A Don's Life by Mary Beard - Times Online - WBLG

The face of Julius Caesar? Come off it!

What do you do if you are an archaeologist and you find a nice Roman portrait bust in the bottom of a river?

The answer is simple. You go through every book of Roman portraits and coins until you find some famous figure in Roman history who looks vaguely likely your man. It is laborious and time-consuming. But the principles are simple – it’s like a game of snap.

Why bother? Because almost every newspaper in the western world will be interested in your find if you say confidently that it is Cleopatra or Nero or Julius Caesar (and even more interested if you say that this is the earliest statue or the only one really taken from life – which is also a useful cover-up for the fact that your statue doesn’t look quite like all the others supposed to represent the famous figure).

However beautiful or important your find, no newspaper will be searching you out, if you have only found Marcus Cornelius Nonentito.

There’s a long tradition to this game. Heinrich Schliemann tried to convince the world that he had gazed upon the face of Agamemnon. Almost every local archaeological society in England was certain that the tiny little Roman villa they were digging up was actually the governor’s residence – and they labelled the plans accordingly, “Governor’s wife’s bedroom” and so on.

Now we have the story of the only surviving statue of Julius Caesar to be sculpted from life dragged out of the river at Arles. Right? And it’s even convinced the excellent Charles Bremner.

Keep Lesbos for the Lesbians

A tricky issue has just hit the Greek courts. Some residents of the island of  Lesbos have just decided to resort to the law to prevent the "Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece" from using the word Lesbian in its title.

The idea is that the heterosexual female denizens of the island don’t much like the idea that when they claim they are Lesbian everyone assumes that they are gay. (It’s a claim that might be stronger, I think, if the appellants in this case were women, not men representing their sisters. .) But if they are successful in their suit against the Greek organisation, the plan is to try to outlaw “Lesbians" (as a word) worldwide.

The problem here is the sixth-century BCE Greek poetess Sappho (on the right): born and bred in Lesbos, she addressed some of the most passionate erotic poetry the world has known to fellow women. An achievement which in the ancient world  earned her the title “10th Muse”. Almost ever since Lesbos has been synonymous with Lesbianism (in fact since the 18th century in British English).

This idea of decoupling Sappho, female homoeroticism and the island of Lesbos seems to me about as mad as trying to white out William Shakespeare from Stratford on Avon.

In fact, Sappho is the sexiest thing to have come from the island in 3000 years. Why on earth jack in the commercial possibilities?

Congestion charge. What did the Romans do?

Will Cambridge have its own traffic congestion charge? It looks likely. A bit different from the London version, it would charge you (£3-£5) for driving around between 7.30 and 9.30 am; after that it would be free. One notch up from the London scheme, there would be no concessions for residents within the zone – and in fact the plan is that you will get charged even for driving out.

I’m all for this in principle, but can’t for the life of me see why someone should get charged for driving from where I live OUT of the city, and so relieving congestion.

What’s puzzling is exactly who is backing this. All the leaflets from the three main parties that have dropped through the letterbox in advance of the City Council elections on May 1 have come out against. The Lib Dems say that it is being introduced by the Conservative County Council, and object (like me) to the driving out charge, and to the fact that the profits are to be spent on a road in Ely, rather than improving cycling facilities etc in Cambridge itself.

The Labour leaflet had the nerve to complain about the civil liberties implications of all the cameras required to operate the scheme. There may well be a point here, but when the Labour party has enthusiastically spread CCTV cameras across the nation to make us the most photographed part of the planet, what idiot (or dissident) in the local Labour party thought we wouldn’t notice the inconsistency?

The Tory, on the other hand, claims that it is all being driven by the Labour party. And with a charming classical reference reassures us that “like all cities since Rome in 70AD, Cambridge suffers from congestion. It is part of being a city.”

So what would the Romans have done?

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.

Meeting the military

Writing on the Roman Triumph has opened some very unexpected doors. I’m hoping to be able to report from the Emmy awards in Los Angeles in September (courtesy of the Triumph). But meanwhile, on Friday, I’m off to talk at RUSI (the Royal United Service Institute for Defence and Security Studies, founded by none other than the Duke of Wellington).

