Doctor Who -- Up Pompeii

There were enough good jokes to keep even the meanest classicist amused in Doctor Who’s visit to Pompeii on Saturday night.

For a start, when Donna and the Doctor emerged from the tardis, they immediately assumed that they were in ancient Rome. Well actually they were. Any keen follower of historical movies can spot the “ancient Rome” built at Cinecittà in modern Rome a mile off (it’s actually very like the “ancient Rome” built in modern Tunisia, except the whole thing is a bit bigger and the extras tend to have a slightly lighter facial colouring).

But just a few minutes into the plot, the table were nicely turned when we saw an unmistakable Vesuvius looming at the end of the street. The penny quickly dropped for us and for the Doctor. This must be Pompeii.

And it turned out to be August 23 AD 79: for those in the know (like the Doctor) the day before the final eruption. At least that is the usual date: an alternative school of thought, based on the traces of pollen found in the volcanic ash and on the heavy clothes worn by a number of the victims thinks it must have been later in the autumn. (I’m not convinced by the clothing argument. I always imagine I might put on my winter woollies in the middle of an eruption.)

A good start. And hopes that the writers actually knew something about the history of Pompeii and even knew a little Latin were not disappointed.

There were, for example, plenty of reference to the earthquake which had struck the city in 62 (or 63 according to another alternative line of thought) – which may, or may not, have had something to do with the Pyroviles (I cant honestly remember). The city had also obviously been experiencing a fair number of tremors in the run-up to the “Big One”.  That is exactly in tune with modern archaeological orthodoxy. We now think that the  reason that almost every Pompeian house seems to have had the decorators in at the moment they were overwhelmed is because they were trying to patch up all those recent cracks. No archaeologist, so far as I know, has spotted the Pyrovile connection.

Best of all, the screen writers had obviously done the Cambridge Latin Course back in high school. For those reading this outside the UK, the CLC is the favourite modern school course for teaching kids Latin in this country. The first book is set in Pompeii, around an ordinary Pompeian family: Caecilius the banker, Metella his wife, and Quintus the son.

Who did the Doctor meet when he arrived? Caecilius, of course (though apparently no longer a banker, but in the marble trade), Metella and Quintus. The family had also, since the CLC was written, grown a daughter Evelina, who was here briefy in the power of the Pyroviles, uttering weird prophecies and having her arm turn to stone.

For Doctor Who fans the big question at the end was whether the time-lord Doctor was going to allow himself to re-write history and rescue Caecilius and his family. The human Donna eventually persuades him to do so. So, whereas in the CLC only Quintus lives to fight another day, in the Doctor Who version, we find the whole family six months later living happily ever after in Rome.

What actually happened to the REAL Caecilius (for the CLC had based him on the figure of  Lucius Caecilius Jucundus, hundreds of whose wax tablet survive detailing his transactions) – we do not know. The chances are that he died before Vesuvius started to rumble.

Comments

[Jane]

Jackie
I've been a fan since the 1960's. I'm not that keen on the latest assistant; I find her unappealing. On Saturday, though, the Doctor re-acquired his last one, the impressive Martha Jones, so things are looking up!

[felicity]

we used Pseudolus Noster at school in the 60s. Did anyone else?

[Jackie]

Jane, I am glad to see you watch Dr Who even if it isn't set in Pompeii!

[Jane]

The Doctor spoke Latin again this evening. "Donna nobis pacem."

[Don Buck]

Several of my Latin students in New Hampshire, USA told me about the Dr Who/Pompeii show and we watched part of it together. I've never watched Dr Who, but I will use this in class next time through. Mary, Quintus is the only freeborn family member who survives, but the family's slave Clemens goes with Quintus to Alexandria, has many adventures there, and is freed by Quintus.

[Rose]

I did the CLC course not so long ago, and it's brilliant to see it on the screen, with all the publicity. Needless to say, Caecilius fans everywhere, of which there are scarily many, especially on facebook, are overjoyed.

