Name and shame for bad classicists

I’ve long been tempted to have a regular extra blog post, collecting together recent howlers about the ancient world presented to an unsuspecting audience by journalists etc who should know better. What has tended to put me off is the “let who is without sin . . .” principle. That is to say, everyone makes mistakes, and if you name and shame someone today, they’ll do it to you the next time you make a slip.

Anyway, I’ve given up those scruples just for a while.

A colleague emailed me the other Saturday morning to tip me off about an interview with the Margaret-Thatcher-loving, tv-historian Dr David Starkey (pictured here with a royal), in the back of the Guardian’s Guide section. Starkey, it turns out, is a real Roman hater (odd that – I’d have predicted the reverse). “What did the Romans ever do for us?” asked the interviewer:

“The Roman empire is a greatly exaggerated virtue”, responded the Doctor, “That’s the case with most empires, and certainly the sort the Romans created, which was, if not mono-cultural, then certainly very centralised and very aggressive, riding roughshod over highly diverse and different native cultures. We’re very reverent about the Roman empire, but the really creative periods are what followed. The Romans were overrated and over here.”

Now I don’t mind anyone hating the Romans, or anyone giving the Middle Ages their fair due. But I do mind them spreading this rubbish. The grudging admission that the Roman empire was not mono-cultural is one thing (try looking at the culture of Roman Syria and comparing it with Roman Scotland and then doing the mono-culture test). But where has Starkey been if he thinks that Rome was very centralised and rode roughshod over native cultures?

Not in a library that’s for sure.

In fact what’s puzzling about the Roman empire is not how efficiently oppressive they were, but how they managed to run the show with such a limited centralised bureaucracy. And the question has always been why on earth did they end up persecuting the Christians, when (with the partial exception of the Druids and the very occasional, temporary bans on some eastern religions in Rome) their religious strategy was consistently one of live and let live, not annihilation.

Like them or not, you’re never going to understand the Romans if you misrepresent them like Starkey did.

Just as I was huffing and puffing over this, the radio started pumping out some more ghastly classical garbling on Saturday Live.

I’m afraid this was partly the work of my friend Bettany Hughes, who has done an enormous amount of good stuff for ancient history on television, and she’ll kill me if she reads this. But on that Saturday morning she was discussing Helen of Troy (on whom she’s written a book) with presenter Muriel Gray.

The question was why had no one written a book on Helen of Troy before (not entirely true, there are plenty of studies as Helen as a literary figure  -- but biography, no).

The pair had some high-minded feminist view on this puzzler, which on other occasions I would have admired. Men, they wondered, had probably been frightened off the subject because of their terror at dissecting the life of the most beautiful woman ever. And so on.

Had it never occurred them that no classicists had taken on the life of Helen because she was a MYTH. It's the Romulus problem again. Helen of Troy did not exist and is no more the apt subject for a biography than Maid Marian.

Comments

[dr venables preller]

Paulo: There is a view that the only advantageous “progress” is an advance in charity.
The term “civilisation” can be used in an ironic sense. Sometimes words with loose subjective meaning can be used to steer the reader toward engagement with possibilities beyond the paradigm. Comment only in strict accordance with conventions of classical grammar can sometimes seem to lack the authenticity of the vernacular.

But your points are taken.

[paul potts]

Dr Preller, It's not the neologisms that bother me and there are none in your writing that I can detect. it is the necrologisms such as "progress" or "civilisation". But since you ask, or challenge me to translate you, from your first paragraph ".... words can have quite different meanings according to context and perspectives of writer and reader." How about this:
"Words can mean quite different things, according to where and who the writer and reader are." And by the way, in your own version, shouldn't that be "the context and perspective" or, "context and the perspectives"? Perhaps, it's better to leave it there unless you want the last word.

Paulo

[dr venables preller]

Dear Paulo,

The problem might be that in an evolving language words can have quite different meanings according to context and perspectives of writer and reader.

Premises, argument and conclusion have a specific meaning together in that order, whilst the individual words have different meanings, for example to an estate agent, policeman or performer.

Professionals also develop their own jargons, the specific meaning in their context sometimes adding clarity (or unintentional obscurity) when used elsewhere.

There is an academic viewpoint that learning can require work input. Reading some material (including research papers) may require more effort than a Readers’ Digest style summary of the main points.

