NUMBER 2, 2011
» Brian Bosworth » Graeme Clarke & Heather Jackson » Grace Karskens
» Susan Sheridan » Chris Wallace-Crabbe » Anna Wierzbicka
The journal of the Australian Academy of the Humanities The Academy Council President Joseph Lo Bianco
Honorary Secretary Welcome Graeme Clarke I am delighted to welcome you to the
Treasurer second issue of Humanities Australia, Pam Sharpe the annual journal of the Australian Vice-Presidents IAcademy of the Humanities. As with the Lesley Johnson Anna Haebich highly popular first issue I am sure you Editor will appreciate the depth, richness and Elizabeth Webby range of current research and reflection International Secretary Lesley Johnson in humanities scholarship in Australia.
Immediate Past President The Australian Academy of the Humanities Ian Donaldson is now more than forty years old and Ordinary Members Matthew Spriggs continues its crucial role of advancing Stephanie Trigg scholarship and promoting understanding Gillian Whitlock Robert Young of the humanities both within academic institutions and more widely in the national Contact details community. We collaborate closely with our For further information about the Australian Academy of the Humanities, fellow learned academies – the Academy contact us: of Sciences, the Academy of Technological Email [email protected] Sciences and Engineering and the Academy
Web of Social Sciences – to advise Government www.humanities.org.au on national research needs and priorities. Telephone The Fellowship of the Academy comprises (+61 2) 6125 9860 more than five hundred distinguished
Editorial/Production individuals elected in recognition of the Academy Editor excellence and impact of their scholarship Elizabeth Webby (2009-) in fields including archaeology, art, Asian Designer Nicole White and European studies, classical and modern
Printed by literature, cultural and communication CanPrint Communications studies, languages and linguistics, Cover illustration Alpha on foundation block of S. Tower philosophy, musicology, history and religion. of City Gate, Jebel Khalid, North Syria. Humanities Australia includes only (Photo: Graeme Clarke) a small selection of essays, poems and © 2011 The Australian Academy of the Humanities and individual contributors reflections; collectively they demonstrate ISSN 1837-8064 the importance of the humanities in The Australian Academy of the Humanities understanding our national life and human is grateful for the ongoing support for its activities from the Australian Government, culture, past, present and future. I trust you through the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, including will enjoy reading Humanities Australia. ¶ the production of this publication. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Government, the Minister or the Department. The illustrations and certain identified inclusions in the text are held under separate Joseph Lo Bianco copyright and may not be reproduced President, Australian Academy in any form without the permission of the respective copyright holders. Every of the Humanities, 2009- reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright holders for illustrative material in this journal. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher.
2 } Humanities Australia Humanities Australia
06 Chris Wallace-Crabbe Skins
08 Susan Sheridan An Uncertain Profession: Australian Women Writers in the Postwar Years
16 Graeme Clarke & Heather Jackson Can the Mute Stones Speak? Evaluating Cultural and Ethnic Identities from Archaeological Remains: The Case of Hellenistic Jebel Khalid
31 Grace Karskens Convict Sydney in the Macquarie Era
42 Chris Wallace-Crabbe Creeping Like Snail
44 Brian Bosworth Anecdote, Apophthegm and the ‘Real’ Alexander
53 Anna Wierzbicka Defining ‘the Humanities’ Editor’s Introduction » ELIZABETH WEBBY
All of those involved in the production knowledge about the humanities includes the of Humanities Australia, whether as editors, belief that ‘it is good if people can know things Aauthors, designer or hard-working members of many kinds about people’. of the Academy’s Secretariat, were delighted The other essays in this issue provide by the enthusiastic response last year, both excellent illustrations of some of the very from Fellows of the Academy and the wider different ways in which humanities researchers community, to its inaugural issue. We were go about finding out these ‘things of many further delighted earlier this year to learn kinds’ about people from both the recent and that Qantas has joined in the vote of approval more distant past. They also demonstrate the by agreeing to feature copies of the journal range and depth of work encompassed under in its lounges, and that the Department the term ‘the humanities’, from digging up of Foreign Affairs and Trade are supplying the remains of past civilisations in Syria, to copies to Australian embassies and High studying the lives of a generation of women Commissions abroad. writers in twentieth-century Australia.
the distinguished linguist Anna Wierzbicka provides a comprehensive definition of the English term ‘the humanities’ and how it is distinguished from ‘science’, a distinction that, as she points out, does not exist in many other languages.
In one of the essays in this second issue Of the many activities carried out by of Humanities Australia, the distinguished Fellows and staff of the Australia Academy of linguist Anna Wierzbicka provides a clear and Humanities, one of the most enjoyable is the comprehensive definition of what is meant by annual symposium, held in a different city the English term ‘the humanities’ and how it is each year. It allows Fellows, colleagues and distinguished from ‘science’, a distinction that, the general public to come together to hear
} as she points out, does not exist in many other and discuss a range of presentations relating (above) languages. Indeed, among Professor Wierzbicka’s to current issues and research, as well as to Academy Secretariat, many international honours is a recent award meet up with those from their own discipline Canberra, Australia. from the Polish Science Foundation. Her area. The symposia always feature at least one Source: Australian definition of what motivates those who devote special lecture, and this issue includes the one Academy of the Humanities Archives. their lives to the discovery and transmission of given last year in Adelaide by the Academy’s
04 } Humanities Australia long-standing Honorary Secretary, Graeme A History of Early Sydney, published in 2009, Clarke. Professor Clarke and others have been went on to win the Prime Minister’s Prize for engaged in archaeological work in North Syria Non-Fiction, demonstrating that humanities since 1984. His lecture provides a fascinating scholarship can indeed attract a broader summary of their discoveries over this period, audience, even if it has almost 700 pages! We demonstrating some of the ways in which it are grateful to Grace Karskens and her publisher is possible to make ‘the mute stones speak’ for allowing us to include an edited extract in relation to excavations at Jebel Khalid, a from The Colony in Humanities Australia, to give fortified settlement on the right bank of the readers a taste of the imaginative ways in which Euphrates that dates from the early years of the she draws on extensive archival research to third century BCE. depict the places and people of early Sydney. As In addition to the Annual Lecture, the 2010 marked two hundred years since the arrival Academy also sponsors a number of special in Sydney of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, it lectures, thanks to generous bequests from seemed appropriate to choose an extract that deceased Fellows. The annual Trendall Lecture focused on his period. is given each year ‘by a distinguished scholar on Susan Sheridan’s Nine Lives: Postwar Women some theme associated with classical studies’, Writers Making their Mark, published by the as directed in the will of the late Professor University of Queensland Press in 2011, A.D. Trendall. The 2009 Trendall lecture was also received a publication subsidy from the delivered by Brian Bosworth, on the always Academy. The edited extract which appears fascinating figure of Alexander the Great. here, again with thanks to Professor Sheridan Through close examination of a wide range and her publishers, introduces the main theme of classical texts, Professor Bosworth argues of the book, the difficulties faced by women for the value of stories about Alexander, often attempting to establish writing careers in dismissed as ‘mere anecdotes’, in bringing us Australia in the decades after World War II, at closer to his beliefs and those of his times. a time when there was still great emphasis on Since the rise of the internet, and especially the domestic sphere as the place for women. All since more recent developments like e-books, of her nine writers married and had children, iPads and Kindles, the future of the printed often also helping to support their families book has been hotly debated, not least by those through paid work, but still managed to involved in humanities research, where the make memorable contributions to Australian academic monograph has long reigned supreme. literature, though in the case of some, such as While there are many advantages in online Elizabeth Jolley and Amy Witting, recognition publication of specialist journals and books, was late arriving. something that helps conserve natural resources The Arts, of course, is another of the while allowing for easy worldwide access to new discipline areas represented in the Academy, research, many scholars in the humanities wish and in this issue we are also happy to feature and deserve to attract a wider, non-specialist two new poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe. Both audience for their work. As with Humanities show the wit and wisdom that that have always Australia, this is still best achieved through characterised his work, together with his love of a handsomely produced, engagingly written word play. For, to return to Anna Wierzbicka’s and well-edited print publication. The cost of definition, saying ‘things with words’, has producing books of this kind, however, has been always been essential to the humanities. ¶ steadily rising, making it increasingly difficult for Australian scholars to find a publisher, especially for books on Australian topics, which do not appeal to a large international Elizabeth Webby library market. Another of the Academy’s roles, Editor, Australian Academy therefore, is to provide subsidies to assist in the of the Humanities, 2009- publication of significant books by both Fellows and non-Fellows. One such work, The Colony.
Humanities Australia { 05 SKINS
» We feel at home in here:
CHRIS CHRIS in our skins that is, for they are not in the least superficial
wallace but snug and utterly ours. Beauty may be no more than skin-deep, as the old line has it,
- but there are more ways crabbe to skin a cat, if you want to, than anyone ever let on.
The farmer’s cattle go forth leatherbound, like old books, and are better plump than skinny, while the wine that goes with my steak may well be a cleanskin and easy on the purse. We swallow the skins of cherries but never of bananas.
Colour of skin can appear to glow as the index of race, the hue of prejudice, so that Native Americans were somehow called redskins by the immigrant colour-blind. Accordingly we might say that the sneer of modern racism is no more than skin-deep: as frail as any dialect.
Turning out and upward let’s consider trees; their skin is called bark though nothing to do with our dogs and proves bemusingly rich in texture, tone and the like;
06 } Humanities Australia box, ironbark, peppermint, mulga, bluegum, yate, snowgum and stringybark, these among many will all display their selves on their skin.
Now, slender blokes are dubbed skinny, baby boys have a foreskin which they may or may not lose, in the luck of the cultural draw, a penny-pincher is of course a miserable bloody skinflint, and the sensitive lass next door was appallingly thin-skinned.
Our globe, the one that we are busily now despoiling, wheels on beneath a giant skin of soil and growing things, except where those oceans roll. We inflict on its patterned skin ills far worse than sunburn; we are harrying it on to death.
When Adam first named the beasts he took particular note of their skins, fur and of course the funny shapes of their tails. His own skin was elastic, pored and grooved like our own, replete with hairs and nerves, and in God’s view, no doubt, a package for the soul, which got itself in trouble deplorably near the start, egged on by a scaly snake.
But we still feel at home in here, more or less, anyway, packaged inside a skin.
Humanities Australia { 07 An Uncertain Profession: AUSTRALIAN WOMEN WRITERS IN THE POSTWAR YEARS
» SUSAN SHERIDAN
The years between 1945 and 1965 saw a joined Meanjin and Southerly to establish an cultural renaissance in Australia. Modernist array of literary magazines, most of which still painting by artists such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur occupy the field today.2 Annual anthologies of T Boyd and Charles Blackman was internationally poetry and short fiction had been initiated in acclaimed. There was an explosion of the 1940s by Angus & Robertson, to be followed iconoclastic energy in theatre, ballet and by the journal Australian Letters in the late 1950s music, encouraged by government subsidies with their annual Verse in Australia. and the formation of new bodies including the Women were not readily visible in the lively Australian Ballet and the Elizabethan Theatre literary scene of the postwar years. Popular Trust. The Commonwealth Literary Fund wisdom has it that after the war women were began a subsidy scheme that underwrote the removed from the public sphere and imprisoned publication of ‘outstanding Australian works in domesticity, but this was not entirely true. which have a limited audience’, including Significant numbers of women were writing, poetry.1 As Australian literature began to be and painting too, combining the artistic taught in schools and universities, it had more life with the domestic. On the whole, their cultural clout than at any previous time. achievements did not attract much notice, During this time the work of A.D. Hope, although they were there, creatively responding Judith Wright and Patrick White won to the challenges of the postwar world.3 international recognition. James McAuley, In my new book, Nine Lives: Postwar Women David Campbell, John Blight, Francis Webb and Writers Making Their Mark, I attempt to put Vincent Buckley joined the ranks of established women writers back into the picture, by poets with Kenneth Slessor, R.D. FitzGerald tracing the early careers of nine Australian and Douglas Stewart. The modernist fiction women born between 1915 and 1925, who each of Hal Porter, Randolph Stow and Thea Astley achieved success between the mid 1940s and was set alongside that of Patrick White. It was a the 1970s.4 Judith Wright and Thea Astley high point for local publishing enterprises, with published quickly to resounding critical Lansdowne, Rigby, Sun Books and University of acclaim, but for other poets and novelists the Queensland Press starting up, and Penguin and road to success was longer and more winding. Macmillan establishing Australian editorial Rosemary Dobson, Dorothy Hewett and offices. In these decades, too, Quadrant, Dorothy Auchterlonie Green all started strongly Overland, Australian Letters, Australian Literary as poets in the 1940s, but over the next decade Studies, Westerly and Australian Book Review Hewett was silent and Auchterlonie published
08 } Humanities Australia very little; Dobson continued to write but with a reduced output. In the 1960s Hewett resumed publishing poetry, and Dorothy Green established herself as a literary scholar as well as a poet; Gwen Harwood’s frustration with incompetent literary editors prompted her scathing pseudonymous poetry. It was not until the 1970s and after that novelists Jessica Anderson, Elizabeth Jolley and Amy Witting were published and achieved the recognition their work merited. In fiction the situation was complicated by a growing separation between literary and popular fiction. Kylie Tennant, Ruth Park, Nancy Keesing and Nancy Cato had, from the 1940s onwards, gained popular success with novels, children’s stories and radio plays. Joan Phipson, Patricia Wrightson and others transformed Australian children’s literature. Yet their work attracted little critical attention. In the new canon of Australian fiction that was built around Patrick White’s modernist work, Thea Astley’s novels were among the social, political and cultural few by women to be admitted and gain critical climate of the times – the ideologically respect. By contrast, Elizabeth Jolley’s stories driven ousting of women from public life } attracted only rejection slips for years, and she in the postwar period, the dominance of (above) had to wait until the mid 1970s to have a book cold war cultural politics that few of these Amy Witting/ published. Amy Witting, too, despite having writers participated in, current literary Joan Levick, 1952. published several stories in magazines during tastes and whether the kind of writing they Supplied by Margaret Connolly the 1960s, including the prestigious New Yorker, were attempting was understood or valued, and Associates. did not see her name on the cover of a book and finally their distinctively feminine until 1977. Olga Masters raised a family of seven commitments to marriage and family. As children and worked as a journalist before writers, they entered the literary scene in a
As writers, they entered the literary scene in a small nation during a key period of its social and cultural development, yet their fortunes varied greatly.
gaining success as a fiction writer in her sixties, small nation during a key period of its social beginning with The Home Girls in 1982. Jessica and cultural development, yet their fortunes Anderson was the first of this group to publish varied greatly. The differences among them a novel, in 1963, when she made the transition depend partly on the genre they chose, partly from writing for money – pseudonymous on their personal circumstances (whether magazine stories and radio scripts – to they had to earn a living, for instance) and publishing serious fiction under her own name. partly on their literary connections, or lack Literature was a particularly unwelcoming of them. All were passionately committed to and uncertain profession for women in the art of writing, but while some maintained the 1950s and 1960s. To account for that intense literary friendships with their male uncertainty requires a complex set of peers, others lived in relative isolation from the interlocking explanations, in terms of the literary scene.
Humanities Australia { 09 In Australia in the 1940s, when Judith began sending out poems in the late 1950s, Wright and Rosemary Dobson began to publish, the number of Australian literary magazines 5 the field of poetry was flourishing. During the available to choose from had expanded greatly. (below) war years there was a flurry of energy invested Book publication for poets, always subsidised, Rosemary Dobson in little magazines, in annual anthologies and was encouraged: Angus & Robertson and with her youngest child, Ian, in 1962. some more ephemeral literary publications. (later) University of Queensland Press took In 1939 the Commonwealth Literary Fund on volumes of verse, and small independent Supplied by Robert Bolton. was established, and it subsidised literary presses maintained a steady output of verse } publications, including poetry. Between those monographs. In 1964 Jacaranda Press in years and the new flowering of little magazines Brisbane published Oodgeroo/Kath Walker’s in the 1950s, poetry was well served by the We Are Going, the first book by an Aboriginal Bulletin’s ‘Red Page’, Meanjin Papers (founded in woman to appear in print. Virginia Woolf’s 1940), and the English Association magazine, prediction that the twentieth century would see
over this whole period of the 1940s and 1950s, poetry was not subjected to the appalling degree of censorship that blighted fiction, both local and imported.
Southerly, founded in 1939. Poetry was regularly the emergence of women poets seemed to have published in newspapers, as well. been vindicated.7 In these multiple outlets for the publication Women fiction writers, whether published of individual poems, critical evaluation and and overlooked, like Anderson, or not published gatekeeping activities were exercised by at all until they were middle-aged, like Witting specialist editors rather than by commercial and Jolley, were disadvantaged by comparison publishing with their contemporaries who wrote poetry. houses. As well, Until the late 1970s, looking for a publisher over this whole for an Australian novel almost inevitably period of the meant looking to London. The only significant 1940s and Australian publisher of quality fiction titles 1950s, poetry during the period was Angus & Robertson. was not Patrick White, Kylie Tennant, George Johnston, subjected to Charmian Clift, Barbara Jefferis and Elizabeth the appalling Harrower, as well as more commercial writers degree of such as Jon Cleary and Morris West, were censorship published in London (and often in the United that blighted States as well). Few local publishers were fiction, both willing to make an investment in new novelists local and during the years when hardback publication imported.6 was standard and paperback reprints rare. In such a This made the publisher’s investment in a context, it new fiction author an expensive risk, until was easier Australian offices of British publishers for a new expanded and paperback originals became more poet to common for literary fiction.8 see her As well as limited publishing opportunities work in print than for a fiction writer. This for fiction in the postwar years, there were meant that the literary milieu into which stronger disagreements about what kinds of young women poets entered was open to new fiction were desirable. It is no accident that voices, and poetry enjoyed high prestige among Astley, the only woman novelist to have been literary forms. By the time Gwen Harwood accorded the highest accolades for her novels
10 } Humanities Australia during the 1960s, was working in the modernist without close links to either the Sydney literary style, with a definite leaning to satire, as was world or the academy. Meanjin rapidly became a Patrick White.9 Her early work was seen as part force to be reckoned with, and most ambitious of the new kind of Australian writing, ‘loaded new writers submitted work to him. He formed with poetic imagery and symbolism’.10 For strong but stormy new writers who eschewed such experimental, relationships ‘poetic’ fiction, it was difficult to get a serious with several hearing. Beatrice Davis, Astley’s editor, rejected of the women novels by Jessica Anderson, Elizabeth Jolley, and writers in Nine Amy Witting. Lives, including Among proliferating literary magazines, Judith Wright and publishing enterprises, state support for writers Gwen Harwood. and the spread of Australian literature as a He published subject for study in schools and universities, the teenage most of the influential protagonists were men. Dorothy Hewett, What roles did they play, with their friendships but not her later and enmities, their political predilections, work, although and their relations with their female they carried contemporaries? Douglas Stewart’s editorship on a friendly of the Bulletin’s literary ‘Red Page’ from 1940 correspondence. until 1960 made him a highly influential He was a lifelong presence, both as a reviewer and a selector of friend to Dorothy poetry and stories. Through his friendship with Green, but both Beatrice Davis, his taste also informed decisions she and Judith made about poetry publishing at Angus & Wright found it Robertson. Although A.D. Hope considered his hard to forgive commitment to poetry insufficiently serious,11 him for what they perceived as his cavalier Stewart proved to be a great encourager of new treatment of their husbands’ work. writers, and was an important mentor for the Among the new journals starting up in the young Rosemary Dobson, Nan McDonald and 1950s, Australian Letters, edited by Geoffrey } Nancy Keesing; Elizabeth Riddell also regularly Dutton and Max Harris, included women (above) published poems in the Bulletin. among their published writers and featured Dorothy Auchterlonie Southerly, based at Sydney University and both Dobson and Wright in their ‘poets and Green as co-principal of the Presbyterian published by Angus & Robertson from 1946 to painters’ series. Dutton and Harris were also Girls’ College, 1961, was edited first by academic R.G. Howarth influential publishers, establishing Sun Books Warwick, about 1958. and then, at the suggestion of Beatrice Davis and Australian Book Review; Dutton edited Supplied by Scots PGC College, and Alec Bolton, by poet Kenneth Slessor. important early critical works on Australian Warwick, Queensland. The two men were close friends and their writers. Stephen Murray-Smith, editor of successive stewardships of Southerly provide a Overland, became a mentor for Dorothy Hewett, vivid example of the way the literary profession though he was critical of her poetry and in Australia in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s preferred her less adventurous short stories. was ‘based on male homo-sociality – in all its Alec Hope and James McAuley (founding richness, and with all its exclusions’.12 Women editor of Quadrant) were highly influential were not well represented in Southerly, although poet-professors throughout the 1960s. They Howarth published some early poems by Judith were important mentors for Gwen Harwood, Wright and Rosemary Dobson, and Kenneth admired Wright’s and Dobson’s work from a Slessor published poetry by Nancy Cato and distance, and both had stormy friendships with Nan McDonald, and, in the late 1950s, Amy Dorothy Green. Witting’s first stories. The only woman who wielded comparable Clem Christesen, editor of Meanjin, was literary influence during this period was more of a loner, who started out in Brisbane Beatrice Davis at Angus & Robertson. She was
Humanities Australia { 11 Katharine Susannah Prichard and Miles Franklin before them. Yet they shared a different and more urgent sense of connectedness to the wider world, in their acute awareness of the legacy of past wars. As well, they shared a commitment to making a life and a career in Australia: cultural life was to be established here, not sought elsewhere – and this was as true for immigrant Elizabeth Jolley as for fifth- generation settler Australian Judith Wright. All these women writers came from middle- or upper-class families and, unlike most of their predecessors, nearly all had some form of post-secondary education. While they all undertook income-earning work at some time during their lives, only Astley, Witting and Green pursued careers in teaching (both secondary and tertiary) from youth until retirement age. These three came from more modest families and had completed degrees and determined that the company should be the teaching qualifications, with the intention of ‘literary hub of Australia’ and, with Douglas earning their own livings. None of the others Stewart, initiated the annual anthologies seems to have been driven by the desire for a
} Australian Poetry and Coast to Coast, which professional career: education at private girls’ 13 (above) featured short stories. Kylie Tennant, as a schools in the 1930s was ‘academic’ in the Dorothy Hewett reviewer and, later, member of the Literature subjects taught, but failure rates were high: with her three Board, supported many new writers, as girls were not generally expected to be keen youngest children, 14 Kate, Rose and Tom, did Nancy Keesing. Thelma Forshaw, by on matriculating and going to university. about 1965. contrast, could be devastating in her reviews. Professions considered appropriate for women
Supplied by Kate Lilley. Rival critics Dorothy Green and Leonie were few – nursing, teaching and librarianship Kramer both devoted scholarly energies – and career opportunities within these to the work of Henry Handel Richardson, professions were severely limited (especially but neither saw it as her responsibility to after marriage). For girls with a literary bent, support women writers in particular. the available jobs in publishing or journalism
The women writers...shared a more urgent sense of connectedness to the wider world...And a commitment to making a life and a career in Australia: cultural life was to be established here, not sought elsewhere
The women writers who emerged in the required no further education at all. Dorothy 1950s and 1960s for the most part did not know Green’s venture into the literary academy shows one another. What commonalities they had how slowly the major social institutions moved were not chosen affiliations, but rather derived towards accepting women as equals. While her from the social and cultural experience shared contemporaries, Thea Astley, Dorothy Hewett by that generation of women. They grew up in and Elizabeth Jolley, all taught at universities the shadow of the Great War and lived though for significant periods of their lives, none of the Depression, World War II and postwar them saw teaching as her primary vocation, as reconstruction. Because of these events, few Green did. of them travelled outside Australia, unlike Like the great majority of women in the Christina Stead, Henry Handel Richardson, larger cohort, all these nine writers married
12 } Humanities Australia and had children – demographically speaking, families, yet they also looked after the daily they participated in the great postwar marriage round of home, children and social life. All did and baby boom. These personal circumstances their own typing and correspondence (a role affected their literary productivity, and had a often taken on by male writers’ wives). Judith marked impact on their professional lives that Wright expressed the dilemma this way: was not replicated in those of their male peers. To mention a few of the best-known of these I’ve always had to do a lot of hack work: men: Patrick White inherited a sufficiently writing school plays for the ABC, and large income to be able to live independently doing children’s books, generally doing the during the early part of his career; Alec Hope housewife jobs in literature, you might say. and James McAuley were both appointed to I don’t think anyone in Australia, unless chairs of English, even though neither of them they’ve got an academic job, can support held postgraduate qualifications higher than a themselves with this kind of really serious Master of Arts degree. All three had domestic writing which you can in Europe, for partners who devoted themselves exclusively instance. And certainly no woman could. It to providing the writers with a secure home would be very difficult. Trivialisation of life and social life. None had major child-raising is a real problem for women, dealing so much responsibilities. Such considerations do not with what’s regarded as trivial, and trying usually enter into accounts of the careers of to find your own value system and live by male writers, but they are crucial in the lives of the values of a serious writer is very difficult their female counterparts. when you haven’t got what you might call a All the women in Nine Lives had major support base.15 domestic responsibilities – homes that they managed single-handedly, and children whose Writing as a profession for women in this needs frequently competed with their creative period was something of an oxymoron: the desires. Wright, Green and Hewett were predominant images of women in postwar effectively the principal breadwinners in their modernity, as domestic or erotic goddesses, did not encompass the role of artist or intellectual. Those who ventured into such roles had few illusions about where they stood as women. As Thea Astley wrote: ‘I grew up believing that women weren’t really people, and didn’t matter in the scheme of things. … Men didn’t listen to women when they expressed an opinion’.16 Women writers on the whole were also poorly represented in the literatures of Europe and North America in the postwar decades, despite the prominence of a few female intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir in France and Iris Murdoch in Britain. Indeed, Sylvia Plath’s brief and tragic life has become an icon of the constraints within which creative women lived. Women artists across the Western world shared to some extent a contradictory position. On the one hand, (left) they were women caught up in the massive Gwen Harwood, 1967.