I am rather glad the family lived though, despite the historical innacuracy... we were always very fond of Caecilius et alii.

[Mary]

Jane-Anne Shaw is right.. it was somewhere very near the beginning.. a winning contender on the dormouse test!

[Jackie]

Nice work if you can get it Mary! A friend of mine did a history MA. Her subject module was American cinema of the 1950's. She spent almost the entire year in front of the television watching DVD's of old Hollywood movies!

[JANE-ANNE SHAW]

Mary, you don't mention your Dormouse Test. I could swear I heard the word within some two minutes of the episode beginning! Did I?
If I did, was it a record?
JANE

[Tony Keen]

Thanks for the kind words. I agree about the warmer clothing - given that the cloud from Vesuvius blotted out the sun, as Pliny tells us, I imagine it would get pretty cold pretty quickly.

Why do you think the creators gave Caecilius the praenomen Lobus (which is confirmed by one of the behind-the-scenes clips on the website)? My theory is that Lucius was written down in somebody's poor handwriting, and misread.

[Kirsty Mills]

CLC Latin course? Now I really feel old. Back in the early '60s at grammar school we just ploughed through Ceasar. (Perhaps more of a lasting treasure?)

[doctorwho]

The asexuality of the doctor is a point of intrigue and one needs to examine his companionship in the capsule rather than anywhere else, most likely.

[anthony alcock]

A bit Radio Four, this stuff.
How about the Doctor stumbling into Minton's Playhouse in Harlem (118th St ) in the late 1940s ?

[Gelfling]

Mary, whose skeleton was found under the half-collapsed wall in Caecilius' house? And was there a skeleton of a dog found with it, as the CLC have it?

[Mary]

Jackie... I fear it was for research purposes (though I was a fan of the first Doctors...and did see that old Doctpr Who visit to Rome 40 years ago).
Tony Keen by the way has a very good post on the episode:
http://tonykeen.blogspot.com/

[Francesca]

I loved this episode (though I am an absolute geek and have had had an obsession with Doctor Who since I was a kid).

Watching this with a couple of fellow Classics geeks, it was so much fun when the family appeared as we had all done the CLC for GCSE...the drinking game possibilites with this episode is immense!

I love the fact that sci-fi shows like Doctor Who set episodes in antiquity, and as long as the show is good, any slight playing with the facts doesn't even bother me that much.

Plus the whole Celtic-when-speaking-Latin thing was hilerical!

[Jackie]

Just as a matter of interest Mary, did you watch Dr Who for the purposes of your new book, or because you are a fan?! If you are a fan, did you know David Tennant is playing Hamlet at Stratford this summer?

[Xjy]

Fair cop, Mike B... I should have written -ta for the ambiguous anceps final syllable (long, or short taken as long). And I should have divided the line differently too - tum-tum tum-titty-tum ti-tum-ti-tum-ta - this gives the rhythmic shape to the line, and a pattern that is also played with by variations of linkage and "stress against the expected", as noted by Mike.

Interestingly enough (for me) this kind of variation is absolutely crucial to the success of the Kalevala verse scheme in Finnish, so easily nuked in a crude Hiawatha-style rendering.

[Jonathan]

I think I did the same Latin course as Abigail! Pueri porta hasta ad agricola, or something. (I'm told I was very good at it, but it's 22 years ago now)

If you turned over and watched Doctor Who Confidential (available on iPlayer, folks) there was quite a good documentary on the filming, and a trip to Pompeii, plus an explanation of the educational in-jokes...

[blurb]

manipulation of time, twinning, wales...

[Lucy]

Cerberus! I think he's the dog that you can find in the ruins of Pompeii - we got taken there on a field trip and it was THE BIGGEST EXCITEMENT finding him. Silly, ohhhh yes. CLC was hilarious - and it has its own facebook group.
Aww ... all this nostalgia, now nice. XJY's experience sounds cool, too.

