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.

What has happened to the archaeology of Iraq?

Last week I reviewed an extraordinary book for the Times Saturday Books page.The Destruction of the Cultural Heritage in Iraq is a collection of essays about what has happened to the archaeology and museums of Iraq around, and since, the invasion. Where are the treasures of Ur, Babylon etc. now? Answer: many are lost, destroyed, or making a lot of money for antiquities dealers in the west.

The review was, in some ways, a stupid thing to take on. My Pompeii book is to be finished  -- bar the would-be elegant conclusion – on Tuesday (sic). But I have recently got very interested in the relationship between archaeology/culture and war. This is partly because of the bombing of Pompeii by the allies in 1943, which left many areas of the site a wreck (though thirsty travellers may be ironically grateful that it cleared the way for the site restaurant).

The book proved even more fascinating than I imagined, and more fascinating than I could squeeze into the 500 words I was given.

I hadn’t for a start properly appreciated the history of the Baghdad Museum, which had been founded by Gertrude Bell, as part of the British Mandate in the 1920s. Indeed it seems to have been Bell who started the practice of keeping some of the antiquities in Iraq, rather than sending them round the Museums of the Great Powers.

That said, given what has happened, one feels quite grateful – as I’m sure I’ve said  before – that some of the Iraqi treasures were in the safe housing of the British Museum.

Cannabis or alcohol? The listening prime-minister.

New Labour has shown again that it only has one response to things it doesn’t like: that is, criminalise them.

And if it wants to show it dislikes something more than it used to, it puts the criminal penalty up a notch, pour encourager les voters.

Many of us don’t like hunting, even if  -- in my case – we flirted with it in our rural pasts. But I can't help thinking that it would have been a good deal better to kill off this nasty nineteenth-century tradition (which is what it surely must be) with the drip, drip of ridicule than with unenforceable legislation. After all, those men in red (pink, I mean) jackets do look very silly, don’t you think?

As for cannabis, it is extremely enjoyable  (more enjoyable than hunting, as -- inter alia - it doesn’t require staying on the back of a horse). There is also no doubt at all that for some users it is dangerous, even life ruining. Surely there is a way of getting that message across without upping the potential prison sentence, which is what the government’s reclassification of the substance from Class C to B means. In fact young people's cannabis use had actually been falling since it was down-graded to C, which makes one wonder whether the risk of punishment might have been part of the allure.

But isn’t it odd that Gordon Brown’s first, turn-over-a-new-leaf, style of listening, actually means not listening to the very committee he got to advise him on this ? For they advocated precisely the reverse. I guess ‘listening’ is a good sound-bite, but it still means a choice about who you are going to listen to.

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?

I miss voting

It’s local election day -- and, of course, I have voted, in a way. I learned very young from a radical mother that women had only recently fought for suffrage and that it was little short of a crime not to use the right. So use it I do.

But nowadays I use it on the kitchen table, with a postal vote. It takes rather less time than going down to the polling station, which is why I opted for it. But actually the opaque instructions they give you, the complicated system of envelopes (two of them A and B) and the declaration that you have to sign, means that the saving is less than you think. I also half suspect that several of my previous postal votes will have been invalidated because I put the wrong piece of paper into the wrong envelope.

The real problem, though, is that on this system voting becomes a very low key experience – done over a bottle of wine, and a jolly chat with the husband about the merits of the various candidates (or in our case about the merits of the Lib Dem and the renegade Lib Dem now standing as an Independent -- I opted for the former; he did too, I think, but confidentiality here is still the rule).

All this is a far cry from walking to the polling station in the redundant school down the road, passing the friendly copper and the party reps taking your number, declaring your identity to the officials, going into the little booth, putting a cross with your pencil and finally folding the piece of paper up and slipping it into that battered tin box.

Even I could never do that without a bit of a shudder of civic responsibility and sense of occasion.

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?

Ten excellent blogs

I was chuffed to be nominated as an “excellent blog” by Heresy Corner (an excellent blog itself). So, according to the rules of this game, I must now nominate ten more excellent blogs.

Here goes in no particular order  (not all are on my links list yet, but they will be soon).

One: BLDG BLOG is a real queen of blogs. Hosted by Geoff Manaugh in California, it’s mostly about architecture, art and urban (and other) spaces. A book of the blog is coming next year.

