Yes please, Socrates

The result of the great debate was, as I predicted, that a rather large majority of the audience decided that they would accept the invitation. As Tom Holland said in the moments after our defeat: that’s democracy for you…but, of course, Socrates, wasn’t exactly a fan of that.

All the same I thought our side made as good a showing as we could, so didn’t feel especially pissed off. It’s a bit like doing an exam. You don’t mind doing not so well as you hoped, if you think you did as well as you could.

In fact, once the Taplin/McCabe side had trailed the idea that one might be having dinner not just with Socrates, but Hippocrates, Sophocles, Pheidias, Euripides, Hegel and Wittgenstein too – honestly I thought the audience would rebel. But they didn’t.

Anyway, everyone can listen to the podcast and see what you think.

I had the feeling that, zany silliness that it was, some more substantial ideas were bubbling under the surface.

One question that came up in the audience discussion (which is not on the podcast) is about how we choose to imagine the past, and to what extent it is anyway a largely fictional creation. Socrates, of course, is a good case to explore that on, because he wrote nothing. So all our “evidence” is already some sort of fictional construction by contemporary and later admirers or detractors.

You get one picture of the sage if you follow the image of him, as most people do, in Plato. You get quite a different one if you take the more chubby, pub-philosopher style created by Xenophon.  (I talk about Xenophon a bit at the start of my pitch.)

I would have liked to explore a bit more why we have this hankering after actually meeting writers. That after all is what literary festivals are largely about. But isn’t it part of the old fallacious identification of author and text, page and personality? Why can’t be satisfied with a good book without wanting to get to grips with the author too. Especially as we know that it is more often than we would like a terrible disappointment.

As I write this, I’m listening to a discussion on In our Time  about Isaac Newton  – who was a well known, taciturn social-inadequate, whom it would have been ghastly to come across in the flesh. And I wouldn’t have much fancied an evening with Philip Larkin (though much enjoy an evening with Whitsun Weddings).

But is this to bite the festival  hand that feeds?

Hope you’ll listen to the podcast (turn up the volume when you get to McCabe, whose uncharacteristic quietness is caused by her being more distant from the mike than the rest of us).

Comments

[Tony Francis]

Dear OPN: If we are to believe Holdsworth: "Much of Bracton's active judicial life was associated with Devonshire. Like most judges of his day he was an ecclesiastic. He was instituted rector of Combe in Teignhead in 1259 and of Bideford in 1261 and the latter living he probably retained till his death. He was archdeacon of Barnstaple in 1264. When he died in 1268 he held prebends at Exeter and Bosham, and was chancellor of Exeter Cathedral." This would seem to define and justify the warrant to have an altar in his name.
At present I have written the articles on my computer. It is good to go back and re-write them several times before posting for real on Wiki. Even so, someone will find extraneous material to be deleted. That is the usual pattern.

[Oliver Nicholson]

One of the nave altars in Exeter cathedral used to be called Bracton's Altar - I know not quo warranto.
OPN

[Tony Francis]

Dear PL: You have comfirmed what I was thinking: the allegory between Melchizedek and Ulpian. I will put it in the article on Bracton. He was in the midst of a revolution in English Law, whereby Latin/Roman law was incorporated, first through the church courts, then eventually, in English common law courts. Large parts of Justinian's code were involved. Any idea why Bratton became Bracton? Is this Latin? Early Norman law was mainly directed at keeping large chunks of land in the hands of a small number of faithful lords, who could produce food, horses and fighting men for the crown. That is, the definition of feudalism. Statute Quia Emptores was short, less than 500 words. It was meant to clear up some confusion about land transfer. But it has been controversial in both meaning and effect since it was enacted in 1290. All US land law (except for Louisiana, which is based on Continental Law) is based in spirit, if not actual wording, on Quia Emptores. Yet not one in 100 lawyers have any consciousness of Quia Emptores. Same thing with Bracton: he believed in "lex naturae", the law of nature. This is another Biblical analogy. Yet "natural law", as a subject is stricken out of every law text used in the US. The "writ subpoena" was the whimsical invention of some Canon lawyer in Chancery, even though they had been forbidden from creating new writs in Statute Westminster II, 1285.

[PL]

Comment for Tony Francis concerning Pollock's and Maitland's remark, "Bracton feels he is a priest of the law, a priest after the order of Ulpian."
Some modern readers will miss the biblical allusion: "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek" (Psalm 110, quoted in Hebrews, Ch 7). For the author of Hebrews, Melchisedek (a numinous figure in Genesis 14:18ff) is a type of Christ; and Christ, like Melchizedek, is a priest according to a higher and more ancient (indeed timeless) ordination than that of the Jewish priests descended from Aaron. Everyone in Bracton's time would have seen the parallel. A lawyer who feels he was called to the bar by Ulpian himself must think himself superior to those who merely obtained their qualifications the ordinary way.

