In case you were wondering, as I was, why the Latin newsfeed on the sidebar hasn’t been updated for a while, “Nuntii Latini ob ferias aestivas ad tres menses intermittuntur, quam ob rem proxima emissio non ante quam Nonis Septembribus (5.9.) fiet.” [Over here.]
Ever since I started reading the Vatican’s excellent website about ten years ago I always thought it odd that you could get it in English, French, Portuguese, and so on, but not in Latin. Now the BBC is reporting today on the launch of the Vatican’s Latin website and suggesting the Pope’s enthusiasm for Latin might be the reason for its belated appearance. I’m quite pleased with this. Not so pleased that I’ll forgive the Church for its appalling record on child abuse or contraception or for closing down Amnesty International groups in its schools in Northern Ireland because Amnesty thinks rape victims should be allowed to have abortions, or anything like that. But, still, I’m quite pleased.
Perhaps they’ve been there for years, but I’ve only just noticed. Anyway, the papers from PECUS: Man and Animal in Antiquity, a conference held at the Istituto Svedese (i.e., Swedish Institute) in Rome in September 2002 are all online over here. I showed up with the rest of the gang from the British School at Rome in order to provide moral support for Michael MacKinnon, who was presenting some of his zooarchaeological work (i.e., ancient animal bones), and it then turned out to be easily the most enjoyable academic conference I’ve ever been to. Though I’m sorry to see the poster presentation (with music!) on bestialities ancient and modern in the rural mezzogiorno didn’t seem to make it through to the publication stage.
I’ve finally worked out how to make the Finnish Latin news feed on the sidebar update itself, so we now have news about Nova Hantonia and Amnesty’s campaign ut lapidationem ad capitis poenam expetendam finiant. For some reason it stopped reporting the nuntii some time in the Autumn. Happily, it’s sorted out now.
Charlotte Higgins on the return of Latin to the inner city.
(I still say we should make Latin the sole official language of the European Union, but I think I’m the only one who says that.)
Oliver Kamm makes the correct point that Paul Foot’s book on The Rise of Enoch Powell is really very good indeed; Mary Beard provides a classicist’s perspective on his notorious speech; and Simon has a very interesting discusison of West Midlands Toryism.
UPDATE [4.45pm]: So, here’s Hastilow’s article; here’s the transcript of the “rivers of blood” speech, and there’s some blog-discussion by Tories here, here, here [ConservativeHome] and here [Iain Dale]. Also Michael White and Sunder Katwala on CiF.
It had to happen. Over here.
Norm links to the bearded philosophers page at Cambridge and quotes the saying that “A beard does not a philosopher make” (”Barba non facit philosophum”, from over here). It’s a terrific topic. We have a report of this exchange from antiquity, involving the Stoic Epictetus:
“Come now, Epictetus, take off your beard.”
– If I am a philosopher, I answer, I will not take it off.
“Then I will take off your head.”
– If that will do you any good, take it.
And John Sellars tells this story in his book on The Art of Living (2003, p.15):
“In AD 176 the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius created four chairs of philosophy in Athens, one for each of the major schools. When, a few years later, the holder of the Peripatetic Chair died, two equally well qualified candidates applied for the post. One of the candidates, Diocles, was already very old so it seemed that his rival, Bagoas, would be sure to get the job. However, one of the selection committee objected to Bagoas on the grounds that he did not have [a] beard saying that, above all else, a philosopher should always have a long beard in order to inspire confidence in his students. Bagoas responded by saying that if philosophers are to be judged only by the length of their beards then perhaps the chair of Peripatetic philosophy should be given to a billy-goat. The matter was considered to be of such grave importance that it was referred to the highest authorities in Rome, presumably to the Emperor himself…”
Over the page, Sellars suggests that it was the mission of the three philosophers to Rome in 155 BCE which created the popular link between philosophers and beards. That was the famous occasion (which haunts Grotius scholarship down to the present day) when the Sceptic Carneades made a speech in favour of justice one day, and a speech against it the next, very much annoying Cato the Censor in the process. But these were bearded Greeks in clean-shaven Rome, and the Romans remembered the beards.