Two: Clive Davis' Spectator blog. The Spectator isn’t Beard’s natural home, but when I discovered he was reading me I gave him a go (OK -- how self-regarding can you get?). He picks up lots of good things – and has a nice wry take on them.

Three: Soleil en tête is one to catch for the francophone. A French Canadian writer and history teacher blogs about writing, teaching and her brain tumour. Not the usual illness-blog-cliché and not mawkish at all. She posts, for nice classical reasons, under the name of Danaee.

Four . . .

Old-fashioned mortgages

I am beginning to feel some nostalgia for the old-fashioned mortgage. I’m sure that some readers of this blog must remember what it was like borrowing money to buy a roof over your head in the old days. The old days? I mean a quarter of a century ago,  which is when I bought my first flat, overlooking the main railway line just north of Euston. Jolly nice it was too; but jolly noisy.

Anyway, the old system went something like this. First of all, you had to show you were a ‘regular saver’.  That usually meant picking a Building Society some years before you thought you would ever want to buy a house, and paying 50 quid or so into a savings account. Unless your Mum and Dad were going to help out, you’d need to do that anyway, because 100% mortgages were quite unheard of. If you were very lucky, you might get 90% -- so my £27,500 flat needed £2750 from my own little nest egg of savings.

Then there was the basic rule of thumb that you could have two and a half times your annual salary, which JUST about worked for me. But more than that there was the scary interview . . . all about financial responsibility and being part of a mutual building society. Patronising and paternalistic it may have been. But this was not a questions of banks and shareholders and profits; this was about membership, and the symbiosis of investors and borrowers.

So I had a quick check on the Halifax’s mortgage calculator website, to discover that the rule of thumb was now FIVE times your annual salary.

Travel sick?

I know that tales of travelling misery rarely touch anyone else’s heart. The obvious answer is: well if you must go off jet-setting around and spoiling the planet, why should the rest of the world feel sorry if you are delayed/your flight is cancelled/you lose your luggage…

All the same, I am going allow myself a moan about my latest trip to the States. It’s been huge fun in all sorts of ways: I gave a lecture on the triumph at Rutgers, talked to a great group of US high-school teachers in Cambridge Mass., and had a fantastic two days in Seattle at a wonderful conference on Roman Art, which had been timed to coincide with a loan exhibition of Roman art from the Louvre at the local museum. A long way, you might say, to go to see art from Paris, but the display in the Seattle Art Museum was brilliant – and actually made me see all kinds of objects afresh.

But, nice as the whole trip has been, every single leg of travel has gone wrong in some way or other. I’ll pass over the more trivial problems: the almost missed connection in Chicago on my way from Boston to Seattle (I got the plane by 30 seconds as it was closing its doors, and it took me most of the flight to get my breath back); the suspicious package on the railway line, which held up the inappropriately named Acela Express from New York to Boston,  in New Haven station for over an hour. (OK, I know: better safe than sorry – but it doesn’t always feel like that when you’re not moving).

One of the worst bits was arriving in Newark “Liberty” airport – which had the effect of making me feel rather benign towards Terminal 5.

Feminism now: should boys play harps?

Last week the main BBC news (plus the Today programme) was full of a piece of research which demonstrated a gender bias  in choice of musical instruments.  Whereas 90% of young harpists are (apparently) female, almost 80% of young tuba players are (apparently ) male – and even more  electric guitarist. Indeed kids are encouraged in those choices by friends, teachers, society . . .you name it.

While parts of the planet were in melt-down, while Zimbabwe tottered, Kenya  simmered and  too few people were  killed in Iraq to be newsworthy . . .THIS was transmitted as a piece of gender discrimination akin to the revelation (the sort of news we faced when I was a kid) that more girls than boys were encouraged to become doctors and vice versa.

After a short time, feeling a bit bad about this, as I was obviously supposed to, I found myself reflecting….do I care really  if tuba players are largely male?

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.

Disabled access

I know it’s all too easy to knock Health and Safety rules, and the like. I’ve done it before and – yes – that smirky cynicism will be knocked out of me, if ever I get trapped in a blazing building because the Evac chairs have not been properly installed, or the emergency lighting isn’t working.

All the same . . . try this story.