changes that took place in everyday life, Supplied by brought about by the spread of postwar John Harwood. consumerism and media culture. On the other, they were intellectuals who shared with others concerns about communism versus capitalism,
Humanities Australia { 13 nationalism versus internationalism, artistic to home, a choice that delayed her recognition modernism versus realism and the political in Australia. responsibilities of artists in a post-holocaust The cold war political polarisation of the and post-Hiroshima world. period profoundly affected the literary scene. In Australia specific versions of those cultural Little magazines were generally sympathetic conflicts between the political Left and Right to the Left, except for Quadrant, which was and the aesthetics of modernism and realism specifically established as an anti-communist were exacerbated by strict literary censorship enterprise. Government subsidies to Meanjin and acrimonious disputes. Two major and Overland were reduced or refused on controversies in cultural politics in the 1940s set several occasions, and grants to individual the tone for the following decades. In 1943 there writers were also affected.20 There was some was uproar over William Dobell’s Archibald overlap between political alignments and the Prize-winning portrait of Joshua Smith. In the controversies over modernism: as a communist following year the Ern Malley hoax resulted in Dorothy Hewett felt she had to deny her Max Harris as editor of Angry Penguins being admiration for Ezra Pound and Edith Sitwell, prosecuted for publishing obscene material. denouncing their influence on the A‘ ngry Both incidents involved violent reactions against Penguins’21 – but at the same time cutting modernist experimentation, which forced both herself off from sources of poetic inspiration. writers and artists into taking strong positions Most of the women were wary of being for and against.17 drawn into such side taking. Rosemary Dobson Conflicts over modernism affected fiction declined James McAuley’s urgent invitation writers even more than poets, as can be seen to join Quadrant’s editorial board, for ‘one in negative responses to White’s early fiction.18 must write as an individual’.22 The young (below) This was a daunting context for new writers Judith Wright was suspicious of all groups Jessica Anderson, like Astley. Censorship of sexual material, and coteries, as she wrote in 1952 to Barbara 1976. which had a long history in Australia, added Blackman: ‘What’s lacking is the creative photograph by to the problems for novelists: in the late 1940s stillness; refusal to impose oneself on events, peter JoneS. supplied by 23 Laura Jones. Christina Stead’s American novel Letty Fox: Her refusal to be imposed upon’.
} Luck was banned on the grounds of obscenity.19 When their children were young, these Such censorship influenced Jessica Anderson to women had insufficient time for politics, seek a publisher in Britain rather than closer barely enough for writing. Later they became involved in such causes as Aboriginal rights, refugees, conservation and peace, without aligning themselves to political parties. Their critical responses to postwar gender, race and class relations, deeply influenced by their wartime experiences, were marked by a certain detachment from ‘national’ questions and political independence from traditional Left- Right oppositions. As the 1960s moved into the 1970s, women writers shared the benefits of increased support for literary enterprises, not only government subsidies for publications and writers’ fellowships through the Literature Board of the Australia Council (formed in 1975) but also the spread of literary prizes, writers’ festivals and the like. There were expanding opportunities to write for radio and television. Changes in the publishing industry, which made it more possible for local publishers to risk taking on
14 } Humanities Australia new writers, especially authors of innovative 9. Susan Sheridan, ‘Thea Astley: A Woman fiction, contributed to an increase in the among the Satirists of Postwar Modernity’, Australian Feminist Studies, 29, 3 (2003), 261-71. writing and publication of books by women. 10. Sidney J. Baker, ‘Australian Novels and Our During the 1980s when an expansive literary Prose Poets’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August scene met an expanding audience for women’s 1958, p. 13. writing, inspired by the second wave of 11. Thomas Shapcott, ‘Douglas Stewart and Poetry feminism, women writers came into their own. in the Bulletin, 1940 to 1960’, in Cross Currents, But the story told in Nine Lives is the prelude to ed. by Bruce Bennett (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1981), pp. 148-57. this decade of the women. ¶ 12. Susan Sheridan, ‘Gentlemen’s Agreements: Southerly’s First Editors’, Southerly, 67, 1 & 2 (2007), 333-47. Susan Sheridan FAHA is 13. Jacqueline Kent, A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, Adjunct Professor of English and A Literary Life (Ringwood: Penguin, 2001), Women’s Studies at Flinders pp. 73-5. University. She has published 14. Janet McCalman, Journeyings: The Biography widely on women’s writing, of a Middle-Class Generation 1920–1990, feminist cultural studies and (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993), Australian cultural history. Her latest book is Nine p. 127. Lives: Postwar Women Writers Making their Mark 15. Wright, interview with Jim Davidson, Sideways (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2011). from the Page: The Meanjin Interviews (Sydney: Fontana, 1983), p. 403. 16. Thea Astley in Jennifer Ellison, Rooms of Their Own (Ringwood: Penguin, 1986), p. 56. 1. Neil James and Elizabeth Webby, ‘Canon Around the Hub: Angus and Robertson and 17. Rosemary Dobson, A World of Difference; the Post-War Literary Canon’, Southerly, 57, 3 Michael Heyward, The Ern Malley Affair (St (1997), 51-66. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993). 2. David Carter, ‘Publishing, Patronage and 18. Notable among these was poet A.D. Hope’s Cultural Politics: Institutional Changes in the review of The Tree of Man, calling it ‘illiterate Field of Australian Literature from 1950’, in The verbal sludge’: ‘The Bunyip Stages a Comeback’, Cambridge History of Australian Literature, ed. by Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 1956, reprinted Peter Pierce (Melbourne: Cambridge University in A.D. Hope: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. by Press, 2009) pp. 360-90. David Brooks (Sydney: Halstead Press, 2000), pp. 213-15. 3. Susan Sheridan, ‘Cold War, Home Front: Australian Women Writer and Artists in the 19. Nicole Moore, ‘The Totally Incredible 1950s’, Australian Literary Studies, 20, 3 (2002), Obscenity of Letty Fox’, Journal of the Association 155-66. for Australian Literature, 2 (2003), 67-79. 4. Susan Sheridan, Nine Lives: Postwar Women 20. Kylie Tennant experienced this kind of political Writers Making Their Mark (St Lucia: University wrangling when in 1952 she was attacked of Queensland Press, 2011). in Parliament as a ‘Communist’ recipient of Commonwealth funding, and again ten years 5. Rosemary Dobson, A World of Difference: later when, as a member of the Commonwealth Australian Poetry and Painting in the 1940s, 3rd Literary Fund’s Board, she was lobbied by her Blaiklock Lecture (Sydney: Wentworth Press, friends, editors Clem Christesen and Stephen 1973). Chris Wallace-Crabbe, ‘Poetry and Murray-Smith, to support their applications: Modernism’, in The Oxford Literary History of Jane Grant, Kylie Tennant: A Life (Canberra: Australia, ed. by Bruce Bennett and Jennifer National Library of Australia, 2006), pp. 74-6 Strauss (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, and 95-8. 1998), pp. 217-35. 21. Dorothy Hewett, Wild Card: An Autobiography 6. Nicole Moore, The Censor’s Library (St Lucia: 1923-1958 (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1990), University of Queensland Press, forthcoming pp. 90, 113. 2011). 22. RD to JMcA (draft) 23 February 1956, Rosemary 7. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (London: Dobson Papers, National Library of Australia, Hogarth Press, 1928). MS 4955, Folder 16. 8. Patrick Buckridge, ‘Clearing a Space for 23. JW to BB, 15 May 1952, in Portrait of a Friendship: Australian Literature, 1940–1965’, in The Oxford The Letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Literary, ed. by Bennett and Strauss, pp. 169-92. Wright, 1950-2000, ed. by Bryony Cosgrove (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2007), p. 8.
Humanities Australia { 15 can the mute Stones speak ? Evaluating cultural and ethnic identities from archaeolo g i c a l r e m a i n s : the case of Hellenistic Jebel Khalid*
» Graeme Clarke & Heather Jackson
Given this absence of evidence [from Syria in the concept itself of the ‘colonial’ does not the Hellenistic period], we cannot expect to go uncontested (especially in a non-western, know much about the culture of Syria in this pre-industrial and military context).1 But period, or whether there was, except along the exercise, however fraught and tentative, the coast, any significant evolution towards still needs to be made if we are going to get the mixed culture which came to be so vividly anywhere towards reconstructing the lives expressed in the Roman period… One of represented for us by the archaeological record the major problems in the understanding of that settlers have left behind, through their Hellenistic Syria is thus the relative scarcity material remains and in a context where it can of direct and contemporary evidence for any be baldly asserted that ‘Archaeology cannot non-Greek culture or cultures in the region…# dig up ethnicity’ (Dick Whittaker in Derks and Roymans, cited in fn. 1, p. 202). It is a notoriously fraught activity to The site we are concerned with is Jebel endeavour to establish cultural and ethnic Khalid in North Syria, a fortified settlement on Iidentities purely from material remains, from the right bank of the Euphrates that dates to data left behind in the archaeological record, the early years of the third century BCE, at the } especially given the highly subjective, mutable beginning of the Seleukid control of the region, (above) and constructed nature of such identities – as and which was substantially abandoned by the Engravings from such, the exercise entails an hermeneutic leap late 70s BCE, at the time of the collapse of the Diderot Encyclopedia: from the material to the subjective. And it is The Complete Illustrations 1762-1777. doubly troublesome in a colonial context, where montage images provided contested issues of ‘coexistence’, ‘mutualities’, by graeme clarke. full ‘negotiation and mediation’, ‘assimilation and details can be found on pages 18, 20, 21 & 25. resistance’, ‘accommodation and appropriation’, ‘acculturation’, ‘fusion’, ‘interculturality’, (right) ‘hybridity’, ‘creolization’, ‘networks of exchange’, f i g . 1. Map showing ‘Middle Ground’, ‘cultural bricolage’, ‘métissage’, the position of Jebel Khalid in relation ‘Verschmelzung’, et al., have to be contended to other Hellenistic with, where multiple (and shifting) social and centres in Syria. cultural identities might well be in play, as we Courtesy of have been made well aware from postcolonial Macquarie University AND GRAEME CLARKE. studies – and where the appropriateness of
16 } Humanities Australia Seleukid regime (fig.1: location map of Jebel colonised within the immediate region at this Khalid, previous page). The chronology is clear. period (some of whose traditionally available So far, some 747 coins have been recovered, land was no doubt summarily expropriated, of which just on 90% fall within the period starting with the fifty ha of grazing land of 301-70 BCE: a very few are earlier (three coins Jebel Khalid itself). It is notorious that the of Alexander the Great and two posthumous previous two centuries of the Achaemenid Alexanders) and the remainder have been period are virtually lost to our perception found either in the region of the Temple (which from the archaeological record, so continuous enjoyed a post-abandonment life as a sacred appears to be the material culture from site) or in areas of later stone-robbing. This site earlier in the Iron Age, showing very few has been the subject of survey and excavation distinguishing Persian-period features. by an Australian team for some quarter of a So much so that the introduction of Greek- century, since 1984, and sufficient data have period material culture comes with sharp now been amassed to allow for an exploration clarity, so markedly different is it in many of what the material recovered over those respects from that of immediately preceding years might suggest about the identities of the centuries. But survey has shown that this inhabitants of the settlement over those two perception of Persian-period absence in this and a quarter centuries of occupation. region (of largely Aramaic speakers?) may well
This site has been the subject of survey and excavation by an Australian team for some quarter of a century.
To this end we examine below (necessarily be misleading and exaggerated: terra incognita briefly) a range of categories of material does not necessarily mean terra deserta,2 nor evidence (by no means an exhaustive list) (as we well know) terra nullius. Pastoral nomads – Language, the Built Environment (Town notoriously can leave a very light footprint on Planning, Public Buildings, Religious and the archaeological landscape. Social/Cultural Institutions, Domestic Houses), Ceramics and Cuisine, Figurines and Seals Language (both public and private). So much must remain unknown that would be revealing as cultural Written language will tell us something markers, e.g. what clothing the inhabitants about the dominant literate culture(s) – not chose to wear, whether on ceremonial necessarily about ethnicities. Certainly the occasions, in public generally, or in their 80 or so graffiti recovered, scratched on domestic privacy. ceramics (much of it domestic in character), are A major difficulty must be made explicit overwhelmingly in Greek letters (some few may initially if we are going to examine the be symbols rather than letters), indicating on interaction between the colonisers of Jebel this evidence that for the most part Greek was Khalid and the colonised, the indigenous the script of literacy within the Jebel Khalid population, within the region: that is to say, our community.3 But among the six dipinti, two are, ignorance. We know nothing of the colonisers exceptionally, in Aramaic with Semitic names except what we might presume from our (on locally-made large jars [‘sons of ´Abd(a) knowledge of the settlers at other (more major) laha’ (fig. 2: Aramaic dipinto, following page), Seleukid foundations like Syrian Apamea and ‘Abimah’ = ‘Abimelekh’])4 – pointless, unless Antioch – mixed Greeks and Macedonians they were intelligible to their owners or users. along with polyethnic mercenary soldiers Not only that. Three locally produced stamped drawn widely from all over the Aegean world amphora handles (out of a total, to date, of 112 (though Celts, Thracians and Jews are attested stamps)5 are in Aramaic lettering6 and there is a also for Asia Minor settlements). Likewise the notable series of local stamped (pseudo-coan)
Humanities Australia { 17 } (above, top row, left to right) f i g . 2. (inset) Aramaic dipinto. column capital), multiple lunate sigmas (on f i g . 3. Stamped handle of ‘Abidsalma’. Laconian roof tiles – a Greek form of roofing f i g . 4. (inset) Graffito used throughout the site), even including alpha of ‘Dionysios Nikias’. through to eta on the drums of a tapering column in the Acropolis palace,10 and a marble (bottom row, tile marked on the underside with alpha and left to right) amphora handles – some 20 examples – with beta.11 (fig. 6: marble tile marked on underside f i g . 5. Alpha on identifiably Semitic names but written in Greek with alpha and beta). Supervising masons, at foundation block of S. Tower of City Gate. script (eg. theophorics Abidsalma [= servant of least, and tile suppliers were literate in Greek f i g . 6. Marble tile Salman] (fig. 3: Stamped handle of Abidsalma), conventions. But what may have been spoken marked on underside Bargates [= son of Ateh]).7 Whilst it is notorious domestically or publicly in the market place, or with alpha and beta.. that onomastics will not necessarily tell us the on formal occasions on the Acropolis – and by Courtesy of ethnicity of any particular individual they will the illiterate – lies beyond our archaeological GRAEME CLARKE. at least reveal cultural influences – whereas, at evidence. Monumental public, civic inscriptions the same time, these locally produced Greek- are also lacking (a phenomenon common style amphoras were designed for storing those throughout Hellenistic Syrian cities).12 very Greek culinary necessities of oil8 and wine. These exceptional handles and dipinti Town planning all derive from later occupation levels of the settlement, suggestive of some bilingualism The settlement, apparently on a virgin site, and of a growing interaction between the was laid out according to Greek conventions initial (multi-ethnic Greek/Macedonian?) – Hippodamian grid pattern with insulae, settlers and indigenous merchants, traders and streets orthogonal, running strictly north/ entrepreneurs as well as local farmers come to south and east/west despite the undulating town to sell their wares. On the other hand, the and rocky terrain, public facilities (commercial one full name recovered among the graffiti is workrooms, palaestra, Temple) located centrally unmistakably Greek (Dionysios Nikias)9 along a main axis – all this is undoubtedly (fig. 4: Graffito of Dionysios Nikias) and mason indicative of initial Greek-style urban planning marks throughout the site (defensive walling, (fig. 7: contour map of Jebel Khalid, following Acropolis palace, Temple) are Greek – e.g. page). Likewise the defensive system. There several alphas, deltas (on foundation blocks) are overall 3.4 km of circuit walling, clinging (fig. 5: alpha on foundation block of S. Tower to the extreme landward edge of the Jebel in of City Gate), one omicron (on an Acropolis Hellenistic fashion, with some 30 interval
18 } Humanities Australia towers and bastions, with Greek theories and Greek all constructed in aesthetics, and the site, visually, (left) standard Hellenistic will never have lost this strong f i g . 7. Contour map header and stretcher Greek flavour. But how far can of Jebel Khalid. Courtesy of format (with blocks we tell if this Greek-looking city GRAEME CLARKE. of a standard was occupied by Greek settlers three cubits [one exclusively, or even dominantly? Macedonian cubit or ell = c. 0.35m] Architecture: x 1.5 cubits x 1.5 The Public Buildings cubits),13 and all conforming to Whilst the settlers may have standard Hellenistic had little say in the initial theories of poliorketics layout of their town, they may (towers are not tied to the have exercised greater choice in curtain walling but merely architectural decisions. abut, jogs and bastions Up on the Acropolis a two- control enfilading fire, one storied administrative public horse-shoe shaped tower building was constructed in (below left) designed to control a sharp the course of the third century f i g . 8. Plan re-entrant angle in the north- BCE. At first sight it looks of City Gate. west corner).14 The design of the overwhelmingly Greek – axial, twin towers of the city-gateway on a raised podium, orthogonal (below right) closely mirrors that of a Hellenistic wings opening off a central f i g . 9. Reconstructed gateway at Assos on the Troad, with the added courtyard surrounded by a decastyle Doric plan of The Governor’s Palace, Acropolis, feature of a sally-port in the north tower colonnade (fig. 9: plan of Acropolis Palace), the Jebel Khalid. (fig. 8: plan of City Gate),15 the careful stonework rooms plastered throughout in masonry style, Courtesy of reflecting the dictum of Aristotle (Pol. vii.11.1331a with evidence for the use of Ionic decoration GRAEME CLARKE.