ADDED A FEW MINUTES LATER: Sellars also goes on to note (pp.18-9) that there’s evidence from the ancient sources to suggest that the philosophies of the Greek philosophers shaped the ways in which they wore their beards:
“For example, the Cynics, who preached strict indifference to all external goods and social customs, sported the longest and dirtiest beards. The Stoics, who argued that it is acceptable to prefer certain external goods so long as they are never valued above virtue, also sported long beards, but engaged in occasional washing and trimming for purely practical considerations. The Peripatetics, who following Aristotle believed that external goods and social status were necessary for the good life together with virtue, took great care of their beards, carefully trimming them as appropriate for a member of the traditional Greek aristocracy.”
Presumably this is some kind of ancestor of the debate in the Eastern Orthodox Church about whether holiness resides in a beard, but maybe that only ever existed in my imagination.
Final thing, final thing: I think the Stoics were the ones who were most gripped by the idea that philosophers should have beards, and it’s interesting in this regard that when eighteenth-century French writers were compiling their surveys of women philosophers in antiquity (which were sometimes appended to editions of Diogenes Laertius, presumably for consumption within salon culture, but I don’t really know) that they were able to find evidence of women philosophers belonging to all the different sects except the Stoics. (Lots of good women scholars of Stoicism these days, but that might not be quite the same thing.)
Thanks to a plug-in or two and the technical assistance of my friend Steve, we now have the News in Latin easily available on the sidebar, just below “last posts” and just above the blogroll. This is splendid.
More information about Finland’s gift to the world here.
Over the same curry, I enjoyed reading a new version of a well-known Christmas Carol in the most recent copy of the Classical Association News (which the Virtual Stoa reads so you don’t have to, etc.):
Misit huc Magos Oriens
stella tres nos ducit agens
rura rivos campum clivos
donaque transferens(O) SIDUS ADMIRABILE
CLARA PULCHRITUDINE
NOS PRAECEDENS, NUSQUAM SEDENS
NOS AD LUMEN DIRIGE!Natus est ad Bethlehem Rex:
aureus confirmet apex;
totus sine cuncto fine
pareat illi grex:Numinosum offero tus:
noscitatur ture Deus;
ornent iuncti Summum cuncti
cum prece laudibus:Ecce! myrrha acerbum olens,
umbras imminere docens!
Cruciatum immolatum
en lapis opprimens!Iamque vindicatus ovat,
se victorem nuntiat
angelorum terra chorum
laude reduplicat.
Mark Mortimer’s apparently translated 300 hymns and carols into Latin: Latinised Hymns available from Newton Publications, Old Rectory, Newton Reigny, Penrith, Cumbria, CA11 0AY, £11 a pop.
Right, that really is it for a bit. I’m off to watch the Dalek episode of Dr. Who, and then I’m popping round the corner to St Barnabas for the Midnight Mass. And then off to London in the morning, if I can find a bus to take me.
Yup, it was Pliny the Elder alright, Natural History 8, 47. Here’s the Latin:
Easdem partes sibi ipsi Pontici amputant fibri periculo urgente, ob hoc se peti gnari; castoreum id vocant medici. alias animal horrendi morsus arbores iuxta flumina ut ferro caedit, hominis parte conprehensa non ante quam fracta concrepuerint ossa morsus resolvit. cauda piscium his, cetera species lutrae. utrumque aquaticum, utrique mollior pluma pilus.
And here’s the splendid English translation of 1601 by Philemon Holland:
The Bievers in Pontus gueld themselves, when they see how neere they are driven, and bee in danger of the hunters: as knowing full well, that chased they bee for their genetoires: and these their stones, Physicians call Castoreum. And otherwise, this is a daungerous and terrible beast with his teeth. For verily, hee will bite downe the trees growing by the river sides, as if they were cut with an axe. Looke where he catcheth hold of a man once, he never leaveth nor letteth loose untill hee have knapped the bones in sunder, and heard it cracke againe. Tailed hee is like a fish, otherwise he resembleth the otter. Both those beasts live in the water altogether, and carrie an haire softer than any plume or downe of feathers.
That’s probably enough Beaver-Blogging for one morning. I’ll get back to Kitten-Blogging soon.
A while ago I used this weblog to publicise the excellent Latin translation of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” by Judith P. Hallett. She visited the VS recently and wrote this in the comments box, which I’ll reproduce below on the grounds that I don’t think any of my readers are quite sad enough to spend their time trawling entries from months ago on the offchance that new comments have appeared. (I hope not, at any rate.)
See Classical Association News, June 2003, for a Latin version of “Take Me Out…” in honor of the CA Centenary.
Aufer nos ad Britannos, alumnos Boudiccae
Da nobis quae (id est quid, plura)
Publicae domus ardens est cura.
