The staging of the battle scenes is fairly ordinary and as a result not very exciting.

The script is relatively free of melodramatics as compared to similar American films of the time, and thankfully does not push the religious elements strongly.

And a conclusion:

A reasonably interesting epic from the early 1960s, this might be worth a rental if you are not deterred by poor quality prints.

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.

Et tu, Ecclesia?

David Gibson (beliefnet) points out an essay by Thomas Casey, S.J. in America, arguing that the Roman Catholic Church should jettison Latin as the official language of the Vatican, in favor of English--basically, the argument is that Latin was adopted because it was the "lingua franca" in the late Western Roman Empire, and that now English is the international lingua franca.  He does concede the historical importance of Latin:

Latin remains essential to the church’s tradition and identity. Anyone who wants to study canon law or to understand great Catholic thinkers, like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, needs a good working knowledge of the language. As the Papal Latinist, Reginald Foster, O.C.D., puts it: “You cannot understand Saint Augustine in English. He thought in Latin. It is like listening to Mozart through a jukebox.”

He notes that originally the common language of the Church was Greek, although he strangely sees this as a "choice" (over Hebrew!--not Aramaic) rather than an inevitable concomitant of expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean:

Christianity at its origins made a surprising decision: it adopted Greek as its language. The earliest documents of the Christian community were written in Greek. Although Greek was the language most Christians used among themselves, it would have been easier in many ways had they made Hebrew the church’s official language. After all, Hebrew was the revered language of the Jewish Scriptures and the language in which God first revealed his love to the chosen people, and the very earliest Christians (the Apostles) were predominantly Jewish. Yet the church’s surprising decision to switch to Greek paid enormous historical dividends.

The church produced its most creative theology during its first millennium, because it was audacious enough to take Greek as its language. It took the best from the Greek world of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and brought it together with the wisdom of Judaism.

He rightly pokes a little fun at Mel Gibson:

Given the historical importance of Greek in the first centuries of Christianity, it is surprising today to encounter zealous young seminarians and priests who are enthusiastic about Latin, thinking it is rooted in a 2,000-year-old connection with the church. They imagine they are returning to the genesis of Christianity, but they have unknowingly erased the first centuries of church history.

Such selective amnesia was also evident in Mel Gibson’s controversial film “The Passion.” In the film Gibson has the Roman soldiers speaking Latin, a historical blunder. Was Gibson led to this mistake because of his attachment to the Latin Tridentine liturgy and the conservative Catholic lens through which he views early Christianity? Scholars agree that the common language of the Roman Empire in the Middle East was Greek. Greek was, in fact, widely used in Italy and Rome at the time of Jesus. There is little doubt that Pilate and Roman military officers garrisoned in Palestine would have been Greek-speakers.

And again, he presents the switch to Latin as entirely calculated, top-down [cf. this bit of history, although not on the Greek vs. Latin question]:

First, the church had come to recognize that the center of Christianity was in Rome. Latin was the language of that city and the language of the world’s major power at the time, the Roman Empire. Second, the church recognized that Latin was the lingua franca throughout western Europe, and it wanted to reach all the people there. The decision to take on Latin had major ramifications: By identifying with the Roman Empire, would the church appear to endorse imperialism? Why would it throw in its lot with the Roman Empire, which in many respects was antithetical to Christian ideals and values? Would it be more appropriate to retain Greek?

Yet Latin won the day. One can recognize the great potential of Latin simply from observing the beauty and economy of this most resourceful of languages. The very structure of Latin gave new clarity and precision to the teaching of the church. Although common or “vulgar” Latin deteriorated into a series of dialects that were to become the basis of languages like Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish, classical Latin itself remained unchanged. Since it was no longer used daily, this more refined Latin was not subject to alteration. It thus provided the Catholic Church with a stable norm by which to evaluate the correctness of doctrinal and theological expressions in other languages. For centuries, Latin continued to be a critical point of reference for the Catholic Church.

