(Anticipatory) Spring Break Reading Suggestions

Hello Fellow Nerds,

I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to a wonderful little gem that I picked up in a used bookstore.

The Classical Compendium by Philip Matyszak

This book's cover promises to deliver: "A miscellany of scandalous gossip, bawdy jokes, peculiar facts and bad behavior from the ancient Greeks and Romans." And it does just that. Here, now, I will expose you to some of the wondrous tales stored inside. Then, if you are so inclined, you can purchase a copy used off Amazon for $0.01 (what a steal!). Enjoy!

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Excerpt from pages 52-53:

"Bad Moon Rising"

Signs of impending misfortune were regularly sent by the gods, though you had to know where to look to find them...

Eclipses, in particular, were signs of something unpleasant on the horizon. Following their failed siege of Syracuse in 413 BC, the Athenians decided to withdraw their men and ships and go home. However, they were halted by an eclipse of the moon, which Nicias, their superstitious commander, felt compelled to counteract by stopping everything and making a sacrifice to the gods. The gods were clearly not pleased, however, since the Syracusans used the delay to thwart the Athenian escape and capture or kill the entire expeditionary force.

Other bad signs included:

- A woman carrying a spindle in public

- Stumbling on the doorstep when going out

- An owl roosting on the house

- Snakes appearing in the house

- Walking over a grave

- Meeting a donkey carrying the herbs used to decorate a tombstone

- A crow appearing on the viewer's left (a crow on the right was good)

- The Athenians believed that spitting when dealing with an epileptic or mentally disturbed person averted evil

- An image of Medusa's head (Medusa being the lady with snakes for hair) was believed to have the power to attract and hold evil forces, and consequently was often painted or carved onto buildings

Excerpt from page 59:

"Aphrodisiacs"

Roman

Garlic - Ideally with chopped coriander leaves in white wine

Rocket - (Arugula)

Sparrows - (Amorous little animals according to the Romans) - either eaten, or presented live to the amoratrix

Carrots, asparagus, nettles - All preferably served with pepper and spice to excite the blood

Greek

Garlic

Lentils - Especially if cooked in saffron

Beans - Also best in a spicy soup

Artichokes

Truffles

Excerpt from page 142:

"Possible Professions for Women in Ancient Greece"

Baker
Fishmonger
Priestess
Seamstress
Musician
Weaver
Pharmacist
Dancer
Witch
Hetaira
Prostitute
Innkeeper
Laundrywoman
Market-stall owner
Wet-nurse
Bath-house keeper
Camp-follower

Propertius' Elegies II: Invectives Targeting Caesar and the State

Salvete Omnes!

As you may remember there was a post last fall about a poem by Sextus Propertius, in which he describes the opening of the portico of Apollo on the Palatine in the late first century BC.  I have actually been conducting more extensive research on the book which this poem is from and thought I might share my findings and my argument that I am developing.

 As stated in the previous post about about Propertius, Elegies II is wholly concerned with Cynthia, his lover, and the nature of love.  Although these themes are dominant  throughout the book, Propertius states quite often in the poems that he is not suited for writing epic poetry like Vergil and Homer.  I argue that through this Propertius and a few more direct lines he means to slight Emperor Augustus and the state.  For instance, Propertius deliberately neglects an invocation of the muse and or god in the beginning of the poem which was custom amongst his contemporaries like Vergil and Ovid.  These poets would praise a god and or muse for inspiring their verses and in the first lines of Elegies II Propertius writes that neither Calliope, a muse, nor the god Apollo sing his lines to him.  In a later poem Propertius mentions that if he and Cynthia ever had children, they would not ever be soldiers.  This is again a rejection of standard Roman values and in the last poem he is even more revealing in telling that though he has little wealth and no ancestral military triumphs to boast about, he could care less because he is a poet destined for great fame.

There is no evidence to suggest that Propertius ever suffered any consequences for making these implications in his poetry, especially considering that his patron was Maecenas, a close counselor to Augustus and a patron to some of Propertius' contemporaries.  It seems completely absurd that Propertius would openly rip on epic poets and slander the state and not care for the possible repercussions thus raising more questions.

Anyways, it's a great read if anyone is interested!  You can find some pretty good translations online if you Latin scholars out there don't feel like wearing yourselves out by doing it yourself.

Astronomy in Ancient Greece

I am an avid enthusiast of astronomy and cosmology. I therefore would like to present a basic missive on astronomy in ancient Greece. Enjoy!

