A Don’s Life

Killing babies

One of the things that makes the Greco-Roman world seem so alien is the practice of killing unwanted babies. However much we are shocked by the recent  discoveries of the remains of 8 new-born babies in France (and whatever human tragedy underlies it), the fact is that such things were common in antiquity. Some were disposed of by 'exposure' (put out on a dung heap), others by rather more aggressive forms of murder. There were many Roman houses where dead babies lay under the floorboards or buried in the garden.

Indeed the very myth of the foundation of Rome itself starts with a story of exposure. Their wicked uncle ordered Romulus and Remus to be disposed of, and it was only good luck that meant that they were washed up on the banks of the flooded Tiber -- to be found by the wolf (the lupa -- a word which in Latin could also mean 'prostitute', which led to all kinds of predictable speculation on the part of hard-headed Roman rationalists).

And several of the plots of Roman comedies feature a slave girl who turns out to be have been born free -- but exposed at birth, and picked up by someone to be brought up as a slave. The revelation of free birth usually means that she gets to marry the (free) boy of her dreams.

But it's not just in myth and fiction. There is plenty of evidence from real life too. A famous papyrus letter from husband to wife in Roman Egypt, asks her to "let the baby live, if it is male; if it is female, expose it'. And the Jewish writer Philo, writes (disapprovingly) about the practice, explaining that some people strangle or suffocate the babies, while others expose them (after which they are just as likely to be eaten by wild animals as rescued by another human being).That's in Special Laws III, 114-5.

Classicists have found this puts them in a moral spot. Some have denied that the practise was, in real life, a common as is often imagined. One ostrich writing in the 1930s (to be precise, Classical Review for 1932) claimed that "the cruelty involved in infanticide even by exposure is very slight". The more recent line has tended to be that we are dealing here with a significantly different definition of "humanity" from our own. Of course, we have plenty enough debates about when someone becomes a person with human rights (at conception? at birth? somewhere in between?). For the Romans it was when the person was formally "accepted" (usually by the father) into the community, at a few days old. Before that the baby, although outside the womb, was no more than a foetus; infanticide, in other words, was a late abortion.

That is all logical enough, though I suspect in a hundred years or so, it will look as desperately exculpatory as the 1930s garbage about it not being 'cruel now does.

But why did the Romans (and the Greeks too, for that matter) do it?

Civilian casualties, leaks and the ancient view

By and large, Greek and Roman military command had it relatively easy when it came to leaks, civilian casualties and the PR side of warfare. To put it at its crudest, the imperial Roman legions would go off to conquer some bit of foreign territory, they would do it any way they could and come back home and boast about it. Not many people in Rome knew or cared about war crimes. It was winning that mattered.
Of course, it looked different from the barbarian point of view, but the barbarians got very little chance to put their point of view at Rome.

But even in the ancient world, it wasnt quite so simple. Many modern observers of the column of Marcus Aurelius (the 'other', less famous column still standing in the centre of the city) have wondered just how 'subversive' were the scenes of Roman violence depicted. The theme is Marcus Aurelius' campaigns against the Germans. There is much more here than on Trajan's column of (for example) women and children getting abducted or slaughtered. (There's a typical case at the top of this post.) Was this all celebratory? Or was there at least a strand here of displaying (even if not directly questioning) the very nasty side of Roman conquest?

And as for leaks, the problems of communication in the ancient world, meant that there were leaks and rumours aplenty. This is one of the things that struck me most when I was researching The Roman Triumph, I discovered that the senate often said to a general returning home and wanting a triumphal procession that they would wait and interview some of the (Roman) eye-witnesses before deciding on whether the victory deserved such an honour. The most extraordinary rumour I came across concerned a victory scored by Cassius Longinus (who went on to be one of the assassins of Julius Caesar). He claimed to have repelled an invasion of Parthians into Syria. Had he? One rumour circulating in Rome was that they weren't Parthians at all but Arabs dressed up as Parthians. (A bit like us saying that they weren't the Taliban but a load of Kurds dressed up as Taliban.)

And civilian losses could be controversial too.

FBA

I am going to allow myself a little boast -- because, as Richard Baron has already noticed in his comment on the last post, I was elected a Fellow of the British Academy yesterday. In fact I have known about this for a couple of months. It's one of those things where you get a letter saying that this is on the cards, but that is not going to be official until it has actually been passed formally at the AGM... and you are not to breathe a word etc etc.