12) that fortifications must answer aesthetic in the upper floor, even including a (much- } as well as military demands, with a revetment used) Hellenistic-style drum altar still in situ of delicate orthostat cladding on the exteriors on its plinth in an open-air courtyard on the of the towers and careful rustication, drafting and bevelling on their interiors. The separately defended Acropolis on the high ground of the Jebel is equally equipped with similarly constructed walls, gateway, postern and towers. The surveyors and initial planners of the urban layout of Jebel Khalid were certainly imbued
Humanities Australia { 19 NW wing (fig. 10: drum altar on Acropolis). they were ethnically such, or otherwise) – But on closer inspection there are some alien representing the ‘performative’ aspects features: the central peristylar court had of identity. garden plantings around its perimeter – not The Temple, down in the heart of the main yet a standard feature in contemporary Greek settlement, (‘Area B’) likewise constructed in the course of the third century BCE, reveals similar mixed features. There can be nothing more Greek than a hexastyle, amphiprostyle Doric Temple, complete with crepidoma and surrounded by a peribolos colonnade (in modified Doric) defining its temenos. However, the overall proportions of this Temple are certainly not Greek (the cella measures 13m x 11m); rather, they conform to the ‘quadratic’ proportions so frequently encountered in Mesopotamian religious buildings and the internal layout of the Temple, with tripartite adyton (sanctuary area), is, once again, far from mainland buildings – and both off the north being Greek but rather Mesopotamian (figs.
} and south of this court off-centre doorways 11 and 12: surviving stones and reconstructed gave onto long corridor antechambers (rooms plan of Temple, following page).18 The choices (above) 1 and 23) which in turn led into the main made must have been deliberate. Was this to f i g . 10. Drum altar hypostyle halls or reception rooms (rooms cater for the tastes and sensitivities of a mixed on Acropolis. 12 and 20). These are features rather in the worshipping community? Certainly the range Courtesy of Mesopotamian/Achaemenid tradition of palace of images recovered within the temenos, from GRAEME CLARKE. design.16 And these must have been conscious fragments of over-life-size statuary carved
Could the mixed messages from the architecture and statuary reflect the mixed nature of the users of the Temple itself?
choices – reflective, perhaps, of experiences of in heroic Hellenistic style from (imported) Mesopotamian palatial amenities elsewhere. Parian marble19 (figs. 13: two sets of toes in After all, Greeks have by now been enjoying Parian marble) through a Hellenising head their occupation of Achaemenid satrapal in local limestone (possibly of Herakles, palaces for at least half a century. On the other wearing earring) (fig. 14: limestone head) to hand, those main reception halls were each patently vernacular images (figs. 15 and 16: equipped with two large kitchens on either two vernacular images), might go some way side (rooms 5 and 11, rooms 19 and 21), and to corroborate this suggestion.20 But were the the substantial but repetitive pottery – some worshippers envisaged to be merely local? The eight tonnes of local wares – and glassware Temple was so situated as to be the first public recovered suggest an assemblage for mass- building encountered by travellers entering dining (bulk numbers of uniform-size eating the settlement from the great highway of the bowls and serving platters) and carousing river (stopping off at the river quays still visible, (drinking cups, again in standard sizes, jugs, lying just under the current water level). These craters, amphoras and amphora stands).17 This, would include sailors, merchants and traders in turn, suggests well-known habits of mess- as well as the many pilgrims travelling upriver dining and communal drinking by a governor on their way to celebrate the annual festivals and his garrison troops, behaving socially of the great Syrian Goddess at nearby Menbij as ‘Macedonians’ (irrespective of whether (ancient Syrian Hierapolis). Could the mixed
20 } Humanities Australia (left, top row)
f i g . 11: Surviving stones of Jebel Khalid Temple.
f i g . 12: Reconstructed plan of Jebel Khalid Temple.
(middle row)
f i g . 13: Two sets of toes in Parian marble from Temple.
f i g . 14: Limestone head with under-chin beard and fillet from Temple.
(bottom row)
f i g s . 15 and 16: Two vernacular images from Jebel Khalid Temple.
Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE.
messages from the architecture and statuary the Temple, was designed for liquid offerings reflect, therefore, the mixed nature of the only, with an adjacent sump for drainage (not users of the Temple rather than exclusively the a bone in sight) (fig. 17: remnant of altar and inhabitants of Jebel Khalid itself? By contrast sump, following page) – that is, in the manner with the drum-altar up on the Acropolis traditional of Mesopotamian cults,22 (i.e. not (where a thick ashy lens of burnt bones attests for blood sacrifice) and as occurred famously in the regular offering of animal sacrifice – in the temple of the Syrian Goddess at Menbij23 – traditional Greek fashion),21 the one altar although such bloodless offerings are certainly ofthe Hellenistic period, on the east platform not incompatible with Greek cultic traditions of the Temple in front of the east entry to also (considered by Pausanias to be ‘in the
Humanities Australia { 21 their initial cultural or ethnic identities.27 It was no idle undertaking: to erect the building was an expensive operation and the institution itself entailed the selection and appointment of an overseeing official (implying some civic organisation?), the hiring of teachers and trainers, the establishment of the curriculum of subjects to be taught (music,28 writing, reading – along with a supply of books), arrangements for the provision of high-grade oil, etc. Any associated gymnasium is yet to be located.29 archaic manner’, 5.15.10 [Olympia]). Does this However, as elsewhere throughout Hellenistic temple portend Fergus Millar’s ‘mixed culture’ Syria, there is no sign at Jebel Khalid of any so evident during the Roman period? Greek theatre. } Some 125m to the north of the Temple, (above) but on the same alignment (‘Area C’), was The Housing Insula f i g . 17. Remnant constructed, again in the course of the third of altar and sump, century BCE,24 a palaestra, eight (Doric) An insula of seven or eight houses lies Jebel Khalid Temple. columns per side of the central court (cordiform almost a kilometre to the north of the Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE. in the corners), the overall proportions of Jebel Khalid Acropolis. On this south-facing, which closely approximate the dimensions of south-sloping site, it is the only one of several the palaestra at Delphi. Palaestrae can rightly insulae to have been excavated. This is surely be regarded as being quintessentially Greek, a fruitful area in which to look at non-public providing a characteristic mixture of physical architecture and lifestyle from the point of view and educational training, with public displays of cultural preferences. of physical sporting activities like boxing and Its very position declares a knowledge of the wrestling, and requiring performers to train Greek ideal of house orientation, as expressed in the nude. Our reading of the institution by Xenophon and Aristotle, who advise a is inevitably coloured by the propaganda strictly southern orientation so that in winter of 2 Maccabees (c.4) as being hopelessly the sun may shine into the more important alien to Semitic sensibilities and traditions, rooms to the north of the courtyard and in though the narrative in 2 Maccabees clearly summer, the sun may pass directly over the concedes that many Jews did in fact freely and roof, affording shade.30 enthusiastically participate:25 even so, this is The insula is 35 m E/W and 90 m N/S. In its still a Greek institution, erected in Greek style, primary form it was divided approximately in intended for athletic training, education and half by an E/W alleyway. Its width translates civic entertainment in Greek ways of being. cleanly into 100 Macedonian ‘cubits’.31 Whilst palaestrae were constructed down Although it is somewhat smaller than the on the Levantine coast (much more open to estimated size of Hellenistic insulae elsewhere cultural changes) and elsewhere in Seleukid in Seleukid Syria, this can be explained by territory during this period,26 this is the only difficulties of terrain.32 one attested so far within inland Syria for the The materials used in construction are whole of the Hellenistic period (Damascus interestingly ‘Greek’, although one can had to wait until the time of Herod the Great find common-sense rather than cultural for its palaestra, Joseph. B.J. 1.21.11 (422)). This explanations for their choice. The walls are of building is eloquent for at least the ‘Greek’ field stones, preserved in places to a height of aspirations of the settlers of Jebel Khalid in the more than 2.00 m, so they are not the mud- course of the third century BCE, for having brick walls on low stone foundations found their sons reared in the traditions of Greek at Near Eastern sites and, indeed, at many paideia and for providing public entertainment Greek sites. The availability of stone from and social activity in Greek style whatever the Jebel quarries easily justifies that type of
22 } Humanities Australia construction.33 Terracotta tiles were the roof Based on early twentieth-century excavations, covering, identifying the roof as pitched rather the ‘Greek house’ model was either Olynthus than flat. This is again a Greek34 rather than (the ‘pastas’ house) or Priene (the ‘prostas’ Near Eastern choice but makes excellent sense house).38 This limited view has already been for water collection on a site high above the abandoned, thanks to Nevett’s re-assessment river, in an insula possessing only two water and the full publication of Delos house plans storage cisterns between seven and eight by Trümper.39 At Jebel Khalid, as at Delos, houses. The tiles were Laconian tiles, of a type each house is different, in size, layout and also used in Macedonia.35 orientation. Only one house has what might Interior walls were covered in stucco and be called a pastas and none has a prostas. painted with Greek motifs. Most of the plaster But even Nevett’s redefinition of a ‘single- fragments excavated were plain coloured entrance courtyard house’ does not quite (usually red) but in several rooms, fragments of cover the variety. Common features such as moulded pattern bands were found, e.g. egg- the arrangement of rooms around a central and-dart, Lesbian cymation, wave pattern and a courtyard were hardly unusual anywhere in the geometric meander pattern that seems to belong Mediterranean or Near East. However, there are to the cornice. In Area 19, we have been able to some features which may argue for a non-Greek reconstruct a full wall painted in the Masonry preference. One is the mode of entry. This, too,
such decoration is surely deliberate on the part of an owner who wished to represent himself as Greek. But does it necessarily imply Greek ownership?
Style, with black, red and yellow orthostates varies between houses but the earliest mode, and a figured frieze at eye level, featuring Erotes as demonstrated in the south of the insula, is driving goat chariots.36 (fig. 18: fragments of goat via a substantially sized room which effectively chariots) Masonry Style comparanda for such delays entry into the courtyard by means of an a schema, with figured offset door. This is very private and more like frieze in a domestic the houses at Neo-Assyrian Assur than the context, come from direct entry (into the courtyard) mode at Delos Hellenistic Delos or the door-width corridor entry at Priene.40 37 and Asia Minor. The The Parthian houses at Dura-Europus have an (left) 41 iconography of the frieze itself even more private elbow-shaped entry. f i g . 18. Fragments is pure Hellenistic The arrangement of the main rooms in of goat chariots. Greek. And while three of the houses at Jebel Khalid is another Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE. the use of Greek feature. The oikos Areas 37, 19 and 95, are all at building materials the northern end of a south-sloping courtyard, can be attributed as recommended by Xenophon. The oikos Area to practical 19 has a three-door frontage opening south, considerations, paralleled several times in Delos houses.42 At the choice of both Delos and Priene, it is common for there such decoration to be one room privately accessed from the is surely oikos. At Jebel Khalid, Areas 19, 37 and 95 are deliberate on each flanked by a private room onboth sides, the part of one at least accessed only from the oikos. This an owner who ‘private suite’ arrangement has no precedent wished to represent himself as Greek. But does it in the Macedonian houses of the later fourth necessarily imply Greek ownership? century,43 where all rooms open onto courts, The layout of the houses may offer some but it is a preferred arrangement at Dura- indication of ingrained cultural preferences. Europus44 and has Achaemenid precedents at
Humanities Australia { 23 Assur and Babylon.45 So, for both entry and animals were culled for eating towards the end (right) arrangement of main rooms, there is a need for of their useful lives, so would need stewing. f i g . 19. Jebel Khalid privacy, which may be an eastern tradition. The most common of these cooking- cooking pots. pots is a shape which goes back Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE. Ceramics and cuisine to the Persian period and the Iron Age.49 There are no lidded It is well known that Greek ceramic shapes pots, only one Greek casserole became international in the Hellenistic period (found in Area S, not the Housing and may be found as far east as Afghanistan. Insula) and no baking pans. It is So it is not surprising that at Jebel Khalid the not convincing to Greek shapes dominate both the imported argue that Jebel wares and the local production of tableware. Khalid was too The imports of black-glazed wares (from Attica remote from the early in the settlement period), West Slope coast to encounter style pottery and moulded bowls from Antioch or import these vessels and the west, as well as the post-150 BCE mass because fine wares were production of Eastern Sigillata A wares, far being regularly imported outnumber the import of green-glazed wares. from Antioch and imitated The latter constitute the only import from locally. This seems a Mesopotamia or the south and even these copy deliberate rejection of the the Greek shapes, e.g. fishplates, bowls with kind of Greek cuisine cooked inturned rim, saucers and table amphorae with in lidded pots and casseroles. twisted handles. If the tableware reflects eating At Samaria and Akko, the lidded cooking and drinking preferences, then the inhabitants pot is called a ‘Greek form’ as opposed to the
it is possible [eating FISH] was taboo, since Hierapolis, home of the Syrian Goddess and her sacred fish, was not far away.
of the insula were dining in the Greek style, traditional Persian-period cooking-pot.50 As drinking out of elegant cups and eating off for casseroles, Berlin states that ‘Casseroles a choice of small saucers, fishplates or large are Greek not only in origin but in subsequent platters. In the early days of the settlement they use and association. They are very common were drinking wine imported from Rhodes.46 in Greek domestic assemblages and in some However, in the kitchenware department, cases are the prevalent type of vessel found’.51 a somewhat different picture emerges. Many Casseroles were cooking vessels for fish, of the useful kitchen bowls are of traditional among other things, and fish bones have been shapes, used in Syria from the Iron Age and difficult to find in the Housing Insula.52 One sometimes before.47 This is not surprising as a would expect fish from the Euphrates to be on useful shape is not subject to fashion. But it is the menu but it is possible it was taboo, since the cooking pots of Jebel Khalid that provide Hierapolis, home of the Syrian Goddess and her the most compelling evidence, among the sacred fish, was not far away.53 That offers one ceramics, of a non-Greek tradition. Whereas cultural reason why casseroles were not used. the Greek sites on or near the Phoenician coast It is easy to assume that the persons doing produced a great variety of cooking vessels,48 the cooking were local Syrians who preferred we can publish only three types of globular, their traditional cooking methods and cuisine. lidless cooking pots at Jebel Khalid, all designed But the owner-families in the houses also to cook stews or gruel (fig. 19: Jebel Khalid had a lasting preference for the local cuisine. cooking-pots). The faunal remains show that, This does not necessarily mean that they were among ovi-caprids, equids and cattle, the not Greeks but it could mean that the insula
24 } Humanities Australia was home to a mixture of second-generation died out, but that it manifested itself rather colonists who were already acclimatised to local differently, perhaps in the form of some tastes and conditions. of the women in Greek dress, and that this may represent a blending of Greek with Near Figurines Eastern tradition among the population of Jebel Khalid.57 So it is among the figurine fragments The figurine fragments found at Jebel that it is possible to gain a strong sense of a Khalid (now over 500 in number) probably surviving indigenous culture, even though the reflect, better than any other class of artefact, Greek presence is statistically dominant: some the variety and complexity of the cultural 60% of the assemblage is undeniably Greek, self-identification of the inhabitants of the whereas unmistakable Near Eastern figures are site. These are not clusters of votives found at less than 20%, but Greek-style images may well a religious precinct: they come largely from have been viewed by the indigenous population domestic contexts but also from the Main as representations à la grecque of Semitic deities. Gate, the Acropolis, the Commercial Area S and the rubbish dumps. They have already Seals been published in detail so a brief summary suffices here.54 Representations of Greek deities The dominant Greek presence is reflected and heroes dominate the corpus numerically: very clearly in the iconography of three official Aphrodite, Dionysus, Heracles, Apollo, possibly Seleucid seals found on the Acropolis.58 One Demeter. Jackson suggests that this is the has the well-known anchor as its symbol, used public or official iconography of Jebel Khalid, as an emblem of the Seleukid Royal Treasury. just as Athena and Zeus appear The second features Athena Nikephoros, (lower left) 55 on official seals. Alongside another official Seleukid image, which often f i g . 20. ‘Astarte plaque’ this but not subservient to it appeared on coins. The third shows a bearded and Persian rider. and certainly not suppressed, Zeus seated on a throne, holding a Nike on his Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE. is a private iconography right hand. This is Zeus Nikephoros, familiar found mainly in the houses, on Seleukid coins or seals. A fourth seal was which has identifiable Near found near the Main Gate, featuring a bust of Eastern antecedents: ‘Astarte’ Athena, an image that again recurs on plaques, the handmade Persian Seleukid coins. These are all official riders (fig. 20: A‘ starte plaque’ seals used in the administration and Persian rider) and a mysterious child rider of Jebel Khalid – and are figure which may be a hybrid of Greek and Near unmistakably Greek Eastern features.56 There are (fig. 21: official seal). relatively few ‘Astarte’ plaques A private seal, made and those few seem to belong by a gem impression only to the earliest phase on the shoulder of a local of settlement and were amphora, displays a different image: found in the houses, not a standing figure, stiffly profile, in long robes the official administrative reminiscent of Achaemenid dress, possibly } area on the Acropolis. with hair bunched in Mesopotamian style, 59 The later phase is holding aloft a cone-shaped object. The (above) flooded, instead, identity and even gender of the figure remains f i g . 21: Official seal with little figures of uncertain but it does not immediately recall from Jebel Khalid. women in Greek Greek iconography, nor is the stance of the Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE. dress wearing Greek headdresses and hairstyles figure Hellenistic in style. It rather resembles such as the lampadion and bow knot, although the figures of worshippers and sages seen a few wear veils in the Eastern style. Jackson on Babylonian seals, admittedly from the takes this disappearance of ‘Astarte’ plaques Hellenistic period but thought by Wallenfels to to indicate not that the worship of this deity represent a continuity of traditional Assyrian
Humanities Australia { 25 and Babylonian types.60 The small size of the recalls the iconography of Atargatis, the seal (carefully re-stamped to ensure the figure Syrian goddess, whose temple was at nearby was vertical) and its position on the shoulder Hierapolis. This cylinder was found in a context of the jar are both factors which argue for dating to the beginning of the settlement. Both this being a private seal, made before firing by seals were personal articles of adornment. arrangement with the potter to ‘book’ the jar Herakles was worshipped by the army, and for private use. It may be of significance that his image had strong associations with the jar was found in the palaestra – the jar was Macedonian royalty, so it is tempting to deduce marked with the owner’s personal (non-Greek) that the ring’s owner, whether Greek or Syrian, seal, apparently reserving it for personal use surely identified with the Greek regime. On (below) within that very Greek institution. the other hand, Semitic deities like Melqart or f i g . 22. Carnelian Two private sealing devices were discovered Nabu in this period acquired the physiognomy bezel of Herakles. in the Housing Insula, of contrasting and attributes of Herakles as the quintessential 61 Courtesy of iconography and design. One was an iron powerful protecting god. The cylinder seal, GRAEME CLARKE. finger ring, with a carved carnelian bezel, too found with another pierced agate that was } small to be an official seal (fig. 22: carnelian obviously part of the same necklace, may have bezel of Herakles). The other was a rare six- been worn by a person with the power to use a sided cylinder seal of chalcedony, pierced seal and with allegiance to a deity symbolised as though to be part of a necklace and by a star and crescent; such seals were often representing the long-standing use of accorded a quasi-magical significance and, as cylinder seals in the Near East (fig. 23: such, could be passed down through many Six-sided cylinder seal of chalcedony). generations.62 These two sealing devices may The carnelian bears an image of well illustrate the merging of cultures between Herakles in profile, lion skin on scalp, the (presumed) Macedonian settlers and club on right shoulder. He is Herakles surviving indigenous tradition. in the Greek style, with curly hair and large eyes. The cylinder is much Conclusion worn; of its six sides three, possibly four, carry images of long-robed figures, probably Ambiguity abounds everywhere in reading female, two carrying stalks or sprays. Two sides the material remains so far uncovered. And, carry symbols, one a stylised branch and the in addition, some bias in the material may other a rough crescent. Taken as a whole, the be due to the sample available to us from iconography is closer to that of Mesopotamian the areas so far excavated – the fortification seals, where astral symbols accompany a system, the public buildings, the particular range of figures identified as worshippers. The insula of houses. For whilst the housing crescent and star combination particularly insula has told us much about the way of life
(right) f i g . 23. Six-sided cylinder seal of chalcedony.
Courtesy of GRAEME CLARKE.