[Kim]

We used Ecce, Romani at school, so the joke about Caecilius, Metella et al passed me by.

Sham. They sound like a lot more fun than Marcus, Sextus, Cornelia, Flava and Davus the slave, who featured in Eccce, Romani.

[Jane]

Jonathan
Thank you for explanation.
Yes it's all hugely fun.
I'd have liked to see a bit more footage of the actual eruption (even though we've seen it all on reconstructions on the History channel) and it would have been amusing to see people running away with pillows on their heads (pace Pliny).

[Heresiarch]

I was most disappointed not to see Grumio the cook. His on-off relationship with slave-girl Melissa was for many of us the highlight of the saga.

[kath bell]

It's a while since I've looked at the Cambridge Latin Course so I didn't pick up the references. But now you mention it, I want to know what happened to the slaves, Grumio and Clemens. And how about Cerberus the dog? Where were they and why didn't the Doctor save them too?

[Michael Bulley]

What a surprise in XJY's comment! I hear the end of most Catullan hendecasyllable as tum-tum (or even dum-dum) rather than tum-ti. Of course, these English rhythmic mnemonics, like the famous "strawberry jampot" for hexameters, can be misleading: tum-ti tum-tum works OK for the first or fourth lines of that poem, for example, - atque amemus... redire possunt - but not for the end of the fifth one - breuis lux - which, in terms of stress, is tum-ti-tum. Earlier in the hendecasyllable, the variations of stress against the fixed theoretical length are even freer. So XJY's titty could come even come down to a tum-tum.

[Abigail]

I did a different latin course. Puella parva in horto lente ambulat.

[Jonathan]

@Jane: it's a bit of a joke at the expense of tricks like Star Trek's Universal Translator and the TARDIS's telepathic circuits. Donna, when told she could read and speak Latin, asked what would happen if she actually spoke Latin rather than letting the TARDIS translate her English. "I'd never thought of that" says the Doctor, so she gives it a go.
The TARDIS translates Latin in to Welsh (Celtic) which leads on to other Welsh jokes later in the episode. Doctor Who is made in Wales...
It's funny on so many levels. There's lovely.

[Xjy]

Oh the joy of self-reference in art! Now even over the top SciFi is going ficumentary. And the peculiarly English (?) twist of Latin textbook characters to boot. Shows that a well-written textbook has strong narratives and STICKS.

With luck, this episode will lift the prestige of Latin in the eyes of the public even more!

Latin can be FUN! I even dragged Catullus into my Swedish 8th grade classes once. Lesbia (Vivamus) up on the blackboard - copy out exactly please! Then a word for word run through guessing at the meanings with the help of the Latino kids. "Love", "sun", "night", "perpetual", "give", "kisses", "thousand", etc. They were hooked... Then choral reading with a swing: Tum-tum-tum titty-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-ti. Then interlinear word-for-word translation into Swedish, then a second interlinear fluent version in Swedish. Then choral reading again.

Can't remember if I asked them to learn it by heart for homework. If I didn't, I should have done! :-)

Took a couple of periods to work through.

Just in case anyone's wondering, Swedish as a school subject here includes "world literature" and therefore the classics. And no this wasn't an elite school, it was the opposite, the local comprehensive in the second poorest/most disadvantaged suburb in Sweden. Immigrant kids 99.5 per cent, ie no kids out of 300 with two Swedish parents, two with one Swedish parent.

[Lucy]

Caecilius! Yay!

How many readers got started on Latin by CLC, I wonder?

[Jane]

I enjoyed the Pompeii Doctor Who as well.
Mary, I have one puzzle: why, when the Doctor quoted some Latin tags, eg "Caveat emptor" and "status quo", did the Roman paterfamilias laugh off this eccentricity to the rest of the family by accusing him of being a Celt? Could it have been his (presumably) atrocious accent do you think?