Further complication can arise when a sense of humour is deployed or words are chosen so as not to offend the politically correct.

It can be a while before neologisms reach the hard copy of the big dictionary, but I understand that the new words department at OUP has fully trained staff to help customers to address their concerns such as recent output of journalists or political policy wonks.

Does this begin to make sense? Now please translate without use of any abstract nouns!

[paul potts]

Dear Dr Preller

I write as a friend, not an enemy. I mean, if Mary posts your stuff, there must be some reason for reading it. Or trying to.

As for dictionaries, someone good once described the Oxford big one as "That useful but tendentious product of British empiricism.

In a benighted attemp to get round this (!)(modern publishers have gone for presenting the language as she is actually spoke using massive data bases, rather than the Johnsonian use of the best written sources. English as it is, not how it's supposed to be. Collins, Longmans, and I fear the OUP itself. Not Chambers, though, not yet, which is in places intentionally funny, and not like the others, unwittingly.

Paulo

[dr venables preller]

For Paulo. Dictionaries are available. Google notwithstanding, there's no shame in their use.

[paul potts]

Can I please ask Dr Preller to cut ou the abstract nouns? Yes, all of them. Then I might understnad his point. "We" might understand what they mean, but I do not.

Paulo

[Xjy]

As to Paul's remarks on plurals on unhistorical principles, the computing community presents a subculture of its own with wild and woolly riffs on the theme of virii for viruses, etc... Ah, bracing is the rush to be had poking the wasps' nests in that particular jungle.

[Jane]

"The history by the Venerable Bede gives the impression that the Romans weren't all that enthusiastic about defending the north:"

Anyone who has ever visited the Roman garrison at Bearsden outside Glasgow in freezing, pelting winter rain will know exactly why this was so!

As for Helen of Troy, what struck me most in the TV programme (the film of the book, or is it the other way round?!), was BH saying that the Spartan women had a reputation for beauty. Surely this was only in Classical Sparta because unlike just about all the other Greek women, Spartan females were actually encouraged (probably required!) to do a lot of physical exercise, so no wonder they had great figures.

Don't know if this is true, but I suspect women tend to divide over H of T, as to whether she is a heroine or a villainess. To me she is the latter - not only did she abandon her children, but why on earth did she not insist on returning to Menelaeus in order to stop so many people dying in the Trojan War and to save Troy? On the other hand, presumably Homer treats her roughly in the text? Doesn't she get called 'bitch-featured'?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Sounds like a definition of the contemporary American "Empire".

With the subtle distinction that in most cases we save your asses, leave, and then you have to pay us money to send our culture to you.

[Jenny]

I love those university mottoes - presumably anyone who has wintered in Cambridge will agree on the accuracy of that translation: "From here, light and sacred draughts" - better pack your thermals then.

[Tony Francis]

Wiki has a site for "Faux Amis" or "False Friends"- words that sound alike, but are different in other languages.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friends
There is an amusing story about the Parker Pen Company writing in Spanish "The pen won't leak and cause pregnancy" (not the intended message).
But they have inexplicably put this fine site up for deletion:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_false_friends
While recommending this site which is mainly Slavic/Bosnian/Russian
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:False_friends

[Tony Francis]

A list of Univeristy Mottos, (mostly in Latin) is found:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_mottos
My favorites are Wuhan University (Chinese): "Get Bestirred, Develop Perseverance, Aspire after Truth and Blaze New Trails"; and the University of Bologna: "Alma Mater Studiorum": translated as "Nourishing Mother of the Studies".

[Tony Francis]

Paul's post made me remember a radio program from about ten years ago. They said Julius Caesar was probably pronounced "Kay-ser" or "Kai-sar"- similar to the German. To my surprise, this topic is discussed on many boards, but to no useful end. Even Wiki has a couple of articles on it, indicating the "Kai-ser" version:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_the_name_of_Julius_Caesar
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_(title)
This site from the apparently defunct "Dartmouth Academy of Canada" has an amusing joke on the pronunciation of "Veni, Vidi, Vici": "Yulius Kai-sar said weenie, weedy, weakie", and the British surrendered - so the site indicates, anyway.
http://bcoy1cpb.pacdat.net/dartmouth_academy.htm
But if this is true, why don't we call the Tsar or Czar "Kar" or "Carr"?
Another site discusses not only Julius Kay-ser, but also Vercingetorix. He notes, through gritted teeth, that the History Channel calls him Ver-son-Gett-or-ricks (which is true about the History Channel). According to the site, this is wrong (while Kai-ser is correct):
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=107679