As a bit of a wobbly pacifist, I’m slightly surprised at myself for having invested (so apparently sympathetically) into the dilemmas of Roman warfare. Indeed I must also confess to having a bit of a soft spot for intellectual soldiers (the sort that end up as Bursars of Cambridge colleges). They  always seem to have better moral credentials when it comes to warfare than I do (a bit like the atheist clerics who end up as chaplains of Oxbridge colleges – a worthy tradition stretching back at least to the eighteenth century).

This is a romantic sensibility I must have inherited. For I also have a cousin who was once married to frontline member of the SAS, who managed to charm my mother (a far more hard-line pacifist that I am). Even she would somehow manage to overlook what this guy had done in the Iranian embassy siege, because he could intellectualise the moral problems so nicely (and help with the washing up).

The trouble is that smart generals and clever SAS boys are one thing; most other aspects of the military seem not so appealing.

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.

A piss-up with Socrates

Preparations are now apace for our TLS debate in Oxford tomorrow: would you accept a dinner invitation with Socrates? Beard, in case you didn’t already know/guess, is on the NO THANKS side (along with fellow sceptic Tom Holland). Those thinking that they would reply with a YES PLEASE are Oliver Taplin and MM McCabe.

I am already, I must confess, resigned to defeat. For a start I have never been known to win in debates like this (not enough punchy, simple , populist rhetoric??). I managed to lose when I was standing up for the Parthenon in a head to head with the Alhambra, championed by Robert Irwin. His pitch was that the Alhambra was very very beautiful indeed. Mine was that the Parthenon not only stood for the whole of western culture, having been pagan temple, church and mosque – but that it also affected us more qua ruin, than any complete building ever could. True – but not a winner in the rhetorical cut and thrust.

Then last year I managed to lose in the Greeks versus Romans debate at Cheltenham. I lost so badly in fact that the Greeks registered more votes at the end of the session than they did at the beginning. In other words my inventions actually lost the Romans some of the votes they already had. The problem is that Hellenophiles find it so easy to stand up and bang on about well springs/originary moments of Western culture: QED. (It is what I should have done when speaking for the Parthenon….)

So what am I going to say about Socrates?

Lets get rid of the fascist Olympic torch

I don’t quite understand how we have forgotten that the “Olympic Torch” ceremony was invented by Hitler and his chums.

If ever there was an “invented tradition” well worth stamping out, it is this ridiculous, Fascist-inspired waste of money – which sends a Bunsen Burner around the world at tremendous cost for several months before the Games, manned (and womanned) by people dressed up in pseudo-ancient Greek costume, no doubt feeling very silly.

In London, we are now told, it will soon be doing a mini tour, carried by a London bus, Docklands Light Railway and Dame Kelly Holmes (inter alios).

I can’t quite work out whether most of the press reports are pleased at the pro-Tibetan protests which dented the hi-tech assisted, sunbeam lighting ceremonial (plucky little Tibet poking the Chinese dragon where it, for once, might hurt); or whether they are a touch censorious at this upsetting of the peaceful, non-political programme of the Olympic Games that we have inherited from the ancient Greeks; or whether they are wondering what might happen to the UK in the ceremonies to come in 2012  (don’t forget Iraq, Mr Blair/Brown….).

Hardly any commentator stops to mention that this silly torch ceremony has nothing to do with the ancient Greeks, and was really invented to be a magnificent shot in Leni Riefenstahl’s movie (choreographed by Carl Diem). This is one of Hitler’s most pervasive legacies.

They also don’t stop to mention that the ancient Olympics – far from being that sweet haven of peace -- were pretty political anyway. Even in their hay-day, they were often interrupted by the rough hand of Politics.

Do we need Wikipedia in Latin?

I’ve only just caught up with the fact that there is a version of Wikipedia in Latin: or, to be precise, Vicipaedia.