26 } Humanities Australia of its occupants, the houses here, high on the * Variant versions of this paper are due to slope away from the commercial area below, appear in a volume of papers on the theme of L’Orient hellénisé, edited by Pierre Leriche (Paris, are élite housing, without any evidence of UNESCO) and in the second volume of Papers industrial activity. As such, their architecture, in Honour of Professor Sir Fergus Millar, edited decoration and material goods would appear by Richard Alston and Sam Lieu (Turnhout, to reveal more Greek elements than they do Brepols). # fergus Millar, ‘The Problem of Hellenistic Syrian (though by no means exclusively). But, Syria’, in Hellenism in the East. The Interaction of as shown above, some proof also exists for Greek and non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to indigenous cult loyalties and hybridisation of Central Asia after Alexander, ed. by Amélie Kuhrt cults, as well as of the local manufacture of and Susan Sherwin-White (Berkeley and Los 63 Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), figurines, including traditional Syrian figures. pp. 110-133 at pp. 130-1, reprinted in Rome, The And there was a major local pottery industry Greek World, and The East, vol. 3, The Greek World, (85% of the common-ware pottery is of local the Jews, and the East, ed. by Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers (Chapel Hill: The University manufacture).64 What needs to be explored, in of North Carolina Press, 2006), order to arrive at a more balanced assessment, pp. 3-31 at pp. 28-9. are the domestic quarters of low-status houses, 1. For some literature, J. M. Hall, Ethnic Identity where the workers and labourers of these in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge local industries are likely to have lived, and all University Press, 1997); S. Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past aspects of the material contents of these more and Present (London: Routledge, 1997); I. modest dwellings compared with those of the Maklin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization grander housing insula. This way some further and Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Identities in the Eastern insight into the socioeconomic structure of Mediterranean in Antiquity, ed. by G.W. Clarke the society of Jebel Khalid could be gained as (Sydney: Mediterranean Archaeology, 1998); well as into its ethnic and cultural identities. Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, ed. by S. But we can be sure that the mute stones will, Mitchell and G. Greatrex (London: Duckworth, 2000); The Archaeology of Colonialism: Issues nevertheless, speak only tentatively: there is and Debates, ed. by C.L. Lyons and J. K. so much that material remains in archaeology Papadopoulos (Los Angeles: Getty Research cannot securely tell us. ¶ Institute, 2002); J. Geiger, ‘Language, Culture and Identity in Ancient Palestine’, in Greek Romans and Roman Greeks. Studies in Cultural Interaction, ed. by E.N. Ostenfeld (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2002), pp. 233-46; I. Graeme Clarke AO, FAHA is an Maklin, ‘Postcolonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization’, Modern Language Quarterly Adjunct Professor in the School 65 (2004), 341-364; Ancient Colonizations: Analogy, of History at the ANU, having Similarity and Difference, ed. by H. Hurst and been previously Professor S. Owen (London: Duckworth, 2005); The of Classical Studies at the Archaeology of Colonial Encounters. Comparative University of Melbourne Perspectives, ed. by G. J. Stein (Santa Fe/Oxford: (1969-1981) and a Director in the Humanities James Currey, 2005); Cultural Borrowings and Research Centre, ANU (1982-1999). He has been Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity, ed. by E. S. a Director of excavations at the Hellenistic site Gruen (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2005); J. M. Hall, of Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates in North Syria ‘The Creation and Expression of Identity: The Greek World’, in Classical Archaeology, ed. by since 1986. S.E. Alcock and R. Osborne (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 337-354; Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, Heather Jackson FSA and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. is Co-Director of the by K. Zacharia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); excavations project at Jebel Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power Khalid on the Euphrates, and and Tradition, ed. by T. Derks and N. Roymans Honorary Fellow of the (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, University of Melbourne’s 2009); Material Culture and Social Identities in the Ancient World, ed. by S. Hales and T. Hodos Centre for Classics and Archaeology. Her books and (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); articles on Jebel Khalid focus on the wall painting, G. Tsetskhladze and J. Hargrave, ‘Colonisation pottery and figurines. She is preparing a volume on Ancient and Modern: Some Observations’, in the architecture and artefacts of the housing insula. Gaudeamus Igitur: Studies to Honour the 60th Birthday of A.V. Podossinov, ed. by T.N. Jackson,
Humanities Australia { 27 I.G. Konovalova and G.R. Tsetskhladze 9. See G.W. Clarke, ‘A Greek Graffito from (Moscow: Institute of World History, Russian Jebel Khalid’, Mediterranean Archaeology 9/10 Academy of Sciences/Russian Endowment for (1996/97), 185-6. Science and Education/Dmitriy Pozharskiy 10. See G.W. Clarke, ‘The Governor’s Palace, University, 2010), pp. 381-98. Acropolis’ in Clarke et al., op. cit. in n.3, 2. See M. Mottram and D. Menere, ‘Preliminary pp. 25-48 at p. 38. Surface Investigation in the Wadi Abu Qalqal 11. See art. cit. in n.10 at p. 36. Region, North Syria’, Mediterranean Archaeology 12. See M. Sartre, ‘The Nature of Syrian Hellenism 18 (2005), 161-174 at 165-6. For a summary of in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Periods’ the meagre evidence from the Tell Es-Sweyhat in Y. Z. Eliav, E. A. Friedland and S. Herbert, Survey (the Tell is some 15km downstream The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near from Jebel Khalid on the east bank), see T.J. East. Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power Wilkinson et al., On the Margins of the Euphrates. (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), pp. 25-49 at pp. 35-8, cf. Settlement and Land Use at Tell Es-Sweyhat and F. Millar, art. cit. in introduction, 116-7. in the Upper Lake Assad Area, Syria (Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University 13. See P.J. Connor and G.W. Clarke, ‘Jebel of Chicago, 2004), pp. 144-5 and see, more Khalid in North Syria: the First Campaigns’, generally, M.R. Whincop, Pots, People, and Mediterraean Archaeology 9/10 (1996/97), 151-83. Politics; A Reconsideration of the Role of Ceramics The Hellenistic-period fortification blocks at in Reconstructions of the Iron Age Northern Levant Dura-Europos are based on the same unit of (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2009). measurement (von Gerkan, ‘The Fortifications’, Dura Reports 7/8 (1933-4 & 1934-5), pp. 1-23 at 3. See G.W. Clarke and H. Jackson, ‘Graffiti and p. 1. On the Macedonian unit of measurement Dipinti’, in G.W. Clarke et al., Jebel Khalid on see N.G.L. Hammond, ‘A Macedonian Shield the Euphrates. Report on Excavations 1986- and Macedonian Measures’, BSA 91, 365-7. 1996 (Sydney: Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement 5, 2002), pp. 206-16, and G.W. Clarke 14. See P. Connor and G.W. Clarke, ‘The North- and H. Jackson, ‘Jebel Khalid: Graffiti andD ipinti West Tower’, in Clarke et al., op. cit. in n.3, 2000-2005’, Mediterranean Archaeology 18 (2005), pp. 1-15. 193-98. See also G.W. Clarke, ‘Greek Graffiti 15. See G.W. Clarke, ‘The Main Gate’, in Clarke from North Syria’, Mediterranean Archaeology et al., op. cit. in n.3, 17-23. 5/6 (1992/3), 117-20 (graffiti in Greek on plaster 16. See G.W. Clarke, art. cit. in n.10 and I. Nielsen from the Acropolis Palace). Literacy is also (ed.) The Royal Palace Institution in the First attested by the recovery of a number of styluses, Millennium BC (Aarhus: Monographs of the both bone and bronze. At least 5 (Cretan-style) Danish institute at Athens, vol. 4, 2001), passim: arrowheads have been recovered, engraved with note especially I. Nielsen, ‘The Gardens of the monogram beta~ epsilon (parallels have been Hellenistic Palaces’, pp. 165-185 at pp. 177-81. found in Jerusalem, on Cyprus, Cyrene, Crete, 17. See G.W. Clarke, ‘Preface’, in H. Jackson and Egypt and elsewhere) and perhaps imply the J. Tidmarsh, Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates, Report presence of a detachment of Cretan mercenary vol. III: The Pottery (Sydney: Mediterranean archers as part of the garrison troops. Archaeology Supplement, forthcoming). 4. See Clarke and Jackson, art. cit. in n.3 18. For reports on excavations at the Temple site [Mediterranean Archaeology 18 (2005)], p. 198 see G.W. Clarke, Mediterranean Archaeology 13 (JK Di.6) with n.3. (2000), 123-6; 15 (2002), 116-21; 16 (2003), 171-5; 5. In addition to the articles cited in nn 6 and 18 (2005), 128-35; 19/20 (2006/07), 132-9; 21 (2008) 7 below, G.W. Clarke, ‘Jebel Khalid Stamped 59-64. An early precursor of the Jebel Khalid Amphora Handles 2006-2008’, Mediterranean Temple might be found in the Phoenician Archaeology 21 (2008), 105-114. 16 further stamps, temple to Echmoun at Sidon, dating to the excavated in the 2010 season, await publication. beginning of the fourth century BCE: fully 6. See G.W. Clarke, ‘Stamped Amphora Handles’ in Greek in the exterior (hexastyle, amphiprostyle, Clarke et al., op. cit. in n.3, 271-89 at 287 Ionic) but with its interior — cella ‘probablement (JK SH.44 and JK SH.45). I owe this carée’ and adyton richly decorated — ‘fidèle identification to the courtesy of Professor à la tradition orientale’. See R.A. Stucky, Joseph Naveh. ‘Acculturation et retour aux sources: Sidon 7. See G.W. Clarke, art. cit. in n.6, at pp. 286-7 aux époques perse et hellénistique’, in Recherches récents sur le monde hellénistique (JK SH.39-42) and idem, ‘Jebel Khalid: Stamped , ed. by R. Frei- Amphora Handles 2000-2005’, Mediterranean Stolba and K. Gex (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001), Archaeology 18 (2005), 175-91 at 181-3 (JK SH. pp. 247-258 at p. 249. 63-67). 19. See G.W. Clarke, ‘The Jebel Khalid Marbles’, 8. It would appear that the cultivation of the olive Mediterranean Archaeology 21 (2008), 115-118. was a Greek introduction into this region: 20. ‘Plurality of modes of representation of the gods the site is outside olive’s natural distribution seems to be a characteristic feature of Syrian zone. A. Fairbairn and E. Asouti, ‘Evidence for Hellenism’, M. Sartre, art. cit. in n.12, p. 45. Olive Wood and Deforestation at Jebel Khalid’, Compare the mixed statuary found in the (later) Mediterranean Archaeology 18 (2005), 190-1. Temple of Zeus Megistos at Dura-Europos,
28 } Humanities Australia reflecting the (known) mixed nature of the gymnasia into baths in which they anointed population at Dura-Europos, S.B. Downey, ‘The themselves with expensive oils and perfumes’. Role of Sculpture in Worship at the Temples of 27. See, on the 2008 excavations at the palaestra, Dura-Europos’, in Y. Z. Eliav, E. A. Friedland and G. W. Clarke, Mediterranean Archaeology 22/23 S. Herbert, The Sculptural Environment, pp. 413- (2009/10), forthcoming. 435 at pp. 417-428. 28. A bone flute fragment has been recovered 21. See, for example, S.K. Stowers, ‘Greeks Who on site. Sacrifice and Those WhoD o Not: Toward an 29. Several attempts at sub-surface survey, with Anthropology of Greek Religion’, in The Social the object of producing an overall site plan World of the First Christians. Essays in Honor of of Jebel Khalid, by Dr Bruno Frohlich and his Wayne A. Meeks, ed. by L.M. White and O.L. team (Smithsonian Institute), have produced Yarbrough (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), disappointing results due to the extreme pp. 293-333; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Greek Normative irregularity of the underlying bedrock. Animal Sacrifice’, inA Companion to Greek Religion, ed. by D. Ogden (Oxford: Blackwell, 30. Xenophon, Memorabilia, III, 8 and Oeconomicus 2007), pp. 132-144. IX, 4; Aristotle, Economics I vi 7. Vitruvius’ Greek house echoes this ideal: Vitruvius VI, 7. 22. Cf. the inscription on the left paw of the great protecting lion guarding the sanctuary of 31. In Macedonian cubits, the E/W dimension of Allat in Palmyra: ‘May Allat bless whoever 35m translates nicely into 100 cubits (taking the does not shed blood in the precinct’ [no bones cubit as 35cm) but the N/S dimension of 90m were recovered during the excavation of this is not so neat at 257.14 cubits. In Doric feet the sanctuary] and see further H.J.W. Drijvers, dimension would be 107 x 276 feet; in Ionic feet: ‘Sanctuaries and Social Safety: The Iconography 118 x 305. Rounded dimensions, e.g. 100 x 300, of Divine Place in Hellenistic Syria’, Visible are rare. Religion 1 (1982), 65-75. Of all the multiple altars 32. At Antioch and Laodicea, the insulae were so far excavated at Dura-Europos, not one is allegedly 54 x 108 m and at Damascus (overlaid suitable for blood sacrifice, although there are a by Roman remains, so suspect) 45 x 100 m very few (later) monuments that imply it. (R. Martin, L’urbanisme dans la Grèce antique, 23. In the post-Hellenistic period, the Temple 2nd ed., [Paris: A & J Picard et Cie, 1974], p. was modified and 23 incense altars were, 165). At Apamea-on-the-Orontes, insula size is additionally, erected around its periphery. reported as 57 x 105 m (J. C. Balty, ‘Les Grands Etapes de L’Ubanisme d’Apamée-sur-l’Oronte’, 24. On the dating, see ‘Jebel Khalid: The 2006 Ktema 1977, 5). At Apamea-Osrhoene 38 x 10 8 Season’ and ‘Jebel Khalid Fieldwork Report m (C.Abadie-Reynal–R. Ergeç et al., ‘Moyenne 2008’, Mediterranean Archaeology 21 (2008), 123-4 Vallée de L’Euphrate. Rapport préliminaire de and 22/23 (2009/10) (forthcoming). la campagne des fouilles 1997’, Anatolia Antiqua 25. For a very recent and thorough study of the 6 (1998), 139-406 at 403). See also J. D. Grainger, Revolt of the Maccabees see P. F. Mittag, The Cities of Seleukid Syria (Oxford: Clarendon Antiochus IV. Epiphanes. Eine politische Biographie Press, 1990), pp. 48, 50, where he dismisses (Berlin: Akademie, 2006), pp. 225-81. For the theory of contemporaneity of foundation a particularly illuminating study of the based on an approximate 2:1 ratio of insula language and interpretation of 2 Maccabees measurements. c.4, exploiting the two letters of Eumenes II to 33. It is possible that an upper storey was of mud Phrygian Tyraion, see Nigel M. Kennell, ‘New brick. Only one set of steps has been found, in Light on 2 Maccabees 4:7-15’, Journal of Jewish the north of the insula, indicating the presence Studies 56 (2005), 10-24 (I owe this reference to of an upper storey, although wooden ladders the courtesy of Fergus Millar). or steps could have existed elsewhere. No mud 26. Louis Robert brings out well the cultural brick has been preserved. significance of the gymnasium atA ï Khanoum 34. For the ‘Greekness’ of a tiled roof, see J. C. Balty, on the Oxus in ‘De Delphes à l’Oxus. ‘La maison urbaine en Syrie’, in Archéologie Inscriptions grecques nouvelles de la Bactriane’, et histoire de la Syrie, vol.2, La Syrie de l’époque CRAI 1968, 416-457 at 420f., 454-7. See also achéménide à l’avènement de l’Islam, ed. by J.-M. M. Sartre, Histoires grecques: Snapshots from Dentzer and W. Orthmann (Saarbrücken: Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 1989), p. 407. 2009) (trans. C. Porter) c. 23 (‘Gymnasium: Keep out! or Education and Citizenship in the 35. E.g. at Phlorina (M. Lilibaki-Akamate–I. Hellenistic World’) pp. 201-6 and c. 26 (‘The Akamates, “Ελληνιστκὴ πόλη στη Φλώρινα”, Promotion of Toriaion, or How to Become Το α̉ρχαιλογικό ε̉ργο στη Μακεδονία και Θρα̃κη, a City State’) pp. 223-231. Note Posidonius 4 (1990), 67-74 at 67). Although Laconian in F62a Edelstein and Kidd (apud Athenaeus shape, the Jebel Khalid tiles were probably Deipnosophistae 12.527e): ‘All the people of manufactured locally; their fabric resembles Syria, because of the great plenty which their that of the local pottery. land afforded, were free from worry about the 36. H. Jackson, ‘Erotes on the Euphrates. A Figured basics of life, and so were for ever meeting Frieze in a Private House at Hellenistic Jebel for a continual life of feasting, turning their Khalid on the Euphrates’, AJA 113, 2 (2009), 231-53.
Humanities Australia { 29 37. Contrast M. Rostovzteff, Dura-Europos and its (ed.) S. C. Herbert (Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum, Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), p. 49: ‘The 1997), pp. ix-247 at pp. 91-103, where 430 casserole wall decoration of the private houses of Dura rims and ten different forms of casserole were has nothing in common with the Hellenistic found, as well as several baking pans. At Dor, and Italian type of wall decoration. We find in at least one casserole profile dates to the 3rd no house in Dura anything resembling the wall century BCE (B. Guz-Zilberstein, ‘The typology paintings of Priene, Delos, Pompeii…’. of the Hellenistic coarse ware and selected 38. Olynthus: D. M. Robinson, Excavations at loci of the Hellenistic and Roman periods’, in Olynthus XII: Domestic and Public Architecture Excavations at Dor, Final Report vol. IB: The Finds, (Baltimore, 1946), D. M. Robinson– A. J. W. ed. by E. Stern [Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Graham, Excavations at Olynthus VIII: The Society, 1995], pp. 289-434 at p. 300). In the Hellenistic House (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Athenian Agora, lopades (casseroles) dominate University Studies in Archaeology no. 25, 1938); the cooking corpus. Intriguingly, Rotroff Priene: T. Wiegand– H. Schrader, Priene: Ergebnisse emphasizes their popularity in the Eastern der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen in des Mediterranean and hints at an Eastern origin Jahren 1895-1898 (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu for the shape (S. Rotroff, C‘ oarse Wares at the Berlin, 1904). Athenian Agora’, Praktika 2004, 455-60 at 459). 39. L. C. Nevett, House and Society in the Ancient 49. Jackson, op. cit. in n.47, Type 38. Greek World (Cambridge: Cambridge University 50. J. W. Crowfoot–G. M. Crowfoot–K. M. Kenyon, Press, 1999); M. Trümper, Wohnen in Delos. Eine Samaria-Sebaste III: The Objects from Samaria baugeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Wandel de (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1975), Wohnkultur in hellenistischer Zeit (Rahden/Westf., p. 230; M. Dothan, ‘Akko: Interim Excavation Verlag Marie Leidorf, 1998). Report, First Season 1973/4’, BASOR 1976, 1-48 40. For the Red House at Assur, see C. Preusser, Die at 31. Wohnhäuser in Assur (Berlin: Wissenschaftliche 51. Berlin, op. cit. in n.48, p. 94. Veröffentlichung der Deutschen Orient- 52. By contrast, fish bones have been found in the Gesellschaft. no. 64, 1954), pl.11: here the entry Acropolis Palace, as well as a fish-hook and lead room has a fountain installed. For Delos, see sinkers, but one could argue that Greek officials Trümper, op. cit. in n.39, passim. For Priene: there felt immune from any such taboo. No Wiegand–Schrader, op. cit. in n.38, p. 207 casseroles were found there, either. (House 33). 53. Cp Porphyry De Abstin. 2.61 ‘…while Syrians do 41. See C. Hopkins, ‘Private Houses’, in Excavations not taste fish and theH ebrews pigs and many at Dura-Europos, 5th Season, 1931-32, ed. by M. of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians cows…’.; Rostovzeff (New Haven: Yale University Press, cp. ibid. 4.15 (quoting Menander); Athenaeus, 1934), pp. 31-72 at p. 31. Houses in Seleucia-on- Deipnosophist., 8.346 c-d. the-Tigris also show this feature: M. Coppa, 54. H. Jackson, Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates. Storia dell’urbanistica. Vol. 2: Le età ellenistiche Volume Two: The Terracotta Figurines (Sydney: (Rome: Einaudi, 1981), p. 727, fig. 442 (Block B, Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement Level III). 6, 2006) 42. E.g. Maison des Tritons and Maison du Lac 55. Jackson, op. cit., n.54, p. 222. For the seals, (Trümper, op. cit. in n.39, figs. 14, 17). see infra. 43. M. Kiderlen, Megale Oikia. Untersuchungen zur 56. Jackson, op. cit., n.54, pp. 221-2 Entwicklung aufwendiger griechisher Stäthaus Architektur (Hürth: Verlag Martin Lange, 1995), 57. Jackson, op. cit., n.54, p. 223. Cat. Nos. 1, 13, 28. 58. Published by Graeme Clarke, ‘Four Hellenistic 44. E.g. A. Allara, ‘Domestic Architecture at Dura- Seal Impressions’, in Clarke et al., op. cit. in n.3, Europos’, Mesopotamia 22 (1987), 67-76 at 67, pp. 201-3. fig. B. 59. See Heather Jackson, ‘A local jar seal’, Appendix 45. Assur: Preusser, op. cit. in n.40, pl. 11:1; Babylon: to Graeme Clarke, ‘Jebel Khalid: Stamped W. Hoepfner–E.-L. Schwander, Haus und Stadt Amphora Handles 2000-2005’, Mediterranean in Klassischen Griechenland (Munich: Deutscher Archaeology 18 (2005), 186-9. Kunstverlag, 1994) (2nd ed.), fig. 243,H ouses X, 60. R. Wallenfels, Hellenistic Seal Impressions in the Xii, Xiii, V, VI. Yale Babylonian Collection, vol. I. Ausgrabungen in 46. See Graeme Clarke, ‘The Stamped Amphora Uruk-Warka. Endberichte, (Mainz am Rhein: von Handles’, in Clarke et al., op. cit. in n.3, pp. 275- Zabern, 1994), p. 151. 85, 288. 61. See Heather Jackson, ‘Two Engraved Gems from 47. See H. Jackson, Chapter 1, ‘The Common Hellenistic Jebel Khalid’, Antike Kunst 47 (2004), Wares’, in H. Jackson–J. Tidmarsh, Jebel Khalid 34-46. on the Euphrates, Vol.III: The Pottery (Sydney: 62. For examples. P. H. Merrillees, Cylinder and Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement, Stamp Seals in Australian Collections (Burwood: forthcoming), Types 21-3. Victoria College Press, 1990), p. 103. 48. E.g. at Anafa, A. M. Berlin, ‘The Plain Wares’, in 63. Jackson, op. cit. in n.54. Tell Anafa 2.1: The Hellenistic and Roman Pottery, 64. Jackson, op. cit. in n.47.