[Paul]

How about howlers of erroneously formed Greek and Latin. I'm thinking of plurals like "rhinoceri" and "necropoli" and singulars like "more" for "mos" (singular of "mores") and (what I was amazed to find in an otherwise literate article) "homo sapien" as a singular and "homo sapiens" as a plural!!
Unfortunately I can't name, and therefore can't shame, the prepetrators of any of the above. But the shameful practice occurs frequently in many places.
An allied phenomenon is bad Latin which may be excusable as not really Latin but English (or some other modern language). Every summer here in Sweden a circus arrives advertising itself as "CIRCUS MAXIMUM". This always sets my teeth on edge, yet it could be defended as good---- or almost good--- English (or Swedish) punning on a familiar Latin phrase--- almost good, because in the modern Germanic languages the adjective normally precedes the noun, as in "maximum circus".

[dr venables preller]

To revert to topic, one may wonder whether the idea of good classicists as professional with evidence-based accuracy, whilst those who oversimplify beyond the point of error are considered to be bad, might be better expressed in context by a range of less judgmental adjectives.

Just as time has worn away the detail of frescoes and much tangible evidence of the past, so simplifying a concept for easy digestion by a large audience can blur the boundary of evidence and conjecture. As all TV presenters know, being a stickler for academic precision can get in the way of a populist storyline, and be likely to set the viewers channel-hopping.

There's also the difficulty that concepts of good and bad might cause offence to the increasing numbers who place essential deference to diverse inclusion before any perceived elitism of professional excellence.

Perhaps those who stretch or break the envelope of truth in this way properly belong to categories of general populist classicists, presenter-classicists or even Disney-style classicists?

[Tony Francis]

Roman dominance was probably dictated by political need, geography, population density and the individual personality of the general or governor. Without a doubt, the underlying Celitc cultures of Gaul and Spain were completely obliterated. In France, this was probably due to the personality of Julius Caesar and the low population density:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Gaul
Spain was also subdued, but for different reasons. It was a no-man's land in the wars with Carthage:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Spain
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage
This conflict would be repeated in the Muslim/Christian wars 2000 years later.
Britian appears to be a different story. It has never been clear how much influence the Romans really had in the north. Whether this was due to lack of troop strength, logistics or political will is arguable.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Britain
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Roman_Britain
The history by the Venerable Bede gives the impression that the Romans weren't all that enthusiastic about defending the north:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book1.html
The Saxon invasions added a difficult dimension to evaluate:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxons
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano-Britons
Derek Roebuck has written in his book on English Common Law that the Latins were forced into Wales by the Saxons. Unfortunately, he is not in Wiki. According to him, the word "Wals" or "Wales" meant slave, as in Saxon slave. Walton as a surname meant "Slave from Slave town". (Sam Walton of Walmart, take note.) The Wiki site gives a different impression:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales
The story in the east was different. The Romans could never dominate the pre-existing Greek culture:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Roman_Empire
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_civilization
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Eastern_Empires

[Richard]

There is some pretty good evidence from indubitably non-Christian sources for at least some persecution: a famous example is where Tacitus describes the aftermath of the fire at Rome in AD 64:
"But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired."
(Annals 15.44; translation from www.perseus.tufts.edu)
This is not the only place in literature by pagan authors where such persecution is attested (tho' it doesn't always sound quite as nasty as this). It does not of course follow that every martyrdom story is true or that such persecution was typical.

Best wishes,
Richard

[Michael Bulley]

On the information plaque at the Amphithéâtre des Trois Gaules in Lyon it says clearly, in English, that this is where "the Christians were tortued". So that seems to settle it. Let's have no more of this nonsensical idea that Christians were tortured . They were turned into tortoises.

[Xjy]

The efficiency of Roman imperial oppression was partly due to the amazing simplicity of Roman Law, especially the codification of economic relations of debt and payment, partly due to the balance between the latifundia (the landed rich with their slaves) and the municipal trading hubs (with their administrators, plebeian "free" masses (citizen soldiers and artisans), and cultural energy, and partly due to the no-nonsense communications networks by sea and land.