I have to say that it is all very well done. I explored it, hoping to discover some dreadful howlers. But a ten minute glance gave them pretty much a clean bill of health. And there is plenty of earnest worrying about how to translate such termini technici as ‘link’ into Latin. Ligamen, nexus or vinculum? Oh help…

They haven’t got very far yet. Check out  the section on “professores rerum classicarum” (professors of  Classics) and you’ll find they’ve only got to three: the distinguished, but unlikely trio of Barry Baldwin, E. R. Dodds and W. L. Westermann.

But my problem with this enterprise is not its accuracy in Latinity or its progress. It is: what on earth is the point?

The house of Augustus: all mod cons?

Another new site to visit opens in Rome this week. It’s four rooms of the House of the first Emperor Augustus on the Palatine hill, never on show to the public before. Some parts of this building have opened from time to time, but those bits which you might have seen in the past  are currently closed. The plan is that in due course, when conservation has finished, they will open again to join this new section.

You’ll have to pay (11 euros), to cover entrance to this and  the whole of the Forum area. In fact, there’s been a bit of a sleight of hand here. For the last few years entrance to the Roman Forum has been free – one of the few major Roman sites in Italy making no charge at all. This ‘combined’ 11 euro ticket uses the new display of these four painted rooms to conceal the fact that you’re now being charged for the Forum too.

But the material you can see is so good that its hard to complain about the price. For what you’re walking into is part of the ‘modest house’ of the first emperor.

Of course modesty comes at various levels.

Does size matter?

I had a quick peek at the excellent new Cranach exhibition at the Royal Academy this week. I didn’t know much about Lucas Cranach the Elder before I went along -- except that he was one of those few painters whose work even an amateur like me could spot a mile off.

The Academy’s Norman Rosenthal lumped him together with Modigliani and Botticelli for instant recognisability, which I thought was a bit unfair to Botticelli, but you know what he means.

This Cranach show had caught the headlines a few weeks ago when London Transport first of all banned his nude Venus advertising poster from the underground, then relented. So we can now see her on the tube in all her glory.

But seeing her in the flesh sprang a couple of surprises.

Prince Harry: the Roman solution

I’ve found the adulation of Prince Harry -- who appears to have spent a couple of months driving a lap-top and something called a “Spartan vehicle” in Afghanistan -- a bit hard to take. OK, it’s easy for me to sneer, as I haven’t been in the Taliban firing line, but you know what I mean. Wouldn’t it actually have been more honourable if he had faced danger on some humanitarian project rather than pushing forward whatever military folly we’re committing in Afghanistan.

Almost equally insufferable were the interviews with the said youth, including his memorable comment about how he didn’t like England much.  To this, I had two reactions. One is that it is Harry’s job to like England. The rest of us are allowed to feel as ambivalent as we like. But, as third in line to the throne, he doesn’t have that luxury (though he has plenty of other ones). So he’d better just get on with it.

Second is that, if it’s the paparazzi who are bothering him, then may be fewer late night romps at Boujis could do the trick.

But further thought suggested that there was a Roman angle to this trip of the young prince to the military front line. In fact, Roman emperors knew a thing or two about the problems of sending the son and heir off to war.

Richard and Judy meet the Classics

I honestly have very little ambition to be a tv don. I know that a good number of academics do secretly – or not so secretly --  hanker after the celebrity heaven of their own Starkey-style series. Not me.

The effort-reward ratio never seems quite right. The hours of preparation, make-up, nose-powdering, dressing-up is out of all proportion to those few minutes when you’re visible on the screen. Unlike radio, when you turn up at the studio, say your piece, have a friendly drink, and go.

All the same, when the call came from Richard and Judy a few days ago, I didn’t say no. The story is in the trade that a feature on Richard and Judy can turn even the most unprepossessing book into a best seller. Sadly, that’s not why the call came. They were wanting to talk about Spartacus, the Roman rebel slave. I’ve recently been advising another BBC drama-doc on the Spartacan rebellion (it’s broadcast on Friday night). Richard and Judy wanted to know if this was more historically accurate than the old Stanley Kubrick-Kirk Douglas version.