Bob Dylan, Amateur Classicist

Douglas Brinkley interviewed Dylan for the new issue of Rolling Stone, in the course of which the conversation turned to religion, morality, and the musician's early intellectual "influences" (as reported by Douglas LeBlanc of GetReligion.org):

After that evening’s show at the Heineken Music Hall — at around 11:30 p.m. — I interview Dylan again. Because it is Easter weekend, I decide to push him on the importance of Christian Scripture in his life. “Well, sure,” he says, “that and those other first books I read were biblical stuff. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur. Those were the books that I remembered reading and finding religion in. Later on, I started reading over and over again Plutarch and his Roman Lives. And the writers Cicero, Tacitus and Marcus Aurelius. … I like the morality thing. People talk about it all the time. Some say you can’t legislate morality. Well, maybe not. But morality has gotten kind of a bad rap. In Roman thought, morality is broken down into basically four things. Wisdom, Justice, Moderation and Courage. All of these are the elements that would make up the depth of a person’s morality. And then that would dictate the types of behavior patterns you’d use to respond in any given situation. I don’t look at morality as a religious thing.”

Byzantine Ecclesiastical Politics - with a (Martial) Point

So, who's been following the politics of the Alaska diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church?  This report from the Kodiak Daily Mirror - I confess, not one of my usual sources for news - gives some of the latest details. 

The Byzantine:

In early March, when Bishop Nikolai refused to recognize his mandatory leave of absence, he said he did so because proper procedure had not been followed. He argued the point at a special meeting of the synod last month, and won. The bishop returned to Alaska reinstated....Bishop Tikon was one of two bishops who came to Alaska to investigate allegations that Bishop Nikolai has been ruling the diocese by fear and intimidation.  Bishop Tikon is a supporter of Bishop Nikolai.  In his letter to Bishop Nikolai, he criticized the church’s leader for trying to keep Bishop Nikolai from attending the synod meeting.

“I contemplated the recent letter you got from the Metropolitan Herman in which he rather haughtily told you that while the Holy Synod would be meeting for a second ‘extraordinary’ time during the great 40-day fast, you, a constituent member of that synod, should not come, for all members (except you of course) want to have their meeting to discuss you without you being there,” he wrote. “Where I grew up, that’s called ‘talking behind someone’s back,’ a common human vice.”

The Point:

Bishop Tikon, a member of the synod, then closed with words of hope and an indication of where his vote may lean.

“As one who knows you better than probably any other member of the Laos (both clergy and non-clergy) alive today, I wish to offer you my version of ‘Keep the Faith’ by providing you a most apt quotation from the classic Latin master of the epigram, Martial,” he wrote. “It seems to me the words must have been created centuries ago in order to (be) made available to you, as a kindness.”

If the vote does go in favor of Bishop Nikolai he will return to Alaska, no longer under threat of removal.

Wait - that wasn't much of an epigram, is it?  Of course, the plot thickens...[more Martial to follow]

Inspiring Destination

Chris Welsch, of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, learns at Delphi that "Know Thyself" really means "Find out for Thyself"...

I had arrived by bus from Athens at about 1 p.m. with the mistaken assumption that guides would be lined up outside the gates of the ruins, just waiting to interpret Greek history. There weren't any. So I went back to my hotel in modern Delphi and spent a couple of hours consulting the Internet and the phone book. I learned that there are four guides in Delphi who don't work full time for bus-tour companies. And for the next three days - orthodox Easter weekend - they were working full time for the bus-tour companies.

From what I knew of the Oracle, this situation wasn't unusual; getting information here, historically, was never easy. The cautionary inscription "Know thyself" greeted every traveler who crossed the threshold of the Temple of Apollo. The Oracle's responses to questions, especially for the unprepared, were often caustic or misleading. So perhaps this made sense. I would have to learn what I could on my own.