The hierarchy was very clear, and any uppity threats to it were settled quickly by force - until it disintegrated and metastasized into the decentralized and self-propagating round of coups, counter-coups and trials of force we know and love as the European heritage.

Like the Venetian Republic's notorious "Serenity" and the Pax Americana, the stability of the Roman Realm was all smoke and mirrors really. A surface calm (for the most part) veiling a seething subsurface turmoil, that occasionally exploded into open eruption when the uppity force was about as strong as the containing one.

The centralizing, monopolistic pretensions of the monotheistic ideologies were anathema to the container, and tirelessly put down until they were able/had to be incorporated. Hence the difference, post-disintegration, between the Germanic-spawned realms (metastasized versions of hybrid heathen Teutonic ideology and Byzantine mono-God-King-ism) and the Islamic ones.

In other words, Candadai's reference to the sectarian motive forces of "truth, exclusivity and sheer opposition" just about hits the nail on the head.

[Wynne]

Mary, yes of course you are right on the point about "riding rough-shod".

The "Romanisation" of (southern) Britain is a fascinating topic anyway - how exactly was it achieved? How come there is so little left of the tribal culture the Romans...replaced, or destroyed??

[dr venables preller]

Mary, your point about the Roman empire not 'riding roughshod over native cultures.' seems spot-on, and highlights similarity with the model for the effective (for a while) indirect rule practised in the former British empire.

Eventual failure of these sytems to adapt to wish for change (or to suppress or modify it) in the subordinate cultures would have negated long-term continuance.

Perhaps attempts to combine imperialism of any shade with lip service to democracy creates problems incapable of a solution as we know it, short of straying into a Nietzchian world beyond most comfort zones.

[Mary]

Wynne -- My point is not whether the Roman empire was nice; it wasnt (aren't all empires robbery with violence?). It is however simply INCORRECT (and a wilful misunderstanding of how Roman imperialism operated) to say that it rode roughshod over native cultures.. and veered towards 'the mono-cultural'. One might still argue that various forms of multi-culturalism were weapons in the hands of the imperial power -- but that is a different argument.

[Wynne]

I don't particularly want to agree with David Starkey but he is surely right about the Roman Empire.

The archaeologist Neil Faulkner is spot on when he says the Roman Empire was basically "robbery with violence". He came to this conclusion in his excellent book "The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain" (2000) which makes startling and enlightening reading in the present context of the occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan/Palestine.

Faulkner demonstrates that you can only have an Empire as long as you can sustain a military force to contain it. Talk about "Roman culture" or "civilisation" means nothing when all the resources available are needed to maintain a massive military presence.

Roman Britain was basically a resource to maintain Rome's huge army.

Christianity became a political weapon in Constantine's "counter-revolution" to centralize his power. An ideology with one god of which the Emperor is the exclusive representative was very useful..

[dr venables preller]

'In fact what’s puzzling about the Roman empire is not how efficiently oppressive they were, but how they managed to run the show with such a limited centralised bureaucracy.'

Perhaps there was an understanding of the skills of delegation to 'lower echelons' and of the importance of the size of hierarchical groups in relation to their areas of responsibility.

As anyone who has ever sat on a committee of greater than optimum size will know, the scope for wasting of time and pursuit of atypically coloured herring fish increases geometrically according to committee number and diversity.

The key to efficient control structures, of minimising bureaucratic clutter whilst optimising individual responsibility is one which might with advantage be learned and relearned by any who sense turgid management inertia, who are enmeshed in complexity burying itself and all with political or government aspirations - present and future.

[Tony Francis]

Alex, are you suggesting the story of Christian persecution by the Romans is just propaganda? There are at least eleven different periods of persecuction documented in the first three centuries after the death of Christ:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_early_Christians_by_the_Romans
These are as well sourced as anything from the ancient world. They even include court transcripts. It would not be unusual for the "powers that be" to ignore persecution. There is no evidence that the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, if we go by the Egyptian record. Do you doubt the Bible account? Or was that just Jewish porpaganda? (There is an off-beat theory provided by David Rohl about Hebrew slavery in Egypt, but it is not generally accepted.)
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rohl
Anyway, there were many pagan critics of Christianity in ancient Rome. Their original works still exist, as do the apologetics which answered them. It is difficult to determine the number of actual martyrs. But does it really matter if it were a few hundred or many thousands? One of the early arguments in the Church concerned the acceptance of Roman Christians who had denied the Church during persecutions, then wanted to be accepted back after things calmed down. Pope Cornelius brought about a resolution to this problem:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Cornelius
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy
This incident provides indirect evidence that the persecutions did occur.