It turned out rather as I feared.

Did St Valentine exist?

Valentine’s day comes with a sense of relief for middle-aged. At least you are not on tenterhooks about what might, or might not, come in the mail. Truth to tell, apart from welcome tokens of affection from the husband, I don’t think I have ever received a Valentine – of the traditional, unexpected, “wonder who it is” sort.

Nor for that matter have I ever sent one, so far as I can remember. Except years ago as a joke to a senior colleague, who was instantly convinced that it was from someone else. The less said about this the better.

None of which stops me being curious about the Roman history of all this. In fact, for all of you wondering if there was ever a real Saint Valentinus, the good news is that there was not just one, but three.

The bad news is that we know almost nothing reliable about him/them. Earnest and detailed articles about his true history (like the one in last Sunday’s Telegraph) have, I am afraid, fallen for some very unreliable parts of Valentine’s myth.

The "facts" are these.

What made the Romans laugh?

This is my new project, which I’m soon going to be working on full time and full speed. But, as I was down to give a lecture to a group of “lifelong learners” on Saturday night (they were spending their weekend reading Latin at the University’s Continuing Education Centre at Madingley Hall), I decided to give them a first taster.

So we spent an hour looking at Roman jokes. It’s a richer subject than you might imagine, though it’s shame that some of the best texts haven’t survived. Just think what you could have done with the 150 volumes of joke anthologies by one Melissus, a contemporary of the Emperor Augustus.

Still, I tried out some of those we do still have, curious to see how they went down.

The winner, I think, wasn’t exactly a joke, but a bit of Roman imperial sit-com. It’s a story about the bonkers emperor Elagabalus, recounted in the hugely unreliable late imperial series of biographies known as the Historia Augusta. It still had them laughing on Saturday:

"He had the custom of asking to dinner eight bald men, or else eight one-eyed men or eight men who suffered from gout, or eight deaf men, or eight men of dark complexion, or eight tall men or eight fat men  -- his purpose being in the case of these last, since they could not be accompanied on one couch, to call forth general laughter."

Elagabalus had a strong suit in practical jokes, and can be credited with the invention of a Roman version of the whoopy cushion. But they had a dangerous side too. He was the emperor (again according to the Historia Augusta) who showered his guests with so many rose petals they suffocated and died. (On the left, as pictured by Alma Tadema.)

But as for jokes proper, the winner was an ancient version of a “nutty professor” joke.

"How old is the Parthenon?"

Last week I got an email from a “researcher” in the office of the National Geographic Traveler Magazine. “Hello, Prof Beard”, it started.

The gist was that they were about to run a short article on Athens, and wanted to check a few facts. The first question was “How many years old is the  Parthenon?” Others followed: “Back in the early 1900s could visitors wander the ruins of the Parthenon at will?” “Is it currently surrounded by scaffolding as part of a meticulous restoration project?”

Now, without advertising my services too widely, I am usually very happy to help people out with classical things, if they have done something to help themselves (like read a book) , or if it is a bit arcane (I’m currently having a jolly exchange with a clinical psychologist about ‘thrill seeking’ in ancient Rome).

But I get pretty cross if I’m just being used a free ‘book-substitute”. OK, she did promise me a free copy of the magazine. But didn’t the guy who was getting a no doubt fat fee for writing this article think it was part of his job to know how old the Parthenon was?

So I wrote back like this:

The return of the gods

My gig on Friday night was at Tate Britain, The first Friday of every month the gallery hosts a “Late at Tate” night. It’s a marvellous mixture of a regular evening out and a bit of gallery gawping – a combination of music, drinking, eating, acts, art and lectures. Apart from the food and drink, it’s all free. A sort of May Ball for grown-ups, but a lot cheaper.

I came in on the lecturing side. The Tate has just opened a new show of neo-classical sculpture, called “The Return of the Gods” – full of classically inspired themes in eighteenth and nineteenth-century sculpture, from Thetis dipping the baby Achilles in the Styx to Pandora wistfully wondering whether to open the box. My job was to talk to punters about just four pieces for ten minutes spread throughout the evening.