Greek astronomy is the astronomy of those who wrote in the Greek language in classical antiquity (see Aristarchus of Samos, Greek astronomer/mathematician, and his heliocentric model of the solar system). Greek astronomy is understood to include the ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman, and Late Antiquity eras. It is not geographically limited to Greece or to ethnic Greeks, as the Greek language had become the language of scholarship throughout the Hellenistic world following the conquests of Alexander. While this phase of Greek astronomy is also known as Hellenistic astronomy, the pre-Hellenistic phase is known as Classical Greek astronomy. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, much of the Greek and non-Greek astronomers working in the Greek tradition studied at the famous Musaeum and the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. The development of astronomy by the Greek and Hellenistic astronomers is considered by historians to be a major phase in the history of astronomy in Western culture. It was influenced by Babylonian astronomy, and in turn, it influenced Islamic, Indian, and Western European astronomy.

Most ancient civilizations watched the heavens as patterns in the sky that mainly allowed them to know when the seasons changed; this dictated calendars and harvest times, among other important functions. They built great stone monuments called astronomical observatories, such as Stonehenge, as celestial clocks to mark these events as well as the passage of time.

These civilizations believed that the gods lived in the skies, and so named the constellations after them. This is the reason astrology and mythology follow the same patterns. In the end, the answers were in the sky since that is where the gods dwell. In metaphysics, this is called 'moving into a higher frequency' than what we experience in our third dimensional bodies. Our creators are from higher realms; this implies that they have powers that are lost to us in the physical body, even though many seek to activate those powers now.

Since early Egyptian farmers discovered the annual reappearance of Sirius a few days before the yearly rising of the Nile, ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean have sought to explain the movements of the heavens as a sort of calendar to help them conduct Earthly activities. Counting phases of the moon or observing the annual variations of day-length could, after many years of observations, serve as vital indicators for planting and harvesting times, safe or stormy season for sailing, or time to bring the flocks from winter to summer pastures.

In our time, and such observation behind us, we sometimes forget that seeing and recording anything less obvious than the rough position of the sun or nightly change of the moon's phases requires inventing both accurate observation tools (a stone circle, a gnomon (picture at left), etc.) and a system of recording the data in a way that could be understood by others. The ancient Greeks struggled with these problems too, using native technology, inquiry, and drawing upon the large body of observations and theories gradually gleaned from their older neighbors across the sea, Egypt and Babylonia.

Gradually moving from a system of gods and divine powers ordering the world, to a system of elements, mathematics, and physical laws, the Greeks slowly adapted old ideas to fit into a less supernatural, more hyper-rational universe. As ancient peoples began to realize that sun, moon and stars follow certain rhythms in step with the seasons, they made the leap of thought to postulate that some conscious set of rules must be dictating these movements and seasonal changes which, for agrarian or pastoral societies, were a matter of life or starvation. Who or what could be causing these all-important changes to come about? Certainly nothing on earth, no beast or human, had the power. Thus, gods were born.

There are hints of the Greek conception of the universe in Homer, who mentions many subjects on his two epics describing war and the perils of trying to come home after long absence. Homer mentions the movements of sun, moon, and many stars by name. The fact that Hades is on the underside of earth has an important impact on conceptions of heaven: it is unlit by the sun, therefore the sun--and by extension, other heavenly bodies - must sink only to the level of Ocean, which (at the time) is a river circling Earth's edge. From it the Sun must also rise -though how it gets back to the eastern bank of Ocean is never explained.
These popular conceptions of sky are more fully explained in Hesiod, whose works on gods and on agriculture and animal-herding are more closely connected to the practical application of astronomy. He clocks spring, summer, and harvest by solstices and the rising and setting of certain stars, and notices that the sun migrates southwards in winter. Night is a substance welling up from under the Earth, as if it were a dark flowing mist. One early and popular cult, that of Orpheus, developed its own of gods and universe-creation variant from those in Homer and Hesiod; there, a primeval egg is birthed by the early gods, and the upper half of its broken shell becomes heaven's vault.

Various cults, cities and tribes of Greece (who were unified only by language and common culture, and both of these had regional variants) probably had different versions of cosmogony and slightly different gods in charge of astronomical movement, but the general physical conception of the sky is alluded to by many authors of plays and other popular works, and was probably held by the majority of people.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I give to you Ancient Greek Love

In modern English, we have (roughly) one word for love. There are related-concept-words, like care, affection, desire, but still. In ancient Greek, there were four types of love recognised in language: eros, agape, philia and storge.

Eros

This is a familiar one; most people recognise the name of the god (aka Cupid). This is of course also the etymological root of ‘erotic’. So eros refers to romantic love and desire – often in the context of those first stages of falling in love. Current mainstream thinking often holds up falling in love as a wonderful thing, a thing to be greatly desired, and the phase of ‘can’t eat, can’t sleep, missing you’ is seen as deeply romantic and special. (And yes, I admit, the romantic in me agrees). But even the word ‘falling’ describes a dangerous thing to do, literally speaking, and the ancient Greeks recognised this danger – erotic love was seen not as a wonderful and essential state to be desired, but as a kind of madness. And this kind of passionate love was recognised as sometimes having terrible and destructive results – this is the love that drives the great stories of humanity, the love that inspires wars, suicides, murderous jealousy… Think of the stories of classical mythology, of Shakespearean tragedies.