[Carolus]

Actually, someone has written a biography of God -- "God: A Biography" by Jack Miles. But both this title and the Helen of Troy "biography" are really just marketing ploys. More troubling is fact that the author herself seems to have bought into the marketing whole hog. And the argument that men have stayed away from writing about Helen out of fear is the sort of codswallop that gives feminism a bad name.

[Michael Bulley]

tune putas fictam esse Helenam quam cantat Homerus?
falsa uiro, fateor, sed mihi uera fuit.

[Alex]

"And the question has always been why on earth did they end up persecuting the Christians"

Is not the problem that we believe the Christian sources, though they certainly had an agenda to exaggerate the persecution? How often is the persecution mentioned by non-Christian contemporary sources?

[Tony Francis]

Christians were persecuted by the Romans because they refused to worship the Latin gods. This was viewed as treason by the Romans. Other cults or religions had no problem giving latria or hyperdulia to the Roman gods, along with their own deities. This would have been seen as idolatry by the early Christians. There is some evidence that the ban on cremation was instituted because the smoke from the burning body was seen as a tribute to the man-god who was also the emperor.
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521633864&ss=exc

http://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703663.html

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamen

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitoline_Triad

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_%28ancient_Rome%29

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11388a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09736b.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01650b.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01586a.htm
There were attempts to re-establish the old religions after Christian ascendancy:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/340917.htm
Evidence from the trial of Justin and companions:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0133.htm
Jews would not have been inclined to offer worship to the Roman gods, but there is some information that they were exempted from such practices in various times and places:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04775c.htm

[Peter Sewell]

I think the reason the Romans were so antagonistic to Christianity was that in the early years, this religion had most of the characteristics of what we would nowadays call a cult.

Cults are always frowned upon by the authorities, partly because they fear that the way they carry on their activities renders them incapable of being controlled.

The frantic and irrational violence with which the Waco Siege was brought to an end by the FBI is possibly a modern equivalent of the treatment of Christians by the Roman authorities.

[F.Gamberini]

Generally we shall be on safer ground taking for granted the ugliness of the past. Nor am I sure that we are over-reverent about the Roman empire: we are, or at least should be, now beyond the "grandeur that was Rome" rhetoric. The Roman empire exists as historical fact; it was grand while it lasted: take it or leave it.
But, "what did the Romans ever do for us", if it's rather flippantly put, could be reframed so as to express a genuine question. The legacy of Rome, whether by unbroken descent or rediscovery, is certainly an interesting field, and a particularly poignant one in a country that was the first in Europe from which the Romans withdrew.

Now, about Bettany Hughes....
There's no such thing as "the most beautiful woman in the world". But what's wrong with writing a biography of a myth, creating myth in the process, perhaps, like an adventurer-poet, even forging the myth of your own life?
Not that I would have thought of treading where she has ventured, yet I cannot but admire.

[Xjy]

Time for a biography of God, obviously...

It's one thing to smear or cheer a real person, but clearly quite another to mess with people's myths. The mind-forged manacles work better than steel or kevlar.

No wonder Plato pumped out the myths the way he did - so much harder to escape when following his advice leads us deeper and deeper into the bloody cave.

As for Starkey and his ilk... Furr'd robes hide all.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

It is certainly true that Rome tolerated nearly every variety of religion, possibly to the disgust of Juvenal. But it had trouble accommodating Hebraic monotheism, considering it the "Jewish superstition." And I think Romans were similarly offended by Christianity's claim to be the truth and to exclusivity, and no doubt worried about its dissolving influence. Marcus Aurelius singled out what he called the "sheer opposition " of the Christians.

[Gilles]

"[...] mono-cultural, then certainly very centralised and very aggressive, riding roughshod over highly diverse and different native cultures."
 
Sounds like a definition of the contemporary American "Empire".