Highlight of the show, but not for me (I actually think it’s a bit irritating), is Canova’s Three Graces. I decided to talk about some of the less well known pieces. The aim was to explain why what may look like slightly insipid white marble, recreating some serenely voluptuous male and female flesh, is actually a lot cleverer and a lot more intellectually engaged with the Greco-Roman sources on which it is based than most people ever imagine.

I’m hugely keen on the sculptor John Gibson, who has several pieces in the show. Not, sadly, his Tinted Venus (on the right), a brilliant confection of the Aphrodite of Cnidos and the biblical Eve (the bright gold apple does double duty, as both the prize awarded by Paris to Aphrodite, and Eve’s fruit).

But an unexpected star on Friday was Johan Tobias Sergel’s, Diomedes.

The rape of Britannia

I shall be rather sad if Britannia does indeed, as the Prime Minister plans, disappear from British coins. After all, it’s part of the point of a modern coin design that it should include some hoary old symbol that is simultaneously easily recognisable and also not fully comprehensible (or not comprehensible without a bit of research, anyway).

After all one of the Greek Euros has the Rape of Europa on it:  a frisky bull, about to run off with -- and worse – an innocent young maid. (Imagine what the New Labour moral police would have done with that one.) And what on earth was that little bird on the old farthing. Was it a wren or a robin? And why?

So Britannia fits the bill rather nicely. An appropriately antique goddess, invented by the Romans, as a symbol of their new province, and used on British coins since the seventeenth century. If she goes, I don’t hold out much hope, long term, for that nice bit of Virgil (decus et tutamen -- from Aeneid Book V) around the pound coin. I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr Brown isn’t much of a fan of Latin.

But while the traditionalists lament Britannia’s disappearance, they might like to reflect on her first appearance in Roman art. As rape victim of the doddery old emperor Claudius.

Roman gardening

I had missed the sad fact that Wilhelmina Jashemski died just before Christmas, aged 97. Hardly a household name, she had been Professor at the University of Maryland for almost 40 years, retiring in the 1980s. It was, however, thanks to her that we have a reasonably good idea what the average Roman garden once looked like.  I never met her .. and our only contact was when she asked me to write an article on ancient cucumber frames (sic -- which I regretfully declined). But I find that I’ve been using her more and more while I’ve been writing about Pompeii.

Jashemski’s triumph was to see that you could do a proper archaeology of Roman gardens. That meant  not just picking up all those microscopic traces of seeds and pollen that earlier archaeologists simply didn’t spot. Jashesmski did for plant roots what Giuseppe Fiorelli did for dead bodies.

That is to say, where Fiorelli in the late nineteenth century saw that you could pour Plaster of Paris into the cavities left in the lava by decaying corpses and reveal the shapes of the bodies, Jashemski saw that you could do the same with  the roots of plants … and so see what big trees/shrubs had been growing.

Whole gardens came to life.

Beard the Blog

What were the papers like at the APA? Several people have asked -- and the fact is that I didn’t actually go to any except my own, and those in my own panel. I wasn’t buried away interviewing, like some (though I did interview two potential graduate students for Cambridge).

No, I was sitting in my room writing an essay for a catalogue to go with an exhibition about the Roman Triumph, due to open in the Colosseum in the spring (it looks a good show by the way, for anyone who is going to be in Rome). My theme was fraud and deception at the triumph – including those marvellous stories of Roman emperors who dressed up fake prisoners to adorn their processions, or Domitian who, in the absence of any good spoils raided his own palace furniture store and  paraded that.  OK this should have been a piece of cake, but it still took me more than a day to put together.

Anyway my panel was called “From Classical Tradition to Receptions Studies: four national perspectives” – featuring me, Jim Porter from Michigan (on “Hellenism and Modernity”), Ernst Schmidt from Tübingen (on “The German rediscovery of Vergil in the Early 20th Century’) and Alessandro Barchiesi from Stanford (on whom more later).

So how did it go?