If you are like me -- female, neurotic, and conscious of a variety of past indiscretions that might make you seem decidedly un-papabile -- you have these terrors that you will be blackballed at the last minute. In fact, when the email message came from the Academy to say that all had gone through, I was convinced that it was going to be a convoluted apology, explaining that things had not gone smoothly at the last minute ... but I would still be welcome at the dinner (which is how the election is celebrated) as my place had already been laid.

Actually  all went well and I had a great time and a great feast (and, no -- just in case anyone from the Daily Telegraph is reading this -- it wasn't at taxpayers' expense; we paid for our revels). There were over 30 people elected at the same time as me (you can see the full list here). But I was especially pleased that they included my old mate Andrew Wallace Hadrill...not just because I was pleased in a generous altruistic kind of way, but (as we admitted to each other last night) each of us would have been pretty miffed if the other had got in first. I mean I would have offered him fulsome congratulations, but would have been spitting inside. (There -- how's that for honesty!).

The joke is, of course, that I used to slag the Academy off something terrible.

Big Society: Cassandra speaks

Another advantage (sort of) of getting older is the more accurate predictions you find you can make about bright new initiatives brought in by some bright new government. That's why the elderly can seem a bit smug or grumpy -- they really have seen a lot of this before, and they know all about chickens coming home to roost.

There have been a couple of examples of this over the last few days. First there was the headmaster who was supposed to be earning more than the Prime Minister. This, I should say, is a dreadful new calibrator because it always assumes that the PM is earning some £140k, when in fact he earns than in addition to his basic MP's pay, making over £200k altogether. (Besides, over the years, the PM's pay has clearly been kept artificially low partly  to enable successive governments to criticise examples of high pay they don't like on the catchy grounds that this unworthy person is "earning more than the Prime Minister".)

Anyway this particular headmaster did appear (if you counted his backpay) to be earning more than the PM. I have no idea whether he is worth it. But fast-backward a few years and us oldies will recall how we being told that we should reward high flying school heads with the market rate for the job, that we should be able to pay "super heads" what they were worth. So a little "scandal" like this is almost inevitably the result.

It could happen in Universities too. We used to have a fixed "age-related" pay scale, with no "market supplements" or personally negotiated pay. Basically you could tell what a University teacher earned if you knew how old they were, and all full professors got paid the same. Then we were told that this was not rewarding talent or high fliers... and it was forcing our best home grown talent across the Atlantic. So now things are much more fluid, and a vast pay-scale for professors, which we can bid to ascend. It's only a matter of time before some newspaper finds a Professor of Sanskrit earning more than the PM (well not quite...)

And then there was the Observer's scoop about the rough discipline (to put in mildly) in privately run young offenders institutions. Another bright idea (it would be so much cheaper, and anyway competition will force the quality of penal institutions up...) going down the predictable path.

So it isn't hard to see what will happen with all these Big Society initiatives.

Laughter - Chapter One

I have spent the last few days writing the first chapter of my Laughter book (and finished it today). I had, in fact, written this chapter some time before, a couple of months ago -- but it wasn't right. In fact two colleagues, one in Berkeley and one in Cambridge, tactfully told me that it wasn't quite right.

Looking at it again, I saw what they were getting at. It was frankly a bit boring. So I have had another go at it.

What I  have wanted to do is introduce a book on Roman Laughter with  a couple of vignettes that somehow capture the complexity and interest of the subject -- and tell the reader how fascinating it is, without just doing the "here are a few dirty Roman jokes" routine.

Do we need bad teachers?

The retiring Chair of Ofsted, Zenna Atkins, has got herself into trouble (and no doubt been misquoted) in saying that it might be good for kids to learn to cope with the occasional bad teacher. Even if she is misquoted, I am with her (despite her ghastly website)... the idea that public services can be free from human frailty is surely bonkers. We all need to learn how to recognise and deal with a teacher/policeman/tax-inspector/doctor we don't entirely trust -- just as we learn how to deal with a private business that does not give us what we asked for. The appalling encroachment of (illusory) tick-box competence is something we need to resist; we are always going to have to deal with people who are below par (that's the definition of par, after all).

But the big question is not "what do you do with bad teachers?", but "how do you know who a bad teacher is?"

When I was an undergraduate, I was very fierce about what I considered bad lectures. In fact a good friend of mine on one occasion went up to the then Professor of  ***** (one Professor K***) and told him publicly that his lectures were a disgrace to the university. The truth is that they both were and weren't, but my friend's fully frontal confrontation was a much more effective way of raising the issue than pouring her heart out in an anonymous questionnaire.