30 } Humanities Australia » Grace Karskens
The landscape of handsome public works, tools in every room, and masters and mistresses refined domestic environments and new public of much the same rank and cultural outlooks as Topen spaces had quite different meanings themselves. They worked for their masters and for convicts arriving in Sydney in the Age of mistresses, but those who were artisans often Macquarie. Ankles freed of shipboard irons, also paid them to be allowed to work on their they were mustered in the gaol yard and own account.1 assigned to government work gangs or to Increasingly Macquarie also kept skilled settlers. Those assigned to well-off settlers tradesmen in Sydney to work on his public and townsfolk went to live with them, and so works programme, which expanded in tandem became familiar with the grand houses, their with the rising numbers of convicts who dining rooms and drawing rooms, kitchens arrived after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in and gardens, the whims of their masters 1815.2 For the first thirty years of the colony’s and mistresses. Others knew the bare huts existence, men assigned to the work gangs on and scrabbling lives of the small-farming buildings, in quarries, at the brickworks, or emancipist settlers on the plain and the the great hive of manufacturing activity that rivers. Still others found themselves in the was the Lumber Yard, were not housed in gaols more familiar domestic environments of the or barracks, but told to go and find their own publicans and trades people of the town: the lodgings in the town and turn up for work when plain, solid stone houses of two or three rooms, the morning bells were rung. They went to the the jumble of furniture, household goods and older neighbourhoods, like the Rocks, rented
Humanities Australia { 31 (previous page) rooms together or dossed down in the kitchens course, Macquarie’s buildings meant work Elizabeth Henrietta and skillions of established householders. The rather than aesthetic improvement, though the Macquarie, 1819. urban conditions in which they lived were not contrast between the fine airy rooms of the new Mitchell Library, State Library of New South much affected by Macquarie’s improvements: residences and hospital and the stinking, filthy, Wales, MIN 237. the streets here were still uneven, the pubs were crowded gaol where prisoners were housed could everywhere. Some houses were much improved not have escaped them. There were places to be Lachlan Macquarie, and had proper wells and privies; others seen, like the market place, alive on Saturdays; a portrait by Richard Read senior in 1822. were hastily put up as mean ‘rents’ with few and places to avoid being seen, like the 3 Mitchell Library, State amenities, if any. ambivalent, often dangerous military zone, and Library of New South Night time might be hazardous for the all the guard houses and sentry boxes manned by Wales, P2 / 144. careless, though, as convicts were subject to a soldiers and constables who were the authorities’ curfew and could be arrested and thrown into eyes in the town. These sentries stood to Joseph Lycett, Convict Barracks the watchhouses after 9pm. Macquarie revived attention, or lounged, or dozed, at the wharves, Sydney N. S. Wales, the division of the town into districts, each the forts, at government house and the Domain c1820. patrolled at night by constables with rattles and gate, at the Main Guard and the barracks. Mitchell Library, State Library of sabres, who called out the hour. But Sydney also For the first two years or more, the newly- New South Wales, PX*D 41. had a free population, so there were bound to arrived were perhaps most conscious of the be frictions. As convicts did not wear distinctive shorelines, the wharves, the Heads of Sydney clothing, it was difficult for constables to tell Harbour and the horizon. Throughout the them from free labourers or artisans, and the period of transportation to the colony, they curfew was a constant source of irritation and were the most likely group to attempt escape. indignation to non-convict townsfolk. Although The sea was their link with home: harbour and the increased policing of convicts was still only the ships offered the hope of return. They must partly effective, it nonetheless jarred with the have listened eagerly for news of ships, when free, and Sydney people resisted by refusing they sailed, which labour-starved captains to be arrested. They tore down Macquarie’s might be prepared to take stowaways, which first notices about new rules and regulations. seamen might be bribed to hide them.6 Macquarie expressed his ‘astonishment’ at this For others there were bright possibilities and declared with characteristic drama that in Macquarie’s Sydney, and for the many the culprits caught would be tried as ‘traitors’.4 there were the consolations and enjoyment The knowledge of people’s whereabouts and of popular culture, much of it carried on out movements was also fundamental to urban of doors, in public places. The streets and old control, so the townsfolk were ordered to inform squares remained places for mobs to gather and their local constabulary when they or their fights to break out. By the end of the decade servants moved. They refused.5 there were pubs and drinking houses on almost It would not have taken new arrivals long every corner, with drinking, gambling, dancing to become familiar with the lineaments and and music, while illegal carts trundled around particular places of Sydney town. Strangeness the town selling spirits too. Everyone who gradually settled into patterns and landmarks: owned a horse, even the most broken-down the stores where rations were old carthorse, wanted to race it and wager on distributed, the quarries and the result. The streets were used for reckless brickworks, and the scaffolds of horseracing, even after Hyde Park was set aside the new buildings. To them, of as a racecourse. Cock-fighting, dog-fighting, bare-knuckle prize-fighting and foot racing
32 } Humanities Australia also attracted great crowds. The locations for could not improve it further because ‘a man (below) extralegal meetings, usually isolated, fringe happen(ed) to be killed on it’. No one would Edward Close’s 1817 places, were passed by word of mouth among work there for her. And at the place where watercolour of the new public building the patrons. Unruly mobs of both white and the cart-tracks crossed in Hyde Park lay the in Macquarie Street, black people commonly gathered at the Kings bodies of suicides. They were excluded from framed by the trees Wharf – at the bottom of the Rocks – or in the consecrated ground and buried there with and shrubs of the Domain. old square outside the new Main Guard, much stakes driven through their hearts.8 National Library to the consternation of the constables and For Sydney’s convicts and labouring people, of Australia, soldiers on sentry duty.7 the Macquarie era was also marked by walls. nla.pic-an4563834-s9.
So by the 1810s Sydney’s people had inscribed Walls of rubble or ashlar sandstone rose } the urban landscape with cultural meanings, relentlessly to heights of nine, ten, twelve, meanings made by common actions, repeated fourteen feet, encircling new buildings and old, over time, which had become common cutting off access to yards and the waterfront knowledge. Other public spaces were more and common ground. At the Dockyard, the old unsettling, marked by death or the expiation ‘battered railing and gates’ were replaced by of crime. The crowded, malodorous old burial a ‘high stone wall, nine feet tall’. A stonewall
The walls had to do with the control of bodies and movement, with enclosure and exclusion. How did people deal with them? ...Often they simply made holes in the walls, and walked through. ground next to the new market was closed in rose around the old churchyard of St Phillips 1820, but people continued to use it for illegal on Church Hill (now Grosvenor Street). The old or covert purposes. Thieves buried stolen goods hospital at the foot of the Rocks had no walls at there, fathers quietly buried stillborn babies. all; in the new hospital, inmates were confined The hideous hanging ground on the far fringe by another nine-foot wall.9 This was a new received the bodies of executed criminals. phenomenon in a town where, apart from the Angry townsfolk dragged the body of a young gaol wall and paling fences, the demarcation of woman who had committed infanticide space had been largely mental, and fluid. out here too, to lie among the hanged. Fire The walls had to do was sometimes used to cleanse places after with the control of gruesome murders. Near Brickfield Hill to the bodies and movement, south, the house where poor Reverend Samuel with enclosure Clode was murdered by soldiers in 1799 had and exclusion. been burned to the ground. The bodies of his killers were strung up on gibbets nearby: public reminders, public spectacles, places suffused with evil and stench. Sometimes private land was ill-omened by a death. Catherine Cotton complained in 1810 that she had gone to considerable expense to clear her land on the north shore, but now
Humanities Australia { 33 enter the Domain legally – either through the official gate, with its lodge and constable, or over a stile on Bent Street. But they defied Macquarie’s rules and surveillance by repeatedly making convenient holes in the wall from Hyde Park, or behind the hospital, and by continuing to use the ‘pleasure ground’ for what were now defined as ‘improper’ purposes. Elizabeth Macquarie’s carefully designed ‘new shrubbery and young forest trees’ were trampled and broken. Perhaps it was deliberate; or perhaps the ‘intruders’ had not really noticed them. Either way Macquarie was incensed. He ordered constables to hide near the wall and arrest anyone who came through. They obediently pounced on two young women, one a servant to merchant Robert Campbell and his wife Sophia, with a child in her arms. And they arrested two convicts and three skilled free men – a stonemason and caretaker named Reed, a respectable blacksmith, William Blake, who wanted to relieve himself, and a coiner named Henshall who was after some white sand for his metallurgy.11 Both young women went to gaol for 48 hours without trial. In the gaol yard outside their cell, the men were summarily flogged: 30 lashes for bond and 25 for free. The flogging of How did people deal with them? In places convicts meant little to the free townsfolk, but of confinement, they sometimes scaled and the flogging of free men without trial ‘created jumped over them, literally risking life and a great degree of alarm among all classes of
} limb. But more often they simply made holes in inhabitant’, especially those who had received (above) the walls, and walked through. pardons from Macquarie. What were the rights C. Cartwright, Map The Domain wall, snaking right across the of free men if a governor could pardon or flog of the Governor’s neck between Sydney Cove and Woolloomooloo as he pleased? A petition to the British House of Desmesne 1816, an extraordinarily Bay became a flashpoint for the struggle between Commons was already in circulation: the case detailed map showing governor and people over the uses of urban of the Domain victims was added to it, along the new pathways, space. People came in to cut firewood, to bathe with the names of many emancipists.12 trees and the line of the wall reaching naked in the waters, to meet or simply to walk. In insisting on new uses and the control of from Sydney Cove to Couples seeking some privacy went there for sex. public space in this way, Macquarie provided ‘Woolloomoolla’. Thieves dumped or hid stolen goods, convicts ammunition for both his own enemies and the Mitchell Library, hid there after the curfew hour, young women enemies of the colony. The Domain became State Library of New South Wales, were clandestinely spirited away on ships from synonymous, not with the public good and ZM3 811.172/1816/1. its dark shores at night. While the Macquaries equal access for all, but with tyranny and considered the Domain transformed into a the infringement of individual liberty. The pleasure ground, a place of ‘rational amusement’, summary punishments were not even effective in the minds of the people it was still ‘the as deterrents. Three months later, people were skirts’ of the town, still a place for practical and still breaking down the wall and ‘trespassing’ nefarious activities.10 on the Domain. The wall was strengthened and It was bound to be problematic, this double raised still higher, and eventually they gave up. reading of space. People were in fact able to * * *
34 } Humanities Australia If Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie’s Fresh, with calm Slumbers, from the fanciful gothic stables and classical pigeon cleanly Bed houses were properly set among trees in Nursed with Humanity’s consoling Care, picturesque harbour landscapes, the opposite And cheer’d with currents of salubrious Air was true of the sterner buildings meant to Til rosy Health expands its vivid Glow house and control convicts and labouring And new-born Hope pervades the smiling people – the hospital and barracks. Seriously Brow!15 authoritarian, they stood in the centre of bare, walled yards, with not a tree or shrub in Surely this poem would have been read aloud sight. Such spaces had nowhere to hide. They from the Gazette, perhaps in rolling, pseudo- were fashioned for surveillance, for mustering pompous voice, in the crowded, stifling wards? people, for lining them up and for flogging The patients, bred on the humour of inversion, miscreants before their assembled fellows. would have loved it. They had only moved from Ironically, but unsurprisingly, most paintings the old hospital a year earlier, in April 1816, and of these buildings do not show the people they the new one was overcrowded, unhygienic and were built for, though they often feature the disorderly. Much of the new building had been odd frock-coated figure pointing at them.13 appropriated for other purposes – two wards for But if we could zoom in on those handsome courtrooms, another for a retiring room. Artist hospital verandahs in 1816 or 1817, they would John Lewin occupied yet another floor, painting not have been stately, quiet and deserted at his vistas of harbour and towns. Macquarie all. The women patients used these spaces himself came to inspect the building when it
Crowds of townsfolk thronged in to barter, buy and haggle for the beef with the bandaged, the aged, the venereal, the dysenteric and the scorbutic.
to wash and dry their clothes: gowns and was under construction, but he rarely visited undergarments flapped between the columns. once it was occupied and seems to have taken And the verandahs really came alive on the days no interest in its management.16 the inmates received their meat rations. Crowds There were only two hospital wards for men of townsfolk thronged in to barter, buy and and one for women, with around 40 patients haggle for the beef with the bandaged, the aged, in each, their cots lined in four rows. When it the venereal, the dysenteric and the scorbutic. was discovered that male and female patients Those patients too sick to walk crawled on the were having sex, bolts were placed on the ward floors amidst the hubbub. With the proceeds, doors and another storeroom was converted to patients could then buy other supplies – tea, a syphilitic ward. The other spaces were chaotic milk, sugar, spirits.14 too – one kitchen was used to house the overseer The alleged confluence of grand public and the other as a dead-house (morgue), so all works, the common good and the improved the cooking was done in the wards themselves. environment of public health were celebrated The storerooms were so untidy and crammed in poetry as well as painting. The Macquaries’ that much-needed medicines were lost under ‘Poet Laureate’, Michael Massey Robinson, piles of other stores. Convict clerks stole included a panegyric to the new hospital, this medicines from the Dispensary and sold them to time with its happy inmates, in his ‘Ode for the quack-doctors and chemists in the town. There King’s Birthday’ in 1817: was never enough jalap, tincture, calomel and laudanum for the patients.17 To rear yon fabric, that with stately Boast In the wards themselves, fires were kept Shews its white Columns to the distant Coast; burning day and night, while the multi-paned Within whose Walls, pale Sickness rears sash windows were always locked shut to its Head prevent inmates escaping (so much for the
Humanities Australia { 35 ‘currents of salubrious air’). Visiting surgeons come in at night and take shelter after were shocked, felt their stomachs heave in committing robberies’.20 Now the poor protest at the stench, the heat, the slabs of preferred the chances of the streets to the meat thrown down in the dust, the slovenly, horrors and restrictions of the new hospital. untrained convict nurses, the soiled bandages The freedom of the streets made people kicked under the bed. Not to mention the pans vulnerable too, though. Irregular food and full of excrement. Somehow the architects and sleeping rough wore down their bodies, builders had neglected to include privies in made them susceptible to disease. While the building. Wooden commode chairs were doctors rejoiced in the general absence of installed at the top of the handsome stairs. serious infectious diseases in Sydney, they The bedpans were emptied out the windows.18 agreed that dysentery was endemic, and a killer. Who in their right mind would enter such People who were ‘in the habit of lying in the a hellish place? Nobody, if they could help it. street’ at night were particularly susceptible Certainly not the elite, nor the middling and to ‘bad bowels’. They weakened quickly, dying artisanal townsfolk; nor even labourers in in the most abject conditions. The doctors regular work. The hospital was a last resort for generally opined that indulgence in drink was those who had exhausted all other options: the the cause.21 weakest and poorest, the friendless, those with Accommodation for convicts became no sustaining social networks to shelter and a pressing issue when their numbers rose nurse them. To enter the hospital, or indeed dramatically after the end of the Napoleonic any institution, was feared and stigmatised. Wars in 1815. Shipload after shipload They called it the ‘Sidney Slaughterhouse’.19 arrived in the unprepared town, sometimes Besides the fact that it was a deadly unannounced, a total of seventy-eight environment, the hospital represented the ships carrying 13,221 convicts. The colony’s surrender of personal independence. Despite its population more than doubled in the six years vast size, the new hospital had fewer patients between 1815 and 1821, from 12,911 to 29,783, a than the old one. This was probably a result of greater increase than in its whole history until the fact that wards had been commandeered that time.22 A severe labour shortage suddenly for other purposes, but it also had to do with became a glut, and free settlers could not take confinement – the forbidding nine-foot wall all the men as servants. Macquarie’s greatly around the bare, dirty yard, the gate locked at expanded building programme in Sydney was six every night. The old hospital at the foot of one solution – it provided employment, but it the Rocks had no walls at all and was a sort of also kept the convict workers tied to the town. drop-in centre for the old and indigent, ‘a mere Existing housing stock was stretched to the skulking place for Pensioners, who used to limit, the streets were full of strangers. The older inhabitants must have wondered what was happening to their town.
36 } Humanities Australia Macquarie also wanted to make convicts six hundred hungry men; and the incredible (below) work a full day rather than the customary roar in the room, the eating, drinking, talking, Edward Close’s task work arrangements which had prevailed shouting, singing, the fug of bodies, the aromas picture of the Sydney Barracks since the foundation of the colony, and which of food and the smoke from six hundred clay shows the pompous left the convicts free to do as they pleased after pipes). Lachlan and Elizabeth and their young brick facades 3 o’clock in the afternoon.23 The new barracks son Lachlan, together with all the important and the Grecian- style well in the in Macquarie Street (now Hyde Park Barracks officers and judges of the colony, called in on parade ground, Museum) were built to address both problems. the feast. Like the landowners at Harvest Home but also includes a The foundation stone was laid on the land feasts back in England, Macquarie toasted washerwoman at work and a soldier next to the hospital in December 1817, and the assembled convicts’ health and happiness. chasing some ducks. the three-storey walls of soft orange bricks, He noted in his diary later that the men ‘all National Library set in mortar bonded with bits of shell, rose appeared very happy and Contented, and gave of Australia, nla.pic-an4563834-s29. steadily to Greenway’s design. To those with us three cheers on us going away’.25 } pretensions to architectural taste, the barracks But after the feast was over, the doors were were an object of ‘towering grandeur … the shut and they became barracks men. Their most elegant proportions of the Greek school’. trunks and possessions were taken away and But to the convicts, they must have looked put into storage, they were assigned hammocks much like a workhouse, that hated place of slung over rails on the upper floors, much like detention and regulation.24 the hammocks for sailors on ships. They were Macquarie now had a problem: while 130 to rise, muster and march to their places of men had moved into the unfinished building in work, labour a full day, mess together and retire May (probably the most desperately homeless to their hammocks. The constables were to put and hungry), how could the majority of convicts out the oil lamps at 8.30 at night.26 be lured into his handsome new barracks? How An impressive façade and a bevy of rules: could they be persuaded to exchange their but appearance belies the reality of life in the private lodgings, the freedom of the streets, barracks, the measure of looseness that still for longer hours of work, routines, surveillance allowed convicts some action and movement. and confinement? A suite of inducements was Their time was certainly more regulated, offered: barracks men would have their rations and the working day longer. Their space was increased by half, and they would still have free patrolled and men who committed offences time to work or enjoy the pleasures of the town were brutally flogged in the yard. Yet these on the weekends. Macquarie added a final, were barracks, not a prison. The overseers and characteristic, incentive: a spectacular and constables were themselves ‘well- welcome feast on the King’s Birthday. So on behaved’ convicts and ex-convicts, little more 4 June 1819, 598 convict men sat down in the accustomed to precise regimentation than their mess hall to mountains of beef and plum charges, and they often ignored the rules. On pudding and half a pint of rum punch each, Sunday the barracks men were marched across eaten and drunk from tin platters and pots. the bridge and up to St Phillips for Divine (One thinks of the logistics: cooking, carrying Service. After that, those who hadn’t skived off and serving beef and plum pudding for nearly already could amuse themselves in the town as they pleased. ‘They run immediately to the
Humanities Australia { 37 Rocks’ as one disgusted officer later reported 300-400 ‘best behaved men and men married ‘where every species of Debauchery and villainy legally’ who were still allowed to ‘sleep out in is practised’. As the punishment books show, the town’. Some of these ran shops and trades convicts continued to commit crimes, though as well. Skills, capital, intelligence, a wife, and the numbers of robberies in the town fell, willingness to work for the authorities were still during the weekdays at least. The downside, factors which decided where and how convict according to the Government Architect, men would live in Sydney after 1819, not their Francis Greenway, was that the overfed convict status. Confident demeanour, physical and regulated barracks men made poor, height and initiative helped too.30 unmotivated workers. When the government * * * wanted a job done quickly, they reverted to the old taskwork system.27 The Age of Macquarie is often seen as a At night the overcrowded wards were not period of harmony, order and tranquillity silent and orderly, but rang with conversation after the early wretched, starving days. Yet the and arguments, singing and oaths, the men economic and social realities of Macquarie’s probably playing cards and drinking. In later decade were tumultuous. The retail market years they made cabbage tree hats to sell, collapsed in 1811-12, followed by a major walking about the town with them stacked economic depression that ruined many of four- or five-high on their heads.28 One Sunday the early Sydney traders. Floods, drought and night in 1820 after the days’ carousing, the caterpillar plagues jeopardised food supplies, hubbub of talk was so loud that the groaning destroyed grazing land and threatened the and crying of a desperately ill man leaning tenuous hold the rural settlers had established on the hammock rail was not even noticed; on the farms. A severe labour shortage was such raving usually simply meant a man was followed by a tremendous glut as the colony drunk. Eventually a fellow prisoner sent for the was swamped by those thousands of newly clerk, and Matthew Hyard, a quiet man who arrived convicts. Macquarie’s own enlightened worked at the lumberyard, was carried down policy of accepting emancipists – or the wealthy to the courtroom and placed in a chair by the ones at least – back into society and to his own fire. He was in such pain he begged them not table, and even elevating them to positions of to touch him, he frothed at the mouth. Asked high office, was utterly rejected by both the what was wrong, he gasped about a lump in military and civil officers and free arrivals.