Professors for hire

I’m writing this in the “151 Bar”  of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Chicago, to the accompaniment of a Diet Coke (an unusual tipple for Beard) and a chicken quesedilla (an equally unusual food). Apart from two brief cab-rides to restaurants, I haven’t left this hotel for three days. The only real glimpse of the Windy City for me has been from my bedroom window (thirtieth floor but still not particularly inspiring – being face to face with a yet taller office block).

The reason for being here is the annual APA conference, the biggest classical conference in the USA (and therefore the world). These vast American jamborees are strange affairs. There are literally thousands of punters, which means that “plenary sessions” are more or less impossible (you need a vast ballroom to fit in even half those who attend). Instead there are dozens of “parallel panel sessions”, four to six mini papers of 15 or 20 minutes, grouped (rather optimistically sometimes) around a single theme.

But like with most conferences, it’s not the lectures that you go for.

What's an acceptable alternative to democracy?

The main difference between ancient Athenian democracy and our own was nothing to do with all those things the textbooks usually tell us: the use of a lottery to choose most state officials (the fairest, most equal kind of selection after all); the participation of everyone -- well every male citizen -- in the decision making process, not just selected representatives, as in our parliament; and so on.

Much more important than these institutional distinctions was the simple fact that Athenian democracy existed in a world in which it was perfectly acceptable NOT to be a democrat. It was quite OK to think that oligarchy, for example, might be a better idea.  Suggesting that democracy might not always be the best political system wouldn’t have caused a nasty silence at parties. In fact most surviving Athenian writers fell firmly in the anti-democrat camp.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have fancied living under an oligarchy, especially if I was poor and so firmly excluded from that particular political process (I know, as a woman I’d have been excluded from every kind of ancient political system – but I’m leaving that on one side just for the moment). And I wouldn’t much have fancied getting caught up in the civil wars that periodically broke out between oligarchs and democrats. But having some viable alternative did at least keep democracy on its toes – and it kept “democracy” meaning something.

Unlike now, when all kinds of corrupt and corrupting versions of the system trundle on under the legitimating title of “democracy” . . . and when we're all "democrats", or claim to be.

This last week has certainly been a bad one for the D-word.

Labouring Classicists -- and New year Resolutions

It’s New Years day and my birthday (OK.. 53). And my devotion to study on days that might in other circumstances be devoted to jollity is, I am afraid, getting to be a habit.

Today, I’ve been writing a paper for a big Classics conference (“the APA”)  in Chicago, where I’m going on Thursday. I promised a talk on “working-class engagement in Classics” in the nineteenth century. I’ve been fed up for a long time with the usual line that Classics has always been an exclusively elite subject, designed only to shore up such dubious notions as British imperialism and the un-contestable superiority of the British elite.

The idea in proposing this paper was to try to get some flesh on those doubts. It turns out that I only have to talk for 20 minutes, into which you can hardly squeeze much of an argument. But even so I’ve left it a bit to the last minute. Hence full steam ahead to today.

Actually – never mind the argument of the paper -- I’ve found some tremendous characters. My particular favourite is Alfred Williams (born 1877 and the man in the picture), and author of Life in a Railway Factory, who taught himself Greek and Latin, partly by chalking up his irregular verbs on the casing of his forge.

Five things the Romans did at Christmas

OK, the Romans didn’t actually have Christmas. And even Christian Romans didn’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday on 25 December until at least the fourth century AD.

But they did have a big festival in late December for the god Saturn (god of sowing, it is often said – but for most urban Romans his temple in the Forum was best known because it doubled as the state treasury).

And there are lots of things about this festival – the Saturnalia – that should ring a (Christmas) bell.

1) A big dinner. On 17 December, there was a great banquet at which the gods -- or statues of them at any rate -- joined in. And it was a day of release for Saturn himself, because the woollen threads which bound the feet of his statue together were cut or loosened. No, don’t ask me why: I haven’t a clue. But it’s another nice addition to the list of very weird things the Romans did.

And next . . .

Were ancient statues painted?