[Tony Francis]

I am going to revise these Wiki articles in the near future:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quia_emptores
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpoena_ad_testificandum
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_de_Bracton
As you can see, they are in sorry shape as they now exist. Concerning Bracton (whose real name was Bratton), Pollock and Maitland give this quote: "Ius dicitur ars boni et sequi, cuius merito quis nos sacerdotes appellat: iuatium namque colimus et sacra iura ministramus." Pollock and Maitland remark: "Bracton feels he is a priest of the law, a priest after the order of Ulpian." Any comments about this? Ulpian refers to a Latin (Roman) lawyer:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpian

[anthony alcock]

I think you're right. Hankering after meeting someone whose work you admire is peculiar, especially if it turns out that you don't really take to each other. I was on the same bill as George Melly once (in Hamburg), and was disappointed to find out how patronizing he was.

[don]

I once introduced I.F.Stone to my teacher Gregory Vlastos. They held very different views of Socrates, but I believe both would have had dinner with him. I.F.Stone because he would have wanted to interrogate Socrates about his politics, and Prof. Vlastos to try and understand why Socrates behaved as he did. I don't think I would precisely because I've never been able to figure out where being interrogated by Socrates left a person. I could just be a coward.

[adq]

The ideal, of course, is to be clever and to be established, like Mary Beard.

[Tony Francis]

Consider this hypothetical: There was a Cambridge Professor of Classics who was adamant about avoiding a dinner with Socrates, using terms like "ghastly", and "repugnant". The reason for this avoidance? The old bastards were talking of "sweat in the gym" and "perfume" in a decidedly homosexual manner. THE same Professor demurs in the matter of a dinner with Aristotle. At the same time, THE Professor is just giddy about an evening with Parker Posey.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Posey
What are we to conclude? What am I missing?

[adq]

The next Queen of England is not CoE. I'd watch your mouth XJY and with your necessary apology letters to shocked wives of masters of Eton, you won't be getting very far. To the test. Good luck with the KBE. When you are King, I'll cordially decline your invitation and sup with the mass, doing works of charity. What we don't like is squeelers and family shitters. Never can do. Hoorah, hoorah for the Beard! Long live the Queen.

[Jackie]

One reason I go to Literary Festivals is to get hold of signed copies of books.(I collect them)I've only once failed to get the one I wanted, due to my own fault. I rushed off after a brilliant talk by one speaker (a female classicist who shall remain nameless) missing getting a copy of her book, to be in time for what I, in my ignorance, expected to be a very funny talk by a former Monty Python. It was rubbish!
The podcast was interesting, but I have no idea why the voting went the way it did. I though you and Tom Holland were much more persuasive! And Socrates would not have been 'fondling Alcibiades', he turned him down!

[adq]

Apologies for not. too busy getting the coffee and triple checking the grammar. jolly good job home is indeed still home really. Bummer to those who are forced to move. Fine if one moves by choice. Good luck with MM. She's normally extraordinarily persuasive. Only skimmed the rest.

[Xjy]

Too bad you lost - though I don't think any bets would have been taken on the outcome... :-)

I'd be a bit careful about knocking the "author/text", "page/personality" identifications, though, Mary. You might just get swept out in the next round of Cambridge's anti-intellectual purges. Gradgrind doesn't like the idea of hidden mechanisms at work beneath the "visible" surface. Except maybe the "hidden hand" of the market, or of (our good old comfortable reliable male King James CofE) God. Don't want boat-rockers or high-horsers here!!

(School memory, 6th form French:
Me: ... God - if he exists...
Squeers: Get off yer high horse, boy!)

[doggerel]

Ref literary festivals.
The book's the thing. The rest is just gravy train trimmings. Adds a bit of flavour for some leisured punters and brings in the dosh for impoverished authors and academics.
All parts of the whole are needed, though, so we should all celebrate anthing that elevates books to consciousness level.
I see books as entertainment. just like footall or Dancing on Ice. Just as in the case of D on I, the entertainment is backed up by a set of skills strenuously maintained by exercise. Academics are the skill set, and festivals the exercise.
So applaud.

[Mary]

Michael -- I think you are being a tad unfair to Peter.... the intro worked well as a welconing opener on the evening... it seems a bit weird, though, when you're listening at home and just want to get to the STUFF. I'm glad anyway that you 'appreciated' my anglo-style Greek!
But you didnt say what you thought of the whole!

[Michael Bulley]

Now we know the result. Prompted by the above piece, I've listened to a bit more of the podcast. The person introducing it (Peter Stothard?) should think twice before speaking in public again. I said I'd given up, in my first go, before the end of his remarks and so hadn't even got as far as Mary Beard's contribution. This time, I analysed the first minute, just to check. During it, there are 16 "er"s and eight repetitions of words. If it makes sense for him to have had that role, it would make as much sense for me to be chosen as Britain's shot putt representative in the Olympic Games.

It seems, too, that Mary Beard has the same approach to the pronunciation of classical Greek as Chaucer's Prioress had towards that of French. Or are we, again, mired in the miserable ironies of certain strata of British society where it is not the done thing to seem to have done a thing well? One doesn't want to be thought a show-off, you know. A few years ago the winner of the English croquet championships, who had won by a huge margin on account of his obviously superior skill, declared it was just luck. I despair!

[adq]

The point about biting the festival that feeds is a point. There is no alma mater, so it seems