The Age of Macquarie is often seen as a period of harmony, order and tranquillity after the early wretched, starving days. Yet the economic and social realities of Macquarie’s decade were tumultuous.
his stomach, and that he had been sent away They undermined and betrayed him by sending from the dispensary as an ‘impostor’ and was outraged complaints to influential people in ‘afraid to go in to the hospital lest he should not England. The Age of Macquarie was also a be properly treated’.29 He died in agony a few period of war and massacre: the war waged by hours later. Aboriginal people on the Cumberland Plain Matthew Hyard probably had no choice settlers intensified until 1816, when Macquarie but to go into the barracks. While men ordered a retributive raid which resulted in the ‘who could get a living by their work were massacre of at least fourteen men, women and discontented’ there, it was a refuge for ‘those children at Appin.31 who could not pay for their lodging’. The In the town of Sydney, beauty, taste and more acquiescent were glad of the food and appearance largely took precedence over shelter. The restless and ‘dissolute’ wanted pragmatic needs and humane concerns. The to be among the favoured ranks of around conditions in the gaol and hospital were
38 } Humanities Australia appalling and filthy, and the gaol was insecure, engaging, more impersonal and bureaucratic while the public wharves were in a state of governors. Petitioners often wrote nostalgically ruin. Macquarie’s elaborate public works, which of his benevolence. ‘Declining life few diverted funds and attention from more basic consolations bring’ wrote his aging, crippled necessities, also provided powerful ammunition town crier John Pendergrass in 1825, ‘for when I for his enemies. They portrayed him as an lost Macquarie I lost a friend’.35 extravagant, self-indulgent martinet and watched his every move.32 Nevertheless, Macquarie remained in power for twelve years and evidently won the affection and loyalty of many Sydney people. When he returned from a brief visit to Hobart Town in July 1821, the entire town was lit up in ‘one continued blaze of light’ to welcome him back.33 Despite all the rules and regulations, the temperamental outbursts and his insistence on subordinate behaviour, Macquarie exerted a charismatic personal influence upon the people: there was a relationship between them. He was a negotiator, often imaginative and flamboyant. He made verbal promises, face- to-face with people of humble standing. He understood the nature of public ritual and performance. He insisted on being present at the musters ‘to see and be seen by the people’. John Thomas Bigge, lawyer and himself They saw him travel the colony from one end a former governor, was sent out by the to the other over the years, inspecting, naming, British Government in 1819 to investigate } instructing, proclaiming. There were agendas Macquarie’s administration and the state of the (above) 36 of deference and obligation on both sides of colony. It was clear to Bigge that the British The pubs, streets course: this was no unanimously grateful Government’s original purpose and plan in and houses of the Rocks. This was and cowed population. But nobody could founding the colony had been well and truly the convicts’ and have missed Macquarie’s profound interest perverted. Instead of a place of dread that ex-convicts’ side in the colony and the town, whatever they would deter crime, the colony had a certain of the town, and the buildings and thought of his improvements and buildings. To degree of laxity and liberty, most obviously spaces reflected emancipists, who made up the largest section of seen in the pleasures and freedoms of the their taste, habits the population, his unwavering support of the town. Some convicts were writing back and and aspirations. Macquarie’s wealthy men among them had great moral and encouraging relatives to join them – Sydney had improvements made symbolic power. And despite the continuance become familiar rather than strange, a place of little impact here. of floggings, convicts must have known that opportunity rather than terror. A great many Dixson Galleries, State Library of Macquarie was the first governor to reduce other convicts, unmoved by good weather or New South Wales, the savage floggings of the naval governors, colonial possibilities, escaped on the rising DL PX 52. limiting the number of lashes to fifty (although numbers of visiting ships, despite the great, magistrates still ordered 100).34 cumbersome edifice of port regulations. The If Sydney itself was an artefact of the Macquaries’ improvements had ironic outcomes Macquaries’ artistic and authoritarian visions, too – intended to transform and gentrify the it had nevertheless remained a space for urban fabric, they kept convicts in the town, negotiation over urban life and forms too, as which the convicts themselves preferred. well as a vehicle for the expression of popular Sydney pulsed with their movements, familiar feeling: celebration, enjoyment, rage, mourning. networks and popular culture, its pleasures After he left the colony, Macquarie grew rosier a constant beacon for those assigned to the in memory, especially with the arrival of far less inland settlements.37
Humanities Australia { 39 Commissioner Bigge had also been Australian Historical Society, 93, 1 (2007), case of commissioned to find out whether New South Edward Cureton and his servants, p. 6. Wales could be an ‘object of real terror’ which 2. For a detailed account see Dyster, ‘Bungling a Courthouse’. would deter criminals, and whether a system 3. Evidence of Major Druitt, in John Thomas of ‘general discipline, constant work and Bigge, Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry on vigilant superintendence’ could be established. the Colony of New South Wales (Adelaide: Library He thought both were possible – but only if Board of South Australia, 1966; first published, Sydney was excised from convict experience, London 1823), Appendix, Bonwick Transcripts [hereafter BT], Mitchell Library [hereafter ML], and they from it. The urban environment, the Box 1, 4, 17; Grace Karskens, Inside the Rocks: real bustling streets and wharves of Sydney, the The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood (Sydney: anonymity and social networks it offered, were Hale and Iremonger, 1999), pp. 31-3, 50-3. incompatible with discipline and punishment.38 4. Lachlan Macquarie, Public Notice, Sydney Bigge’s vision for the future colony sketched Gazette [hereafter SG], 3 January 1810. an elegant fusion of capitalism, colonial 5. John Hirst, Convict Society and its Enemies (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983), p. 88. expansion, punishment and reform. Rather 6. Grace Karskens, ‘This Spirit of Emigration: than growing food for themselves as originally The Nature and Meaning of Escape in Early envisioned, convicts would be sent out to New South Wales’, Journal of Australian Colonial the estates of large landowners, providing History, 7 (2005), 27-9. unpaid labour for agriculture and pastoralism. 7. Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney The skilled artisans would be taken off the (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997, ch. 7); Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, government projects and sent to private masters Public Leisure: A History of Australian Popular too. Their masters, in turn, would come from Culture Since 1788 (Melbourne: Longman, 1995), the ranks of free immigrants with capital, lured pp. 17-19, 36-9; Evidence of D’Arcy Wentworth by promises of free land. Convicts who re- in Bigge, Report, Appendix, 1819, BT Box 2, 576, 579; James McAllister, committal hearing, 3 offended, who were recalcitrant and hardened, January 1822, Court of Criminal Jurisdiction, were to be banished too, sent to ‘distant parties’ Reel 1976, 306, State Records of New South for hard labour in irons, building a network Wales [hereafter SRNSW]. of Great Roads, radiating from Sydney to the 8. Karskens, The Rocks, p. 115; SG 14 June 1807; Rev. inland.39 Boundless lands, considered to be Clode: James Bonwick, Australia’s First Preacher: The Reverend Richard Johnson (London: Sampson unoccupied, twinned with the existence of Low, Maston & Co, 1898), pp. 126-7; David Sydney, would underpin colonial expansion, the Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New rising severity of the convict system, and the South Wales (facs. ed. Adelaide: Libraries Board continued dispossession of Aboriginal people of South Australia, 1971, f.p. London: T. Cadell and W Davies, 1798), v. 2, p. 216; Catherine over the next two decades. ¶ Cotton, Petition, January 1810, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, ML, 4/1822, No 272; SG 28 May 1809; Obed West, Memoirs of Obed West: Grace Karskens FAHA A Portrait of Early Sydney, ed. by Edward West teaches Australian history Marriot (Bowral, NSW: Barcom Press, 1988, f.p. at the University of New Sydney Morning Herald 1878), p. 30. South Wales. Her latest book 9. M. H. Ellis, Lachlan Macquarie: His Life, The Colony: A History of Adventures and Times (Sydney: Dymocks, 1947), pp. 340-1; Evidence of Major Druitt, 27 Oct Early Sydney won the 2010 1819, in Bigge, Report, Appendix, BT Box 1, 8, 16; Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Evidence of Henry Cowper, 16 November 1819, Photograph of Grace Karskens by Mine Konakci. in BT Box 6, 2371; James Broadbent, ‘Macquarie’s Domain’, in The Age of Macquarie, ed. by James Broadbent and Joy Hughes (Melbourne: * This is an edited extract from The Colony: A Melbourne University Press), pp. 3-4. History of Early Sydney (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 10. Evidence of Mr Murray, in Bigge, Report, 2009), winner of the 2010 Prime Minister’s Prize Appendix, BT Box 1, 629; evidence of D’Arcy for Non-Fiction and available from bookshops Wentworth, 1819, BT Box 2, 601; papers or online at www.allenandunwin.com re abduction of Emma Crook, Colonial 1. Barrie Dyster, ‘Bungling a Courthouse: Convict Secretary’s Papers, ML, 4/1743, 31ff. Workplace Reform’, Journal of the Royal
40 } Humanities Australia 11. John Thomas Bigge, Report of the Commissioner evidence of Christopher Tattersall, 5 Aug 1820, of Inquiry, on the Judicial Establishments of New BT Box 6, 2451-2; Greenway to Druitt 14 Aug South Wales (Adelaide: Library Board of South 1819, BT Box 19, 2875-8. Australia, 1966, f.p. London: 1823), pp. 75-80; 28. Historic Houses Trust, Hyde Park Barracks Evidence of D’Arcy Wentworth, 1819, in Report, Museum Guidebook, p. 37 and Historic Houses Appendix, BT Box 2, 601; evidence of Mr Trust, ‘Hyde Park Barracks Guidebook’, draft, Murray and Thomas Hughes, BT Box 2, 646, 2003, copy courtesy John Petersen. 656; Ellis, pp. 341-3. 29. Inquest on Matthew Hyard – died in the 12. B i g g e , Report on the Judicial Establishments, new convict barracks, 31 July 1820, Colonial pp. 75-80. Secretary’s Papers, ML, 4/1819, 315. 13. For example Joseph Lycett, ‘Convict Barracks 30. Evidence of Major Druitt 27 October 1819, in Sydney N. S. Wales’, c1820, ML, though Bigge, Report, Appendix, BT Box 1, 4, 17, 29; compare with series of 1836 lithographs by evidence of Thomas Messling 27 May 1821, BT J G Austin & Co (held in National Gallery of Box 1, 145 and D’Arcy Wentworth, BT Box 2, Australia and Mitchell Library) which depict 576; Grace Karskens, ‘Resurrecting Chapman’, working people in the streets outside. Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society, 14. Evidence of Henry Cowper 16 November 1819, XVIII, 1 (June 2006), 8-21. in Bigge, Report, Appendix, BT Box 6, 2323-30. 31. D. R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: 15. SG 8 June 1817. Simeon Lord and His Contemporaries 1788-1821 16. SG 6 April 1816; evidence of James Bean (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1972), ch. 6; (carpenter) c1819, in Bigge, Report, Appendix, Brian Fletcher, Landed Enterprise and Penal BT Box 6, 2527. Society: A History of Farming and Grazing in New South Wales Before 1821 (Sydney: Sydney 17. Women caught having sex were sent to the University Press, 1976), p. 112; T. M. Perry, Factory or to Newcastle and men were flogged Australia’s First Frontier: The Spread of Settlement in the hospital yard and put in solitary cells. in New South Wales (Melbourne: Melbourne Evidence of Henry Cowper and William University Press, 1963), pp. 29-32; Carol Liston, Johnstone c1819, in Bigge, Report, Appendix, ‘Colonial Society’, in The Age of Macquarie, ed. BT Box 6, 2322-71, 2417-21. by Broadbent and Hughes, pp. 19-34; Helen 18. Evidence of John Clarisey, James Hunter Proudfoot, ‘Opening Towns’, in The Age of (Surgeon R.N), William Redfern, and D’Arcy Macquarie ed. by Broadbent and Hughes, p. 64; Wentworth, c1819, in Bigge, Report, Appendix, Hirst, pp. 154-6; Carol Liston, Campbelltown: BT Box 6, 2389, 2480-1, 2491, 2497, 2517-18. The Bicentennial History (Sydney: Allen & 19. Evidence of Henry Cowper, 1821, in Bigge, Unwin, 1988), pp. 21-3. Report, Appendix, BT Box 6, 2455; Inquest 32. Magistrate’s Report on the State of the Gaol, on James Church, 10 August 1822, Colonial 7 July 1821, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, ML, Secretary’s Papers, ML, 4/1819, 315; Grace 4/1748; Bigge, Report, pp. 50-1, 71; Data on Karskens, ‘Death Was in His Face: Dying, condition and size of the gaol, in Bigge, Report, Burial and Remembrance in Early Sydney’, Appendix, BT Box 27, 6502; evidence of George Labour History, 74 (May 1998), 21-39. Panton, c1819, BT Box 9. 20. Evidence of Henry Cowper 16 Nov 1819, in 33. Ellis, pp. 506-9; Anita Callaway, Visual Bigge, Report, Appendix, BT Box 6, 2371. Ephemera: Theatrical Art in Nineteenth Century 21. Evidence of Henry Cowper, D’Arcy Wentworth Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000), p. 14. and Mr Bowman, 1821, in Bigge, Report, 34. Fletcher, p. 133; Hirst, pp. 63, 87, 111. Appendix, BT Box 6, 2454-5, 2525, 2646; 35. John Pendergrass, Memorial, 18 January 1825, Karskens, ‘Death Was in His Face’. Colonial Secretary’s Papers, ML, 4/1785, p. 41; 22. John J Eddy, ‘Empire and Politics’, in The Age of Hirst, p. 130. Macquarie, ed. by Broadbent and Hughes, p. 45. 36. Fletcher, pp. 166-8; 187; Hirst, pp. 87-8; Bigge, 23. Hirst, pp. 40-1. Report on the Judicial Establishments, pp. 76-7. 24. SG, 17 July 1819; see Peter Higginbotham, ‘The 37. Karskens, ‘Spirit of Emigration’; Bigge, Report, Workhouse’ (2006)
Humanities Australia { 41 » CHRIS CHRIS wallace - crabbe
(above) Pamphlet’s Elizabethan Collar by Kristen Headlam.
courtesy of Chris Wallace-Crabbe.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe FAHA has published eighteen volumes of poetry, a novel, and numerous prose works. His Selected Poems 1956-1995 (Carcanet Oxford Poets) won the Age Book of the Year Prize. He chairs the newly-established Australian Poetry Limited and is an Emeritus Professor at Melbourne University.
42 } Humanities Australia CREEPING LIKE SNAIL
Come along, then, you milkthistle-sniffing Staffy cross with more than a hint or tittle of border collie, like ever so many of our dogs in this neck or lower-right thigh of the world.
D’you think we’ve got till the end of time for this walk, a suburban Gotterdammerung? Move those decrepit paws; after all, there’s a maplike cat merely perching on a front-gate brick pillar directly over your head, a study in black-and-white before technicolour like you. Deaf as a brick, though, and pretty much blind you survive in a cloudy world of introspection: is it pure intellect, or nothing more than hard cheese?
Whatever you’re sniffing now, at the ragged paperbark, can only be some standardized how-do-you-do. Get on with it, dog, I still have the black plastic bag crumpled in my left pocket for nobody other than you.
Humanities Australia { 43 ANECDOTE, APOPHTHEGM & THE ‘REAL’ ALEXANDER
» Brian Bosworth
The ‘real’ Alexander systematically eludes It certainly deals with a detached incident, and us. The historical sources, notably Arrian, it works up to a punch line, what the ancients Tare explicit that they are out to record the termed an apophthegm.1 It also tells us a king’s achievements, which means primarily certain amount about the characters involved, his military successes. Alexander may be the especially the author of the put down but also central figure, but Arrian tells us comparatively the butt of the episode, who made a virtue out little of what he was like. What we have is a of prolixity. I may add that there are problems sequence of battle narratives, which give us of verification. There is no doubt about the a vivid impression of his strategic genius but apophthegm; it is the perfect one-liner, which, there is little about the man. In particular once heard, is always remembered. There is also Arrian is very sparing in his use of anecdote, agreement on the identity of the victim. No one the narrative, as the Oxford English Dictionary else would have boasted so openly about his puts it, ‘of a single event, told as being in itself production rate. Where the disagreement arises interesting or striking’. And, one may add, concerns the author of the witticism. A number
} amusing. I will illustrate what I mean from of names have been canvassed. I have myself (above) an episode that took place early in my career, been approached as an eyewitness, although Etching and text more years ago than I care to remember. The I was not on the scene there, but I do recall extract from The venue was the old University House, a modest one of my colleagues who was a participant Iliad of Homer. building, now demolished on aesthetic grounds. approaching me on the day in a state of high C. C Felton (ed.), (Cambridge: Brown, A group of colleagues would get together for hilarity and retailing the entire incident, Shattuck & Co, 1833). lunch and pass judgement on the most recent including the name of the central figure. That delinquencies of the then Vice-Chancellor. On is, I fear, as close to the truth as I am likely to Detail from the day in question a much loved but somewhat come. It does, however, illustrate very nicely a The Battle of Gaugamela. Relief insensitive professor came in late to join the feature of the classic anecdote, that it tends to inspired by a table, and, rubbing his hands, he exclaimed, be transferred from one individual to another Charles Le Brun’s painting on the ‘What a wonderful day! I’ve written 2,000 at a relatively early stage. The framework is same subject. Image words already’. Without looking up from his agreed, but the actors are fluid. shows Alexander tray, one of the party reacted without a pause, Arrian, then, rarely resorts to anecdote, the Great fighting and riding his horse, ‘O yes, Bert. In any particular order?’ but the same cannot be said of Plutarch, who Bucephalus. Little things perhaps please little minds, gives us one anecdote after another in his 2 Photograph by Luis but the story became legendary among the Life of Alexander. In a famous passage he García, 2008. Source: Wikimedia Commons. participating group, and it is a classic anecdote. describes the surrender of the Indian monarch
44 } Humanities Australia Porus, insisting that his intention is not to a third century historian writing a couple of give a narrative history of Alexander’s reign, generations after the event (Athen. 6.251.c = but to record episodes that are valuable as FGrH 81 F 11). This time Nicesias confronted an illustration of character. Inconsequential Alexander when he was racked with pain after words and deeds (even jokes) can give greater taking a drug and observed, ‘Even you, the gods, insight into character than any number of experience pain’. Alexander replied: ‘What battles or sieges.3 Plutarch does follow a rough kind of gods? I am afraid that we may be god chronological framework, but he interweaves hated’. Here Nicesias is associating Alexander a string of anecdotes, which he considers of with the gods, as a god himself, and Alexander importance for judging character. For instance, reacts sarcastically; any gods he belongs with when he deals with the Battle of the Hydaspes must be the enemy of more powerful deities. (in the spring of 326) Plutarch first gives a If he is a god, he is a very weak one. Alexander brief account of the engagement, derived is sceptical here, but the anecdote belongs in from Alexander’s letters, and then moves to the context of court flattery, which clearly anecdotes, first the solicitous behaviour of the portrayed him as a god who was at least the royal elephant,4 which defended its master equivalent of the Olympians. to the last, and then the famous exchange There is a similar anecdote that shows the between Alexander and the Indian rajah, same ambivalent attitude to deification. It is Porus.5 Alexander met the captured monarch located at the siege of Massaga, the principal and asked how he should treat him. The answer city of the Swat Valley. While surveying the came as a single word βασιλικῶς (‘like a king’). fortifications Alexander was struck in the ankle That is the ultimate in one-liners. It means by an arrow and again suffered severe pain. both ‘treat me as a king’ and ‘treat me as a king There is unanimity in the source tradition that would’. The implication is that if Alexander the wound was compared with the famous mistreats him he is falling short of royal wound in the Iliad (5.335-40) that Diomedes magnanimity, and it is hardly surprising that inflicted upon the goddess Aphrodite. He Alexander acted accordingly, reinstating Porus gashed her hand, and her immortal blood in his realm as his satrap (provincial governor). flowed. Only it was not blood. Homer states The anecdote therefore shows both monarchs that it was ‘ichor such as flows in the blessed acting as true kings. There is no suggestion gods’. If, then, ichor circulated in Alexander’s here or elsewhere that Porus had practically veins it was the most telling proof that he was destroyed his own people by his misguided not a being of mortal substance. So far there resistance to Alexander.6 What is stressed is his is agreement, but there is some doubt about fearless and dignified demeanour, which was the author of the apophthegm. According to properly rewarded. Plutarch the Homeric quotation came from At this point I shall examine a number of Alexander himself. He turned to his friends and anecdotes that circulate around Alexander’s laughingly showed them the living proof that concept of his own divinity, a favourite it was blood that came from the wound. This theme for court flatterers. It would seem that presupposes that there was some discussion Alexander was convinced relatively early in of Alexander’s nature – human or divine, his reign that he was in some way the son of and a crucial criterion would be the ichor in Zeus (or his African manifestation, Ammon), his blood. Alexander, it seems, made a joke but by the time he had reached the far north- of the matter, but it was taken very seriously east of the empire his courtiers were actively in his court. According to the contemporary promoting the view that he was a god in historian, Aristobulus of Cassandreia, the his own right. One of them, Nicesias, went comparison was made by the great athlete, so far as to claim that the March flies then Dioxippus of Athens, who was a significant bothering Alexander would conquer the fly personality at court. This is probably correct, world after tasting his blood (Athen. 6.249.d-e). for Aristobulus was a member of staff and More significant for our purposes is another perhaps reported the apophthegm at first anecdote, which was attested by Phylarchus, hand.7 In that case, why is the quotation
Humanities Australia { 45 intellectuals in a recension of the text, which he kept embedded in a gold casket.9 The passage that Dioxippus quoted contains the only references to ichor in the Iliad, and Alexander could not fail to appreciate the allusion. If he was the stuff of immortality, it was the same stuff as the weakest of the pantheon. Alexander was unlikely to have been amused, and the future career of Dioxippus shows a gradual decline in royal favour.10 He was one of the most formidable athletes of his day, the chief exponent of the all-in thuggery known as the pankration, and said to be the strongest man in Greece. So fearsome was he that he won the (right) Olympic event without opposition (ἀκονιτί); The phalanx no one would take the lists against him. He attacking the centre in the battle joined Alexander, perhaps in 331, and was of the Hydaspes by retained as one of a select band of athletes, who André Castaigne, 1899. would demonstrate their prowess – and annoy the Macedonians who did the actual fighting sourced from Wikimedia Commons. that kept them in luxury. By 325 Dioxippus’ stock was evidently low, and at a banquet he attributed to Alexander and interpreted as a was challenged to single combat by a brash, facetious rebuff to flattery? newly promoted Macedonian. Alexander had We should perhaps look more closely no objections,11 and may even have set up at the context of the anecdote. There is the encounter. It was a mistake. Dioxippus, something rather disquieting in the Homeric resplendent in heroic nudity, had an effortless quotation. The goddess who suffers the victory over his heavily armed Macedonian wound is Aphrodite, the least warlike of adversary, and in so doing embarrassed all the Olympians, and her weakness and Alexander a second time. Not surprisingly incompetence is stressed repeatedly in the he fell more and more into disfavour, and in passage. When wounded she shrieks with the the end he was falsely accused of theft and
This is a very strange allusion for a flatterer to have made. The greatest conqueror of all time is assimilated to the goddess of love. This is a real sting in the tail, and Alexander could not but be aware of the allusion.