The short answer is ‘yes’. Much of the pure, gleaming white marble sculpture that we now admire was certainly coloured in some way. The question is how was it coloured: a delicate wash, or bright, glaring hues?

When I was in the States, I went to an exhibition in the Sackler Galleries at Harvard, which offered some examples of how Greek and Roman statues might have appeared with all their original paint. (You may have seen this show already – as a version of the same exhibition has appeared in Munich, Rome, Istanbul, and will soon go to the Getty.)

It’s a great, garish multi-colour spectacular. My question is  quite how far you believe the details. Does the colouring of  ancient statuary really mean this kind of bright, in-your-face, dazzle.

Or, to put it another way: if you are not entirely convinced by the gaudy blues and yellows, are you simply guilty of a romantic view of ancient sculpture that wants it all white?

How do we want our ancient sculpture to look?

The Last Days of Pompeii

Blogging again from 37,000 feet, I have come to the conclusion that air-stewards/esses fall into two types, much like nannies. On the one hand, there are those who exude brisk, efficient and wholesome concern (and, while affectionately liberal with the goodies, don’t encourage too many second helpings). In my experience, this is the British Airways/Air New Zealand type.

On the other are the “double dose of Calpol all round, rock the little ones  to sleep, so the nannies can put the kettle on and chat about their latest dates” type. This is what I have just experienced on American Airlines, from Los Angeles to Boston. We piled on at 3.00 in the afternoon and got force-fed vast quantities of alcohol (OK – it was what is euphemistically called a “premium” cabin), lunch was delivered and taken away at lightning speed. And then it was blinds down and lights out, while the cabin crew spent the rest of the six hours engrossed in chat and doing their nails. Woebetide any passenger who didn’t go to sleep. In fact, on the flight out to LA, they actually barricaded their area with one of those little trolleys and anyone daring enough to try to pass by to get to the loo was firmly told to use the one at the back.

I wouldn’t have minded the lights-out, snuggle-down routine quite so much in other circumstances, but when you are going West to East, LA to Boston, in the middle of the day, the way to avoid jet lag is to STAY AWAKE not go to sleep.

But anyway this was the only blot on my trip to the Getty Villa and Center, where it was a nice 80 degrees and sunny, the lecture went well, plenty of books were sold, lots of friends came – and (when I wasn’t self-promoting) I had enormous fun as part of a “brain-storming” group making plans for a Getty exhibition on the “Last Days of Pompeii”.

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.

Want a motto? Do it in Latin.

I am delighted to see that some of the contributors to the great British national motto competition realised that a bit of Latin might help out here. For it is truth universally acknowledged that a society in search of a slogan, must be in need of Latin – which usually puts things snappier and shorter and cleverer than the poor old English vernacular.

I mean, could you ever capture “Per Ardua ad Astra” quite so neatly in our mother tongue? “Through struggles to the stars” seems horribly cumbersome. It's actually only one word more, it feels more like three times as long. (There were in fact a couple of 'tribute' parodies of this posted.."Per ardua ad nauseam" -- or "Per ardua ad Robin Reliant (cant afford an astra)")

I know this truth to be fairly universally acknowledged, as my Faculty in Cambridge gets so many requests from Rugby clubs, charities, WI’s, etc., to turn some reassuring platitude into a Latin slogan that we have a specially designated motto-writer. Professor X (I’m not going to reveal his name for fear of increasing the workload beyond what is manageable) is kept pretty busy.

Well, the British motto suggestions fell into two camps: a few who picked up an existing Latin slogan and redeployed it more or less appropriately; and most who tried their hand at their own bit of Latin. The results of this were what my older colleagues would call “alpha/gamma” – that is, occasionally brilliant but let down by some awful Latin grammar (or alternatively, disappointing in their grip on the Latin language, but enlivened by flashes of genius).