The Classical Faculty building in Cambridge (where I tend at the moment, finishing my Pompeii book, to spend rather more hours of my life than I do at home) has just installed disabled access: (semi-)automatic front doors. This isn’t anyone’s fault. We were obliged to do this to be “compliant” (and, as one of my senior colleagues put it, to be “transparent” and “robust” too, no doubt).

So, until two weeks ago we had perfectly manageable front doors : a double set - one pair of outside doors plus another pair the other side of a small lobby. They were very easy to handle. The outside pair were heavy-ish, opened one way only and were still just about possible to manage if you had a large pile of books in your arms. The inner pair swung both ways and were easy to push or pull from whichever way you approached.

They have now been “up-graded’ to disabled use, and are almost unusable by the rest of us.

Terminal 5: the true horror

No, I have not had the misfortune to visit the new Terminal 5 at  Heathrow today, Thursday. But the husband has. Though, happily for him, he was arriving rather than trying to leave (hand baggage only, if your flight wasn’t cancelled).

The whole experience started brightly enough. The check-in at Athens was serving champagne (and juice for the minors) to celebrate T5 day. But things got darker pretty quickly when he discovered that, owing to problems at the new Terminal, the flight was delayed by two hours.

When it did finally take off, the cabin crew had stories that went rather beyond the official line of  “teething troubles with the baggage system”.

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.

Please can I have a bigger overdraft

The credit squeeze has started to hit even leafy Cambridge. Last week the son, who had received frequent communications from what we used to know as “The Listening Bank” suggesting that he might like to extend his overdraft, decided to take them up on their offer.

So he trotted off to the local branch and had an interview with some bank official not much older than himself, reviewing his assets etc. The upshot was that he was not a good enough credit risk. In other words, despite the come-on advertising campaign, the answer was no.

In some ways, this was an entirely sensible decision. The son has no assets at all apart from a few guitars and his Mum and Dad, so without some investigation into us, I don’t see why he should get a bigger overdraft.

On the other hand, he came home clutching his refusal letter explaining that he had not been given more credit for two reasons. One: he hadn’t passed the bank’s own guidelines. Two: he had “failed”, as it were, a credit reference agency check. The letter helpfully suggested that he might like to see what the credit reference agencies were saying about him and gave the names of three.

Having heard stories of terrible errors creeping into these records, we decided to take a look.

Do physicists need French?

If you have academically elite universities, it’s only predictable – indeed it's right and proper – that people debate exactly what qualifications students should have to get into them.

A hundred years ago, the headlines were all about whether ancient Greek should be a  necessary qualification to get  into Cambridge. Technically speaking it wasn’t actually a qualification you needed to be admitted in the first  place. But, if you wanted an honours degree, you had to do a preliminary exam in Greek soon after you arrived – which was pretty much the same thing in practice.

The arguments went as you might expect. The abolitionists claimed that the Greek requirement was preventing highly intelligent boys (sic) from coming to Cambridge, if they weren’t already at a select group of socially elite schools (the access argument). They also suggested that it was pretty ante-diluvian requiring a dead language when you could be getting the boys to learn a modern language, French or German (the utility argument).

On the other side, the retentionists argued that Greek was an essential part of a liberal education, and that it would disappear from schools unless Cambridge continued to require it. To this the abolitionists retorted that it wasn’t Cambridge’s job to take responsibility for the school curriculum.

The arguments went on from 1870 to 1919, when in the brave new post-war world the Greek requirement was abolished (and, true to the retentionists fears, the decline of Greek in schools had begun).

A hundred years on and the radical choice of the early twentieth century – namely French and German – are now in their turn to be toppled. Cambridge is planning no longer to require a modern language from all students across the board.

Dead men's books

When my mother was dying, she made it very clear that she didn’t want anyone wearing her clothes after she was dead. I didn’t quite understand this at the time. After all, she would have happily have given away her internal organs if they hadn’t been past their sell by date. And she happily distributed her used clothes during her lifetime. So why not after her death?

I vaguely supposed that it was something to do with the final annihilation that people going through, choosing or rejecting your clothes would seem to entail. And didn’t give it much more thought.

But last week, I came face to face with that sense of annihilation when the vultures(self included) descended to take the pickings of my old, recently dead supervisor’s books.