pain and leaves the battlefield to find first aid committed suicide. The whole story was an and comfort in her mother’s arms. The passage object lesson not to provoke or challenge the ends with Zeus himself, greatly amused, king. He had a long memory. advising his daughter to avoid things military, Perhaps we can now fill out the historical and keep to her own theatre of operations context of the anecdote. It presupposes two – the marriage bed.8 This is a very strange quotations of the same passages: first we have allusion for a flatterer to have made. The Dioxippus’ use of the Aphrodite episode and greatest conqueror of all time is assimilated to then Alexander’s reply to it. All sources state the goddess of love. This is a real sting in the that Dioxippus’ quotation and its repetition by tail, and Alexander could not but be aware of Alexander were a reaction to wounds sustained the allusion. He was steeped in Homer, and in battle. The second was the wound at the allegedly collaborated with two of the court siege of Massaga in winter 327-326. The first is
46 } Humanities Australia open to conjecture, but Alexander sustained of Phoenicia at his disposal, yet he singled out several wounds in the campaigning season Tyre for his celebrations. Tyre had suffered a of 329. My preference would be the encounter seven-month siege the previous year and must near Samarkand, in which Alexander was have still shown the marks of destruction. again wounded by an arrow, which supposedly Large stretches of the walls would have been transfixed his leg and shaved the fibula. After reduced to rubble, and the interior of the city that one can make real sense of the exchange. would have been fired, except for the palace Dioxippus saw Alexander after his wound. and state temples. Most sinister of all were That in itself is significant. The pankratiast the remains of the fighting population, which was a huge man, and at the best of times he had been crucified along the shoreline. Two would have towered over the Macedonian thousand of them are reported to have suffered king, who was of relatively modest stature. The that appalling death, and Alexander would have disparity was emphasised by the quotation. For made sure that some of the whitened bones Dioxippus, Alexander may have been divine remained on the crosses as a lasting warning and have ichor in his veins, but his model not to challenge his sovereignty. Certainly the was the unwarlike Aphrodite. In contrast Cypriot kings would have been on their best Dioxippus must have looked like Zeus himself. behaviour, well aware that many had served What is more, he was Zeus invictus, not with the Persian navy in the Aegean and only merely victorious but untouched, a candidate came over to Alexander at the news of his for heroic honours after his death. It made victory at Issus. Particularly sensitive was Alexander look insignificant. Two years later, Nicocreon, king of Salamis, the most powerful in the Swat valley, Alexander sustained another state of Cyprus. In the months after the fall arrow wound in the leg, and he referred back of Tyre his father had died (or been deposed), to Dioxippus’ quotation, and did so pointedly. and he had been installed as king. It was in his His friends gathered round, and he displayed interest to make the most positive impression his wound, stating categorically, ‘This, as you on his new overlord, who had enlisted his see, is blood, not ichor’. This does not mean brother as a companion, and no doubt that Alexander was rejecting any suggestion hostage.12 To that end he lavished time, effort that he was divine. He was rejecting Dioxippus’ and money to support the Argead family friend, implicit comparison with Aphrodite. It was the actor Thessalus, who was a celebrated tragic not good enough to have ichor, which could actor and a competitor in the dramatic festival. run in the veins of any old god, however Nicocreon basked in the limelight, but he unimpressive. His aim was to achieve godhead was not everyone’s favourite. In fact he had a through achievement on earth, like his great particularly poisonous enemy, the philosopher ancestor Heracles, who served as a role model Anaxarchus of Abdera. Anaxarchus was, to put for Alexander to surpass, and his wounds would it mildly, an exotic personage. He was known discharge human blood. After his translation to as the ‘Eudaimonist’, the pursuer of good life, Olympus it could be changed to ichor. and his near contemporary, Clearchus of Soli, With Dioxippus we are not faced with a describes how he had his wine poured by a single isolated story. There are two traditions, naked nymphette and made his baker wear interrelated by context and punch line, and gloves and a facemask while he was kneading they can be combined as a narrative. I should dough. Such a man would revel in the luxury like to examine another of these anecdotal of Alexander’s court, and it is clear that the strings, which again sheds light on the thorny king found him an amenable companion. question of deification. The setting is Tyre, in Anaxarchus’ philosophical doctrine is the early summer of 331. There Alexander held practically irretrievable. All that survives is a a famous festival, at which the city kings of couple of fragments, one of which comes from Cyprus distinguished themselves by attracting a treatise On Kingship, and stresses the need the leading actors of Greece to participate in for moderation. Erudition (πολυμαθίη) is all a great dramatic festival. Now, the choice of very well, but it must be judiciously exploited.13 venue is significant. Alexander had the whole It can benefit the clever man, but it damages
Humanities Australia { 47 the person who unthinkingly utters every at the table’.14 There is real venom here, and sentiment before the entire people. Knowledge Anaxarchus spat it out (ἀπορρίπτων) directly of what is appropriate (καιρό) is the mark of at Nicocreon, making it unmistakable who the wisdom. It is difficult to deny that Anaxarchus target was. It is interesting that Nicocreon is was aiming at his rival Callisthenes, who spoke not given his title of king. Like Porus in India out emphatically against Alexander’s plan to he is called satrap, a term that underlines his introduce the Persian practice of ceremonial subordinate status. He might be king to his prostration at his own court. Callisthenes subjects in Cyprus, but around Alexander succeeded in having the proposal quashed, but there was only one king – himself. For all he had fallen fatally out of favour, and shortly his display at the festival Nicocreon was no afterwards was implicated in a conspiracy, independent ruler, and if he misbehaved could arrested, tortured and executed. If ever there be summarily executed. That is presumably was an object lesson in avoiding unseasonable one of the many messages that could be read frankness, that was it. In contrast Anaxarchus into the apophthegm. If Nicocreon deserved to was far more adroit, a natural courtier. He was be decapitated, then he was guilty, or thought no uncritical flatterer; rather he was an expert guilty, of insubordination. That would have in ethical admonition, whose speciality was to been a devastating insinuation, given the mix encomium with criticism. But there was far history of the royal house of Salamis during the more honey than vinegar in his admonitions. Persian Empire, which was an almost unbroken For instance, he is said to have criticised series of rebellions, not least by Nicocreon’s Alexander for his propensity to flattery, but father, Pnytagoras. Nicocreon may have been then turned the moral edification into a joke: represented as following in his footsteps and flattery is appropriate for the progeny of Zeus, planning revolt and domination over the nine who kept buffoons in their entourage, Dionysus cities of Cyprus. the satyrs, and Heracles the Kerkopes. It was a As it turned out, Nicocreon survived the nice analogy: Anaxarchus’ rivals at court were reign of Alexander, and there is no evidence equated with the more grotesque and dissipated that he fell out of favour. However, Anaxarchus’ figures of mythology, and Alexander was feted attack was remembered and exploited, just as the counterpart of Heracles and Dionysus, like Dioxippus’ quotation of Homer, and is both of whom were sons of Zeus and gained evoked in the second strand of the anecdotal divinity through their achievements on earth. string. This anecdote conforms perfectly to Anaxarchus, then, was a royal favourite and type. It is a distinct episode and leads up to a as such dangerous. That emerges clearly from memorable apophthegm, reported with similar the first part of our anecdotal string. For some wording throughout the tradition. The context reason he had made an enemy of Nicocreon, is not given. Alexander was with his entourage king of Salamis. We are not told what caused when there was a huge clap of thunder that the enmity, but it was deep, bitter and lasting. shocked the gathering. Anaxarchus was again After Alexander’s death Anaxarchus was present, and delivered an ironic challenge: inadvertently driven into Cyprus by the ‘Could you, the son of Zeus, do something prevailing wind, and fell into the hands of like that?’ There is something distinctly anal Nicocreon, who had him pounded to death in this. Alexander is invited to break wind so with iron pestles – a sad end for the pursuer of violently that it would match the thunderclap. happiness. The two were enemies at the time The king facetiously declined the challenge, of the great dramatic festival in Tyre where claiming that ‘he did not wish to be an object the bad blood oozed out openly. At a formal of fear to his friends, as you would have me do, banquet there Alexander asked Anaxarchus, you who disparage my banquet because you who was (of course) a noted epicure, how he see fish set out on the tables, and not satraps’ found the meal. The philosopher responded heads’. Alexander is sending Anaxarchus’ with a memorable apophthegm: ‘everything apophthegm back at him and intensifying it. is excellent, o king, but one thing is missing Now it is not a single satrap’s head at risk but a – the head of a certain governor set before us plurality. The peripatetic scholar Satyrus went
48 } Humanities Australia even further. In his version of the apophthegm among men. The two concepts could coexist. Anaxarchus urges Alexander to have the heads Alexander could boast divine parentage. As son of satraps and kings brought before him. It of Zeus he could expect to enjoy exceptional reads as though Anaxarchus was suggesting a favour and divine assistance, as his historian bloodbath, in which the Cypriot kings would Callisthenes had suggested in his account of figure prominently. For all the coarse humour the Battle of Gaugamela, a few months after there is a very sinister undertone. In the earlier the games at Tyre. Alexander called on his anecdote Anaxarchus had directed his attack at divine father ‘to defend and encourage the a single individual, Nicocreon. Now the range is Greeks’. This strongly recalls Aristarchus’ wider. Alexander implies that he could institute burlesque, but it is deadly serious. Alexander a purge of his subordinates throughout the is represented invoking the assistance of Zeus, Levant. He is not about to do so, but his and is duly answered by the appearance of an response hints that he very well could. This is eagle, confirmation that Zeus would support an anecdote that starts as a joke but soon takes his son and bring victory. It is the most striking on rather darker colours. The urbane, facetious instance of Alexander’s good fortune, to have Alexander could become the repressive on side a father who was the supreme force autocrat. He is also son of Zeus. That is clear of the universe, and he emblazoned it on his from Anaxarchus’ challenge, which presupposes coinage. There on his celebrated decadrachms
It is the most striking instance of Alexander’s good fortune, to have on side a father who was the supreme force of the universe, and he emblazoned it on his coinage.
that Alexander could match the thunderbolts we see him brandishing the thunderbolts so of his Olympian father. Here anecdote blends characteristic of Zeus with Victory herself about } into history proper. Alexander had recently to crown him as invincible. The son of Zeus (above) been in Egypt, where he had visited the great appropriately wears the regalia of his father. He Ptolemy I Soter, sanctuary of Zeus Ammon at the oasis of also wears a plumed helmet and grasps a sarisa successor of Alexander the Great. Siwah. The officiating priest had hailed him as in his left hand. This is the visual counterpart Courtesy of son of Zeus, and, according to Curtius (4.7.30), to Callisthenes’ account of Gaugamela. Kenneth Sheedy FAHA, Alexander did not simply assent to being called Alexander assumes the attributes of his divine Australian Centre for Ancient son of Zeus, he actually demanded it, much to father, and achieves victory without end, the Numismatic Studies. the chagrin of his Macedonians. The anecdote greatest of all Macedonian monarchs. we have examined shows the new convention in That is one aspect of Alexander’s relations operation. Anaxarchus exploited the alarming with the divine. More radical still was his thunderclap to produce an outrageous piece of assimilation to divinities proper, divinities flattery. If Alexander could match the explosion whose blood was ichor. There is a famous he was truly the progeny of Zeus, and deserved anecdote that associates the two aspects. It recognition as such. derives from a certain Ephippus of Olynthus, So far we have examined two anecdotal who wrote a treatise on the deaths of strings separately. In one Alexander is depicted Alexander and his favourite Hephaestion. as the son of Zeus: he is confirmed in his This concentrated upon the more sensational belief at Siwah, and Anaxarchus reinforces aspects of court life, particularly the prodigious the notion by suggesting that he could eclipse drinking that took place at the court symposia. a thunderstorm simply by his bowel motions. Ephippus also supplied details about the That was superhuman. But it was more than contemporary worship of Alexander, and was that. As we saw, Alexander could be represented probably an eyewitness. In particular he gave as more than human. He was positively alien, a highly colourful account of a celebration with ichor running in his veins, literally a god at the Median capital of Ecbatana, held in
Humanities Australia { 49 honour of Dionysus during the autumn of (64-5) that Gorgus was a historical personage 324. Alexander was the centre of attention, who very probably had an animus against the recipient of a vast number of crowns. The Athens. Nevertheless Pearson regards Ephippus’ highlight of this egregious display of flattery work as invention: ‘It is interesting to note was provided by Gorgus, the guardian of the how skilfully Ephippus has built up his story royal arsenal, who made a formal proclamation, on the basis of certain well-attested facts’. But quoted verbatim by Ephippus. Gorgus gave surely the reverse is true. Everything that can Alexander crowns worth 3,000 gold staters, and be verified on the strength of existing evidence promised ten thousand panoplies and the same has been verified. In particular the acclamation number of catapults and artillery for the siege of Alexander as son of Ammon (Zeus) occurs of Athens. This was a time of acute tension, in a precise context, in the Dionysiac festival at when Alexander came close to invading Attica, Ecbatana; the host, Alexander’s satrap of Media and Gorgus’ offer of munitions would have (Atropates), is also a historical personage, been a timely one. The proclamation was and the general strategic picture is plausible. not only notable for its extravagance. Gorgus The Athenians were anticipating an attack hailed Alexander as son of Ammon, as his at the time. Why not, then, draw the obvious men had been instructed to do at Siwah. The conclusion? The anecdote is true as it stands, announcement, moreover, is presented in direct and the apophthegm (Gorgus’ proclamation) is speech as an apophthegm, which would surely correctly cited. In that case Gorgus did crown have been remembered by all participants in Alexander and proclaimed him son of Ammon. the festival. There is no reason to suppose that the story Now, Gorgus is a well-known historical is not correct as it stands, and certainly no personage. He came from the Carian city reason to think that the acclamation was not of Iasus, where he was a rich, respected to Alexander’s liking. On the contrary, it seems citizen, and at some stage attached himself that Gorgus chose exactly the wording that he to Alexander’s court. He was a power broker, felt would be most effective with Alexander, whose support could be extremely valuable. which was correctly reported by Ephippus. There is corroboration in an inscription of the This takes us to the previous anecdote from island of Samos, which recorded how Gorgus Ephippus, which portrays Alexander assuming offered a crown to Alexander on an occasion the cult dress of the Olympian gods. While this when he declared his intention of returning is more difficult to believe than his assumption Samos to the Samians. This is patronage at of the title of son of Zeus (Ammon), again there work. Gorgus supported the interests of his is a match with the material record. According clients on Samos, and at the same time worked to Ephippus, Alexander took on the dress of against the Athenians, who had occupied the Ammon himself, in particular the rams’ horns island since 365, and showed no intention of that are the glory of the coinage of Lysimachus. relinquishing it. Everything fits together, but Here art reflects life, and the image on the coins even so there has been a trend among modern marks out Alexander as not merely his father’s scholars to dismiss the story as fabrication. son but his father’s substance. It became as There is a footnote in Sir William Tarn’s much an identifying mark as the rams’ horns Alexander the Great (ii.354. n.2) that has the of Ammon himself. Similarly, he ‘often’ wore dubious distinction of having every word in it the lion skin and club of Heracles. As a Heraclid wrong. In his view Alexander objected violently himself he would honour the founder of the to being called a son of Ammon; ‘it always line by assuming his characteristic dress. But roused him to fury’. ‘Always’ is pitching it too there was more. Heracles was notoriously the strongly; there is just one instance of such benefactor par excellence of humanity, and was fury, in the mutiny at Opis, when Alexander taken into Olympus as a reward, with a goddess had much more than a mocking reference as his consort. As we have seen, Heracles to Ammon to take care of. There is a similar was a model for Alexander, and Heracles’ sentiment in Lionel Pearson’s respected work head appeared on the obverse of his imperial on the lost histories of Alexander. He concedes tetradrachms, by far the most prolific and
50 } Humanities Australia widely circulated of any coinage that the world humanity to the Underworld? If so, it is hardly had seen, so it is hardly surprising that his surprising that he was treated with reverential image gradually fused with that of Alexander. silence by his courtiers. This is the most potent The two looked the same and had the same proof that Alexander was viewed as a god in his attributes. One may add that Dioxippus’ own right. He had libations poured before him, appearance at his combat with Corrhagus, myrrh and incense were burned continuously nude and with a Herculean club, challenged in his honour, and ritual silence was observed, Alexander’s monopoly of the image of Heracles, the sign of the presence of a god. The anecdote and would not have endeared him to the king. does not end in an apophthegm, rather a But Alexander did not simply imitate vignette which reflects the sheer terror that male divinities: he assumed the attributes Alexander could inspire. He was intolerable and of Artemis, something that has provoked murderous, and was thought to be in a state of outrage, especially with scholars of a Victorian violent depression (μελαγχολικόϚ) – perhaps disposition, who rejected the very idea of their in part a reaction to the death of Hephaestion. manly hero cross-dressing. That in itself was Ephippus paints a memorable picture of terror, sufficient to dismiss the anecdote: ‘Ephippus which, if he witnessed it, would never have has nothing to do with history’ is Tarn’s been forgotten, just as the dynast Cassander is contemptuous verdict. However, Alexander said to have had a severe anxiety attack when did have a somewhat tortuous relation with he came face to face with a statue of Alexander Artemis. He was allegedly born on the day that at Delphi. the great temple at Ephesus was burned down, This vivid description has often been thanks to the absence of the goddess, who was discounted. Ephippus is thought to have away in Macedon aiding the confinement of been hostile to Alexander, and therefore Olympias, and he himself had provided for the created the blackest picture possible. There prosperity of the rebuilt temple by assigning is a predisposition to discount it as fiction; it tribute money for its upkeep. Now, Alexander is dismissed out of hand without any serious did not, of course, adopt the persona of argument. The great German scholar, Felix Artemis the attendant of childbirth. He took Jacoby, found himself at a loss when dealing on the appearance of Artemis the huntress, with the episode. He found it difficult to bearing her characteristic bow and hunting accept the authenticity of all the details in the spear (σιβύνη). That was logical enough. first passage (dressing as the gods), but in the Alexander was one of the keenest and most second passage (on Gorgus) Ephippus is so well assiduous huntsmen of all time, and took every informed that in the first too it is perhaps only opportunity to be present at the chase. Indeed, the nuances (‘Ton und Beleuchtung’) that are along with the symposium, hunting was the false. It is better to concede that both passages characteristic occupation of the Macedonian are correct in detail, and there is no reason court, and taking on the dress of Artemis to think that Ephippus is writing fiction to indicated that he was uniquely successful – and blacken the memory of Alexander. He may uniquely dangerous. have had no love for the king (and there is little Dressing as a god does not imply divine enough indication of that), but the picture he status: otherwise there would be a plethora of constructs cannot be faulted. Our attitude to Athenian deities who had played the role of anecdotal evidence should be less sceptical gods at the dramatic festivals. However, there than it has been in the past. Unless it is proven is clearly a suggestion that Alexander took on otherwise, we should accept its historicity, the functions of the gods, even the sinister role assuming that the tradition goes back to some of Hermes, whose major task it was to conduct memorable deed or apophthegm. The model the dead to Hades, as Alexander would have and master is Herodotus, who commits himself known well from the finale of the Odyssey. to recording what is memorable, and provides Is it too much to see the dress of Hermes as us with a coruscating array of amusing and an indication that Alexander was responsible informative anecdotes. The material that for the transfer of a significant portion of I have examined here (unlike Herodotus’
Humanities Australia { 51 anecdotes) has little in the way of narrative 4. P l u t . Alex. 60. 12-13. The story is extremely context, but internal analysis reveals nothing popular and appears widely in the extant tradition. See Arr. 5.19.2 with Plut. Mor. 181e, self-contradictory or implausible. Instead I 332e, 458b. have traced a line of consistent anecdotes, 5. It is Porus who steals the limelight. Alexander which illustrate both Alexander’s view of his is practically anonymous, described as the mortal (or divine) status and the reaction of straight man to Porus’ Achilles. his entourage, showing early conviction that 6. On this see A. B. Bosworth, Alexander and he was the son of Zeus Ammon and a growing the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 9-19. conviction that he was a god in his own right, 7. Athen. 6.251a = FGrH 139 F 47. The quotation is emulating and surpassing Heracles. At the also attributed to the philosopher Anaxarchus, same time his courtiers reacted in different but it is a late tradition (Diog. Laert. 9.60), and ways, some accepting and promoting the cult is probably affected by Anaxarchus’ reputation of Alexander as god, others rejecting it. And as a flatterer. Seneca (Suas. 1.5) attributes it to Callisthenes, but it occurs in a piece of there were those who, like Anaxarchus, chose a rhetoric, which conflates Callisthenes and middle way, using irony and humour to anchor Cleitus in an unholy jumble. Alexander to his mortality. This is exactly the 8. ‘No, my child, not for you are the works detail that is remembered and passed on by of warfare. contemporaries, and the anecdotes that provide Rather concern yourself with the lovely secrets of marriage’ (Iliad 5.428-9) the evidence should be treasured and exploited, 9. Strab. 13.1.27 (594); cf. Plut. Alex 8.2. The not casually ruled out of court. ¶ recension of the text was allegedly the work of Anaxarchus and Callisthenes, both with philosophical persuasion and mutually hostile. Brian Bosworth FAHA spent 10. According to Curtius (9.7.18) Alexander gave most of his academic career at way to popular demand because he could not the University of Western prevent the contest; the Macedonian inspired Australia, from 1967-2007. He is terror as if he were Ares, while Dioxippus currently Emeritus at UWA, excelled in sheer strength and athletic Conjoint Professor of Classics at training; still more, because of his club he bore a resemblance to Heracles. For Dioxippus’ the University of Newcastle, and Professor of athletic pre-eminence note the observations of Ancient History at Macquarie University. Apart from the orator Hyperides (Eux. 78-82). the history and historiography of Alexander the Great 11. That may be so, but equally there may be some and his successors, Professor Bosworth’s research element of drama. Alexander was quite capable interests include Thucydides and Classical Greek of putting on a show of reluctance. history, Roman imperial history and historiography. 12. Nithaphon, mentioned as a trierarch at the Hydaspes (Arr. Ind. 18.8). 13. The source for this anecdote was the peripatetic 1. There is little literature on the anecdote in philosopher Satyrus, who took advantage of antiquity. The most comprehensive treatment an impressive thunder clap in Syria to make a is still Richard Saller’s essay, ‘Anecdotes as scurrilous comparison. Alexander happened Historical Evidence for the Principate’, Greece to be riding with his entourage, when there Rome, 27 (1999), 69-83. As its title suggests, was a sudden violent storm which made their its field is largely confined to the Roman horses rear. At that Anaxarchus challenged his world, whereas my discussion is focused on overlord, pretending that he could rival and the early Hellenistic period, where there is an surpass Zeus himself when it was a matter of abundance of evidence, but little attempt to breaking wind (6.250f-251a). exploit it. 14. The fragments deal with the excessive drinking 2. P l u t . Alex..1.3. Compare the similar at symposia, which was hard fact. There is programmatic statement in Arrian’s praefatio, perhaps some hostility in the allegation that which may foreshadow Plutarch. See the it was the wrath of Dionysus that brought his excellent discussion of Timothy E. Duff, death, because Alexander had stormed his Plutarch’s Lives (Oxford: Oxford University native city of Thebes (Athen. 10.434.b = FGrH Press, 2002), pp. 14-34. 126 F 3), but contemporaries might have felt this 3. In similar vein Nietzsche is said to have to be a reasonable inference. There is no basis observed that the picture of a person can for Tarn’s dismissal of Eppiphus as a ‘scurrilous be constructed from three anecdotes (Aus pasquinader’. drei Anekdoten ist es möglich, das Bild eines Menschen zu geben). 52 } Humanities Australia » Anna Wierzbicka
‘Polish Science Foundation’ something else: the non-equivalence of the } (‘Fundacja Nauki Polskiej’)1 Polish word nauka and the English word science, (above) and the different vision of human knowledge Detail from The A month ago, I travelled from a summery in Poland and in English-speaking countries Three Graces by Raffaello Sanzio, Canberra to a snowbound Warsaw, to receive, like Australia. If Australia had an institution 1504-1505. at a ceremony at the Royal Castle, an award called the ‘Australian Science Foundation’, The Yorck Project: Afrom the Polish Science Foundation, known in such a Foundation would be unlikely to award 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. Distributed by Poland informally as ‘the Polish Nobel’ (in the a prize ‘for the humanities’ (or even ‘the social DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. Source: Wikimedia plural, ‘Polskie Noble’, see the picture). I was sciences’). This raises a number of questions, Commons. one of three laureates for 2010: one received including these two: what is ‘science’? And what the prize for the field of exact sciences (in are ‘the humanities’? Etching from his case, chemistry), one for biological and One thing seems clear: in English, ‘the Regnum Animale by medical sciences, and one (myself, a linguist) for humanities’ are not part of ‘science’, on a par Carl Linnaeus, 1735. humanities and social sciences. with fields like chemistry and biology, whereas Source: Wikimedia Commons. The award, which attracts a great deal in Polish, they are part of ‘nauka’. of media interest, reflects the high prestige Portraits of Giambattista Vico, that ‘nauka’ (a word translated into English The different status of ‘science’ Descartes and as ‘science’) has in Poland. But it also reflects and ‘the humanities’ in Thomas Reid.