It’s interesting, then, that poly communities recognise this amazing and beautiful but potentially destructive force as NRE – new relationship energy. Giving it a label makes it something that can be recognised and accounted for (like, don’t make any big decisions while you’re in the throes of NRE and decide that you want to move your shiny new lover into the family home because she isamazing and clearly there is nothing that can possibly go wrong). You do, I think, go temporarily mad when falling in love. But unlike when your friends fall in love (you lose them for a little while, and then they come back when they’ve returned to normal) in a poly relationship it’s essential not to neglect existing loves in favour of New Shiny. So it’s incredibly valuable to have a vocabulary with which to talk about this. Orwell recognised the power of words when he created Newspeak in 1984 – if you don’t have words for something, you can’t effectively acknowledge it, talk about it, criticise or debate it.

Plato’s specific take on eros- is a whole topic in itself, but that is, of course, where we get the term ‘platonic love’.

Agape

(pronounced a-gah-pay) This usually refers to the deep, true, unconditional love felt by a parent for a child, or the love in a long-established marriage. It was also adopted by early Christians to refer to the unconditional love of God for humanity, and Christian love more generally. As an atheist, and someone who was a bookish child, I tend to associate CS Lewis with the Narnia books – but his extensive writings on Christianity after his conversion include The Four Loves, based in part on these four ancient Greek words, and holding up agape as the finest and truest form of love. Another one to add to the reading list, I think.

I suppose the particular relevance for polyamory is, looking at how eros and agape apply to specifically romantic/sexual relationships, how to balance those different forms of love without making unfair comparisons. You may not have the depth of understanding and trust with a new lover as you do with a long-established partner, but that’s okay. You may not be obsessively checking your phone for texts from your husband in the way you do with your girlfriend, but that’s okay, too. Again, we’re back to this idea of the value of giving words to something; if we can happily recognise these as two different kinds of love, then perhaps it helps us celebrate and value them for what they are, not look for what they aren’t.

Philia

This is the root of all those words ending in -phile, and is of course also part of philosophy – literally, the love of wisdom (sophia). Philia is the most general kind of love; it’s often translated as friendship. Aristotle talks about philia a lot in the Nicomachean Ethics, his best known work on ethics which explores how men should live (it was originally based on notes from his lectures to young men destined for Big Things in Athens). 

The Nicomachean Ethics has lots of examples of philia – like lifelong friends, political contacts, fellow travellers, members of the same religious society or tribe, even ‘a cobbler and the person who buys from him’. Interestingly he also lists parents and children, which might suggest that more than one kind of love can exist in the same relationship – the love of a parent for a child seems to crop up regularly in all the forms of love except (obviously) eros. Philia is characterised by, again, wanting the best for someone for their own sake, and wanting to do things for them as much as is possible/reasonable. Though in that qualifier is a big distinction from agape, which is a self-sacrificing love. Another distinction is that – not always, but often –philia is characterised by a sense of equality, of meeting as equals, in the very nature of the Iove itself, not merely in the persons of those sharing the love.

As this refers to a much wider sense of friendship-love, there’s nothing – to me – that seems any more relevant to non-monogamous people than everyone else. We all need friends, and that comfortable companionable love of an old friendship is wonderful. I suppose the only thought here would be, even if you are conducting twenty romantic relationships at once, don’t neglect your friendships; make the time for them too.

Storge

This is much less commonly used in classical writings than the others. It’s the kind of affection that comes through familiarity; it can explain the love-bonds of wider family members and is generally only used to describe family love. It is often described as a natural or instinctive affection; similar to agape, it is unconditional in that it doesn’t depend on any characteristics in the loved one to make them ‘worthy’ of love, it’s simply because they are there. But storge does not have the self-sacrificing and altruistic aspects of agape.

Interestingly, a less widely-used meaning of storge can be found in political thought, especially Renaissance-era. Some thinkers claimed that the State can in fact be made to wither away by the subjects believing themselves to be ruled over by a benevolent father-like figure, and loving the state (ie storge), and the king or tyrant in return believing himself to be like a loving parent.

Storge is primarily used to describe familiar familial love. As ethical non-monogamy becomes more visible, it’s likely that more and more people will incorporate – somehow – multiple partners into their family life, which no doubt brings all sorts of challenges of its own. 