Societate gaudeamus
Eorum classica.
Centum annos floruit cum speque gloria.
As a member of the Classical Association (oddly enough), I’m flattered. And she also refers us to more of her translated songs on the Munich Petronian Society webpage, including “Jailhouse Rock” and, I’m delighted to report, the main theme from Oklahoma! reworked as “Nostra Roma!” (”Nostra Roma, urbs aeterna septem collium”, etc).
(We can only hope that a Latin version of “The Farmer and the Cowman” will appear before too long.)
Over at Respectful of Otters, Rivka reproduces “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in Latin and comments, “But seriously: I don’t know what it is about fans of Latin that prompts them to translate just about anything into Latin, seemingly unprovoked. You don’t see Ancient Sumerian hobbyists doing anything like that, do you?”.Well, you do, actually: go here for some discussion of the problems that you run into when you try executing the important project of putting Elvis Presley lyrics into Sumerian.
(The same guy also recorded quite a bit of Elvis in Latin, so perhaps it’s only Latin obsessives who also want to put things into Sumerian, too.)
When I’m not reading the blogs, I’m reading the newsletter of the Classical Association, CA News. This is old news, but it’s only just reached me, and it made me laugh, from the round-up of “Classics in the Media” in 2003:
But the biggest publisher’s advance, $500,000 no less, has gone to Victor Davis Hanson for a book on the Peloponnesian War. Hanson is a Classics teacher and raisin farmer… [blah blah blah] He followed this up [= Who Killed Homer?] with a devastating review of a Judith Hallett anthology, which led her to protest that he had not disclosed to the editors the fact that, some years previously, she had reported him and a colleague to the FBI as fitting the description of the wanted “Unabomber”…
The colleague, perhaps unsurprisingly, was John Heath, co-author of the egregious nonsense that was WKH?, a book that was memorably and also devastatingly reviewed by Peter Green in the New York Review of Books [though sadly, it's not online: it should be, as a public service to the world].Judith Hallett’s more recent contribution to classical studies has been to translate the American classic, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, into Latin. Sing along with me, please:
Aufer me ad arenam.
Aufer me cum turba.
Da mihi glires sparsos melle.
Reditum domum non curo velle.
Pro leonibus exhortemur.
Nil refert hominum.
Duo, tria membra edent
gladiatorum.
[And for an almost-literal and spendidly-singable translation back into English: Take me to the arena / Take me out with the crowd / Buy me some dormice in honeycomb / I don't care if I never go home / So let's root, root, root for the lions / Not the humans they maim / Munching two, three more body parts / at our Caesar's game!]
There’s more about garum on the internet than I thought there would be.
One of the curious things about being a politics academic going to classics lectures on Herodotus (see below) is that J. Enoch Powell is regularly mentioned, but in his capacity as author of a standard reference work, A Lexicon to Herodotus, rather than in his more familiar (to me, at least) capacity as racist hatemonger.
It reminds me of the time I was reading a very dull book from 1930 by Richard Hope on The Book of Diogenes Laertius (quite unlike DL’s own book, which is fabulous, full of good things). On several occasions, as I remember, the Book of Richard Hope footnoted Friedrich Nietzsche’s DL scholarship — for before he became the Nietzsche we know today, he was a professional classicist at the university of Basel who wrote rather dull articles on DL’s sources, and those who work on DL are understandably more interested in these pieces than, say, Beyond Good and Evil or Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Writing those words reminds me that Powell did go through a phase of modelling himself on Nietzsche: think of his obsession with landing a chair in his 20s, which led to his brief migration to Australia just before the outbreak of war. But, all things considered, I think that Nietzsche made the right career move when he gave up his academic classics. It would have been much better for all of us — and for the world of Herodotus scholarship — if Powell hadn’t.
Yesterday I went to a superb lecture by UC Berkeley’s Leslie Kurke on Herodotus-as-Aesopian-fabulist, which ended with a discussion of the famous Hippokleides story:
At last the day arrived for the marriage feast and for the Kleisthenes’ announcement of whom he had chosen from all. Kleisthenes sacrificed one hundred cattle, and summoned both the suitors and all of the citizens of Sicyon to the banquet. After dinner, the musical competition among the suitors was held, as well as also the competition in speaking on a set theme and in these, Hippokleides surpassed all the other suitors. As the drinking continued, Hippokleides ordered the flute player to play a dance tune for him, and when the flute player obeyed he began to dance. Presumably, Hippokleides danced to his own satisfaction, but Kleisthenes, as he watched the whole business, was disturbed. Hippokleides rested for a little while, but then he ordered the servants to bring in a table, and when it had been brought in, he danced on it, first of all Lakonian dances and after that Attic dances, he stood on his head on the table and waved his legs in the air. Even though Hippokleides was no longer acceptable to him as a son-in-law, because of the shamelessness of his dancing, Kleisthenes did not wish to berate him and restrained himself during the first two sessions of dancing but when he saw him waving his legs in the air he was no longer able to restrain himself and said: “Oh son of Teisander, you have danced away your wedding”: but Hippokleides replied: “Hippokleides doesn’t care”.
And today I’m very pleased to read on the BBC website that Johnny Cash’s son John Carter Cash said of his dad at the 37th Annual Country Music Awards that “It’s amazing my father had such a life that he could expose himself and still never lose his dignity”.The Man in Black doesn’t care!
Though it’s unclear whether he was waving his legs in the air at the time.
Still, they should never have given a prize to American Recordings IV: The Man Comes Around: unlike just about everything else he ever did, it’s a pile of shite. (Danny Boy? Bridge Over Troubled Water? Can it get worse? Yes it bloody well can: We’ll Meet Again to close out the disc. Yuck.)
Anyone who missed the excellent Latin oration in the Financial Times celebrating the possible candidacy of William Jefferson Clinton for the Chancellorship of Oxford University can find it on the Der Spiegel website.
Other nominations for Chancellor gratefully received.
You’ve enjoyed Nuntii Latini — now try the Akropolis World News, in Ancient Greek!
As everybody knows, or ought to know, the Finnish World Service has for many years now broadcast a weekly news bulletin in Latin, Nuntii Latini. Part of the reason they do this, I think, is that they are well aware that there are more Latin-speakers around the world than Finnophones, if that is a word. A snippet in the Classical Association News tells me that this excellent service can be found on the web here. Here is its coverage of recent developments in Cuba:
CUBA SOCIALISTICA MANEBIT
Parlamentum Cubanum consensu omnium legem fundamentalem ita mutandam esse censuit, ut systema socialisticum in Cuba administranda semper servaretur et illud consultum irrevocabile esset. Hoc plebiscito sancito civibus persuasum est nihil iam impedire posse, quominus patria sua etiam post obitum praesidentis Fidel Castro et successoris eius designati Raul Castro socialistica maneat.
I shall stick a link on the sidebar, to encourage you all to visit again, and again, and again.
I was lucky enough to be in Rome at the weekend, and visited the “Domus Aurea”, Nero’s “Golden House”, which is carved out underneath the Caelian Hill. Suetonius has this marvellous description of what it was once like, from his life of Nero in The Twelve Caesars:
“His wastefulness showed most of all in the architectural projects. He built a palace, stretching from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which he called ‘The Passageway’; and when it burned down soon afterwards, rebuilt it under the new name of ‘The Golden House’. The following details will give some notion of its size and magnificence. A huge statue of himself, 120 feet high, stood in the entrace hall; and the pillared arcade ran for a whole mile. An enormous pool, more like a sea than a pool, was surrounded by buildings made to resemble cities, and by a landscape garden consisting of ploughed fields, vineyards, pastures and woodlands - where every variety of domestic and wild animals roamed about. Parts of the house were overlaid with gold and studded with precious stones and nacre. All the dining-rooms had ceilings of fretted ivory, the panels of which could slide back and let a rain of flowers, or of perfume from hidden sprinklers, shower upon his guests. The main dining-room was circular, and its roof revolved slowly, day and night, in time with the sky. Sea water, or sulphur water, was always on tap in the baths. When the palace had been decorated throughout in this lavish style, Nero dedicated it, and condescended to remark: ‘Good, now I can at last begin to live like a human being!’.”
It would be lovely, if implausible, to think that this was what Nero’s tutor Seneca was thinking of, when he issued his famous injunction at the end of his treatise De Ira (On Anger) that we should learn to “cultivate our humanity” (colamus humanitatem).
Suetonius, on the emperor Nero’s singing, in Robert Graves’s translation of The Twelve Caesars:
“No one was allowed to leave the theatre during his recitals, however pressing the reason, and the gates were kept barred. We read of women in the audience giving birth, and of men being so bored with the music and the applause that they furtively dropped down from the wall at the rear, or shammed dead and were carried away for burial.”
World leaders don’t often sing these days, though sometimes they play the drums.