But when a student activist in the 1970s, I got a shock.

Tea at Claridges . . . and dinner at Westminster School

The husband is away, and I have been in London working (in fact the whole day I spent in the Institute of Classical Studies Library was the most delightful, uninterrupted Library day I have had for months ... and my 'holiday' is I hope going to involve many more such). But the evenings have offered some more sybaritic rewards.

On Tuesday, I went to meet an old schoolfriend, who mostly lives in Singapore, for tea at Claridges -- an English experience we thought we should try before we got too old. It turned out to be rather good, and though pricey, you wouldn't have been able to eat any supper after it (three courses of sandwiches, scones and cake -- with, for us, jasmine tea; and we added a glass of champagne to start). And it wasn't too much of a replica of itself if you know what I mean (elegant modern china, not something pretending to be what your granny might have had).

But the real surprise was the other people eating there... lots of them. There are roughly three 'sittings' and you need to book a good way in advance -- the though-put must be in the hundreds. Some were predictable enough: families and quite a few Muslim groups (the champagne was very much an optional extra -- it's  a good place to come and celebrate alcohol free). The surprise was a significant minority of tables occupied by men, mostly in pairs, but a few threes and fours. What were they at? My tea companion thought that business deals were being struck, also in an alcohol-free zone. Another friend later suggested that tea at Claridges must be a spot on the gay scene ... More ideas?

Anyway, the next night, it was dinner at Westminster . . . .School.

Question Time . . . "and the prize for the prettiest panellist goes to . . ."

Last Thursday I was a panellist on Question Time, the tv equivalent of Any Questions and just a bit more scary. That's partly because it's television and so if you make an idiot of yourself, it's entirely VISIBLE (though it is slightly pre-recorded so if you commit libel or blasphemy, they can cut it out). And it's partly because it's a bit more hard line politically, so presumably just a bit edgier for the professional politicians on the panel.

Actually (and predictably enough you may say) I much enjoyed it, as well as being terrified. Like Any Questions, it's rather like doing exams -- which I also remember with a combination of pleasure and fear. You have to question spot, do your revision, get your facts sorted in your head. The difference is that in the case of Question Time, the revision consists in reading all the newspapers I don't usually get time for (or wouldn't want to be caught reading), not in mugging up the set texts.

There's also that familiar sense of annoyance when the revision comes to nothing. On this occasion I had invested several hours in mugging up the British football crisis. I knew the Tory proposals for bringing back competitive school sport (just think how awful that would be ... it was, remember, competitive school sports before the 1970s that put most of us OFF exercise).  And I knew what Fabio Capello earned, and what his possible severance deal was supposed to be -- and I had calculated the annual wages of the squad and how that compared to the annual grant of the British Museum (you can see what my point was going to be . . . why doesn't this country invest in what it is good at (art, music, culture), rather than football, which it isn't?

But the similarities only go so far. The other panelists didn't actually seem much like fellow candidates -- and  sprung some surprises.

Retirement parties -- and more on the trains (sorry)

In the old days, when I showed up at a retirement party, it was for someone who seemed very old -- a senior colleague whom I didn't know very well, or someone who had taught me. Now, retirement parties are for friends, who seem pretty much my age. And I find I have a quite different attitude to their style and choreography ('would I like this for me?' tends to be a question niggling at the back of my mind).

On Wednesday I went to the party for John House, who is leaving the Courtauld Institute after thirty odd years. He's on the far left in the picture (inter alia, he works on Monet and Manet -- hence the faint outline of the "Bar at the Folies Bergeres" you see in the background).

Anyway he can't have felt horribly old, because his old PhD supervisor (Alan Bowness, in the middle) also turned up to celebrate his pupil's retirement. You know that you are still young, so long as your old teachers are still walking the planet. (This actually reminded me of going to Frank Walbank's 90th birthday party a few years ago -- and his old Director of Studies was there to give a little speech. Imagine being 90 and still having your old DoS at your party.)

On this occasion one of the best stunts was a cever little elegy for the honorand, composed by John Lowden, on the right in picture.

To understand this properly, you need to know that the Courtauld used to be basedin Home House (pronounced Hume), before it moved to Somerset House, on the Strand; and that one of the keys to understanding Manet's "Bar at the Folies Bergeres" is the precise angle of the mirror...!