I don't know whether it was on the internet that he also came up with the sort of strange list of people who had been to Delphi in ancient times:  "I stood on the ancient ground where Agamemnon, Socrates and Cicero, among others, had humbly stood, hoping to get answers to their big questions."  Strange list, but in fact true - or at least, attested:

• Agamemnon:   Od. 8.79-81
• Socrates [personal visit, not the consultation by Chaerephon about Socrates]:  Aristotle, cited by Diogenes Laertius, II.23 [Socrates sect. VII] [Google Books]; cf. Guthrie, Socrates, p. 85
• Cicero:   Plutarch, Life of Cicero 5.1 [link]

Religion Is Contagious!

Mark Liberman (at LanguageLog) has been posting on "Language as a Virus" and now expands (with help from Cosma Shalizi) to "Culture" (specifically, religion) as a contagious phenomenon, citing Pliny (Ep. 10.96.9) on the Christians:

Neque civitates tantum, sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est.

This phraseology is likely derived from Livy's depiction of the spread of the Bacchanalia (39.9):

Huius mali labes ex Etruria Romam veluti contagione morbi penetravit.

["The infection of this mischief, like that from the contagion of disease, spread from Etruria to Rome." (Google Books)]

Cf. R. M. Grant, "Pliny and the Christians," Harvard Theological Review 1948: 273-4 [link via JSTOR].

One more:  Tacitus, discussing measures against Egyptian and Jewish rites, (Ann. 2.85) mentions 4000 freedmen "infected with that [sic] superstition" (quattuor milia libertini generis ea superstitione infecta)...although "infecta" by itself is not as specific as the English "infected."

The Christians gave as good as they got, of course:  The metaphor appears, for example in the title of Theodoret's great work of apologetic, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, "Cure of the Greek Maladies" [the Greek title being:  Hellenikon therapeutike pathematon]. (Greek text via Google Books)

For later incarnations, note Ludovico Nogarola (16th cen.) on Gian Matteo Giberti's actions against heresy (i.e. Protestantism), presuambly with Livy in mind also:

ille...vir prudens curavit sedulo, ne hoc tam late disseminatum malum Germaniae vicinitate veluti contagione morbi ad nos serperet. [Google Books]

And for more examples in Medieval times, see R. I. Moore, "Heresy as Disease," in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th-13th C.), ed. by W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven, 1976), pp. 1-11.

Romans = Americans : Saddam Hussein is Responsible!

As I just mentioned in the last post, "Unitary Moonbat" had a blog article back in July that began with Gilgamesh and plowed straight on through to Saddam Hussein's literary efforts.  I'm sure I saw something about this back in 2003, but some fun excerpts (these from Begone Demons!) come out here again:

[Unitary Moonbat:]  The villain is named Ezekiel Hescel (three guesses as to his ethnicity), a fat, evil, eternal old man who conspires with the Romans (i.e. the Americans) to invade the lands of Salim, a hero/resistance fighter whom Saddam gushingly describes as "a pure, virtuous Arab. Salim is tall and handsome with a straight nose."  When the coalition invades, Salim's army is there to greet them – here's how Saddam was seeing the epic battle between he and the Americans playing out, even as the Humvees and M1s were massing on his borders...

The king of the Romans gave his orders to begin the charge. The first line of Salim's army shot at the Roman riders with arrows. When the Roman riders fell down the women of the tribe beat them with sticks or killed them with swords.

Salim freed his long hair. He was so strong. He was fighting the Romans like a hawk. He was riding a white horse and shouting: "Allah akbar! Long live the Arabs and long live Islam!"

Salim was carrying a sword and his colleagues were giving him another sword when the first was broken. The Romans ran away as Salim got close to them.

...

Then Ezekiel Hescel and the king of the Romans saw the twin towers of the Roman's city on fire. Ezekiel Hescel was beating his face and saying, "Everything I've collected is gone."

...

Ezekiel Hescel and the Roman leader ran away after because they had lost their power and money.

UM cites Jo Tatchell's article in the Prospect, which identifies the genre of "dic[tator]-lit" and comments:

Saddam was famously fascinated by other great leaders, particularly Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler, and he mixed culture, mythology and religion to create in himself a hybrid, prophet-type character...