(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.