Playing safe with bona fide Latin was John Marshall with “O tempora O mores” (“What times, what customs!”). This is a quote from Cicero in 63 BCE railing in the senate against the standards of his own day and at the terrorist Catiline. Catiline was supposed to be bringing down civilisation as Cicero knew it, and planning to nuke Rome. The only trouble is, it is just as likely that Catiline was a relatively innocent stooge, set up by Cicero looking for reds under the bed, and for an excuse for a brutal campaign of summary executions (or, in our nicer days, detention without trial)…not a dangerous “terrorist” at all. So all the more appropriate then?

The trouble with inventing your own Latin is quite how to make it sound clever rather than “dog”. Not many succeeded. A few admitted their ignorance.

Archimedes thought the "National mottoes are for wimps" might sound better in Latin, but didn't risk it. Simon asked for the Latin for “Keep a stiff upper lip".

What would that be?

Have we found the Cave of Romulus?

There’s lots in the news this morning about Italian archaeologists having found the very cave where “according to legend” the famous wolf suckled the abandoned twins – Romulus and Remus – who went on to found the city of Rome. Or at least Romulus did; he murdered Remus in the process.

It’s one of those funny returning news stories, because it was first announced way back in January. Presumably it didn’t get enough attention then, so it’s now being re-run, backed by Mr Rutelli, ex-mayor of Rome and now the Minister of Culture, as triumph for the Italian nation (“ a mythological place has become real”, he said). And sure enough, today, it’s all over the press and the airways.

But is it true?

Well, for a start, it depends on how much stress you give to “according to legend”. For the last ten years or so, there’s been a huge campaign in Rome to find the traces of the “real Romulus”. One tremendously charismatic Italian archaeologist, Andrea Carandini, has boasted of unearthing the traces of Romulus’ own palace, not to mention his original city boundary (the one Remus jumped over and got himself killed). So why not the cave too?

Well the truth is, folks, Romulus didn’t exist. He is a MYTH. So searching for his physical remains is a pretty fruitless task.

But is this the place that the Romans themselves BELIEVED was the cave of Romulus?

That’s a finer question.

And the answer is “maybe”. But, honestly, I still have my doubts.

Mission accomplished

You’ll be relieved to know that the parties and the five-minutes-of-fame radio talks are pretty much over, here at least.  I don’t think that even I could take more than a week or so, fun as it certainly is. At this point I feel like a nice couple of days in bed to recover.

Dream on. For now comes the rather more serious – and frankly more lasting -- side of raising the book’s profile. That is, going out and talking about it. First stop, on Thursday, is the London Review Bookshop for a gig with one of my colleagues in Cambridge, Chris Clark.

Chris works on the history of Germany and recently wrote a history of Prussia that won loads of prizes. We thought it would be fun to talk about first about the Romans, but then about the idea of “triumphalism” a bit more widely. So do come.

Of course, Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment is likely to be on the agenda – which was typically Roman in its amateur dramatic style. I hadn’t realised until a few weeks ago that the aircraft carrier he landed on was just off San Diego, I thought he was in at least somewhere near the Gulf. Caesar would have loved the stunt.

But we hope to open it up a bit beyond the “US = Rome (or does it?)” debate.

Why didn't the Athenians give the women the vote?

I have had a dreary cold, which in other circumstances would mean postponing teaching and taking to bed with a glass of whisky and a DVD. But the term-time schedule here (see previous moaning blog) means that if you put off an afternoon’s teaching, there’s really nowhere to put it except 7.00 in the morning or 10.00 at night sometime beyond next week. And I can assure you that students find that no more agreeable (or quaintly idionsyncratic) than you or I.

So you muddle through, like I did this afternoon from 2.30 to 7.00 solid, spreading your germs, trusting your voice will hold out, and hoping that the young will get you interested enough to forget you’re feeling so ghastly. It usually works. I can’t claim I was particularly looking forward to the three consecutive hours on the Critics (ancient and modern) of Athenian Democracy, but the students – pairs of my college first years – got me engaged. (If they didn’t, this job would be a lot less worth doing.)

One of the issues we skirted round was, of course, the Woman Question. Why didn’t those lovely democratic fifth-century Athenians give women political rights? And do we think worse of them for not doing so?

"Rivers of Blood" -- what Enoch Powell didn't say