Storge might also be used to describe the love for a metamour – your partner’s partner. If you’re lucky and they are awesome, it may become philia, a deeper friendship in its own right and truly wanting the best for each other, but at the very least you’ll need storge, giving them love and affection not because of who they are or any of their characteristics, but because of the place they hold in your partner’s heart and in your personal constellation of people.

If you don’t have words for something, you can’t talk about it. Why else do subcultures come up with new words like polyamory, metamour, compersion? Perhaps identifying different forms of love as genuinely different feelings, different things, not just different stages of love, would help us talk about them better. And perhaps it would help us all tell our friends more often that we love them. More love in the world – whatever name you give it – can only be a good thing. <3

The Olympics

Salve omnes!

In honor of the Olympic games, the club would like to provide a brief overview of the history of the games in ancient Greece.  The traditional date for the first of the games is 776 BCE in Olympia, located on the western region of the Peloponnese.

There existed large temples of Zeus and Hera as Olympia was a major center of worship in Greece going back to the 10th century.  Here is what is left of the temple of Zeus...

Dedicated to the Olympian gods, the games showed off the physical characteristics of the young athletes and inspired good relations among the Greek city-states.  According to common myths, Herakles held the games in honor of Zeus, who had aided him in conquering King Augeas of Elis.

Entrants to the games were all male Greek citizens, from the philosopher Democritus to Alexander I, a king of Macedonia.  Unmarried women were allowed to spectate at the competitions but married women did not have the privilege of attending the events at all.  Initially the games only lasted one day until they were expanded to a three day event and then later a five day event.  There were competitions in running, javelin, boxing, shot put, and long jump as well as wrestling, horse racing and chariot racing.  

The award ceremony occurred on the last day of the events at the Temple of Zeus and an olive tree wreath would be placed upon the winner's head.

Valete omnes!

Orpheus & Euridice Opera

On December 19, 2013 myself and another member of the club, John Hackett, went to see a free opera performance at Welles Park Pool. It was beyond fabulous!

The performance was of Orpheus and Euridice, and if you don't know the story, here's a quick synopsis:

Orpheus, the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, was a musician and poet whose lyrical melodies could tame wild animals, cause trees and rocks to dance, and divert rivers from their courses. When his young wife Eurydice died, Orpheus journeyed to the Underworld to rescue her. He charmed the Ruler of the Underworld with his music and was allowed to return with her to Earth as long as he didn't look back along the way. As he neared Earth, he was anxious to reassure himself Eurydice was still behind him. As he turned, she vanished back into the Underworld. His pleas to the Ferryman on the River Styx to return him back to the Underworld went unheeded and he mourned the loss of Eurydice a second time. The Thracian women, angry that following his return Orpheus paid them no attention; threw their spears at him; tore him in pieces; and tossed his head and lyre into the Hebrus river. Jupiter threw his lute into the stars while the Shade of Orpheus entered the Underworld where he was finally reunited with Eurydice. Source

The female playing Euridice was singing, while the male playing Orpheus played the clarinet. The two interacted beautifully. Interestingly enough, there was another younger couple of actors that was Orpheus and Euridice, and as the older performers sang and played music, the younger actors put the song into life.

Photo of the performance in the pool

What was so special about this performance was that it took place at an indoor pool! The actors and musicians took advantage of the setting and really integrated it into the performance. Here is a quick description on how that worked from the show creators:

This unique theatrical experience will transport attendees into the River Styx with the actors playing around, on, and IN the water in this modern retelling of the famous Greek myth.

I can honestly say I have never seen a performance so beautiful. It was truly engaging and moving. John and I got a chance to speak briefly with the clarinet player who played Orpheus, Todd Palmer, and he could not have been nicer. He was very engaging with us and appreciative of our attendance - which made me appreciate him that much more.

Me (Paulina) next to the decorative sculpture

John next to the decorative sculpture

League of Legends

Many things in the modern world draw their inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman history. It can be architecture, movies, and even games. One of my favorite games is League of Legends. It draws a lot of its character inspiration from Greek and Roman Mythology. 

For example there is a minotaur named Alistar:

There is Cassiopeia, who's lower half is that of a serpant. One of her abilities is that she can turn people to stone, like Medusa. Also she turns to stone when she dies.

Another character is Pantheon. He is a soldier inspired from Greek mythology.

Some characters also have skins (a skin is a different version of a character, but they cost money) based off of Greek mythology.  For example, 

Muse Sona

Dyraid Soraka

Siren Cassiopeia and Mythic Cassiopeia

There are many other characters in the game probably inspired from Mythology. 

League of Legends is a free to play online team game. Usually 5 vs 5 or  3 vs 3. Every character has their own special abilities, and usually they play a specific role during a match. It would be interesting to play on a team were everyone picked a character inspired from mythology. I'm pretty sure their abilities would work together actually.

(All images are from the League of Legends website: League of Legends characters link )

-Rachele