For many academics, books have much the same significance as clothes. They are what you use every day and you have your favourites as well as your expensive mistakes. Not to mention the carefully mended, the carelessly torn, the messily annotated.

The trouble is what happens to them when you’ve gone to the great library in the sky.

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.

To booze or not to booze . . .

I usually avoid newspaper articles about the dangers of alcohol consumption.

I don’t mind the one’s about teenage binge-ing. These tend to prompt a few minutes thought along the lines of: if we hadn’t put all our energies for the last twenty years into trying to keep the young off cigarettes and Class C recreational pharmaceuticals, then maybe they wouldn’t be going out to get slaughtered every Friday night. The kids have got to do something transgressive after all.

In the same vein I have some sympathy with the Moslem parents who opposed the ‘smoking in public places’ ban. Given that their children weren’t allowed to drink alcohol, there ought to be something a bit wicked they could go and do while they sipped their orange juice, without having to stand outside in the cold and rain.

It’s the doom-laden articles about middle-aged, middle-class women hitting the Sauvignon Blanc after a hard day in the office that I  prefer to avoid.

A day in Guantanamo

OK not quite. But I have just spent a day in an orange Guantanamo style jump-suit, as part of our student Amnesty Group’s “Orange Wednesday”. This was a bit of harmless and colourful street theatre, designed to draw attention to the injustices of illegal detention all over the world. A few hundred of us, mostly students but some staff, went about our daily business dressed as Guantanamo detainees.

I volunteered for this fancy dress partly because I believe in the cause. But partly because most students seem so un-bothered by issues of  surveillance, civil liberties and human rights that it is important to show some solidarity with those who are.

That said, I’m afraid I’ve lost some of my old knack for political action.

The first problem was: was I going to be able to get into the damn suit? (Not an issue for the poor thin creatures at the real Guantanamo, needless to say.) I had ordered an extra-large, but still had my doubts – particularly when the word went about that they only came in one size.

The good news was that it fitted. The bad news was that once in, it was almost impossible to get out. Going to the loo involved a good five minutes twisting and wriggling, before I could manage to release my shoulders and gradually pull the whole thing down.

Trouble on the Cam

The good burghers of Cambridge have got two particular troubles on their mind.

The first is the threatened invasion of a Tesco Express into ‘bohemian’ Mill Road. Why, they ask, when Tesco already controls more than 50% of the grocery retail in the town should we hand it any more? And why should we give them a chance to squeeze out all the local shops? Particularly in this area of town, which is (as it is fondly put) a ‘retail version of the United Nations’, from butchers (old fashioned and halal) to health foods, Italians delis and Korean supermarkets.

I’m entirely on the side of the objectors. However many lorries it will take per day to replenish the proposed outlet, is bound to be too many. Yet it is funny to watch the middle class residents change their tune with the wind. Those who only recently used to deplore the vomit on the pavements, the loitering drug dealers, and the rubbish around Mill Road, are now extolling the cosy multi-culturalism of it all – against the even worse enemy of Tesco plc.

And well-connected as they are, they get their objections onto the Today programme too. All power to them. But it’s not a route open to most of the population who don’t want things in their back yard.

Even more worrying though is what is planned for the Cam.

"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 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.

Can Simon Schama cook?

In this month’s (that is February’s) Vogue, that wonderful polymath Simon Schama shares his views on, and recipes for, stews. In the course of this article, “Simmer of love”, he has some harsh words for the culinary knowledge of Virginia Woolf.

His particular target is the meal cooked by Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, a tremendous pot of boeuf en daube. Just one ladleful of the stuff is enough to turn awkward company into human beings, joined in “tender communion’. Mrs Ramsay is delighted at the success of this French recipe and swoons over the lovely “confusion of savoury yellow and brown meats.”

Hang on, say Schama. What are these yellow meats in a boeuf en daube? “A chicken foot lurking in there along with the beef and onions, is there?”

And it gets worse. Mrs Ramsay had been extremely worried by the timing. “Everything,” writes Woolf, “depended on being served up to the precise moment they were ready.” Hang on again, says Schama. You can’t ruin a daube by the timing. “Stews are the most forgiving dishes.”

Mrs Woolf doesn’t know what she’s talking about in the culinary department, he concludes. She was, after all, rather “bony”.

