Stormy Landscape with the Ruins of Classicism

Curious reader, you may be eager to know what was then said and done? (Apuleius Metamorphoses – adapted)

Oct 1 

We remember her words in our remake of Plato’s analogy of the Cave:

I know that these shadows are the myths that have enthralled and educated generations in this place throughout the ages. I know that in order to understand the ancient world, we have to understand the way they thought about things, which is quite different from the way we think. I know we need to get inside the head of cultures we don’t understand. I know we need to be committed to serious historical inquiry and that it is crucial for us to study legends as a way to interrogate the past. At the same time, while this means encountering many uncomfortable topics, it doesn’t help, or make the historically racist and classist discipline of Classics any more accessible when you, the puppet-masters, make such offensive choices to parade before us. Look at the scene of sexual violence portrayed in that shadow over there to that group of new recruits, why is that the first lesson they encounter here? What does it say about this place that we cannot separate the offensive and sexist images we project ourselves from those of the objects of our discipline? We may not be able to change antiquity, but we can transform our pedagogy, find new models and new methods to teach the past with a sensitivity and solidarity with care for the inequality and violence of the present.

Sept 22 

We remember Plato’s analogy of the Cave expanded into the art historical attention of the Russian avant-garde, away from Malevich as abstraction and into Cosmism as a view of the cosmos.

Sept 29

We remember the following words from Eric Voegelin’s 1957 book Plato:

The Republic is not a quarrel between “philosophy and poetry” in the modern meaning of the words, but the poets of the decaying Hellenic society and the true poet of the newly discovered realm of the soul, who is a twin brother of the philosopher, if not identical with him.

Oct 7

We remember Eulalia of Barcelona…Saint Eulalia…12 year old…murdered by Diocletian…

Oct 2 

We remember the myth of the Last Roman Emperor in Christian Late Antique Roman and Byzantine culture when hearing the phrase “The Last President”, a myth that is part of an apocalyptic tradition, in both the East and the West of the empire, and imagines that a time would come when a Roman Emperor would face a bitter enemy, defeat the evil and as a result surrender his imperial insignia to God, putting an end to the Roman Empire.

Sept 30

We remember our despair about the future of the university as an institution and the question of value in terms of Horace’s poem Odes 3.30 – exegi monumentum aere perennius (“I have completed a monument more lasting than bronze”).

Sept 20 

We remember that moment in the Laws when Plato describes the whistling, hissing and obsequious applause of the theater-going public as theatrokratia, the ‘dictatorship of spectatorship’ (Laws 3. 701a3).

Sept 21 

We remember that once in an ancient garden, Democritus the atomist, tried to wrench out his eyeballs so as not to be distracted by the outside world

Oct 8  

We remember the anecdote about the Cynic philosopher reading Aristotle’s lost work, the Protrepticus (written for the Cypriot king, Themison).

Sept 18

We remember Homer’s ‘sea-blue wool’.

Sept 19 

Sept 23

We remember this story from Aelian’s Various Histories (3.8): The Athenians made Phrynichus general, not out of favor, nor for nobleness of his birth, or for being rich (for which men are commonly esteemed at Athens, and preferred above others), but he having in a certain tragedy composed verses suitable to armed dancers, did win so much upon the theater, and please the spectators, that they immediately chose him general; believing that he would behave himself excellently and advantageously in martial affairs, who had in a play composed verses and songs so proper for armed men.

Sept 24 

We remember Cicero’s letter to Atticus (Att. 4. 8. 2), expressing his delight at the installation of some new bookshelves in an oddly convoluted and high-flown fashion:

postea uero, quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita uidetur meis aedibus. qua quidem in re mirifica opera Dionysi et Menophili tui fuit. nihil uenustius quam illa tua pegmata, postquam mi sillybae libros inlustrarunt.

Now that Tyrannio has set up (disposuit) my books for me, a mind seems to have been added to my house. Your Dionysius and Menophilus were fantastic on that job. There is nothing more beautiful (uenustius) than the bookshelves (pegmata) you sent me, once the labels (sittybae) illuminated the books for me.

Sept 25  

We remember Athenaeus on the philosopher dancer nicknamed Memphis (Deipn. 1. 20b-c): This ‘Memphis’ explains the nature of the Pythagorean system, expounding in silent mimicry all its doctrines to us more clearly than they who profess to teach eloquence.

Sept 26 

We remember the mixture of humility and criticism in the words of Achilles whom Odysseus encounters in the underworld in the Odyssey (Od. 11. 489-491):

I’d rather be a slave on earth for another man,
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

Sept 27 

We remember Hyginus on Semele (Hyginus 167):

Liber, son of Jove and Proserpine, was dismembered by the Titans, and Jove gave his heart, torn to bits, to Semele in a drink. When she was made pregnant by this, Juno, changing herself to look like Semele’s nurse, Beroe, said to her: “Daughter, ask Jove to come to you as he comes to Juno, so you may know what pleasure it is to sleep with a god.” At her suggestion Semele made this request of Jove, and was smitten by a thunderbolt. He took Liber from her womb, and gave him to Nysus to be cared for. For this reason he is called Dionysus, and also “the one with two mothers.”

Sept 28 

We remember the development of the dialogue genre within philosophical traditions. Following from the model of Socratic dialogue which gives us the fantasy of a collective debate instigated by a character who ‘knows nothing’, but which is orchestrated by Plato as dramaturge, there were other forms of dialogue that were explicit about including spokespeople for specific areas of knowledge and bringing them into a more expansive debate (and not as mere interlocutors). These dialogues were dubbed Logistorici by the Roman polymath Varro. The title derives from the two Greek works: logos (‘talk) and some area of knowledge or inquiry (historia). Examples include Sisenna: On History or Tubero: On Human Origins or even mythical figures e.g. Orestes: On Madness. While only fragments survive, we can trace some of Varro’s method in two of Cicero’s dialogues Laelius: On Friendship and Cato: On Old Age.

Oct 3  

We remember the synergy between the Muses (who tell the tale to Minerva/Athena), the Pierides (whose song had previously been paraphrased) and the object of the tale (the Sirens). On the one hand, the transformation of the Pierides into magpies, after losing their contest and the origin narrative of the Sirens, demonstrates the consistent perspective of the Muses as both victors and singers.

Oct 4 

We remember the story in Suetonius’ Life of Augustus, when: A few months before Augustus was born a public prodigy occurred at Rome that warned that Nature was pregnant with a king for the Roman people.

Oct 5 

We remember what it was like to be a Classics professor

Oct 6