2019-09-03

Unchanging

Recently I needed to look at a map of Roman Iberia for the very juvenile reason that an archaeologist friend assured me that there was a settlement called 'Arse' and I didn't believe him until I found it, about 50 km north of Saguntum. Alongside this unfortunately-named town were a host of others that I had never heard of either. By extension the same is true of the thousands of small towns in Gaul, Italy, Anatolia and the Middle East. It then occurred to me that, by and large, ancient history was largely something that happened to relatively few people.

Consider life in a small agricultural community, which is the type of community most people lived in during the classical era. This community is largely self-sufficient - in fact many households are pretty much self-sufficient. The local crops and animals provide food and clothing, people live in the same houses that their great-grandparents did, and water comes from wells or the local river. The town is off the beaten track and visitors are rare, and because visitors are rare, so is news. At the same time, the news is not very interesting. After all, places like Rome and Athens are so distant that they might as well be on another planet, and news that the Archon is involved in a scandal, or that a new consul has been elected in Rome is of considerably less importance than that the neighbour's goats have contracted scrofula and it might be infectious.

Even the sort of events that historians reckon define an era probably meant little to our hypothetical village. Perhaps a tinker or tradesman might drop by with the news. 'By the way, folks, we're now part of the Roman/Persian/whatever empire'. This little community has little of value to a taxman, and that little is hardly worth the trip to collect it, so one can see how history might easily pass such a community by, with little changing over the decades or even the centuries.

2019-08-05

Read a thriller this summer

Before bedtime I like to pour myself a shot of whisky and spend half an hour with a good book. At the end of a long day, I'm not looking for intellectual stimulation or perfectly-crafted literature exploring the sensitivities of the inner self. Instead, the perfect reading material is the sort of thing I was reading this week. It's a war story, with a thoroughly unloveable superior officer and a bunch of rather meat-headed but extremely macho heroes, in a remarkably violent tale of revenge and redemption. Oh, and throw in a squabbling aristocratic family who don't care how many people get hurt in their private and ultimately trivial quarrels.

It's good stuff, and well written, though ultimately a translation. The original author has been deceased too long for copyright to be an issue, for he died around 800 BC. The book is called the Iliad, and the version I was reading was rewritten by John Dolan. The author takes the view that the original Homeric epic was based on stories that soldiers told each other around the campfire, and his version of the Iliad takes the same tone as those first stories probably did - it's gutsy (very literally) powerful and engaging.

That's the thing about classical literature. Most stories did not survive because high-minded lecturers at academic institutions were fascinated by the writer's use of iambic pentameter. It survived because they are a darn good read, provided you can either read the original or find a really good translator. People get hung upon the elegant Latin of say, Lucretius, and forget there's also Martial, most of whose smutty epigrams would only be suitable as graffiti on toilet walls - if teenage kids could write like Shakespeare. Even the in Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor occasionally phrases profound thoughts in language so coarse that one is forcibly reminded that Aurelius was also a soldier, and a very good one.

Give it a go. Find yourself a good translation of the juicy whodunnit of Cicero's Pro Cluentio, the surreal world of Homer's Odyssey, or Dolan's blood-and-thunder rendition of the Iliad. Not only do you have a fascinating read, but you're being a classical scholar while you're at it.

2019-07-05

It's all in the nose

Someone recently wrote to say that I once commented that ancient cities, especially Rome would have been a major assault on the senses in terms of crowding, noise and smell. While he had no issues with the crowding and noise, the writer took issue with the matter of smell.

Now at first, it seems obvious (it did to me anyway) that a city of around a million people with only ox-carts to haul off rubbish was going to have a large olfactory component. Not so, says my correspondent who has spent time as an anthropologist in the urban areas of some developing cities. By and large, smell comes from waste, and in a society with genuine poverty there is not a lot of waste.

Ancient Rome had aqueducts the equivalent of small rivers which flowed into Rome day and night. What comes in eventually comes out, and the water departed in the negative to Rome's aqueducts - sewers which also flowed constantly, carrying away the city's excrement. Other excrement, for example from the aforesaid ox-carts, would be scooped up by enthusiastic urban gardeners. Even the poorest householders probably maintained window boxes or balcony plants. Especially the poorest, in fact.

Almost all forms of waste can be recycled if someone is desperate enough. It is not that long since the rag-and-bone man was a common sight on British streets. The only non-recyclable form of ancient waste was distinctly odour-free broken pottery. Personally I'm not fully convinced, but I do know that the human nose gets really good at filtering out common smells. For example when I last left my mountain retreat to visit the UK I was struck by something those living in the south-east of England probably have not noticed. The place reeks of petroleum.

2019-06-03

June is busting out all over

We have four very pronounced seasons here in the mountains, and each comes with its own set of challenges. Summers are hot, full of bugs and with the threat of wildfires lurking in the background. Autumn is short, colourful and packed with preparations for the winter (which lasts five months of the year). Winter, with six feet of snow in the garden and temperatures hitting twenty below speaks for itself, or rather howls around the chimney in boreal gales.

Each season has its demands and temptations luring me from my keyboard. Winter is snowshoeing through deep forest and up mountainsides amid jaw-dropping beauty. Summer is kayaking on mountain lakes and berry-picking in the woods.

Then there's spring.

Spring is our short growing season, when the plant life goes mad trying to get maximum foliage out before the summer drought. This means mowing the lawn three times a week, and wondering how the dandelions still manage to blossom between times. It's repairing fences, and cutting tree branches damaged by snow. It's restacking the wood we didn't use for the stove, and hunting down wasps trying to nest in the eaves. It's when mama bear drives her cubs away to prepare for the babies she plans on having in summer, leaving confused ursine teenagers raising havoc in the garden and trying to set up home in the garden shed.

In summer and winter, distractions from writing are at least great fun. With spring, for all the blossoms and honeybees, the distractions are hard work.

2019-05-04

The Hellenistic Queens - a real-life soap opera

The more I get into Hellenistics, the more I wonder why no-one has turned these people into a TV drama. For example - and there's lots of other examples - hands up everyone who has heard of Berenice of Cyrenica. All none of you? Thought so. Yet she's part of a story that you'd be hard pressed to turn into credible fiction.

Berenice (born around 266 BC) was the daughter of King Magas of Cyrenica. She was a keen horsewoman and a good cavalry commander who fought alongside her father in battle. When her father died, her mother arranged for her to marry the so-called Demetrius the Fair of Macedonia. So 'fair' was this Demetrius that the mother was unable to resist his charm and started an affair with him.

The affair ended when an exasperated Berenice entered the couple's bedchamber with a pair of assassins who proceeded to butcher Demetrius while Berenice stood in the doorway critiquing their work. She afterwards married Ptolemy III of Egypt. Ptolemy then went to war with Syria because the Seleucid king had married Ptolemy's sister after divorcing his previous wife. However, the Seleucid king decided he preferred his first wife, went back to her and was promptly poisoned by her. The first wife then killed Ptolemy's sister and her infant son, causing an enraged Ptolemy to invade Syria, leaving Berenice to run Egypt.

Berenice later participated in an equestrian event in the Nemean games and allegedly was also an Olympic competitor. She then retired to raise a family, including the ungrateful Ptolemy IV, the son who had her assassinated when Berenice's pharaoh husband died. (Her other son, Magas, was killed at the same time - scalded to death in his bath.)

I would write her biography as a screenplay, except a number of historians in antiquity already have the copyright.