I am afraid that it is the far from bony Prof Schama who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Any Questions -- and Roman omens

When I was about 12, I asked a question on “Any Questions” when it visited Telford New Town. It was one of those “What should the government do. . . “ type questions. In this case, what should the government about a group of merchant seamen who (as I recall ) had been arrested by the Chinese. One of the said seamen came from Market Drayton in Shropshire, and was indeed the brother of one of my school friends.

I remember two things about this occasion. The first was that I was a bit disappointed with the panel’s answers (one of them, I remember, called me “Madam” -- a form of address I didn’t feel particularly applied to me, aged 12). The second was that it seemed wonderfully exciting to be sitting up there on the stage saying what you thought about all these questions that people threw at you. And there, I suppose, a little ambition was born.

An ambition fulfilled on Friday night, when I did appear on “Any Questions” – broadcast from Ashtead in Surrey.

Heathrow border control

The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, says that we all want “compassionate” but “stronger” borders – to prevent illegal immigrants, identity fraudsters and the like entering our fair country. Hence fingerprinting visa applicants, plus other “compassionate” schemes – increased deportation powers, ID cards for visa holders etc.

When I came back from the APA in Chicago to Heathrow Terminal 4 last week, I thought things had already changed, even for us UK passport holders.  Maybe I haven’t been concentrating on what has been happening there recently, but (if you were a suspicious soul, unlike me, of course) it seemed to have taken a few steps further towards the police state.

Of course, shamefully, I am a paid-up member of biometric Britain, so I whizzed through the iris-recognition booth with no delay at all. But my colleague was wanting to wave his passport, for which there was a large queue – so I had plenty of time (some 25 minutes) to observe the surroundings, while I waited for him. It turned out to be even worse than the USA, where at least citizens slip through quite quickly, even if visitors are herded into a long and twisty line.

Breathalysed for my birthday

My latest proud possession is a home breathalyser kit. With Christmas and birthday combined, I’ve had loads of presents over the last few weeks (from shoes through iPhone accessories – yes I have one, “come friendly muggers” – to a new suitcase instantly recognisable on any airport carousel). But a couple have only just turned up.

The first is a jolly Victorian Parian-ware figure of the Muse Ourania (Astronomy), courtesy of Willingham Auctions. (Actually, the catalogue said just “a classical figure”,  but the globe and compasses clearly identifies her, I think.) She is going in my study at home, as soon as I have got some more shelves, and then got books off the floor – so I can actually walk into it again and there’s space for her.

The second is the said home breathalyser.

What prompted this present was this Christmas’s drink-driving campaign, suggesting that a good dinner would very likely leave you still over the limit the next morning. I feel quite confident that I know when not to drive during or after an evening out. But I haven’t got a clue what the score would be the day after.

The good news is that I haven’t yet, after many times of trying, been over the limit at 8.00 am (or at least not according to my kit – assuming it’s accurate). But there are still all kinds of odd discrepancies on the evening before, between me and the husband. Which is to say, after about half an hour into a shared bottle of wine I am regularly twice the legal limit – he is only half way there

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.

Why stop at the frail -- lets tag everyone

When I am 85, if I last that long, I fully expect that I shall be tagged.

Quite how “bewildered”, “frail” or “forgetful” (or whatever other euphemism my loving relatives choose for my incipient Alzheimer’s) I turn out to be, doesn’t matter very much. It will simply be more convenient all round for people to know where the old dear is. I’m sure I shall have given my consent . Between a little electronic chip and the kind of constant vigilance that means you’re only allowed out on the town when someone gives you permission, or worse still takes you, the choice is obvious.

Frankly I’m more worried about losing it (the tag, I mean). If the plan is that the chip doesn’t need to be in a criminal-style leg-band, but can just be slipped into my mobile phone…well, I lose that enough now at age 52. What will I be like at 85? Perhaps it would be sensible to go for the subcutaneous variety that people put in their dogs.

That’s me sorted then. But I have no doubt that it wont be long before the plans for tagging (sorry, “tracking” is the new word of choice) Alzheimer’s sufferers, proposed by the government science minister and now backed  by the Alzheimer’s Society, will be taken up elsewhere.

The case for tagging children is surely even stronger.

What should we do with Stonehenge?

Having been away, I have only just caught up with the decision to leave Stonehenge to the mercy of the motor car: