Shades from the underworld walk inunexpected places in contempo-rary culture, and of late I’ve been

encountering them everywhere. Newmoons are still named after old gods.The International Astronomical Unionapproves this practice and discouragesastronomers from calling asteroids aftertheir pets or their wives. Pluto’s moon,discovered in 1978, was named Charon,and on All Souls Eve 2005, I heard thatthe discovery of two new moons ofPluto had just been announced. Theyhave not yet been named. (Pluto iscalled Pluto because he is the darkest,smallest, and most remote of the planets– not really a planet at all, some havealways said, and indeed in 2006 he wasdemoted.) Astrophysicists, positing theexistence of spectral stellar bodies, havegiven them names such as Vulcan andNemesis – Vulcan is an unseen andhypothetical planet, Nemesis an imagi-nary and deadly twin to our sun.

The names of ships echo classicalthemes. Erebus and Terror, last seen inBaffin Bay in August 1845, were all tooaptly named, and Nelson was familiarwith Agamemnon, Theseus, Medusa,and the French Pluton. Musicians arejust as loyal to the classical: Charon is

also the name of a Finnish pop group,founded in 1992, Styx is an Americanpop group, Artemesia’s Ashes is a Russ-ian pop group, and Tartarus is an inter-net war game. Charon has also given hisname to organizations like CharonCemetery Management, which boaststhat it has “user friendly software for thedeath care industry.” The imagery ofthe ancient underworld has a long andadaptable afterlife.

And classical learning infiltrates con-temporary literature in many ways.Detective and ghost stories frequentlyfeature professors and detective-profes-sors, epitaphs and inscriptions, Latintags and Greek riddles. English writersof the Golden-age of detective fiction,like Dorothy Sayers and MargeryAllingham, display a reader-flatteringfamiliarity with the classics: the texts ofSayers are encrusted with epigraphs andquotations from Elizabethan andJacobean literature and from Latinverse. In Gaudy Night (1935), herOxford-based thriller, one of the clues isa poison-pen letter quoting Book 3.214-218 of the Aeneid, a passage about theHarpies, lines of which a full literaltranslation is never given, though it iseasy enough from the context to pick up

Shadow Government:HBO’s Romeby Alison Futrell

Since the box office success of Gladiator(2000), television networks have been

trying to find a way to bring the glory andcorruption of ancient Rome to the smallscreen. HBO’s long-anticipated miniseriesRome (2005) succeeds hugely, presentinga richly visualized and sophisticated workthat takes the ancient evidence seriously.Focusing on the period between 52 and44 B.C., the series dramatizes the deterio-ration of the Republic into civil war and theestablishment of autocracy under Caesar.

From the opening credits, in whichancient mosaics and graffiti come to ani-mated life, Rome is a feast for the eyes, asqualid, vivid reconstruction of the ancientambience that has clearly paid much atten-tion to the details of Roman material culture,as well as the small elements of social andpolitical behavior. Best of all, the seriesoffers a complex presentation of power rela-tions in Rome, one in which class and theeconomics of empire shape competition onmany levels. There is much emphasis onperception, on the management of publicimage to create legitimacy in the eyes of atargeted audience, whether that audience is

CROSSING THE STYX: THEAFTERLIFE OF THE AFTERLIFE by Margaret Drabble

A publication of the American Philological Association Vol. 5 • Issue 2 • Fall 2006

Book Review: “The Shadow Thieves” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Rome in Prime Time Panel . . . . . . . . . . . 5

WHAT’S NEW IN ANCIENT ROMANMAGIC: RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

A Pair of Pieces from Book Four of“The Gardens of Flora Baum” . . . . . . . 8

National Endowment for theHumanities Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

IT WAS THEIR DESTINY: ROMAN POWERAND IMPERIAL SELF-ESTEEM . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Did You Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

APA Speakers Bureau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

The Reimagined Getty Villa . . . . . . . . 12

Book Review: “Harrius Potter etPhilosophi Lapis”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

PLATO’S “SYMPOSIUM”: A FILMMAKER’SPERsPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Book Review: “The Lock,“ “The Key,” and “The Door in the Wall” . . . . . . . . 18

Book Review: “Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Ask A Classicist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

The World of Neo-Latin . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Guidelines for contributors. . . . . 24

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Fig. 1. Atia (Polly Walker) sits on thepodium at Caesar’s triumph withAntony (James Purefoy) in the back-ground. Rome, episode 1.10“Triumph,” HBO, 2005.

a sense that these creatures are foulfemale monsters of unnatural habits.This poison pen letter is also a mislead-ing clue in that it leads heroine HarrietVane to pronounce, “I’m afraid we can’tsuspect Emily or any of the scouts ofexpressing their feelings in Virgilianhexameters” (116) – a sentiment thatneatly summarizes the social cachet orsnob appeal of the Latin tag.

(At the end of this novel, addicts willrecall, Lord Peter Wimsey proposes toHarriet in the words, Placetne, magistra,to which she replies Placet: this obliqueapproach added for us schoolgirls adeeper sexual thrill, all the morethrilling for being clothed, as Gibbonput it, in the decent obscurity of alearned language.)

One might have expected the con-nection between detective fiction andthe classics to wane with the teaching ofclassics, but it persists, with great suc-cess, in novels like Donna Tartt’s TheSecret History (1992), which achievedworldwide popularity and assumes afamiliarity with Greek myth andDionysian ecstasy. Carol Goodman’s TheLake of Dead Languages (2001) has a simi-lar background of death and the school-room. And classical detective fictionisn’t wholly an English language obses-sion: in the year 2000, Cuban writer JoséCarlos Somoza published The AthenianMurders (originally in Spanish entitledLa Caverna de Las Ideas, or The Cave ofIdeas), which involves the mysteriousdeath of one of Plato’s pupils, a plumpdetective called Heracles, and manyscholarly jokes about textual misinter-pretations, defective manuscripts, foot-notes, and translator’s errors. The novelis presented as an authentic Greek text,written shortly after the PeloponnesianWars, and baffled and delighted eventhose who knew the period.

Classicists have always been goodcode-breakers: at Bletchley Park, thecentre of British intelligence duringWorld War II, many Oxbridge donswere employed decoding messagesabout the movements of German sub-marines, and some of these also turnedtheir attention to detective fiction – asdid the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, translatorof Virgil, writing as Nicholas Blake. Ona higher plane of literary ambition wefind Joyce’s Ulysses, with its reworkingof Homer’s Odyssey, and its many lin-guistic games, puzzles, and devices.Homer and Virgil are and remain a richsource, sometimes hidden, sometimes

overtly displayed. Anthony Burgess’sfirst novel, A Vision of Battlements, writ-ten about 1949 but not published until1965, and set in Gibraltar, is based onthe journey of Aeneas – his hero iscalled Ennis, and Turnus becomesTurner – and in his foreword, Burgessowns, modestly, “The use of an epicframework, diminished and madecomic, was not merely pedantic wanton-ness, nor was it solely a tribute to JamesJoyce; it was a tyro’s method of givinghis story a backbone. . . .” Burgess, as arecent biography by Andrew Biswellrevealed, was not a good Latin scholar:

at Manchester University he passed hiscourses in English, History, and French,but failed the subsidiary but compulsoryGeneral Latin paper. He was granted arespectable Upper Second class degreein his Finals, thanks to the grace of aviva (an oral examination, or interview)– so we know that his Virgil came tohim in translation, and courtesy of theinspiration of Joyce.

The tradition continues: the SouthAfrican born novelist Lynn Freed usesthe Demeter-Persephone myth in Houseof Women (2002), a lyrical, female explo-ration of the story. Here, a daughterstruggles to free herself from her over-protective mother, only to find herselftrapped in another form of hell and sex-ual subjugation with her husband, the“Syrian,” whose name is Naim – anunusually anti-maternal interpretationof the myth and the Homeric Hymn toDemeter. How, one wonders, would thisstrike a reader who did not recognisethe source? Which sources are familiarto contemporary readers, and why?

A brief aside here about the editingof the 1985 edition of The Oxford Com-panion to English Literature and our poli-cy for including entries on Greek andRoman authors. The original OxfordCompanion, edited by Paul Harvey,appeared in 1932, when male middle-

class, public-school-educated readerswere far more likely to have had a classi-cal education than now. (Latinremained an entrance requirement forthe older universities until well after myday.) Harvey’s first edition was full ofreferences to myth and fable – refer-ences which we reduced to save spacefor contemporary writers. But here was adilemma. Because classical allusionswere less current, that did not mean thata reference book could omit them, forone of the reasons why we need refer-ence books is to inform ourselves aboutthe things that our culture may have for-gotten. So we aimed to include thosemajor names that are woven through thefabric of English Literature and to try,where possible, to relate them to theirinfluence, their major translators, andtheir history in the English-speakingworld. We also included brief defini-tions of terms such as Hellenistic andAugustan, and we cross-referred to theHoratian Ode. These were not easylinks or decisions (Senecan drama andLucan are not very elegantly connect-ed), and we were aware that while youcan look up Ovid anywhere, it is not soeasy to find the provenance of legendaryfigure Hermes Trismegistus.

The selection of classical entries wasoverseen by Dr. Robert Bolgar, editor ofClassical Influences on European Culture,A.D. 1500-1700 (1976), whom I nevermet, though I enjoyed our copious cor-respondence. I had one letter from him,which has given me much thought overthe decades, about the survival of litera-ture. He said that while he could specu-late with reasonable confidence aboutwhich classical authors would still befamiliar in two or three hundred years,at least as names and in translation, hecould not begin to imagine what thehuman race, if it survived, would bereading in two to three thousand years.

Let us now plunge into the “under-world” of composition. When I beganwriting fiction I had just left universityand was eager to enter what I naivelythought of as the real world. Almost bychance, I hit on a chatty, first person,girlish narrative voice, which served mewell through several novels. This was avoice that tried to hide erudition, torefrain from too much quotation, and towear its learning lightly. Ars est celareartem was my motto. But I succeeded,perhaps, too well, and in recent years, Ihave felt the need for a greater connec-tion with literary sources and structures.

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Classical learning infiltrates contemporary

literature in many ways.

In my novel The Peppered Moth (2000), Imade conscious use of the Demeter-Persephone story, in my attempt toreach my dead mother. In writing aboutmy mother, I felt that I was indeedcrossing the Styx of hatred and ill-willand entering an underworld in search ofreconciliation and enlightenment. As Isay at the end of the novel, I don’t thinkI found them. The shade of my motheris still waiting somewhere across theriver.

Writing that novel was difficult, andwhen I began the next, The Seven Sisters(2002), I needed to look elsewhere. Iremember thinking that if I used theconceit of a Reading Group studyingVirgil I could give myself the pleasanttask of re-reading the Aeneid and re-acquainting myself with a familiar butlargely forgotten story – a task fromwhich I could surely find sustenance.From this project, my novel took shape,and I found myself reworking theunderworld myth in a lighter vein. MyVirgil class sets off on a largely happyvoyage in the wake of Aeneas andenjoys a splendid meal on the bird-infested shore of Lake Avernus.

Novels develop themselves and tellstories that their authors do not intend. Ihad intended, in The Seven Sisters, todescribe the lasting joys of reading andto sing the praises of intellectual com-panionship. But I had not consciouslyset out to recreate a yearning for theschoolroom, or a nostalgia for the expe-rience of Latin lessons. This backward-looking desire emerged of its ownaccord, as I revisited old texts and mem-ories. It has since occurred to me thatfor many of us whose lives have notmaintained a continuous contact withclassical studies, the recollection ofthose old struggles with a dead languageencapsulates, paradoxically, the spirit ofyouthful enquiry. Remembering theclass room and the set texts, remember-ing Mrs. Jerrold or Mr. Crocker Harris –these memories convey us into our ownpast. Unkind critics may read regressioninto these sentimental journeys: othersmay see them as a return to an unsulliedsource.

For women in particular, the study ofclassics has had a symbolic and polemicsignificance. For centuries, most girlswere denied what their brothers oftensaw as a mixed blessing – the dubiousprivilege of learning Latin and Greek.In George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss,Maggie Tulliver is jealous of her brotherTom’s access to learning: she has aneagerness for knowledge which he, apractical outdoor boy, completely lacks.

Book Review: The Shadow Thievesby Sally Davis

Anne Ursu. The Cronus Chronicles, Book I:The Shadow Thieves. Atheneum Books forYoung Readers (http://www.simonsays.com), 2006. Pp. 424. Hardcover $16.95.ISBN 1-4169-0587-1.

After two prize-winning adult novels,Anne Ursu has written her first book

for children (ages 9-12+). InterweavingGreek mythology with irresistible charactersand a lively plot line, she delivers a surewinner for middle-school readers. The writ-ing is snappy and informal: Ursu has beenvery successful in echoing the conversation-al tone of children that age. Her protago-nists are Charlotte and her cousin Zee. Thevillain, Philonecron, is a power-hungryunderworld rebel who commands an armyof thousands and schemes to overthrowHades. The naming of Philonecron (thecorpse lover) heightens the suspense as wewatch these characters act out their des-tinies. This additional level adds depth tothe story and piques the reader’s curiosityabout the underlying mythology.

Charlotte is a funny, savvy, middle-schooler with red hair and freckles who“has no patience with twits or nerds"; herbest friend is her foundling kitten Mew.When her English soccer-playing cousin,Zee, comes to live with her family, strangethings begin to happen. A mysterious, incur-able illness visits anyone whom Zee touches– something to do with missing shadows. . . .Charlotte, who usually finds school annoy-ing and dull, gets a creepy new Englishteacher, Mr. Metos, who introduces an in-depth unit on the Underworld. The threadsnow come together: at the same time ofZee’s arrival, Mr. Metos’ lessons come tolife, and Philonecron’s minions begin toescape to the upper world and steal moreshadows for his army. Charlotte and Zeemust find a way to thwart Philonecron’sShadow Thieves and save their friends.

The heart of the story is when Charlotteand Zee pursue the thieves to the Underworld.It’s not Lake Avernus in Cumae, not Taenarumin Laconia: the entrance to the Underworld isa nondescript door marked “No Admittance,”hidden in plain sight, where vast crowds ofpeople congregate – in the Mall!

The sights and sounds, the monsters and

ghosts are thoroughly Homeric and Virgilian.The dark journey takes them through blackcaves and tunnels where they are threatenedby bats, rats, huge beetles, and live bird-skeletons. They are shocked to encounter Mr.Metos there, chained to a crag, likePrometheus, with blood on his stomach!

Charlotte is captured, then ferried byragged, greasy Charon; she escapes, slipsby Cerberus and the stinking pit of Tartarus,and heads for the Iron Gate of Hades’Palace. On to Demons, Hydras, Harpies,and the Giant Elm of False Dreams. Thecreepy descriptions of these Stygian depthswill surely inspire our young readers todelve more deeply into the mythic under-world of the Greeks and Romans. WhenCharlotte finally arrives at Hades’ blackthrone, he calls Charlotte by name. Whenshe asks, “How do you know my name?”he responds, “I know everyone’s name.You all belong to me.”

The final battle between the forces ofHades, Thanatos, and Hypnos (with Charlotteand Zee as allies) against Philonecron and theShadow Thieves ends in destruction: “a greatcrack splintered through the air – Philone-cron’s mouth opened, his eyes bugged . . . hetumbled backward, his bottom hitting theground. . . . His feet started smoking, theyburst into a blood-red flame. The fire traveledup his legs, and screaming, he propelled him-self onto the litter – leaving a pile of ashwhere his legs had once been” (392).

This kind of gripping action, the lively andengaging characters, an intricate plot, and afantastically atmospheric setting are bound tocapture the imaginations of readers aged nineto twelve (and beyond). The way Ursu hasplaced the world of homework and soccer soclose to the darkness of the Underworld cre-ates a sense of apprehension and excitement.She succeeds in whetting the appetites ofyoung readers for more of the story (Book II) –and for a deeper taste of ancient mythology.

Sally Davis (saldavis@comcast.net) hastaught Latin in Arlington, Virginia, for thirtyyears and is the author of several textbooksfor Latin, including Cicero’s Somnium Scipio-nis: The Dream of Scipio (co-authored withGilbert Lawall, 1988). She is also a co-founder of the National Latin Exam.

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a badly-duped Brutus, believing Caesar’smisinformation about troop morale in Gaul;or the troops themselves, following Caesaracross the Rubicon when roused by thealleged manhandling of Antony by Pom-pey’s minions; or the Senate, driven to fist-fights when Cicero surprisingly takes a pro-Pompey stance he has openly disavowed.While the corruption of power is an operat-ing cliché for filmic Rome, here there ismuch nuancing of ambition. Characters dis-cuss the implications of Caesar’s new sellacurulis, the consul’s magisterial seat in theCuria, now provided with a back: Caesardeclares it “much more comfortable”; forCassius “it is a throne!” while Brutus demursthat “thrones are generally much more deco-rative. That is decidedly plain and chair-like” (episode 1.11, “The Spoils”).

There is clear evidence throughout of theseries’ deliberate effort to break with sometraditions of representation; creator BrunoHeller wanted to embed Rome within anethical fabric that does not depend onChristian values. Although the publicity forthe series emphasizes the subordination ofmorals to power, the audience is witness tostrong connections drawn between polythe-istic belief and behavior. Characters findsolace in seeking the help of divinities; theycasually interact with deities as they movethrough life; they experience the power ofritual: in “The Stolen Eagle,” the openingepisode of season one, Atia is drenched inbovine gore as she participates in the ritualof the taurobolium, hoping to ensure thesafety of young Octavian.

Contemporary television tends to beuncomfortable with the “epic” value ofantiquity, always concerned that a modernaudience find some means to connect withthe distant past. Focus on personal, evenpetty, motivations gives the grand themes ofhistorical transformation an intimate scale.Heller and the production team acknowl-edge in the DVD commentary that theywere determined as well to present an“everyman” perspective through the charac-ters of Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus whoserve as inadvertent catalysts for climacticmoments in the Late Republic, creating akind of Forrest Gump thread for the series.

They were alsoresolved to incorpo-rate female charac-ters in behind-the-scenes deal making,as key figures inRome’s “shadow gov-ernment.” Indeed, thedramatized feud between Atia and Serviliadrives much of the action in the miniseries,powering developments on the “homefront” and eventually leading to the assassi-nation of Julius Caesar.

Heller, on the official Web site, rightlyclaims a historical basis for this emphasison women as dramatic agents, pointing tothe absence of male elites during conquestand civil war in the later Republic and tothe deterioration of institutions that tradition-ally excluded women from the politicalsphere. Some of the actions of Rome’sfemale characters are consistent with thecustomary roles documented especially forelite matrons. Women act as representa-tives of their families; among the patricians,this duty has a fairly explicit political signifi-cance. Atia is recruited by Caesar to renewthe marital alliance between the Julian fami-ly and Pompey, following the death ofJulia. Atia hosts a secret meeting of mem-bers of the senatorial Old Guard, the mod-erates, and Antony as Caesar’s agent. Lesstraditional, perhaps, is Atia acting aspatron during the tension of Caesar’simpending arrival. Her morning salutatio,the regular “open house” that was a majorvenue for the operation of patron-client rela-tions, is crowded with frightened business-men from whom she extracts financialpledges in exchange for the guarantee ofJulian protection in the days after the cross-ing of the Rubicon.

How does this shadow government oper-ate? These clandestine rulers use the sametechniques of manipulation deployed bytheir male counterparts. Atia shapes popu-lar feeling with graffiti, creating public pres-sure on Caesar to end his relationship withServilia. This maneuver has the secondaryeffect of pushing him to pursue a show-down with the Senate. Servilia’s sponsor-ship of graffiti and pamphlets for public dis-

tribution creates an atmosphere redolent ofthe possibility of tyrannicide.

What are the aims of Rome’s femalerulers? On one level, maternal ambition ofa traditional type fuels their efforts. Thisambition is overtly connected to family dutyby Servilia, who encourages Brutus tobecome politically engaged in emulation ofthe high standards in achievement set byhis Junian ancestors for five hundred years.Power and status, guaranteed by publicrecognition, are also feminine goals,although a distinction is made herebetween power and politics. Atia claims(episode 1.12, “The Kalends of February”)that “politics is for the men” but is very sen-sitive to the performance of status: whoattends her dinner parties, who is seen byher side at public ceremonies – all the visi-ble symbols of privilege (see Fig. 1). Atia’sinitial actions against Servilia are motivatedby jealous fear that her romantic relation-ship with Caesar endangers Atia’s status asthe new first lady of Rome. Outwardly,however, Atia rails against Caesar’s neg-lect of the Republic’s best interests. Serviliaconceives her vengeance initially for per-sonal reasons: politics has caused herintense pain, as Caesar coldly justified hiscutting off their relationship by claiming thathe “must do what is right for the Republic”(episode 1.5, “The Ram Has Touched theWall”). Servilia’s motivation only becomespolitical after she, and her family throughher, suffers a devastating loss of status inthe shifting balance of power in Rome. Thisshift in purpose is demonstrated at the endof the first season’s ninth episode, “Utica,”when Atia’s minions destroy the outwardsigns of Servilia’s status in a public assault.Half-naked and screaming, her slaves lying

Shadow Government: HBO’s Romecontinued from page 1

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Fig. 2. Servilia (Lindsay Duncan) lies inthe street after an attack by Atia’shenchmen. Rome, episode 1.9 “Utica,”HBO, 2005.

dead beside her ruined litter, Servilia is ren-dered quite visibly powerless (see Fig. 2).Her recovery begins when she claims anideological motivation for her ruthlessefforts to destroy Caesar; now it is she whodefends the best interests of the Republic.Servilia brings intense pressure to bear onher son Brutus to fulfill his duty to his familyand to Rome by taking action against thetyrant. She assembles the conspiracyagainst Caesar, guiding the cabal through-out the planning process, reminding themof the crucial support of the people, andmaking the critical connections to enablethem to carry out the assassination. And itis she who, in the pre-dawn hours of theIdes, invokes the ancestors of the Junii tohelp Brutus in his honorable task: “Let hisarm be strong, let his aim be true, and lethis heart be filled with sacred rage”(episode 1.12, “The Kalends of February”).

The flames behind the ancestral masks flick-er in a sudden gust of wind but do not dieout.

The eighth episode of the first season,“Caesarion” (the Cleopatra episode), wasthe last to be filmed and, in many ways,sets an interesting direction for season two.The choices made by Heller, director SteveShill, and the production design team weremeant to establish Egypt as an utterly alienculture. In combination with the series’demonstrated interest in depicting themanipulation of popular will, this represen-tation of Egypt lays the ground work for anexploration of the contemporary construc-tion of the Cleopatra legend as propagan-da, a perspective that would certainly sepa-rate Rome’s Cleopatra from the substantialcorpus of previously filmed Cleopatras. Typ-ically, cinematic treatments of the Egyptianqueen buy into the pro-Octavian stance of

the major primary evidence, which empha-sizes seduction and sentiment as key factorsshaping the goals and motivations ofAntony and Cleopatra, thus legitimizingOctavian’s leadership as representative ofthe traditional devotion to responsibleauthority of the Roman male. Rome hasalready established the Octavian characteras an articulate deconstructionist of covertpolitical operations, capable of makingexplicit sneaky schemes to win the heartsand minds of the people. At the very least,one might expect the second season toheighten the usual highly-gendered spin onthe Second Triumvirate by foregroundingthe complex layers of power held byRome’s female characters.

The final scenes of “Caesarion” offer aforeshadowing of the proscriptions thatstart, historically, in 43 B.C. Cicero worriesthat the death of Caesar might give “thatbastard Antony” free license in Rome.Antony then justifies Cicero’s concerns byforcing him to his knees, promising, shouldCicero ever sway from his support of theregime, to “cut off these soft pink handsand nail them to the Senate door.” Theinteraction hints at the increasing darknessof Roman politics that we can anticipatefrom the second season, which is likely tocontinue with an ever more shadowy gov-ernment. This is, after all, a time when sur-viving source material is littered with femaleagents, a time when historical women areliterally and symbolically acknowledged inthe rhetoric and monuments of Romanpower. Indeed, it is the prominence of Atiaand Servilia in the months following Cae-sar’s assassination that likely inspiredRome’s creators to select these women todrive their intriguing dramatization of thepast. Atia’s daughter Octavia and Cleopa-tra, traditional rivals for Antony’s affections,are poised to emerge from the shadows inthe twilight of Rome’s Republic.

Alison Futrell is an associate professor ofRoman History at the University of Arizona.She is currently spending her sabbatical asa Fellow at the Center for the Humanities atOregon State University, working on amonograph on barbarian queens.

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Rome in Prime Time: Panel on HBO’s Rome at theAnnual Meeting of the American PhilologicalAssociation in San Diego Sponsored by the Committee on Outreach

Like Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004), HBO’s series Rome, which first aired inFall 2005, has influenced contemporary audiences’ understanding of the

ancient Mediterranean world. Organized by Mary-Kay Gamel (University of California, Santa Cruz), the

panel, which takes place on Friday, January 5, 2007, from 8:30-11:00 a.m. inMarina Ballroom G, will address various aspects of the series. The speakers areKristina Milnor (Barnard College) on “‘Do You Have an Ubuan Dictionary?’ orWhat I Learned as a Consultant for HBO’s Rome,” Holly Haynes (The Collegeof New Jersey) on “Rome’s Opening Titles and the Triumphal Tituli of the LateRepublic,” Robert Gurval (UCLA) on “Cast(igat)ing Cleopatra: HBO’s Romeand an Egyptian Queen for the 21st Century,” Gregory Daugherty (Randolph-Macon College) on “Titus Pullo of the Thirteenth,” and Alison Futrell (Univer-sity of Arizona) on “Not Some Cheap Murder: Caesar’s Assassination.” Therespondent is Sandra Joshel (University of Washington). In anticipation of thesecond season, which will air in early 2007, we hope you will join the discussion!

Fig. 3. Titus Pullo(Ray Stevenson),on the left, withLucius Vorenus(Kevin McKidd).Rome, episode 1.7“Pharsalus,”HBO, 2005.

Like many sub-fields in ancient his-tory and classics, the sub-field ofancient magic is often dramatically

advanced by new archaeological discover-ies. And, in fact, in the late 1990’s and theearly years of this millennium, archaeolo-gists working on sites uncovered by newconstruction in downtown Mainz in Ger-many and in the Piazza Euclid in Romediscovered intriguing new caches of“voodoo dolls” and curses that greatlyadvance our knowledge of local practicesin the western Roman Empire, whichhitherto were generally thought to imitateclosely Greek cursing rites. The siteunder the Piazza Euclid revealed some ofthe most elaborate third-fourth centuryA.D. magical devices ever discovered:human effigies shaped from wax or flourand then imprisoned within a nestedseries of three lead canisters – much likethose famous Russian nesting dolls – andlead curse tablets rolled up and placedlike wicks in unburned clay lamps. Thecurse tablets from Mainz, on the otherhand, securely dated between A.D. 70and 130, are among the earliest cursetexts in Latin. These tablets were foundin a shared sanctuary of Isis and theMagna Mater and provide us with impor-tant early evidence for the cult, becausethey invoke or make mention of theMater, her self-castrating attendants (thegalli), and various cult items, such as thewithering tree of Attis and the sacredcistae of the goddess, ritual baskets thatcontained secret symbols of her cult.They also reveal Latin cursing formulaethat use hitherto unattested magicalanalogies of inversion and dissolution thatseem little influenced by Greek models.These two sites, then, one from the Ger-man periphery of the empire and theother from its very center, provide inter-esting new data on the relationshipbetween cursing rituals and femaledeities (the Magna Mater and AnnaPerenna) as well as an important contrastbetween “homegrown” Roman forms ofmagic and later forms of the so-calledinternational magic that are more heavilyinfluenced by Greek, Egyptian, and Jew-ish rituals and formulae.

The Fountain of AnnaPerenna in Rome

In the year 2000, Dr. Marina Pira-nomonte, a director of the Soprinten-

denza Archeologica di Roma, and herteam of archaeologists excavated a foun-tain inadvertently uncovered by work-men digging the foundations of a newparking garage under the Piazza Euclid,a spot near the ancient Via Flaminia justsouth of the Milvian Bridge. Therewere two surprises. The first was analtar and two inscriptions from the sec-ond century A.D., which attest to therebuilding and dedication of the foun-tain “to the nymphs of Anna Perenna.”Roman literary sources have a lot to sayabout a sanctuary of Anna Perenna nearthe Tiber River, where at an annual fes-tival, men and woman drank excessive-ly, sang ribald songs in makeshift huts,and prayed to live as many years as thenumber of cups of wine they drank onthat day. But despite this well-docu-mented bacchanal, Ovid (Fasti 3.523-696) makes it abundantly clear thatAnna was a water nymph, whose namemeans something like “perennial flow,”and historians have long suspected thatshe was closely connected with fertility.These suspicions were, in fact, con-firmed by the cultic items found in theholding tank of the fountain: pinecones,eggs, and a small cultic cauldron of ham-mered copper, the first two of whichpoint to a fertility cult.

A second surprise was waiting in theholding tank of the fountain: a series ofhuman effigies (carefully enclosed inlead canisters) and lead curse tablets thatsuggest the fountain had been the site ofcursing rituals. Because these effigieswere triply sealed in lead and then sub-merged in water and mud, they have sur-vived antiquity in amazingly good condi-tion and offer us many new insights into

the variety of materials that might beused to construct a “voodoo doll.”Indeed, prior to the discoveries in thefountain of Anna Perenna, only metal orclay examples survived outside of Egypt.And thanks to a fingerprint inadvertentlyleft while vigorously screwing down thelid of one of the lead canisters, thearchaeologists – with the help of forensicexperts in the Italian police force – arefairly certain that this magician was awoman. It is, moreover, most probablethat this Roman magician created mostof the other “voodoo dolls” found in thewell, for she seems to have used a similartechnique for each ensemble: a singlehand-molded figure of wax placed in aseries of nested lead canisters.

The elaborate preparation of thesedevices clearly points to a professionalwitch. The lead canister with the finger-print, for example, was the innermost ofthree (see Fig. 4) and was inscribed onits outside surface with the figure of aman wearing a helmet and cuirass withthe names of the Egyptian gods Sethand Mnu added on to the left of himand the name Decentia to the right.Inside was found a wax effigy of ahuman figure (presumably of the victim– its gender is uncertain) face to facewith a wax serpent, whose open mouththreatens. These two figurines arebound together by a thin metal band atthe shoulders, by a metal tabletinscribed with magical characters andwrapped around the lower body, and bynails inserted at the navel and the feet.Another of the effigies from the foun-tain was a male modeled from wax,which had the bone of a small animalinserted down into its head and throughits body. Its feet were modeled with therest of the body and then at the endcarefully severed, presumably as part ofthe magical operation designed to pre-vent the victim from walking or usinghis feet. A third example was moldedfrom pure beeswax and had Greek let-ters inscribed all over its body. It wassealed in its canister with a piece ofparchment (now crumbled) that pre-sumably had been inscribed.

Seven figurines survive thanks to theirleaden canisters: five of them depictedmen, one a woman, and one is of uncer-tain sex. Three had small bones inserteddown into the top of the head, and one ofthese bones is inscribed with tiny and

6

WHAT’S NEW IN ANCIENT ROMAN MAGIC:RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES by Christopher A. Faraone

Fig. 4. Roma. Museo Nazionale Romano.Lead canisters from the Fountain ofAnna Perenna, Inv. No. 475549. Photocourtesy Dr. Marina Piranomonte,Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma.

still illegible Latin letters. The bonesare, in fact, unique among the magicaldevices from the ancient Mediterraneanbasin, and until we decipher the textinscribed on the one mentioned above, itis difficult to say whether they aimed(like the nails in the other figurine) atbinding or disabling the person orwhether they were designed to name thevictim. Three of the effigies were placedinto their canisters upside down, and asimilar inversion is implied by the name“Leontius” inscribed upside down onthe outside surface of the innermost ofthree concentric containers. This kind ofmagical analogy is as yet unattested inGreek magic, but parallels from otherLatin magical texts (including the onesfrom Mainz discussed below) suggestthat the goal of this inversion was to dis-orient the victim.

In the same fountain, archaeologistsalso found lead curse tablets of the moreusual type, which were inscribed simplywith their victims’ names. Of specialnote, however, are a handful ofinscribed lead and copper tablets thathad been rolled up and inserted into themouth of unburned clay lamps, as ifthey were lamp wicks. Although badlycorroded, some of the lead exampleshave been unrolled and read. One, forexample, is inscribed on one side with amale figure labeled both on his bodyand above his head with the name“Antonius.” Another lamp held threevery small lead tablets, each apparentlydesigned to curse a man described as“Victor, whom Sexta bore,” a commonway to identify the victim more securelyand avoid the confusion with other menof the same name. The most elaboratelyproduced tablet deciphered so far, how-ever, had been deposited directly intothe waters of the holding tank. Thistablet (see Fig. 5) was apparentlyengraved in two separate stages: first thefigures, designs, and magical symbolswere laid out carefully on the roughlysquare tablet, and then the Latin textwas added, in some places squeezed inbetween the designs.

The generally circular design of thetablet is created by the bodies andheads of four snakelike animals, twoconverging towards the middle of theupper margin and two others, in mirrorreflection to the first two, convergingupside down towards the middle of thelower margin. At the center of the tabletsurrounded by another diamond shapethere is a small cartoon-like figure whois perhaps meant to represent the vic-tim. Five magical symbols (letter-shapeswith little ringlets placed on their

extremities) are placed above the designand seven below. On either side of thediamond-shaped lozenge we find twovaguely circular figures, one labeled dex-tru (“right”) and the other sinesteru(“left”). The curse-text itself suggeststhat these circular figures represent theeyes of the victim, who is to be blinded:

O sacred, holy FUSAPAERIS andangeli, because I ask and beg you <by>your great virtus, take away, complete-ly take away the eye, the right one andleft one of Sura, who was born from anaccursed womb. May this happen, Iask and beg you <by> your greatvirtus.

Because this curse is initially addressedto some plural feminine deities, the edi-tor is probably correct in assuming thatthe third word in the first line(FUSAPAERIS) and the term angeliboth describe the nymphs who live inthe fountain and who are apparentlycalled upon to take away the eyesight ofa man named Sura.

This curse, along with the elaboratedesign with the converging snakes andelaborate magical symbols, was presum-ably copied from a magical handbook.With its deferential tone (“I ask, I beg”)and the piling up of titles (“O sacred,holy FUSAPAERIS”), it seems toresemble a form of cursing called“prayers for justice” that was popularthroughout the Roman Empire. Suchcurses usually invoke deities as judges topunish an enemy of the author, who isalleged to have committed crimes andmisdeeds. The other texts and the“voodoo dolls” from the fountain ofAnna Perenna, however, are closer inform and intent to the less complicatedbinding curses, which seek to restrain,confuse, or nail down rivals or enemiesby binding, inverting, or imprisoningtheir effigies or names in a more straight-forward form of sympathetic magic.

The Sanctuary of MagnaMater in Mainz

The lead tablets from the sanctuaryof Magna Mater in Mainz also showboth forms of cursing, but here theprayers for justice appear in far greaternumbers. This illustrates a well-estab-lished connection between prayers forjustice and powerful female deities, likethe Magna Mater, an Anatolian goddess,who was originally brought to Rome in204 B.C. but maintained her easternrites and attendants. The Mainz cursetablets were found in 1999-2000 alongwith three “voodoo dolls,” when an

older block of buildings in the commer-cial center of the city was demolished tomake way for new construction. A groupof archaeologists, led by Dr. MarionWitteyer, excavated the area and discov-ered a sanctuary dedicated (as inscrip-tions show) to both Isis and the MagnaMater. Most of the lead tablets weredeposited between A.D. 70 and 130 inpits used for the burnt sacrifice of ani-mals. Soon after that date, the pits werecarefully covered with rows of roof tilesand abandoned. Melted and partiallymelted lead tablets were also found inthese pits, suggesting that fire played acrucial role in the magical rites – a factthat is corroborated by the followingtext, which seems to refer to some kindof fiery ritual (translation by J. Blänsdorf):

I hand over (to you), and, observing allritual form, ask that you require fromPublius Cutius and Piperion thereturn of the goods that have beenentrusted to them. Also . . . Placidaand Sacra, her daughter: may theirlimbs melt, just as this lead is to melt,so that [thereby] death shall comeupon them.

Here the petitioner asks a divinity, pre-sumably the Magna Mater, to force Pub-lius Cutius and Piperion to return prop-erty that had been deposited with them,but he or she also performs a ritual ofsympathetic magic designed to makePlacida and Sacra melt “just as this leadis melting,” clearly a reference to theheat of the fire-pit in which this tabletwas found.

The three “voodoo dolls” recoveredfrom other spots in the sanctuary wereall molded roughly from clay and badlyfired. Two poorly preserved examples

continued on page 8 7

Fig. 5. Roma. Museo NazionaleRomano. Lead tablet from the Fountainof Anna Perenna, Inv. No. 475567.Photo courtesy Dr. Marina Piranomonte,Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma.

were discovered in a second centuryA.D. well, where they had beendeposited when it was still in use as awell. The third, however, is nicely pre-served: it had been placed in the upper-most layer of a garbage ditch along witha small rolled-up lead curse tablet and asmall pot that can be dated to the sec-ond century A.D. All three items werethen carefully covered with hay. Theeffigy itself is not inscribed, but the leadtablet seems to have been a label ofsorts, as it contains only the name“Trutmo Florus, son of Clitmo,” who ispresumably the object of the curse. Thenames of both father and son are Celtic,but the son seems to have adopted“Florus” as a second, Roman name.Prior to firing, the doll had been piercedby a thin nail or needle in a half dozenplaces, including the eye, throat, chest,stomach, and anus. Presumably one goalof the magical operation was to pindown or inhibit these parts of the vic-tim’s body. After it was fired, however,the image was carefully broken in halfand laid down with one half facingupwards and the other facing down-wards, in an attempt, no doubt, to con-found the victim by mixing him up,much the same as the inverted “voodoodolls” from the fountain of Anna Perenna.

It is the lead curse tablets fromMainz that provide the most insight intothe magical rituals performed there;inscribed by different persons of greatlyvaried literacy and handwriting, theyoffer us an excellent cross-section of theneeds and goals of the people who visit-ed the sanctuary. One of the best-pre-served examples provides another goodexample of a prayer for justice (transla-tion by J. Blänsdorf):

I entreat you, Mistress Mater Magna,to take revenge for me regarding thegoods of Florus, my husband, of whichUlattius Severus has defrauded me.Just as I write this in reverse, so mayeverything be reversed for him, what-ever he does, whatever he attempts.As salt (melts in) water, so may ithappen to him. In the matter of histheft from me of the goods of Florus,my husband, I entreat you, MistressMater Magna, to take revenge for meabout it.

In this text, the wife or widow of a mannamed Florus pleads for the goddess totake revenge on a man who has stolensome of her husband’s property. And as

in the curse against Publius Cutius andPiperion, the author has two parallelstrategies: she asks the goddess to inter-vene directly and take revenge, but shealso uses two wish formulas that couldalso work independently, one based onthe analogy of reversed letters and theother on melting salt. In her actual exe-cution of the tablet, however, the wife ofUlattius apparently forgot to reverse theletters!

This is not the case with the nextcurse (translation by J. Blänsdorf):

In this tablet I set down invertedQuintus, who leads his life to a badend. Just as the galli or the priests ofBellona castrate or cut themselves sohis good name, reputation, abilityshould be cut off. Just as they are notnumbered among men, so let he notbe either. Just as he cheated me, somay holy Mater Magna cheat him andreject everything. Just as the tree willwither in the sanctuary, so may repu-tation, good name, fortune, ability toact wither in his case. I hand him overto you, Atthis [Attis], Lord, so that youmay revenge me upon him, so thatwithin a year (may) turn . . . his death . . .

Like the preceding example, this prayerfor justice was apparently placed beforethe Magna Mater and her consort Attisand uses a variety of devices to achieveits end. The most remarkable are aseries of unique magical similes that aredrawn from the worship of the MagnaMater. The galli are the priests of thegoddess, who along with the priests ofthe goddess Bellona, ritually castratedthemselves when they became priests.Their castration provides a model forthe desired action of the prayer: so, too,may his good name, reputation, abilitybe cut off. The next simile – “just as thetree will wither in the sanctuary” – like-wise uses an annual temple ritual as afocus for punishment: each year, a livetree was carried into the temple com-pound and allowed to wither and die.This prayer, unlike the one made by thewife of Ulattius, seems directed primari-ly to Attis, the goddess’ consort, whoalone is directly asked to intervene.This may, in fact, have been a matter ofgender, for as the editor points out, thistablet was written in classical Latin byan individual with considerable educa-tion, who uses legal terms and construc-tions and the stylistic devices of Roman

WHAT’S NEW IN ANCIENT ROMAN MAGIC:RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES continued from page 7

A Pair of Pieces fromBook Four of “TheGardens of Flora Baum”by Julia Budenz

IRIS December 14, 2003Il. 15.168-173

I raise my gaze from page to pane.The same snow flies beneath the rushAnd push of North Wind, from Clear SkyBorn loud wild child. Shall I not see The messenger, herself a god,Between great god and great god fly?

DIARY OF FLORA BAUMDecember 15, 2003Consualia

It has been done and better done, they said.

Has it been done in this millennium,I countered, and been done thus, unprovoked,

Unwilled as unexpected, totallyUnforced by me, upon me wholly forced?I did not will the storm that whitened windows,

The tempest that came tapping on the glass,

Blasting down Massachusetts Avenue,Paving a path of candor in the dark.I had been deep in lines of signs, scenes, sounds.

The words I read came true when I looked up.

If sleet could tap, could not the goddess rap,

Leaving for me the marvel of her mark?

Julia Budenz was born in New York Cityand lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Since 1969 she has been writing a poemin five books entitled “The Gardens of FloraBaum,” which is now about 1,800 pagesin length. All of Books One and Two, mostof Book Three, and parts of Books Four andFive have been completed, and numerousportions have been published in journals,anthologies, and separate volumes.

8

rhetoric. It was likely, then, that he wasa man.

These recent discoveries of so-called“black magic” at Mainz and Rome addmuch valuable information about howmagic was practiced “on the ground”during the Roman Empire. The materi-als from Mainz are especially helpful,because they are dated so preciselybetween A.D. 70 and 130. Thus they arethe earliest examples of curse tabletsinscribed in Latin, and it is worth notingthat they use magical analogies thatprobably reflect forms of local Roman orWestern European magic that is stilluntouched by the Greek, Egyptian, andJewish influences that characterize the“international style” of magic found else-where in the Mediterranean basin at thistime. There is, moreover, no sign of theprofessional magician at work in Mainz.The three “voodoo dolls” were crudelyfashioned from clay and badly fired, andthe variations in the handwriting,spelling, and grammar of the inscribedtablets show clearly that they wereinscribed by a number of individuals.The materials retrieved from the foun-tain of Anna Perenna, on the other hand,date at least two centuries later and showclear signs of the “international style”:the names of Egyptian gods Seth andMnu, mysterious magical symbols, andthe nonsensical use of Greek letters. Theclose similarities in the preparation of theeffigies and their triply-nested containerspoint to the work of a professional magi-cian, who was probably working from ahandbook.

Further Reading and InformationThe Anna Perenna Curses:

M. Piranomonte, “Religion andMagic at Rome: The Fountain of AnnaPerenna,” and J. Blänsdorf, “Types andTexts of the Lead Tablets of AnnaPerenna,” in R. Gordon and F. Marco,eds., Magical Practice in the Latin West:Papers from the International Conferenceheld at the University of Zaragoza, 30thSept. - 1st Oct. 2005, Religions in theGraeco-Roman World (Leiden 2006),forthcoming.

Many of these items are on display inthe Epigraphical Museum at Rome(across from Termini Station).

The Curses from Mainz: J. Blänsdorf, “The Curse Tablets

from the Sanctuary of Isis and MagnaMater in Mainz,” and M. Witteyer,“Curse Tablets and Voodoo Dolls fromMainz. The Archaeological Evidencefor Magical Practices in the Sanctuary of

Isis and Magna Mater,” “Proceedings ofthe Symposium on Professional Sorcer-ers and their Wares in Imperial Rome(November 12, 2004, Rome)” inMHNH: Revista Internacional de Investi-gación sobre Magia y Astrología Antiguas 5(2005), 11-26 and 105-124.

J. Blänsdorf, “Magical Methods inthe Defixiones from the Sanctuary of Isisand Mater Magna in Mainz,” in R. Gor-don and F. Marco, eds., Magical Practicein the Latin West: Papers from the Interna-tional Conference held at the University ofZaragoza, 30th Sept. - 1st Oct. 2005, Reli-gions in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden2006), forthcoming.

Items from the Sacred Site of Isis –Magna Mater are on display in Mainz in

the presentation area called the Taber-na Archaeologica.

Christopher A. Faraone is the Frank C.and Gertrude M. Springer Professor of Clas-sics and Humanities at the University ofChicago. He is co-editor (with D. Dodd) ofInitiation in Ancient Greek Rituals andNarratives: New Critical Perspectives(2003) and (with L. McClure) of Prosti-tutes and Courtesans in the AncientWorld (2005), and author of Talismansand Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues inAncient Greek Myth and Ritual (1992)and Ancient Greek Love Magic (1999).He has just completed a book on archaicGreek elegy.

9

National Endowment for the Humanities Grants$650,000 to American Philological Association to Build Endowment for Classics Research andTeaching

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded to the AmericanPhilological Association (APA) a challenge grant of $650,000 to build an Endow-

ment for Classics Research and Teaching. The endowment will ensure the continuedoperation of the American Office of l’Année philologique, the bibliographic databaseused by classicists throughout the world as a research tool.

The grant supports not only the advancement of sophisticated and accessibleresearch and teaching resources in classics, but also the development of the next gener-ation of inspired teachers of classics and classical languages at all levels. The grantreviewers, according to NEH Chairman Bruce Cole, “noted that the American Office ofl’Année philologique serves a world-wide constituency that goes far beyond the field ofclassics into other areas of the humanities. Panelists also praised the American Philologi-cal Association for designing a challenge grant program that will accommodate futuredevelopments in educational technologies.” In this time of rapid technological change,the endowment will be a flexible tool, providing essential scholarly and teachingresources to all classicists, whatever those needs are and whenever they arise.

The APA will collaborate with other forward-looking technological projects in classicsto create and support The American Center for Classics Research and Teaching on thebase of the American Office. Anticipated projects of the Center will include the develop-ment of programs that support the next generation of classics teachers and scholars,such as summer institutes, study/travel opportunities, innovative educational initiatives,and research and publication support; a digital portal providing sophisticated, accessi-ble classics content from a variety of digital sources; and public programming thatbrings the best and most compelling classics scholarship to communities.

The APA will create a special section on its web site (www.apaclassics.org) toinclude information about the Endowment, plans for the American Center, and the Cam-paign. We will be communicating frequently with our colleague organizations through-out the classics field as we move forward with this campaign. We are eager for every-one’s ideas and participation as we take this important step for classics. Further informa-tion is available from:

Adam D. Blistein, APA Executive DirectorAmerican Philological Association • 292 Logan Hall • University of Pennsylvania249 S. 36th Street • Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304Telephone: 215-898-4975 • FAX: 215-573-7874E-mail: apaclassics@sas.upenn.edu • Web site: http://www.apaclassics.org

At the climactic moment of Returnof the Jedi (1983), the last film ofGeorge Lucas’ original Star Wars

trilogy, the Emperor utters some tellingwords to Luke Skywalker. “It is yourdestiny,” he says, meaning that theyoung man is fated to serve the Empireand its Emperor (who, I like to think,resembles no one more than Tiberius asthe historian Tacitus imagined him).Others in the film – Luke’s father DarthVader, the Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Keno-bi, and his tutor Yoda – also speak of hisdestiny. Luke Skywalker, the hero ofthe trilogy, is clearly someone who ishaunted by destiny.

“It is your destiny.” Like Luke,young men and boys of the Roman rul-ing class must have heard much thesame words from their fathers, grandfa-thers, teachers, and, perhaps especially,from their mothers, since the notion ofdestiny played an essential role in theirlives and the lives of their families.Their destiny, like that of their ances-tors before them, was to serve andadvance the fortunes of Rome and itsruling class.

Destiny (fatum), Roman destiny inparticular, is the central theme of thegreat Roman epic, Vergil’s Aeneid, writ-ten during the years 29-19 B.C., in theperiod following the political transfor-mation of Rome engineered by theemperor Augustus. Like Luke, Aeneas,the poem’s hero, is also someone who isburdened by destiny. Indeed, Aeneas ischaracterized in this way as early as thepoem’s second line, where he isdescribed as fato profugus, “an exile bydestiny.” At one of the epic’s climacticmoments, near the end of the pageantof Roman heroes that Aeneas is privi-leged to witness during his underworldjourney, his father informs him of hismission as a Roman (Aeneid 6.851-853):

Your mission, Roman, is to rule the world.

These will be your arts: to establish peace,

To spare the humbled, and to conquer the proud.

(translated by Stanley Lombardo, 2005)

The Romans, the most powerful peopleon earth, are destined to be rulers of theearth. Anchises’ words echo those spo-

ken earlier in the poem by Jupiter, theking and father of gods and men: for theRomans, Jupiter says, he has “set nolimits in time and space” and has giventhem “eternal empire, world withoutend” (Aeneid 1.278-279).

Vergil thus presents an idealized ver-sion of the message that had beenrepeated to elite Roman males since theearly days of the Republic. Young menof the Roman ruling class and thoseaspiring to join it were expected tointernalize the notion that it was theirduty to win glory in the service of Romeand its imperial longings.

There are, however, some lines ofHorace (Odes 3.6.17-20 and 45-48), writ-ten during the very years in which hisfriend Vergil was at work on the Aeneid,that seem to brand the Romans as fail-ures:

Ours is a lineage that knows not the law:marriages, children, hearths defiled,

And from this very source come all catastrophes,

vanquishing our people and our very earth.

And a bit further on, at the poem’s end:

What has Time left intact? Lesser than their own,

our parents bore children lesser still,and ours are lesser still than we, and theirs

than they. And theirs again than they . . .(translated by

Richard Howard, 2002)

These lines suggest that the Romanswere not good enough to fulfill theirexalted destiny, even though theythought it inexorable. Although theywere the masters of many peoples, theRomans are condemned for being pro-foundly unworthy of their appointedrole. All throughout his “Roman Odes”(3.1-6), Horace reminds his readers howmuch better things were back in thedistant past when Romans, thensupremely virtuous, struggled and suc-ceeded, defeating Carthage, the mortalfoe, and making Rome the dominantforce in the Mediterranean world (amessage also conveyed by the historianSallust in his accounts of the war withJugurtha and the conspiracy of Catiline).

But perhaps these unhappy thoughts

were expressed most poignantly at theend of the next century, when Romewas reaching the apex of its imperialpower, by Tacitus, who was writingabout the Britons and the Germans andtheir inevitable subjugation at the handsof Rome. These people, Tacitus impliesmore than once, possess the very virtuesthat once marked the Romans. TheChauci, whom he describes as “thenoblest people of Germany,” are notedfor their uprightness: “Untouched bygreed or lawless ambition, they dwell inquiet seclusion, never provoking a war,never robbing or plundering theirneighbors” (Germania 35). Among theGermans, Tacitus observes, the “mar-riage code . . . is strict, and no feature oftheir morality deserves higher praise.”German women “live uncorrupted bythe temptations of public shows or theexcitements of banquets,” and “no onein Germany finds vice amusing, or callsit ‘up-to-date’ to seduce and beseduced” (18-19). Harold Mattingly,whose translation of the Germania andAgricola (1970) I am using here, sums itup well: “Tacitus unmistakably con-trasts the virtues of the Germans, whichrecall the uncorrupted morals of oldRome, with the degeneracy of theempire” (Introduction, 25).

Tacitus is startlingly frank about thefailings of his generation:

We have indeed set up a record ofsubservience. Rome of old exploredthe utmost limits of freedom; we haveplumbed the depths of slavery,robbed as we are . . . even of the rightto exchange ideas in conversation. Weshould have lost our memories as wellas our tongues had it been as easy toforget as to be silent. (Agricola 2)

The Agricola, as Mattingly notes, ismarked by “belief in Rome, in Romandestiny, and in the Roman ways andstandards of life,” but there is also “anote of tragedy in the thought that thisideal has to live in an unfriendly world,in conditions which make it impossiblefor it to achieve perfection” (Introduc-tion, 17-18). I would venture a bit fur-ther: Tacitus is haunted by the sensethat the Romans will never be able tolive up to their imperial mission.

At the same time, Tacitus can bebrutally unsentimental about the fact

IT WAS THEIR DESTINY: ROMAN POWER ANDIMPERIAL SELF-ESTEEMby Carl Rubino

10

that the Britons and Germans alike aredoomed to subjugation. Telling thestory of a German tribe that was nearlyannihilated by its neighbors, he notesthat the Romans were permitted to wit-ness the slaughter:

More than 60,000 were killed, not byRoman swords or javelins, but – moresplendid still – as a spectacle beforeour delighted eyes. Long, I pray, mayforeign nations persist, if not in lovingus, at least in hating one another; fordestiny is driving our empire upon itsappointed path, and fortune canbestow on us no better gift than dis-cord among our foes. (Germania 33)

Although the insensitivity and cruelty ofsuch sentiments may seem shocking tous, they clearly demonstrate how superi-or the Romans felt to nations and ethnicgroups less fortunate than themselves.

Tacitus’ observations about theBritons and Germans bring to mind thewritings of Thomas Jefferson, whoechoes Rousseau in being sentimentaland idealistic about the “savages” bothof them felt were doomed by the inex-orable advance of European civilization.Jefferson, whose Notes on the State of Vir-ginia exhibit a kind of melancholic ide-alism about Native Americans (note hisreplies to Queries 6 and 11), could alsobe ruthless in insisting that they acceptthe inevitability of their subjugation.Writing to William Henry Harrison, theterritorial governor of Ohio, Jefferson,here speaking as President of the Unit-ed States, offers the following:

our settlements will gradually circum-scribe and approach the Indians, andthey will in time either incorporatewith us as citizens of the UnitedStates, or remove beyond the Missis-sippi. The former is certainly the ter-mination of their history most happyfor themselves; but, in the wholecourse of this, it is essential to culti-vate their love. As to their fear, wepresume that our strength and theirweakness is now so visible that theymust see we have only to shut ourhand to crush them, and that all ourliberalities to them proceed frommotives of pure humanity only.Should any tribe be fool-hardy enoughto take up the hatchet at any time, theseizing the whole country of that tribe,and driving them across the Mississip-pi, as the only condition of peace,would be an example to others, and afurtherance of our final consolidation.(Writings, ed. by Merrill D. Peterson,1984, 1118-1119.)

As the historian Joseph Ellis puts it,

continued on page 19

Sir Elton John’s middle name is Hercules.Born Reginald Dwight, John changed hisname in 1967. He chose Hercules, notbecause of the Greek hero, but because ofa horse named Hercules in the British come-dy series Steptoe and Son (the model forthe American comedy series Sanford and Son).

In the movie Akeelah and the Bee,Akeelah succeeds because she is urged bya college professor (Laurence Fishburne) tostudy Latin, Greek, and French (see Fig. 6).In the words of one review, the movie“makes studying Latin-root flashcards seemlike a cool after-school activity"! For theimportance of Latin and Greek at the annu-al Scripps National Spelling Bee, see JudithHallett’s article in issue 4.1 of Amphora(archived at www.apaclassics.org/out-reach/amphora/2005/Amphora4.1.pdf).

Charles Mingus, one of the great Ameri-can jazz artists, entitled his 1959 album(recently re-mastered and re-released) Min-gus Ah Um, a play on the -us, -a, -umvocabulary listing of first and seconddeclension Latin adjectives.

The Mask of Atreus, by A. J. Hartley, isa murder mystery connecting Atreus andNazis. The story, which begins in a muse-um in Atlanta, is a disturbing look at theblack market through a fictionalizedaccount of the journey of the treasures thatHeinrich Schliemann removed from the siteof Troy and the rumors concerning the fateof Hilter’s body.

C. Jack Ellis, mayor of Macon, Georgia,declared September 9 to be “WilliamSanders Scarborough Day” to com-memorate the eightieth anniversary of hisdeath. Scarborough (1852-1926) wasauthor of a Classical Greek textbook FirstLessons in Greek (1881), president ofWilberforce University, and the thirdAfrican American member of the APA. Formore about Professor Scarborough, see TheAutobiography of William Sanders Scar-borough: An American Journey From Slav-ery to Scholarship (2004), edited by Profes-sor Michele Valerie Ronnick (Wayne StateUniversity). On November 2, 2006, MayorEllis presented Professor Ronnick with thekey to the city at the Georgia Literary Festival.

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Fig. 6. English professor Dr. Larabee(Laurence Fishburne) coaches Akeelah inAkeelah and the Bee (Lions Gate Films,2006).

APA SPEAKERS BUREAU

The APA maintains a roster of enthusiastic speakers who are available toaddress a wide variety of audiences – civic groups, professional societies,

library and other reading groups, middle schools and secondary schools, juniorand senior colleges, universities, and many other organizations.

The Speakers Bureau can be found by going to the APA Web site atwww.apaclassics.org and clicking on Outreach, listed on the left hand side of thescreen of the home page. Under Outreach, you will find the Speakers Bureau.The Bureau lists e-mail addresses of dozens of speakers as well as descriptionsof the talks they are prepared to give. A glance through the topics describedthere will make clear the breadth of presentations that are available, from Med-ical Practices in Pompeii and the Roman Empire to Women’s Letters fromAncient Egypt.

Did You Know…

The Getty Villa in Malibu, California,reopened on January 28, 2006 after

undergoing nine years of renovation by theBoston architectural firm of Machado andSilvetti and the reinstallation of the antiqui-ties collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The collections, buildings, and programsof the new Villa site support its mission as acenter for the study of ancient Greek,Roman, and Etruscan culture. The Villabuilding housing the antiquities collectionlies at the heart of the site (see Fig. 7).Originally opened to the public in 1974, J.Paul Getty’s Villa is a replica in plan of thefirst-century Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum,which was buried by the eruption of Mt.Vesuvius in A.D. 79. The Malibu site wasinitially designed and built to display andstore the entirety of Getty’s collections.Antiquities filled the ground floor, whilesculpture, paintings, decorative arts, manu-scripts, and photography were installed inlight-protected period rooms on the upperfloor. In 1997, the post-antique collectionswere moved to their new home in the gal-leries of The Getty Center in Los Angeles.

At the Getty Villa in Malibu, new andexpansive light-filled galleries are nowinstalled exclusively with the antiquities col-lection (see Fig. 8). Inside, walls wereremoved, and windows and ceilings wereopened to the sun and views of the SantaMonica Mountains and Pacific Ocean. Inorder to provide maximum flexibility for thedisplay of the variety of artifacts containedin the galleries, which range from heavymarbles to delicate glass, new walls werebraced with art-support systems. The designsof intricate terrazzo floors incorporate seis-mically protective anchor points for isolator-base pedestals supporting marble statuaryand display vitrines.

The antiquities collection is now installedthematically. On the ground floor, the largegallery Dionysos and the Theater, with itsdramatic Pompeiian-red Venetian plasterwalls, flanks the Atrium, together with thegallery devoted to Gods and Goddesses,which is plastered in Olympian blue. Thecubicula, small rooms surrounding the Atri-um that are modeled after Roman bed-rooms, are installed with cases devoted to

terracotta, marble, silver, bronze, and glassartifacts. The refurbished and lavish Roomof Colored Marbles, original to the 1974Villa, approximates in its decoration theopulent marble rooms that were fashion-able in luxury villas such as the Villa deiPapiri and holds the Getty’s collection ofancient metalwork. This small room adjoinsthe Basilica, another patterned-marble roomdesigned after Roman architectural plansand installed with marble sculpture. Twogalleries – Mythological Heroes and Storiesof the Trojan War – are also located on theground floor, as are two educational gal-leries. The Timescape Room introduces visi-tors to the styles and chronologies of antiq-uity, and the Family Forum provides learn-ing activities for families.

The Temple of Herakles lies on axis withthe Inner and Outer Peristyles (see Fig. 9).The renovation of this small circular galleryincluded replacing the 1974 dome in orderto create, in effect, a miniature Pantheon.The room, with its intricate circular pavementin Numidian yellow and dark gray Lucullanmarble (copied from the original Villa deiPapiri) and its new dome, was originallyintended to display Mr. Getty’s prized acqui-sition, the Lansdowne Herakles. After over adecade spent in the Getty’s conservationlabs followed by display at the Getty Centerin Los Angeles during the Villa’s renovation,Herakles has finally come home.

The most remarkable visible change tothe Villa building itself was the constructionof a large staircase at the east side of thebuilding. Replacing what had been gal-

leries on both floors, the wide staircase ofcarved Spanish amarillo Triana marble pro-vides an impressive ascent to the newupper floor, framing a view of the East Gar-den on the east-west axis of the Villa. Visi-tors ascending the staircase arrive at a sec-ond floor, which has been completelyreconceived from its former design andinstallation. Everything is new: the terrazzofloors, the skylights, the wood-framed win-dows with views of the nearby mountainsand the Inner Peristyle below, the GettyGuide interactive resource room, and thereading room with its view to the OuterPeristyle and Pacific Ocean, in addition toinstallations of ancient art. The prehistoriccollections are installed in the permanentgallery adjacent to the marble staircase.The major galleries on this floor are Ath-

The Reimagined Getty Villaby Mary Louise Hart

Fig. 7. The Outer Peristyle at the reimagined Getty Villa in Malibu, California, Septem-ber 8, 2005. The J. Paul Getty Museum. © 2005 Richard Ross with the courtesy of the J.Paul Getty Trust.

Fig. 8. Men in Antiquity gallery in the J.Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa inMalibu. The J. Paul Getty Museum. ©2005 Richard Ross with the courtesy ofthe J. Paul Getty Trust.

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letes, Men in Antiquity, and Women andChildren in Antiquity, which togetherinclude some of the most important sculptur-al installations in the museum’s collection.There is also a small gallery containingEgyptian artifacts and, overlooking theocean, an intimate room where visitors canclosely examine selected small objects fromthe Villa’s collections of bronzes, gems,coins, ambers, and ivories, as well as Atticvase fragments – this is the smallest and themost densely installed gallery in the muse-um. Two wings of the corridor encirclingthe Inner Peristyle gallery have beeninstalled with Animals and Funerary Sculp-ture; the other two connecting corridorsadjoin Changing Exhibition galleries on thenorth and east sides of the building.

Because the Villa’s gallery spaces openonto the outdoors as well as other galleries,visitors are often inspired to move outside byan alluring fountain, garden, or view. On theupper floor, bronze doors open onto bal-conies providing dramatic views of the OuterPeristyle, Pacific Ocean, and plaza area.Ground floor galleries on the east, south, andwest sides provide access to redesigned andnewly replanted gardens. The East Garden isa favorite of visitors, with its plantings ofacanthus and sycamore trees and its largeshell and mosaic fountain copied from onediscovered in the House of the Large Foun-tain in Pompeii. Garden views of the Innerand Outer Peristyles have become emblemat-ic of the Villa; these garden spaces havealways been favorite strolling places for visi-tors, as they were for the original inhabitantsof the Villa dei Papiri. They have been rein-stalled with bronze replicas of the originalgarden sculptures now in the collection of theNational Archaeological Museum of Naples.The illusionistic wall paintings of the northwall of the Outer Peristyle have been repaint-ed to conform to the changed requirementsof these new spaces.

The entrance to the Villa, originallylocated at the far end of the Outer Peristyle,has been shifted to the historically-accurateRoman entrance at the Atrium. The visitorreaches this entrance after walking along ahigh path framing architectural and gardenviews between plantings of oleander andolive trees. The idea that the Villa could beperceived as an artifact to be viewed fromabove, like the ruins at Herculaneum, is aconcept the architects developed during the

design process. The Villa’s new front dooris faced by the semi-circular Lawrence andBarbara Fleischman Theater, where ancientplays are produced each year (see Fig. 10).

A suite of new buildings and facilitieswas incorporated into the overall sitedesign to improve the visitor’s experienceat the Villa. An Entry Pavilion has beenbuilt adjacent to a new parking structure.Here, visitors begin their ascent to theMuseum Path by means of stairs or eleva-tors that take them through a terrain con-structed of levels of banded concrete,aggregate, and alabaster, recalling thestrata of an excavation. The walk along thepath provides views of the Villa and itsHerb Garden below. The first view of thecombined architectural program comes atthe end of this path, which leads visitors tothe upper tier of the Fleischman Theater.

From this point, visitors can descend to theMuseum and its new Store and Auditorium.The Café, which provides views of the Villaand Pacific Ocean, lies at the top tier oftheater seats. Just beyond it, a small cam-pus of three interconnected buildings wasconstructed in order to incorporate conser-vation labs, offices used for scholarly pro-gramming, and the UCLA/Getty Conserva-tion Institute Masters Program in the Con-servation of Ethnographic and Archaeologi-cal Material. J. Paul Getty’s 1946 Spanish-style Ranch House has been transformedinto curatorial and scholars’ offices and isthe home of the Getty Research Institute’sVilla Scholars Program. Scholarly and cura-torial research is supported by a 15,000-volume library.

Through exhibitions, conservation, schol-arship, research, and public programs, thereimagined Getty Villa serves a variedaudience interested in the arts and culturesof ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.Admission to the Villa is always free, andinformation about tickets, hours, and eventsmay be found on the Getty Villa Web siteat http://www.getty.edu/visit.

Mary Louise Hart (mhart@getty.edu) isAssistant Curator of Antiquities at the J.Paul Getty Museum Villa. Dr. Hart, an arthistorian, specializes in ancient Athenianvase painting and iconography. Since join-ing the museum in 1997, she has alsobecome a specialist in ancient and contem-porary theater, developing the Getty Villa’sprogram for the performance of ancientGreek and Roman drama. A co-curator ofthe recent “Colors of Clay” exhibition, sheis currently curating the exhibition, “The Artof Ancient Greek Theater,” which will openat the Getty Villa in the summer of 2008.

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Fig. 9. Temple of Herakles gallery, withalternating triangles of Numidian yel-low and africano or dark gray Lucullanmarble, at the Getty Villa in Malibu,September 29, 2005. The J. Paul GettyMuseum. © 2005 Richard Ross with thecourtesy of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Fig. 10. View ofthe J. Paul GettyMuseum and thenew outdoor clas-sic theater at theGetty Villa. The J.Paul Getty Muse-um. © 2005Richard Ross withthe courtesy ofthe J. Paul GettyTrust. © 2006 J.Paul Getty Trust.

Poor Tom, described by his teacher as“rather a rough cub,” is appalled byLatin Grammar and Euclid. When hisclever little sister goes to see him at Mr.Stelling’s small establishment, she tellshim she will help him with his Euclid,to which he retorts:

“You help me, you silly little thing! . . . I should like to see you doing one ofmy lessons! Why, I learn Latin too!Girls never learn such things. They’retoo silly.”

“I know what Latin is very well,”said Maggie confidently. “Latin’s a lan-guage. There are Latin words in the dic-tionary. There’s bonus, a gift.”

“Now, you’re just wrong there, MissMaggie!” said Tom, secretly astonished.“You think you’re very wise. But‘bonus’ means good, as it happens –bonus, bona, bonum.”

“Well, that’s no reason why itshouldn’t mean ‘gift,’” said Maggiestoutly. “It may mean several things –almost every word does.”

Virginia Woolf, like Maggie Tulliver,was also jealous of her brothers and theiruniversity education and struggled com-petitively to learn Greek and Latin,attending lectures at King’s CollegeLondon, then studying privately withtutor Janet Case, with whom she readAeschylus: writing to a friend in Febru-ary 1905, Woolf boasts, “I have taken aplunge into tough Greek, and that has somuch attraction for me – Heaven knowswhy – that I don’t want to do anythingelse. I am really rather good at Greek.”The legendary Jane Harrison (1850-1928), lecturer in classical archaeology atNewnham College, Cambridge, appearsbriefly in A Room of One’s Own, and thesparrows that sing to poor Septimus inMrs. Dalloway sing in Greek, in “voicesprolonged and piercing in Greek words,from trees in the meadow of life beyonda river where the dead walk, how thereis no death . . .” The teaching of classicswas a feminist issue, an issue of familypolitics, family dynamics.

The role and status of the classicsteacher in contemporary fiction raise yetmore questions. In my novel, The Ice Age(1977), I was trying to capture thegloomy, displaced mood of post-imperialBritain after the oil crisis of 1973, and Idiscover that I have there created asemi-tragic character, a poet and teacherof classics called Linton, who feels hehas been washed up in a drying pond. Itis an unflattering portrait: Linton, once

“a bright boy, a pretty boy, a scholar, apoet and a classicist . . . married to apretty girl, with pretty children, slender,with curling tendrils of vine about hisclassic forehead” has grown plump, bit-ter, and censorious, and spends his timeberating his old friends about fallingstandards in the academic world and themenace of trendy school teachers, andbeat poets, and pub poets, and (what wewould now call) performance poets. Hebelieved there is “an anti-clerical con-spiracy, an intellectual-lobby in high andlow places in the educational world”: hisstudents, he says, have been “appalling-ly badly taught . . . none of them had anysolid grounding in grammar, none ofthem could write a prose . . . they had allbeen corrupted by vague ‘classical stud-ies’ and thought that if they knew a fewGreek myths and could recognise apiece of Ovid or Homer and make someapproximate sense of it, that that woulddo. . . . Poor Linton had had the histori-cal misfortune to be gifted in a dyingskill, and to have been insufficientlyaware of the shrinking domain of hisown subject. . . .”

And there is more analysis alongthese lines. This is an unsympatheticportrait, seen through the eyes of an oldfriend who has pursued a much riskiercareer in the property market, and comebadly unstuck. Looking at Linton againnow, nearly thirty years later, afterdecades more of changing classical stud-

ies, I may have a different perspective. Inow feel that our physical, classroomexperience of learning a “dead” lan-guage, combined with our continuingreading of history and poetry in transla-tion – “that battered old purple PenguinTacitus” – form together a layer thatlies beneath our experience of the con-temporary world and helps to structureour memory of who we are, as individu-als and as members of the tribe. Fromthis subterranean lake, from this collec-tive unconscious, we continue to receivemessages and images and metaphors,many of which still belong to a commonstore of memory, although we may notalways be aware of their source. (Themeaning of my use of the GoldenBough in my novel The Seven Sisters hadto be explained to me by a reader at aliterary festival – I hadn’t realised whatI was doing with this image until shetold me, and indeed I resisted her inter-pretation indignantly at the time.)

We may enter this underworld ofimagery, as we may enter the world ofChristian imagery, to renew ourselvesand to rediscover forgotten meanings.The underworld of the Greek andRomans and the Christian underworldwere majestically combined in Dante’sInferno and remain entangled today: thepoet Peter Redgrove asks “where wasthe boatman and his gliding punt?” inhis poem “Lazarus and the Sea,” andwe all recognise Charon even if we donot know his name.

That “boatman with his glidingpunt” remains a potent (and universal?)image. He appears, circling Pluto in thenight skies, in tragic and in comic modein The Frogs of Aristophanes and TheInvention of Love by Tom Stoppard, inConrad and in Hardy, in detective sto-ries and ghost stories, in crossword puz-zles and trade names and sculptures andpaintings – he and his crew are part ofour story.

Margaret Drabble is a novelist and critic,author of seventeen novels, most recently TheSea Lady (2006). She edited the Fifth andSixth editions of The Oxford Companionto English Literature (1985, 2000). She ismarried to biographer Michael Holroyd andlives in London and West Somerset. A ver-sion of this article was delivered at the meet-ing of the American Philological Associationin Montreal on January 6, 2006.

CROSSING THE STYX: THE AFTERLIFE OF THE AFTERLIFE continued from page 3

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14

Coming in FutureIssues of Amphora

Orbis grammaticus

The Minoan Tsunami

Hunting the Lithuanian Bison

Greco-Buddhist Treasures

The Hopi Myth Field Mouse Goes

to War

Re-reading Laura Riding

The Art Infusion Project at the U. S. Mint

The Colony of Augusta Emerita in

Roman Lusitania

Peter Needham, trans. HarriusPotter et Philosophi Lapis, by J. K.Rowling. Bloomsbury Publishing(http://www.bloomsbury. com),2003. Pp. 249. Hardcover$21.95. ISBN 1-58234-825-1.

In the preface to his Latin ver-sion of Robinson Crusoe

(Rebilii Crusonis Annales, 1884),Francis William Newman wrote,“no accuracy of reading smallportions of Latin will ever be soeffective as extensive reading;and to make extensive reading possible tothe many, the style ought to be very easyand the matter attractive.” Newman –younger brother of Cardinal John HenryNewman – had been professor of classicsat University College, London, where to hisdispleasure he came to note that “the modeof teaching Latin has become less and lesseffective in proportion as it has been mademore and more scientific.” Hence heoffered Latin readers of the late nineteenthcentury an elegant translation of DanielDefoe’s desert island classic as a pedagog-ical tool, ad pueros discendos, accordingto his title.

I do not know whether Peter Needhamlaments the current mode of Latin instructionin Great Britain, but he now offers to thetwenty-first century’s readers an easy andefficient Latin translation of the first book inthe best-selling children’s series of the lastdecade, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’sStone. At two hundred and forty-ninepages, this book readily qualifies as exten-sive reading in Latin, and there can be nodoubt that its subject matter will be attrac-tive to the world’s myriad Harry Potter fans.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph(London, 12/3/2001), Needham himselfreferred to the task of translating Harry Pot-ter as “an ideal job for an old bloke inretirement.” As it happens, this old blokeretired after more than thirty years of teach-ing classics at Eton, which has made himan ideal candidate for rendering into Latina story that draws so heavily on the Britishboarding school experience. Over threedecades in public school have given Need-

ham plenty of practice in Latin prose com-position and, equally important in view ofthis particular undertaking, also furnishedhim with a refined sense of the cadence ofadolescent speech. His learning and sensi-tivity for his young readers’ needs are inevidence on every page of this charming lit-tle book, which, to my mind, improvesupon the original. For if I have to readabout slugs (limaces), toads (bufones), caul-drons (lebetes), vampires (sanguisugi),werewolves (versipelles), and even trollbuggers (muci trollosi), I’d prefer to do soin Latin.

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of HarryPotter. I was a born about a decade tooearly, and the first book – pace puerorum –left me underwhelmed. Nevertheless, I cansee how the fantasy world of Hogwarts(Schola Hogvartensis), with its mix of magicand mystery, appeals to less-hardened sen-sibilities as in fact Narnia and Star Warsonce enraptured my own. I also see theimmediate benefit of translating a book sowildly popular among the next generationof Latin readers, many of whom will beable to tackle Needham’s eminently read-able translation after two years of solid lan-guage instruction.

Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis shouldbe of interest to Latin instructors for two

main reasons: first, a large number oftoday’s students are already familiar withthe story and will derive pleasure frombeing able to read it in Latin; second, thedelight these students take from it will givethem confidence in reading longer texts. Isuppose I could make the same point aboutthe English original: just as J. K. Rowlinghas inspired children (of all ages) to readmore, Needham’s translation is designed todo this for Latin. It may even be succeed-ing: the second installment, Harrius Potter etCamera Secretorum (Harry Potter and theChamber of Secrets), will appear in Decem-ber 2006.

Before Harrius, Needham had publisheda Latin version of Paddington Bear (Ursusnomine Paddington, 1999) and thusalready belonged to a growing number oftranslators keen on making popular Euro-pean and American children’s literatureavailable in Latin. The current wave – if wecan call it that – succeeds an illustrious setof translations from the sixties includingWinnie ille Pu (Alexander Lenard, 1960),Regulus (Auguste Haury, 1961), and Aliciain Terra Mirabili (Clive Harcourt Carruthers,1964). The present translation has the dis-tinct merit of being easier to read thanthose.

This is not to say that Needham’s Latinlacks elegance, but the style of Harrius isstraightforward and neat without beingoverly repetitive or simply macaronic. Inthis regard, it cleaves closely to the originaland is neither classical nor medieval andhas no clearly identifiable periodic tinge.Still, it manages to feel like Latin, and this isthe book’s most important achievement.

There are even some pleasant surprisesin Harrius. For example, the use of diribito-rium (75) for “ticket dispenser” is aninspired choice that improves on the origi-nal “barrier.” Moreover, Needham has ren-dered Rowling’s simplistic rhymes into tidyelegiac couplets, including the inscriptionon the Gringotts bank (58), the Hogwartshymn (103), and the song of the “SortingHat” (Petasus Distribuens, 95-96). I cannotfault him for maintaining English idioms inLatin: for example, “she’s a nightmare”becomes est incubo, where monstrumwould be more idiomatic; “to the fork in theroad” becomes ad furcam semitae, wherethe Latin word is bivium. This depends

Book Review: Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapisby Matthew McGowan

Fig. 11. Professor Albus Dumbledore(Richard Harris) samples some FabaeAlberti Botti Omnium Saporum (BertieBott’s Every Flavour Beans) in HarryPotter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (WarnerBrothers, 2001), the film adaptation ofJ. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and thePhilosopher’s Stone (1997).

continued on page 17 15

Iremember my experience as anundergraduate sitting in a Frenchclass, excited about being exposed

to the work of Victor Hugo in his nativetongue. We were to read selections fromLes Misérables, and I was looking forwardto not only improving my French butimproving my own writing in theprocess. I suffered at the time from thenaive idea that most young writing stu-dents have: that a brilliant author’s “lit-erariness” might rub off if I studied (orcopied) it thoroughly enough.

Then, at the bottom of the introduc-tory page, I saw a small footnote. It’sbeen too many years for me to remem-ber the exact wording, but it wentsomething like this: “to assist the stu-dent, Victor Hugo’s rich vocabulary andstyle have been simplified.”

I was incensed. I was supposed to bereading Hugo. What the heck was this?Was it “literary” at all? Could we evencall it Hugo’s? Was it the French equiv-alent of a picture book for the obtuseforeigners who couldn’t be counted onto follow Hugo’s lapidary style? I hadbeen tutoring my fellow students on e. e. cummings, Henry James, andThomas Pynchon. I wasn’t intimidatedby stylistic pieces. I had the patience forit. But what exactly was this text?

My Master’s thesis at Indiana Univer-sity was a translation of Rainer MariaRilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. While examin-ing other translations, and with the helpof my mentor, Professor Eugene Eoyang,I had encountered what I still consider tobe a crucial flaw in most translationanalysis. Too many times, a translationfalls somewhere between two extremesalong a spectrum: either a translation istoo literal, which robs the target lan-guage’s reader of the literary riches of theoriginal text, or the translation is sadlylacking in accuracy because the translatortook the “spirit” of the text and over-looked literal meanings in the source lan-guage. In extreme examples of the for-mer case, the translation can be soencumbered by its need for accuracy thatit becomes nearly impenetrable (seeVladimir Nabokov’s English translationof Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Alek-sandr Pushkin, for example). In the lattercase, the text might wind up being some-thing wonderful in its own right, but itmight also be too casual about the details

of the source text to be called an actualtranslation (see the translations ofStephen Mitchell, for example). Thisdichotomy makes for a self-perpetuatingindustry. Any translation with spirit canbe shown to be inaccurate, and any“accurate” translation can be shown tobe too lacking in spirit.

This stalemate is especially true infilm. Seeing how the film Troy (2004) wasskewered in some quarters was painful tome. It hurt to see that many reviewers,instead of using the film as a point ofentry to the beauty of Homer’s text, wererejecting it for its inaccuracies. For myown part, I was mystified that the produc-ers removed the gods from the picturealtogether, but I had to admit it was quitea task to take western civilization’s great-est epic and place it in three hours of cel-luloid. The fact that a studio was willingto take a chance on it thrilled me. I was sohappy to see the film made because Ithought it would give teachers a chanceto get young people excited aboutAchilles’ pride, about Hector’s valor,about the weakness of Helen’s heart, andabout the cunning of Odysseus’ mind. Ihoped that after exposing students to thefilm, lovers of classics could then moldthat excitement into accurate knowledgeusing Homer’s text.

Troy tried to condense an epic intothree hours. Plato’s Symposium would beeasier to film, since it is merely oneevening’s conversation as recounted bysomeone who was there. The currentpolitical environment, however, wouldmake it a challenging text to present toyoung people, even on film. To add tothis difficulty, Plato, even in the mostdexterous translation, is difficult toenjoy. But a lot of that is his fault. Theearly dialogues are almost insufferablein the way the characters interact withSocrates. Most of his interlocutors haveno characterization at all and are limitedto such insightful dialogue as “Yes,Socrates.” “Oh, you’re right, Socrates.”“I never thought of it that way,Socrates.” These weren’t characters;these were shills; these were straw men.As a student I didn’t have a word for mydiscomfort: once I started working pro-fessionally in film, I found the technicalterm: bad writing. The early dialogues,however philosophically enlightening,could have been much more effective if

Plato were a better writer at the time. But somehow, in the Symposium, Plato

seems to have found his pen. The charac-ters are real: they breathe, they have theirown points of view, and they are justinches away from confronting each otheras we’d see in a Brazilian soap opera.Reading Percy Bysshe Shelley’s transla-tion (The Banquet) again, a few years ago, I realized that Agathon’s winning of theplaywriting prize had to have madeAristophanes extremely jealous. Why didn’t Plato run with that? And Eryxi-machus’ self-absorbed answer about thenature of love indicated a character whosaw life only in terms of his own medicalexperience. Why not call him on that? Isaw Alcibiades not just as a frustratedpolitician, angry that Socrates wouldn’tsleep with him: I saw Plato, angry at hismentor Socrates, incensed that he couldbe so distant with Plato yet be so popularwith others. Was that true? Did Socratesnot make Plato feel special enough? Icouldn’t be the only one who saw this. Infact, as I would learn later, the scholarGregory Vlastos had asked many of thesequestions and addressed Socrates’ failureas a man many years ago, to a largelymuted response. Too much of the schol-arship of Socrates resembles hagiography,and a modern psychoanalytic approach ofthe greatest thinker in occidental historyis still taboo for many of us. But perhapsmost importantly, I saw that Plato’s argu-ment that the purest love was the onefound between very young men andolder ones would be explosive; to say theleast, it would be problematic in educa-tion today.

This was enough for me to try myown translation of the text in preparationfor filming it. Being fully aware of thespectrum of judgments regarding transla-tion, I decided to follow my own beliefs.To me, there are three kinds of transla-tion: the kind that serves the reader whowill never read the source text and hasno desire to; the kind that serves best thereader who has some knowledge of thesource text and wants to understand itbetter; and the kind that serves the read-er who is expert in the source text andwants to interact with it at a deeper level– a translation that gives a new way oflooking at the text. Can one adaptationserve every expectation? Of course not.But it was my money, and no studioexecutive was lingering around tellingme to make it more violent or sexy; so Icould try it my own way.

This is how I approached the filmingof Plato’s Symposium. Plato had alreadylaid out the conflicts that Hollywoodscriptwriters are taught to create. All

PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM: A FILMMAKER’S PERsPECTIVE by Michael Wurth

16

that was needed was a little push, andthe drama would emerge from the phi-losophy. I rented a house with anincredible view on the Hawaiian islandof Oahu and lived together with the castand crew for the three weeks of shoot-ing (see Fig. 12). We’d film until 4 a.m.,drink until 7 a.m., and start over thenext day at 6 p.m. sharp. We fell in lovewith each other during the shoot, inalmost every sense Plato describes. Wehad a wonderful time making the film.

I felt any dialogue about love with-out a feminine viewpoint was irrelevant,so I took Aristophanes and Eryximachusand made them female. I gave to Aristo-phanes the latent jealousy I could intuitreading Plato’s text. And depictingEryximachus and Agathon as husbandand wife, with an infidelity loomingover their marriage, I thought would bean excellent way to explain Agathon’srather simplistic (almost feeble) attemptto define love in Plato’s text and givebeginning students a point of entranceinto the film – viewers would be farmore captivated by an affair about to beexposed than by seven intellectualstalking about love. Dialogues, by theirnature, only tell. Here, I could show afriction that Plato never directly articu-lated, and by doing so, get students whootherwise would nod off in the first fif-teen minutes to stay with us.

Is my filmed version of the Symposiuma mere Hollywood dumbing-down of oneof our culture’s most important texts, or isit a translation that can give insight intowhat Plato was saying? Or, perhaps mosthonestly, was my adaptation just my wayof saying through film what I’ve thoughtsince first reading Plato’s Symposium intranslation in high school: Socrates was a“horse’s ass” who bullied other peoplewith his command of rhetoric while rarelyexposing opinions of his own? Does thatmean I have to provide the asterisk at thebeginning of the film, indicating thatPlato’s rich language has been simplifiedin order to help the student? Not at all.

This isn’t a bad textbook teachingwatered-down Plato.

If my audiences’ reactions so far areany indication, the film has been a suc-cess. By success I do not mean that thefilm defies the two-sided spectrum oftranslation analysis. I mean that if a stu-dent has no interest in philosophy,Plato’s Symposium as filmed generallygets them interested enough to askabout Plato. If a student has some inter-est in philosophy, our film can show per-sonifications of the actual arguments inthe text: real, living people with real con-cerns beyond defining love: people theycan identify with, visual characters thatmake the arcane literary translationsmore accessible. And an expert in Plato’stext will be able to see the Symposium ina different way: as a legitimate effort indramatic writing instead of, as one col-league has told me, merely as “the dia-logue where the theory of forms is firstarticulated.” There’s too much drama inthe text for this to be an accident. I thinkPlato was saying something far deeperthan simply defining the forms. I believePlato was talking to his dead mentorSocrates, and saying a great deal to him.This is what a translation of a classic text– in print or in film – should be: a pointof departure. And I hope we’ve doneenough to achieve that.

Michael Wurth (Michael@scriptwise.com)holds an M.A. in Comparative Literaturefrom Indiana University, with a concentra-tion on translation theory. His film TheSymposium is available with full academiclicense at http://www.scriptwise.com andhttp://www.amazon.com. His new filmSunday Wind, about the tragic fate of threeHawaiian civilians during the Pearl Harborattacks, has just won two awards: the DreamDigital Award at the Hawaii InternationalFilm Festival and the Visionary FilmmakerAward at the MauiFest Film Festival.

Fig. 12. The cast in Michael Wurth’s filmThe Symposium (Scriptwise Partners LLC,2003) discuss the meaning of love.

again on Needham’s awareness of hisreaders’ needs, for whom such one-to-onerenderings will be more easily understand-able.

On the whole, the Latin is reliable andthe text free from typographical errors.Inevitably, the nuance of certain charac-ters’ phraseology, for example, Hagrid’swest-country dialect or Dumbledore’s wiz-ard-speak (see Fig. 11), gets lost in theLatin. In addition, I cannot explain the pres-ence of the rarer feminine form of finis(e.g., 125, 135) or why Needham usesquippe with the adverbial qui instead ofthe more common explanatory relative(e.g., 211, 244).

In sum, although I can think of no placefor Harrius in the Latin curriculum, it is per-fectly suitable for a Latin club’s readinggroup and might be cannily deployed inspoken Latin sessions. There students couldact out some of the more well-knownscenes from the book (and movie) such asthe “Mirror of Erised” (Speculum Erisedii)or “The Man with Two Faces” (Vir DuobusVultibus). My own experience has shownthat students who try to speak the languagetend to learn more: active Latin makeslearning more efficient and, ultimately,more enjoyable. So too with the bookunder review: the pleasure of reading withease makes Harrius Potter et PhilosophiLapis an effective tool for learning Latin,and for that Peter Needham is to be com-mended.

Matthew McGowan (mmcgowan@wooster.edu) is Assistant Professor andChair of Classics at the College of Woosterin Ohio. His research focuses on Latin Liter-ature and the Classical Tradition.

Book Review: HarriusPotter et PhilosophiLapiscontinued from page 15

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Benita Kane Jaro. The Lock. Bolchazy-Car-ducci Publishers (http://www.bolchazy.com), 2002. Pp. 280. Paperback $19.95.ISBN 0-86516-535-1.

Benita Kane Jaro. The Key. Bolchazy-Car-ducci Publishers (http://www.bolchazy.com), 2002. Pp. 280. Paperback $19.95.ISBN 0-86516-534-3.

Benita Kane Jaro. The Door in the Wall.Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers (http://www.bolchazy.com), 2002. Pp. 280. Paperback$19.95. ISBN 0-86516-533-5.

By bundling these three novels together,Jaro stakes her claim to an interpretive

literary trilogy of the closing years of theRoman Republic. She traces this story from62 B.C. to 48 B.C. mainly through theadventures, and largely through the eyes,of Marcus Caelius Rufus, who is the protag-onist as well as the usual narrator. On thewhole, she has created a subtle, dark,ambivalent, and thoughtful set of interlock-ing stories.

The original publication date (1988)suggests that Key should perhaps be readfirst; but there is much to be said for begin-ning with Lock (evidently the last book writ-ten), where Caelius is still a young man.

Lock is the only tale not told directly byCaelius; in fact, while the narrator is anomniscient third person, the point of view ismainly that of a surprisingly sympatheticCicero, who appears here in the most per-suasively favorable fictional characteriza-tion that I know of. He acts neitherpompous nor pretentious. While many nov-els of the period emphasize his vacillation(perhaps fear) or self-aggrandizement,Jaro’s Cicero is courageous, warm, andclever, a man trying to be an honest andserious politician in an age of increasingcorruption. The events of the novel form aclassic ring: we begin at the Bona Dea trialin the shadow of Pompey’s return from theEast, where Clodius is prosecuted for spy-ing on the rites; we conclude at the trial ofMilo, where Cicero defends Milo for theslaying of Clodius along the Appian Waynear a shrine of the Bona Dea, and Pom-

pey seems on the verge of dictatorship. The important characters of the trilogy

are all introduced and fleshed out: PubliusClodius Pulcher, Clodia Metelli, Caesar,Pompey, and Catullus. Caelius himself isimpulsive and naive, an admirer and pro-tégé of Cicero. He is a friend of Catullus,whose featured role in Key is foreshad-owed. The central events of Lock are politi-cal (when they do not hone in on Caelius’personal life), and the tone is, in general,upbeat: the darker episodes and revela-tions of later books, many of them contem-poraneous, are on the perimeter of theaction. Sexual perversity, which becomes asymbol in the trilogy of a deeper moraldecay of the Roman order, remains here onthe surface or ambiguous.

The historical events are, of course,slanted for novelistic purposes. The greatestliberty is the suggestion that Caelius andCicero were implicated in advance in themurder of Clodius, about which Jaro isdefensive enough to include a justificationthat both demurs and defends: “I havedeliberately distorted what we know. . . . Itis no more than conjecture – I think a plau-sible one – that they may have beeninvolved in the way I have suggested”(Lock, 268).

Key is a bold experiment. On the onehand, the narrator is Caelius, reflectingupon what to tell Catullus’ father about hisdead son. On the other hand, the narratorsteps outside the first-person bounds ofwhat anyone other than Catullus could pos-sibly have known or seen. This interplay ofomniscience and Caelius’ own narration iseffective. The book follows the autobio-graphical clues of Catullus’ poems with cre-

ative insight, sometimes through action thatreflects the poems and sometimes throughaction on which poems are brought inexplicitly to comment. The complexity ofCatullus’ character and of his relationshipwith “Lesbia” (who is, in this book, ClodiaMetelli) and our Caelius, who is immortal-ized in Poem 58 (Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Les-bia illa), is well drawn. His alienation fromhis own society, his struggles to articulatethat alienation and to maintain ordinaryrelationships with close friends animate thetale. Personally, I am not a fan of the auto-biographical reading of Catullus’ poems,but Key gives us a nuanced and sensitiveexploration of a life otherwise impossible torecover.

The representation of social disorder insexual deviation becomes more pro-nounced than in Lock. And the choice ofmaterial in Catullus is abundant: adultery,homoeroticism, incest, and everywherebetrayal, regardless of the original pairing.That Clodia, a Roman patrician with pow-erful and wealthy relatives, could find her-self living in squalor, as she does here, isyet another symbolic reflection of thedegeneracy of the society from which shecomes.

In Door, the mood is dark. The storyopens in 48 B.C. with Caelius having takencontrol of Thurii as the civil war betweenPompey and Caesar has reached a climax;Pompey has been defeated and Caeliusawaits the arrival of Caesar’s men. He isperforming the function his rank demands,but he has no understanding of why or onwhose behalf he is doing so. So, bemused,he sits down to write a report as he waitsand decides what to do.

Caelius describes his life in Rome invivid terms, a dissipated romp beginning –as is thematic of the trilogy – with the BonaDea sacrilege, here portrayed as a drunkenlark in which not only Clodius but Catullusand Caelius were complicit. The figure ofCaesar looms in the background, becom-ing increasingly dominant and increasinglythe focus of Caelius’ interest and loyalty.Caelius finally turns against Caesar after aparticularly unpleasant abuse of personalloyalty and real power. Having cast his lot

Book Review: The Lock, The Key, and The Door in the Wallby James S. Ruebel

18

Jaro traces this story mainly through the

adventures, and largelythrough the eyes, of

Marcus Caelius Rufus.

with Pompey, he has lost all hope afterPharsalus.

Jaro’s Caesar is complex: as is rarely thecase, one sees how he attracted followerswith his brilliance and was able to lead inthe most difficult situations; yet his characteris venal, utterly ambitious, and ruthless.Pompey seems thoroughly realistic: a some-what obtuse man of obscure motivationother than his own glory, a fine general,and no match for Caesar as a politician.

In view of Jaro’s thorough knowledge ofCaelius’ letters to Cicero, I was surprisedthat she did not use the famous letter (Fam.8.14) where the real Caelius gives Cicerohis forecast of what he sees as an imminentcivil war. Perhaps the tone was too light (“ifit could be put on without danger, Fortunewould be arranging a great and interestingshow”) or too calculating (“when it hascome to war and the camp, we must followthe stronger side, and the better choice iswhat is safer”) for her character, thoughCaelius’ dilemma about whom to followreflected the sentiment among many in late50 B.C.

In Door, the sexual motif achieves reso-lution. While sexual liberty is rife in thestory, Caesar’s forcible seduction ofCaelius in his command tent represents notonly Caelius’ personal turning point butepitomizes the internal corruption of lead-ers of Caelius’ society, perhaps also repre-sentative of Rome herself. The trilogy endswith a despondent Caelius preparing toride out to meet Caesar’s troops.

All in all, Jaro has forged a layered andprovocative reflection on the fifteen yearsfrom the Bona Dea scandal to the death ofCaelius.

James S. Ruebel is Professor of Classicsand Dean of The Honors College at BallState University in Indiana. His currentteaching is primarily in honors humanitiesand a field-based symposium on the City ofRome.

there was no place in Jefferson’s imagi-nation “for an American society ofdiverse cultures in which Native Ameri-cans lived alongside whites while retain-ing their own Indian values” (AmericanSphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson,1998, 240). Furthermore, in spite of Jef-ferson’s statements about cultivatinglove and acting from “motives of purehumanity,” he must have been wellaware that, in reality, such sentimentsdid not prevail in the treatment ofNative Americans, any more than theydid in the treatment of African Ameri-can slaves. Like Tacitus, Jefferson washaunted by the notion that Americanswere unworthy of their mission. Sixyears before his death he wrote the fol-lowing:

I regret that I am now to die in thebelief, that the useless sacrifice ofthemselves by the generation of 1776,to acquire self-government and happi-ness to their country, is to be thrownaway by the unwise and unworthy pas-sions of their sons, and that my onlyconsolation is to be, that I live not toweep over it. (Writings, 1434-1435)

Jefferson was thinking about slaverywhen he wrote that: as Ellis emphasizes(314-326), the issue of how to deal withthe undeniable injustice of slavery madehim fear for the future of the nation hehad helped to found.

As a teacher, I have discovered thatthe issues of destiny and unworthinessoften seem directly relevant, since mystudents can become quite engagedwith them. Many students in Americanschools, colleges, and universities, espe-cially at private colleges such as the oneat which I teach, have been brought upto believe that they are destined for suc-cess, and this destiny often weighsheavily on them. Are they really goodenough to get the grades required? Willthey ever be able to do what seems tobe expected of them, reaching and evensurpassing the level of achievement –and income – attained by their parents?

Moreover, Tacitus’ observationsabout Roman destiny and the earlyinhabitants of Britain and Germany,taken together with Jefferson’s conflict-ed thoughts about the fate of NativeAmericans, make teaching Roman liter-ature and civilization especially chal-lenging in a world that now seems total-

ly dominated by the military and eco-nomic power of the United States.Thus, I ask my students to examine thenotion, put forth in the 1840’s, that theUnited States had a “manifest destiny”to expand westward, as many thought itdid. Once the students becomeengaged, the questions multiply. DoesAmerica have a destiny today? If so, canAmericans live up to the obligations itimposes upon them? Is America makinggood use of its enormous wealth andpower?

Once again, then, the experience ofthe Romans has given us a fruitful wayof examining the conditions of politicaland social life today. In this case, theirmessage comes down to us in the formof an unsettling interrogation. Like theRomans in the time of Sallust, Vergil,Horace, and Tacitus, we find ourselvesasking questions about our destiny –about what it is and whether we areworthy of it.

Carl A. Rubino is Edward North Profes-sor of Classics at Hamilton College. He haspublished on classics, comparative literature,literary theory, and issues in science and thehumanities. He is presently Book ReviewEditor of the American Journal of Philol-ogy.

Richard Howard’s translation ofHorace, Odes 3.6 may be found in J. D.McClatchy (ed.), Horace, The Odes: NewTranslations by Contemporary Poets(2002).

For more on Star Wars and Roman des-tiny, see Margaret Malamud, “Patriarchyand Pietas in the Star Wars Trilogy,”Amphora 3.1 (Spring 2004), which isavailable at http://www.apaclassics.org/out-reach/amphora/TOCAmphora.html, andMartin M. Winkler, “Star Wars and theRoman Empire,” in Classical Myth andCulture in the Cinema (2001).

IT WAS THEIR DESTINY: ROMAN POWER ANDIMPERIAL SELF-ESTEEMcontinued from page 11

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C. S. Lewis. Till We Have Faces: A MythRetold. Harcourt (www.HarcourtBooks.com), 1956. Pp. 313. Paperback $14.00.ISBN 0-15-690436-5.

Not many people associate C. S. Lewiswith classical myth. A few, perhaps,

are familiar with his studies of medievaland Renaissance literature; many moreknow him as a popular Christian apologist,and most, of course, as the author of thechildren’s books set in the imaginary worldof Narnia. As for myth, his interests, likethose of his friend J. R. R. Tolkien, seem tohave focused primarily on the Germanictradition, as is apparent in his portrayal ofNarnia as a sort of medieval fairyland. Butlike other men of his generation (he wasborn in 1898), his education included fromthe start a good deal of Latin and Greek,and he eventually took a First Class degreeat Oxford in classics. It is thus not surprisingthat figures from classical myth pop up inthe Narnia books: dryads, Chiron-like cen-taurs, and even, in Prince Caspian (1951),Bacchus and Silenus.

But Till We Have Faces is his only workin which classical myth has a central ratherthan a peripheral role; perhaps coincident-ly, it is also his least known work of fiction.As the title proclaims, it is “a myth retold,”and the myth in question is that of Cupidand Psyche as found in Apuleius’ GoldenAss. One might reasonably suppose thatthere could hardly be two writers with suchdiffering sensibilities as Apuleius and C. S.Lewis, yet Lewis manages to transformApuleius’ story in a way that is not onlyeffective but also surprisingly appropriate.

The changes that Lewis makes to theactual storyline are few but significant. First,of Psyche’s two older sisters, who in theoriginal are alike in their beauty and envy,only one is beautiful; the other is ugly andloves Psyche deeply. She alone goes tomourn Psyche and discovers that she is stillalive. Secondly, whereas in Apuleius’ ver-sion it is the experience of Psyche’s luxuri-ous palace that sparks the sisters’ envy, inLewis’ version the sister is unable to see thepalace at all. When she persuades Psycheto spy on her husband, then, it is not

through spite but a kind of jealous protec-tiveness.

But if Lewis was relatively sparing in thechanges he made to the storyline, his toneand treatment are utterly unlike those ofApuleius: his novel has none of the fairytalequality, none of the tongue-in-cheek humor,and none of the ironic distancing that char-acterize the original. The tone is insteadearnest, even somber, lacking the glibnessthat can creep into some of Lewis’ work. Healso adopts the somewhat startling deviceof a first-person narration, telling the storyin the persona of Psyche’s loving elder sis-ter. This is startling not only for the very dif-ferent perspective on the story that it pro-vides but also because Lewis’ somewhatdistant depictions of women in his earlierfiction would not lead one to expect that hewould try writing in a woman’s voice.Although his success is debatable, theattempt itself is intriguing, and perhaps con-nected with the fact that he was working onthe novel in the same year that he was get-ting to know his future wife, apparently thefirst woman whom he took seriously as anequal.

There is much here to interest a classi-cist. Lewis sets the novel in a barbarianland on the far distant periphery of the“Greeklands,” as the characters call them,and tries to imagine how such people mighthave viewed Greek culture. One of themain characters is a Greek slave who actsas a tutor for Psyche and her sisters andeventually, thanks to his typically Greekcleverness, becomes an important coun-selor to the king. He also presents Hell-enization in progress: in the latter part ofthe book, the priest of the main cult (that of

Ungit, whom the Greek equates withAphrodite) not only imports an anthropo-morphic image to supplement the unshapedstone that originally represented the god-dess, but also learns to expound the cult interms of physical allegory.

Allegory is in fact a central feature of thenovel as a whole, and one of the mostimpressive things about it is the skill withwhich Lewis, whose most important scholar-ly work was precisely a study of allegory,has developed it. Most scholars wouldprobably agree that Apuleius’ story ofCupid and Psyche is, on some level, anallegory of the soul’s union with the divine,although they would certainly disagree onhis purpose in devising it: the ease withwhich Apuleius’ novel as a whole allowsfor multiple and conflicting interpretations isone of its most salient characteristics. Lewisnot only preserves this allegorical dimen-sion of the tale, although transforming itinto Christian terms, but also retains its com-plexity: it is no easier to provide a simpleset of one-to-one equivalences for the char-acters and events of his novel than for thoseof the Apuleian original.

Although the intensely religious sensibili-ty of its ending may not appeal to all read-ers, this book certainly deserves to be muchbetter known than it is. Classicists will enjoyLewis’ imaginative presentation of Greekculture from the outside; more importantly,they will appreciate his ability to translatethe Cupid and Psyche story into a very dif-ferent cultural and religious milieu andthereby, astonishingly, render it evenstranger and more richly resonant than theoriginal. In that respect, it represents a featof transformation worthy of Apuleius him-self.

James B. Rives (jbrives@email.unc.edu)is Kenan Eminent Professor of Classics atthe University of North Carolina at ChapelHill, where he teaches courses in Latinprose and Roman culture; his most recentbook is Religion in the Roman Empire(2006). Among his earliest memories arethose of his father reading him C. S. Lewis’Narnia books.

20

Book Review: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retoldby James B. Rives

C. S. Lewis’ tone and treatment are utterly

unlike those of Apuleius.

Odyssey. This prose translation, which hepublished under the name T. E. Shaw, wasgenerally well received and is still in print.

Lawrence was, like Odysseus, a “man ofmany ways.” He loved to speed along Eng-lish country roads on his Brough Superiormotorcycles. He even gave them petnames: a favorite motorcycle was namedBoanerges ("Sons of Thunder") after theGreek word Jesus used in the New Testa-ment to describe the disciples James andJohn (Mark 3:17). It was on one of hismotorcycles that Lawrence met his end.Speeding and not wearing a crash helmet,he swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles.He lost control, flew over the handlebars,and suffered fatal head injuries. He wasburied in the village of Moreton.

QWhat influence did Latin andGreek have on T. E. Lawrence?

AT. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) was amedievalist by training, but he is

best known today for his campaigns, asLawrence of Arabia (see Fig. 13), againstthe Ottoman Turks during the Arab Revoltof 1916-1918.

Like other English boys of his time whoseparents aimed to give them a proper edu-cation, he studied Latin and Greek atschool, and he continued to read both lan-guages after his graduation from Oxford in1910. Of the two ancient languages,Lawrence had a stronger affinity for Greek.He often refers in his writings to a smallgroup of Greek authors: Homer, Herodotus,Aristophanes, Thucydides, Xenophon, andPlato. During the desert war, he carriedwith him a Greek text of the comedies ofAristophanes, and he read Aristophanes’Peace “very gratefully, and without muchtechnical trouble.” He admired, in particu-lar, the historian Herodotus, and his autobi-ographical account of his experiences dur-ing the Arab Revolt, Seven Pillars of Wis-dom, is considered by some scholars to bea kind of Herodotean history. His admira-tion of Herodotus even found expression atClouds Hill, his small, remote cottage inDorsetshire (which is now open for visits).He had a stone lintel placed over the doorof the cottage, and he himself carved onthe lintel ου ϕροντις [sic], ou phrontis,“does not care.” These are the well-knownwords, from the story told by Herodotus inHistories 6.126-130, of Hippocleides, thesuitor who performed a shocking dance ona table and then said he did not care thathe had danced away his marriage. (Manyhave speculated on the meaning of thesewords for understanding the complex per-sonality and activities of Lawrence through-out his life.)

In 1927, after he had disappeared frompublic view and was serving in the RoyalAir Force in India, Lawrence was invited,on the strength of Seven Pillars of Wisdom,to undertake a new translation of Homer’s

Ask A Classicist

Fig. 13. T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence ofArabia) after the First World War.

21

(ISSN 1542-2380) is published twice a year by the AmericanPhilological Association (APA). The APA, founded in 1869 by

“professors, friends, and patrons of linguistic science,” is now the principal learnedsociety in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, liter-atures, and civilizations. While the majority of its members are university and col-lege classics teachers, members also include scholars in other disciplines, primaryand secondary school teachers, and interested lay people. The APA produces severalseries of scholarly books and texts and the journal Transactions of the American Philo-logical Association. It holds an annual meeting each January in conjunction with theArchaeological Institute of America.

All of the APA’s programs are grounded in the rigor and high standards of tradi-tional philology, with the study of ancient Greek and Latin at their core. However,the APA also aims to present a broad view of classical culture and the ancientMediterranean world to a wide audience. In short, the APA seeks to preserve andtransmit the wisdom and values of classical culture and to find new meanings appro-priate to the complex and uncertain world of the twenty-first century.

The APA’s activities serve one or more of these overarching goals:• To ensure an adequate number of well-trained, inspirational classics teachers

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Members attending meetings of or making presentations to interested nonmembersare urged to request sample copies of Amphora from the APA office for distribution tothese audiences.

®

After the erosion of the WesternRoman Empire in the fifth centu-ry, Latin, though no one’s vernac-

ular tongue, continued to be used forabout 1,200 years, and longer in someregions, as the language of the Westernchurch and as the lingua franca of thelearned classes. In the Renaissance,which had its origins in the Italianhumanistic culture of the later four-teenth century, the segments of Euro-pean society that used Latin were notvery different from those of the preced-ing medieval centuries. Latin was stillthe language of church, academia, andsome diplomacy. But in one respect,Renaissance or humanist Latin was dis-tinct from Medieval Latin. Speakingvery generally, the Latin vulgate andthe works of the church fathers estab-lished Medieval Latin, while humanistLatin authors tried much more consis-tently to return to the norms and stylesof ancient pagan Latin prose and poetry.This humanist Latin, which became theprevailing mode of Latin expression innorthern Europe by about 1500, is oftencalled “Neo-Latin” to distinguish itfrom the Latin of the Middle Ages.

The establishment of the pagan clas-sical authors as the basis for Neo-Latindid not happen without controversy. Infact, pagan Latin literature of the periodfrom the first century B.C. (or even thesecond century B.C, if we include Plau-tus and Terence) to the late second cen-tury A.D. embraces a very wide range ofstyles and a considerable variety ofgrammatical usage. Hence it is smallwonder that disputes arose among lead-ing humanists concerning which ancientauthors were worthy of imitation andhow thoroughly one should imitate agiven model or models. Some advocatedan eclectic approach to prose style(much like Seneca proposed in his letter84) that sanctioned drawing togethermany elements of expression from vari-ous pagan authors. Others, especially inItaly, were proponents of Ciceronian-ism, the view that the best model forLatin prose was Cicero. This view wasprobably reinforced by close reading ofthe Roman authors themselves, for inthe Latin literature of the empire it isalmost a commonplace that Cicero wasthe supreme orator and that there hadbeen a decline in eloquence after thelate republic. Other Neo-Latin writers,and this group was perhaps the smallest,

created a difficult and recherché styleby following the example of authors ofthe late second century, such asApuleius and Gellius, and resuscitatingrare words and expressions from earlyLatin. In practice, a sort of moderateCiceronianism eventually prevailed,sanctioned by influential teachers suchas Johannes Sturm (1507-1589) andPhilipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) andthe educational practice of the Jesuitorder. Although they followed in gener-al the syntactical and stylistic norms ofthe classical authors, most writers ofNeo-Latin prose readily employedvocabulary from Christian and MedievalLatin, when necessary, to describe morerecent ideas or things, and sometimesentirely new words.

Perhaps the humanists’ success inestablishing the usage of the ancientpagan authors as the stylistic norm forthe Latin of the Renaissance and theearly-modern era brought an element ofstability and uniformity to Neo-Latin,by comparison to some of the special-ized types of Latin that had evolved inthe late Middle Ages, especially in thefields of theology, philosophy, dialectic,and law. This establishment of norms,according to the late Professor JozefIJsewijn of Leuven, Belgium, whosetwo-volume Companion to Neo-LatinStudies (Leuven, 1990 and 1998) is themost authoritative basic reference workfor anyone interested in Neo-Latin lit-erature, ensured Latin’s role as an inter-national language for several more cen-turies. This role for Latin persisted for avery long time, despite the inevitablegrowth and development of the vernac-ular languages associated with thegreater popular literacy and the consoli-dation of national cultures characteristicof the early modern period.

Latin continued to be a language ofpublic administration and documents insome areas of Europe. In Hungary, tocite an extreme case, Latin remainedthe official language of administrationuntil the mid-nineteenth century – per-haps only in the Catholic Church didLatin persist even longer as an adminis-trative medium. However, with thegradual spread of literacy in the nationallanguages among the laity, vernacularsgenerally replaced Latin for public doc-uments, though at different times in dif-ferent places. At most European univer-sities in the Renaissance, Latin persist-

ed for a longer time as the nearly uni-versal language of academic lectures,disputations, examinations, administra-tion, and publication, not only in whatwe would call classical studies, but inevery field, including philosophy, law,medicine, and the natural sciences. Thissituation started to change during theseventeenth century, a period whenphilosophers, such as Descartes or Leib-niz, began to use the vernacular lan-guages more regularly. Yet even as lateas the turn of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, more Latin bookswere coming from the printing pressesof Germany, to name one region forwhich some statistics exist, than vernac-ular ones. By the later sixteenth centu-ry, Neo-Latin came to dominate even inScandinavia, and the period from theseventeenth to the early eighteenthcenturies is often regarded as a sort of“Golden Age” of Latin writing in Swe-den and Denmark. Neo-Latin was also avehicle for expression in the colonies ofthe New World, especially before about1740, though Neo-Latin texts producedin North and South America and Mexi-co have only recently begun to beexamined by scholars.

Educated people in the late MiddleAges, the Renaissance, and beyondwrote in Latin so their works wouldreach an international audience. ButLatin was also favored because it hadthe prestige acquired by more than amillennium of existence as the universallanguage of Western Christendom’sintellectual elite. The very fact of writ-ing in Latin would require an author toemploy the topoi, literary forms,imagery, and allusions that were insepa-rable from this tradition, and the result-ing work would become part of theLatin patrimony. Many a humanistnoticed that Latin was relatively stableand unchanging, while the vernaculartongues were evolving and unstable. Tomany Renaissance intellectuals, there-fore, especially before 1600, Latinseemed to be a more appropriate lin-guistic medium to ensure a work’s sur-vival for posterity than the vernacularlanguages.

As even a glance at IJsewijn’s Com-panion makes clear, the quantity andvariety of Neo-Latin (especially thatproduced before 1650) is so immensethat no scholar could become an expertin more than a small part of it. Neo-Latin includes great masterpieces ofWestern literature, such as ThomasMore’s Utopia and Erasmus’ Laus stulti-tiae (Praise of Folly), both read usually intranslation by modern students in non-

The World of Neo-Latinby Terence O. Tunberg

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classical language courses (see Fig. 14).Neo-Latin also includes a great varietyof less well known works that are oftremendous cultural significance, suchas Lorenzo Valla’s fifteenth-centurydeclamation on the Donation of Con-stantine, or the monumental sixteenth-century history De orbe novo, by theSpanish bishop Sepulveda that chroni-cles the occupation of the West Indiesand Mexico from Columbus to Cortésand raises disturbing issues pertainingto the encounters between Europeansand the indigenous peoples.

Philosophical, theological, and scien-tific works constitute a significant por-tion of Neo-Latin, but Neo-Latin litera-ture also includes a vast amount of poet-ry, letters, histories, travel accounts, ora-tory, satire, and other genres. Neo-Latindrama, both tragedy and comedy, flour-ished in the Renaissance and was per-formed not merely in churches and uni-

versities, but at municipal festivals andin the courts of great potentates. Schol-ars are just beginning to appreciate thefact that an ample tradition of Latin fic-tion flourished in the Renaissance andearly modern periods. To modern read-ers, the most well known representativeof Neo-Latin fiction is probably More’sUtopia, which is a purely prose text. Butmany Neo-Latin novels, such as theextremely popular and influential Arge-nis written by the Scottish humanistJohn Barclay at the beginning of theseventeenth century, are written in theMenippean style, characterized by prosemixed with verse interludes.

It is paradoxical that this tremendousand fundamental literary heritage haslong remained on the periphery of mod-ern scholarship and teaching. In depart-ments of English, French, German, and

the other national languages and litera-tures, the primary focus, not unreason-ably, is usually on texts written in thenational languages. Scholars in philoso-phy and history may sometimes studyNeo-Latin texts for the informationthey might contain relative to these dis-ciplines, but rather few scholars in thesedisciplines are primarily Latinists. Whowould be better equipped to study andteach Neo-Latin texts than the teachersand professors of Latin? If students ofLatin see themselves exclusively as stu-dents of the Roman (and Hellenistic)world, then Neo-Latin is certainly out-side their purview. But if Latinists con-ceive of their task as potentially embrac-ing the Latin literary tradition as awhole, then why not include Neo-Latin? Indeed, departments of Latinwould have much to gain by awarding alarger role to Neo-Latin studies along-side the study of classical Latin (and thesame arguments, of course, apply also toMedieval Latin). Neo-Latin could addvastly to the cultural content and cen-trality of Latin as a discipline in the con-text of the humanities as a whole, notonly at the university level, but also inthe high schools. The fuller assimilationof the more recent part of the Latin tra-dition into the orbit of conventionalLatin studies would offer a much largerrange of possibilities for cooperation andcontacts in teaching and research amongdepartments of classical languages andprofessors of other disciplines in thehumanities. Finally, there remains anenormous amount to learn about Neo-Latin, and critical editions of many fun-damental Neo-Latin works do not exist.This is scholarship for which a Latinisttrained in classical Latin is extremelywell prepared, and by undertaking suchresearch, a Latinist can make consider-able contributions to many disciplines atthe same time.

In short, if more teachers and stu-dents of Latin involve themselves withNeo-Latin, the field of Latin studiesbecomes no less Latin, but more inter-disciplinary, more multicultural, andmore fundamental to the humanities ingeneral.

Terence O. Tunberg is Professor of Clas-sics at the University of Kentucky. His pub-lished works include studies of the history ofLatin prose styles, articles devoted to Neo-Latin writers, and an edition of a MedievalLatin text. He also specializes in Latin prosecomposition and the active use of Latin inteaching.

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Fig. 14. Erasmus of Rotterdam by HansHolbein the Younger, 1523.

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