Maty's blog
| 2025-02-03 |
| Romans in Winter |
One advantage of country living is that one has a large garden. One disadvantage of country living is that one has to maintain a large garden. When I lived in the UK gardening mostly consisted of picking up the beer cans that local louts had tossed on to our tablecloth-sized patch of lawn. No-one mentioned that later in life I'd be looking piles of bear poop amid acres of dandelions. So I rather like gardening in winter. Outside the Domus Matyszak at present the snow is two meters deep. In places it's up to the roof. The only thing one needs to do is occasionally don snowshoes and chainsaw away tree branches drooping with snowload that are threatening the windows. Otherwise everything slumbers peacefully unattended. It was pleasant then to discover that the Romans also rather enjoyed winter. Apart from those living in the mountains, Italian winters are cold and rainy rather than snowy. Nevertheless, rather as with my garden, there's not a lot to do with growing stuff – which is what most Romans did for a living - so they could spend plenty of time by the tavern fire. If one did have to go out, the Roman's preferred dress was the paenula, a heavy woollen cloak that came with a hood. Of course a toga itself is plenty warm - wrapping oneself in what is basically sixteen square meters of blanket is a good way to keep off the worst of the winter chill. Therefore boots, socks (Roman socks were strips of cloth sewn together rather than the modern knitted tubes) a toga and paenula were protection enough for even the worst of winter's blasts. If it was raining, then a subpaenula might be needed - this was a thinner cloak worn under the heavier one. This was made of unwashed sheep's wool – rich in waterproof lanolin oil – or wool with wax worked into the fibres. Winter was a time for (literally) chilling out and working on personal relationships. In the case of the poet Horace this included romancing a lass called Leuconoe (Odes 1.11) Winter will come on ... While we drink the summer’s wine. See how, in the white winter air, The day, like a rose, droops Toward the outstretched hand Seize it before it's gone. |
| 2025-01-05 |
| Ave MMXXV! |
| Well, the back end of 2024 was certainly not kind to me. That nasty dose of the 'flu hung around all through December, though it faded enough for me to have a pretty good Xmas. Now it's January of a brand new year and I'm horrified by how much of 2024 remains for me to clear up. Even though I was working when I could there was time spent on doctors visits and the hospital, not to mention days when I was basically out for the count. So now there is a book proposal that needs to be in next week, the picture suggestions for a MS I have just completed, the texts on Augustus that should have been there before the new year, and several more odds and ends that should have been wrapped up by now. It's amazing how far one can get behind in a month. On the other hand, recovery is now well under way - I even went snowshoeing last week (though don't tell that to any of my impatient editors). However, all this has definitely reminded me what my new year's resolution has to be. *Slow down*. Last January I decided that as a pensioner I should spend more time with lakes and mountains and less time at the computer. Looking at my schedule for 2025 I can tell you that i failed. However, 2026 will definitely definitely the year I start turning down new projects and taking it easy. Absolutely. For sure. |
| 2024-12-04 |
| Plague Victim |
| Towards the end of the fifth century BC the doctor Hippocrates noted a new kind of fever. This he called the 'cough of Perithous' and noted that the accompanying fever was short-lived and generally not fatal though it did debilitate its victims. The illness, noted Hippocrates, was highly contagious and dangerous to the elderly or those with an underlying health condition. It would take another thousand years for this illness to be called 'influenza'. Italians of the Renaissance noted that the disease was particularly virulent in the autumn and reckoned this was due to the 'influence' of the stars. Today those looking for a few extra days off work might pass off a bad cold as 'the 'flu'. It's not the same. A cold leaves its victim feeling miserable for a week – influenza knocks you flat. I'm particularly bitter about the dose of influenza from which I'm still recovering, because I contracted it when going into town for a covid vaccination. All the symptoms described by Hippocrates are still there – fever, check. Exhaustion, check, and cough, yes, curse it, that cough. The one that keeps me (and my long-suffering wife) awake at nights and has caused the doc to stuff me full of pills because it looks like mutating to pneumonia. (Well spotted there again, Hippocrates.) 'Feelings of tiredness may last ten days longer than other symptoms' the health Canada website informs me. This has led to some anxious emails from editors concerned about my health, (especially as this pertains to pre-Xmas deadlines). Fortunately Ancient History is my happy place, and rather than laying off the history I'm spending even more time in the past as I struggle to forget my illness-wracked present. Hopefully I'll be well for Christmas and ready to go roaring into 2025. |
| 2024-11-04 |
| Rome before Rome |
| What's the difference between a myth and a legend? Well, one way I deal with the question is to ask people whether they would prefer to be described as 'mythical' or as 'legendary'. This is relevant, because I'm something of a specialist in Greek and Roman myth. (Or at least, I've written two well-received books on the topic, which I'm counting as the same thing.) However, my next book which will hopefully be out in time to land in Christmas stockings, is on the topic of Roman legend, which is something different. That's 'Rome before Rome' – the story of the early years of Rome and of the centuries before that starting with when the area consisted of the 'Fields of Janus' – that Roman god who has given his name to the month of January. For Roman trivia experts, the oldest building in classical Rome was a structure on the Janiculan ridge (and guess where that name comes from) called the 'Fort of Janus' which had apparently been there since forever, even in the time of Romulus and Remus. Some bits of the Roman foundation legend are evidently fake – indeed there's around half-a-dozen foundation legends, so at least five of them are fake. Even the most common of the legends – the story of Romulus and Remus contains elements familiar to academics who study legends and how they are formed. For example. the child-king who starts his career hidden in exile is a theme that runs from twenty-five centuries ago with Sargon the Great all the way up to Luke Skywalker some time yesterday. The manor difference between a myth and a legend though, is that while the tale has grown in the telling, a legend retains elements of an original factual story. And much to the frustration of those who insist that Rome grew organically like a city in a modern nation state (spoiler alert: it didn't) no-one has been able to categorically disprove the legend. In fact such evidence as can be firmly established shows that the Romans were on the right track with regard to their origins. Which made telling their story all the more fun. |
| 2024-10-04 |
| A little (too much) knowledge ... |
| A few nights ago we settled down to watch The Revenant, a film starring Leonardo Di Caprio. It was billed as based on a true story and featured survival in the wilderness. This sounded good, especially as we would be watching with a friend who is both an expert woodsman and interested in the period when the movie was set (the 1820s). It quickly became apparent that this was an 'art' movie – slow as molasses with lingering shots of – for example – water dripping off a branch. Not quite like watching paint dry, but close. However the entertainment value the film lacked was supplied by our friend. Five minutes in our hero fires a musket. This was greeted with a howl of outrage from the sofa, because apparently muskets of the time used black powder, which should have produced a cloud of smoke. This did not happen. Nor should firearms of the time be self-loading or have the range or accuracy of modern sniper rifles, as we were indignantly informed as the film went on. It quickly became apparent that the director's experience of actual wilderness survival was limited to being over a kilometer from the nearest place serving soy lattes. Mr Di Caprio, after an attack from a grizzly (which should not have had cubs that age at that time of the year), should have died from drowning, hypothermia and starvation in the first hour as he swam icy rivers and lit fires in the wrong place with the wrong materials while foraging for food that would not have been available. All against a scenic background of mountains which apparently do not exist in North Dakota where the action allegedly took place. The final straw was a 'wilderness' scene clearly shot in a managed forest. If the lack of plant diversity did not give the game away, the fact that the trees were in suspiciously straight lines was a definite hint. At this point we kicked our friend from the room and watched the rest of this turgid drama in silence. Now I know why I'm not allowed to be present when ancient history shows like HBO's 'Rome' are being screened. |
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