contemporary English Source: Wikimedia Commons.
In English-speaking countries it is assumed that ‘everyone knows’ what ‘science’ is: the word science is part and parcel of ordinary, colloquial English. The same is not true, however, of the humanities. Judging by the data from the (left) 2 database Cobuild, Bank of English, the word 2010 Polish Science humanities is not common in contemporary Foundation’s award ceremony. English, and in spoken English it is quite rare: Photograph by Magdalena clearly, it belongs to a specialised, academic Wis´niewska. Reproduced register of English. It is not surprising, with kind permission. therefore, that many speakers of English have no clear idea of what this word really means.
Humanities Australia { 53 Admittedly, the phrase the social sciences is which would include both ‘natural sciences’ not part of colloquial English either, but most and ‘the humanities’. people would take it (and rightly so) to be some The modern English concept of ‘science’ kind of extension from science, modified by focuses on empirical and objectively verifiable the adjective social. It is likely, therefore, that knowledge about ‘things’. The expression the phrase social sciences would not appear social sciences, restricted, by and large, to the to many speakers of English as puzzling or academic register, purports to extend the incomprehensible, and that the association empirical method and the requirement of with science would lend the phrase some of this verifiability to the study of ‘people’ rather word’s prestigious glow. This is not the case, than ‘things’, but ‘people’ studied as groups however, with the humanities. rather than individuals. The prestige of ‘social It is particularly important, therefore, that sciences’ derives from their purported analogy the meaning of the phrase the humanities should with ‘science’. be explained – both to various decision-making bodies and to the general public. Without The roots of the concept of some such explanations, it might not be clear ‘the humanities’ in the thought to many people why ‘the humanities’ should of Giambattista Vico have a claim on any institutional space – or on the public purse – in countries like Australia. The concept of ‘the humanities’, in contrast For example, it could be asked: why should the to that of ‘the social sciences’, evokes a field of Australian Research Council be as ready to inquiry which is fundamentally different from fund research projects in ‘the humanities’ as ‘science’ and which has its own goals and its those in ‘science’ and in ‘the social sciences’? own methods. What can ‘the humanities’ contribute to human The subject matter of ‘the humanities’ is knowledge and human understanding that ‘people’ – not necessarily groups of people neither ‘science’ nor ‘the social sciences’ can? – and the definition which will be developed here (in deliberately simplified language) ‘Science’ – a conceptual artefact reflects the assumption inherent in this concept of modern English that ‘it is good if people can know things of many kinds about people’. It will also include The English word science, which excludes the assumption that people can only gain not only ‘the humanities’ but also logic access to that knowledge if some people (those and even mathematics, does not have exact engaged in the pursuit of ‘the humanities’) equivalents in other European languages, let do some things for a long time to seek that alone languages further afield, and is saturated, knowledge and if they do it in ways different so to speak, with ‘British empiricism’.3 For from those in which those who study ‘things’ example, the German word Wissenschaft rather than people can pursue their studies. (from wissen ‘to know’), like the Polish nauka, The fundamental distinction between embraces all systematic research, and its studying things and studying people was two branches – Naturwissenschaften and introduced into European thought by the Geisteswissenschaften (from Natur ‘nature’ and Italian eighteenth-century philosopher Geist ‘mind, spirit’) – do not privilege empirical, Giambattista Vico.4 Although modern English sense-derived knowledge over any other kind. has since developed its own ways of categorising But in English, knowledge based on knowledge, with its own concepts of ‘science’, ‘experience’ (derived from the senses) achieved ‘social sciences’ and ‘the humanities’, Vico’s such great prestige, and such a privileged status basic idea lives on in the modern English in the edifice of human knowledge, that it concept of ‘the humanities’ (as it does in the shaped the modern concept of ‘science’ itself. German concept of ‘Geisteswissenschaften’, Consequently, in the conceptualisation of the Polish concept of ‘nauki (plural) knowledge embedded in modern English, humanistyczne’ and in other comparable there is no category of ‘science’ or ‘sciences’ concepts in other European languages).
54 } Humanities Australia Essentially, the idea is that people can know is based on what the senses report. We things of many kinds about people in a way can classify their contents into regular they can’t know things about anything else (for uniformities, apply mathematical example, rocks, plants, or stars), and that it is techniques, decompose them into smaller extremely important for people to know things parts, re-combine them, but the result of of these kinds about people. Furthermore, our investigations will be no more than a people can know things of these kinds about report of what stands in what spatial relation people imaginatively, ‘from inside’, and they can to what, or what follow, or is simultaneous have a better understanding of them than they with, what else. Yet to say that this is all we can ever have of the ‘natural world’ (the world can know about human beings, and that of ‘things’). the techniques of our ways of apprehending To study people in the way one can study the external world are, therefore, all that ‘things’ would mean (according to Vico) ‘to we can use in learning about each other, ignore the distinction between human beings would be a grave understatement, a denial and non-human nature, between material of what we know to be true. In the case of objects and mental or emotional life’.5 According human behaviour we can surely ask why men to Vico, it is difficult but vitally important for act as they do; ask not merely what mental people to pursue knowledge about people that states or events, e.g. feelings or volitions,
According to Vico...knowledge about animals, or plants, or things, derives from sense perception, and it cannot be compared to the intimate knowledge that we can have about ourselves and the things that we have created.
is different in kind from knowledge about the are followed by what acts, but also why; not external world. Knowledge about animals, or only whether, but also why persons in this or plants, or things, derives from sense perception, that mental or emotional state are or are not and it cannot be compared to the intimate likely to behave in a given fashion, what is, or knowledge that we can have about ourselves and what would be, rational or desirable or right the things that we have created. for them to do, how and why they decide Taking this contrast between the knowledge between various courses of action, and so on. of the external world and the knowledge In short, we judge human activity in terms of people as human beings as his point of of purposes, motives, acts of will, decisions, departure, Vico set out his vision of the ‘Scienza doubts, hesitations, thoughts, hopes, fears, nuova’ – a phrase whose rendering as ‘the new desires, and so forth; these are among the science’ can be misleading to English readers, ways in which we distinguish human beings given that in contemporary English the word from the rest of nature.6 science means something quite different from what scienza meant for Vico, and indeed, Such thinking about human beings can lead from what science meant in seventeenth- and to ‘true knowledge’ no less than what ‘the eighteenth-century English. Vico’s ‘scienza naturalists do’ – in a sense, (Vico held), even nuova’ was not some extension of science more so: (conceived of in the sense in which this term is used in modern English, that is, roughly, as If, following Descartes’ rigorous rule, we the empirical study of the external world), but allowed only that to be true knowledge which a different kind of knowledge which includes a could be established by physics or other perspective ‘from within’ the subject matter. To natural sciences, we should be confined to quote Isaiah Berlin’s rendition of Vico’s thought: behaviourist tests, namely the uncritical In the case of the external world the assimilation of the human world to the non- naturalists are right: all that we know human – the restriction of our knowledge
Humanities Australia { 55 to those characteristics of men which they In addition, the understanding and share with the non-human world; and interpretation of human conduct and behaviour consequently the attempt to explain human cannot be strictly separated from moral behaviour in non-human terms, as some judgment (‘in the case of human behaviour behaviourists and extreme materialists, both we can surely ask [ …] what is, or what would ancient and modern, inspired by the vision be rational or desirable or right from them (or mirage) of a single, integrated, natural to do’, as Berlin puts it).12 ‘Natural sciences’ science of all there is, have urged us to do. are widely taken to be value-free (and ‘social It may be that a good deal more can be said sciences’ tend to imitate ‘science’ in this regard). in such purely ‘physicalist’ language than its ‘The humanities’, on the other hand, do not opponents have, at times, thought possible; aspire to be value-free. Thus, when a historian, but certainly not enough. For we should find Martin Malia, writes (with reference to the ourselves debarred by such self-imposed historiographies of Stalinism and Nazism) austerity from saying or thinking some of that ‘moral judgments are […] intrinsic to all the most natural and indispensable things historical understanding’, he is placing history that men constantly say or think about other in the context of ‘the humanities’ rather than human beings. The reason is not far to seek: ‘the social sciences’.13 This link with values and men can think of others only as being moral judgment, too, needs to be taken into like themselves.7 account in the full definition of ‘the humanities’.
Vico concluded that, as Berlin puts it, How concepts can be defined ‘Descartes is the great deceiver, whose emphasis and explained: a thumbnail on knowledge of the external world as the sketch of ‘NSM’ paradigm of all knowledge has set philosophy on a false path’.8 Although the concept of ‘the The definition and explanation of the humanities’ as we know it from present-day concept of ‘the humanities’ to be presented
the intimate knowledge of human beings, which is the proper aim of, as we might say today, ‘the humanities’, is inextricably linked with the question of language.
English is not simply modelled on Vico’s ideas, here is based on the NSM approach, developed it is to a large extent informed by them, and we over many years by myself and my colleague can find in these ideas extremely valuable clues Professor Cliff Goddard, and tested by many for defining it. scholars in numerous publications over many For Vico the intimate knowledge of domains.14 The acronym NSM stands for human beings, which is the proper aim of, Natural Semantic Metalanguage – a mini- as we might say today, ‘the humanities’, is language which corresponds to the empirically inextricably linked with the question of discovered intersection (the common core) of all language. As Claudio Véliz (1994) puts it in his languages. This universal ‘mini-language’ can retelling of Vico’s ideas, ‘The crucial Vichian be used effectively for exploring and comparing argument rests on the primordial character the ways of thinking and categorising of language. Immensely more important than experience reflected in different languages of all other human artefacts, signs, symbols, the world and different historical stages of the and institutions, language is the definitive same language (for example, English). element in culture’.9 It is also the one that To define (or ‘explicate’) the meaning of a ‘portrays most tellingly the modalities and word or expression in NSM means to explain it transformations of the social ambit’10 and the through simple and universal human concepts ‘modifications of our human mind’.11 (‘semantic primes’) which do not require
56 } Humanities Australia further explanation themselves and which diversity. Studies in ‘the humanities’ can tell can be found as words (or word-like elements) us what kinds of things can happen to people, in all languages.15 These concepts include, what people can do and why they can want
The words can and possible also highlight the double focus of ‘the humanities’: on ‘humanity’ as a whole and on individual (though culturally embedded) human beings in all their immense diversity. for example, do and happen, someone and to do things of some kinds; how a person can something, and sixty or so others.16 think and feel and what he or she can hold as In addition to semantic primes (‘atoms of good and commendable. meaning’), many NSM explications rely also, Drawing on Vico’s insights and using the in a limited way, on ‘semantic molecules’, mini-language of universal human concepts, we especially in the area of concrete vocabulary. In can propose the following (partial) explication particular, body part concepts often function as of the expression the humanities17: semantic molecules in the meaning of verbs of physical activity, such as walk (‘legs’, ‘feet’), lick a. some people do some things for a long time (‘tongue’) and bite (‘teeth’). In NSM explications, because they think like this: such molecules are marked with the symbol b. ‘it is good if people can know things [m]. (Molecules are not necessary for explicating of many kinds about people the humanities, but they are relevant to the c. it is good if people can know what kinds explication of science.) of things can happen to someone it is good if people can know how someone Defining ‘the humanities’ can feel when these things happen d. it is good if people can know how someone As a first approximation, one could say can think about things of many kinds that the concept of ‘the humanities’ focuses on studying human experience, ways of thinking it is good if people can know how someone and ways of feeling. The approach to this study can feel when this someone thinks about these things is fundamentally different from that of ‘science’ in that it seeks empathetic understanding e. it is good if people can know what kinds of and does not seek to measure anything. If things someone can say with words measurements are used in ‘the humanities’ at it is good if people can know how someone all, they can have only a secondary, auxiliary can say these things with words role: neither empathetic understanding nor self- f. it is good if people can know what kinds of understanding can be based on measurements. things someone can do Seeking now to describe the subject matter of it is good if people can know why someone ‘the humanities’ more fully (but still informally), can want to do these things we could say that it embraces themes like the g. it is good if people can know about some following ones: what can happen to people and things that it is good if someone does what people can do; possible ways of thinking, these things ways of feeling, and ways of speaking; possible it is good if people can know about some motives and possible values. other things that it is bad if someone The words can and possible are important does these things here and they highlight the non-empirical and imaginative character of research in ‘the it is good if people can think about things like this humanities’. They also highlight the double focus of ‘the humanities’: on ‘humanity’ as a h. it is good if people can know how someone whole and on individual (though culturally can live embedded) human beings in all their immense it is good if people can think about this’
Humanities Australia { 57 As this (partial) explication shows, the scope kinds. This is not something open to empirical of the subject matter of ‘the humanities’ is very verification either. broad. It embraces things that happen to people, The appeal to the imagination inherent things that people do, and things that people in the recurring ‘can’ links work in ‘the say, as well as people’s thoughts, emotions, humanities’ in some ways to the work involved motivations, and values. The broad scope of the in creative arts. It also connects with the subject matter of ‘the humanities’ explains why component ‘if these people do these things very fields as different as history, biography, literature, well’, which is included in the full explication of philology, linguistics, classics, philosophy and ‘the humanities’ and which is absent from the religious studies can all be seen (and can see explication of science: science is not conceived of themselves) as part of ‘the humanities’. as cognate to art and the two words (science and Some of these fields can also see themselves art) can be contrasted. The word humanities, on as part of ‘the social sciences’, or at least as the other hand, is normally not contrasted with having one foot in ‘the social sciences’ and the word art. This is due, I suggest, not only to one in ‘the humanities’. Such overlaps are the avowedly non-empirical character of ‘the possible because the concept of ‘the humanities’ humanities’ and to its conceptual link with refers not only to a particular subject matter creative imagination, but also to its implication
The broad scope of the subject matter of ‘the humanities’ explains why fields as different as history, biography, literature, philology, linguistics, classics, philosophy and religious studies can all be seen AS part of ‘the humanities’.
but also to method and approach. As the full of there being here some room for individual explication shows, the approach envisaged by mastery and excellence which cannot be fully ‘the humanities’ is different – fundamentally captured by measurable ‘quality indicators’ different – from that of ‘science’, and (to use an expression from the current consequently, from that of ‘the social sciences’, bureaucratic parlance). which seek to emulate the approach of ‘science’. Another feature which links the concept As already noted, one key feature of of ‘the humanities’ with that of ‘art’ has to the explication of the humanities which do with the outcomes of these activities. ‘Art’ distinguishes it from that of science is the use produces, of course, ‘works of art’, that is, some of the word can in most of the components. lasting products. ‘The humanities’, too, hope According to the concept behind the word to produce some tangible ‘products’ – perhaps humanities, it is good for people to know how more enduring and less likely to get outdated someone can think, feel, speak, live, what than the results of scientific research tend to be. kinds of things can happen to someone, and Often, these ‘products’ take the form of books what kinds of things someone can do. This (rather than journal articles), but they can also use of the modal can makes the concept of ‘the take the form of critical editions, dictionaries, humanities’ unempirical: people can’t study philological exegeses, and so on. ‘Science’ empirically how someone can think, feel, speak, appears to aspire to be constantly on the move or live. This ‘can’ points to a necessary effort and ‘scientists’ appear to always ‘want to know of the imagination, which cannot be fully more’. I have not included such a component replicated and empirically verified. in the full explication of ‘the humanities’. Furthermore, the definition of ‘the Instead, I have included in it the aspiration that humanities’ outlined here is not exclusively ‘afterwards, people can know many things of focused on knowledge: as components g. and h. many kinds about people because of this’. indicate, ‘the humanities’ seek also to provide The ‘non-scientific’ and experiential aspect of opportunities for people to think about how ‘the humanities’ is also reflected in a component someone can live, and whether it is good or (not included in the partial explication presented not good for people to do things of some here), which refers, effectively, to the goal of
58 } Humanities Australia understanding other people. A social scientist pursuit of knowledge. What he called ‘natural seeks knowledge (of some kinds) about ‘people’, philosophy’, and what we might call today but not about ‘other people’. The phrase other empirical study of natural phenomena, was people makes room, as it were, for the person for Reid an important branch of ‘science’, but of the researcher, for this person’s empathetic only one branch among many. In present-day understanding of other human beings. This English, however, what for Reid was a branch points to a pursuit of intersubjective rather than of ‘science’ has become simply ‘science’, and purely ‘objective’ knowledge and understanding, the other branches have found themselves which again sets ‘the humanities’ apart from outside the scope of ‘science’ as the word is now ‘science’ and ‘the social sciences’. commonly understood. This is particularly Vico’s concern for the self-understanding of clear in the way the derived words scientific and the ‘agent’ chimes with another feature of the scientist are now used. explication presented here (in addition to ‘other people’), namely, with its focus on ‘someone’ (in Science (partial explication) the singular) rather than ‘people’ (in the plural) a. some people do some things for a long time as the primary object of interest. because they think like this: Generally speaking, ‘science’ studies classes b. ‘it is good if people can know many things of things rather than individual objects, and about things of many kinds ‘social sciences’ focus on populations and c. it is good if they can know these things well societies. ‘The humanities’, on the other hand, d. it is good if people can know these things have a double focus. On the one hand, they are like someone can know some things interested in ‘people’ in general and they are about something when it is like this: predicated on the assumption that ‘it is good if e. this someone can see this something people can know things of many kinds about people’. On the other hand, however, they are f. this someone’s hands[m] can touch interested in individual human beings – not this something necessarily in specific individuals as such but in g. this someone can say some things the whole range of human experience, human about this something with some pursuits, emotions, values, ways of thinking number[m] words’ and ways of living. Thus, the purpose of ‘the h. often, when these people do these things, humanities’ is not to study particular societies they do some things to some things or to compare societies across places and times, i. they do these things not like other people but rather, to understand ‘human beings’. do things to many things
Defining ‘science’ and concepts Key features of ‘science’ as presented in this like ‘Wissenschaft’ explication include a focus on knowing many things about ‘things’ (rather than ‘people’), and The meaning of science has changed knowing them well, in components (b) and considerably in the course of the last two (c), an experimental basis (not simply ‘doing centuries. This change has to do both with things’ but ‘doing things to some things’ in (h), the scope and the methodology of what can be an empirical orientation (relying on evidence described as ‘science’ now and what could be so such as that provided by ‘the eye and the hand’) described two centuries ago. in (e) and (f), and an emphasis on numbers and For example, the eighteenth-century measurements (component g). In addition, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, in his Essays references to seeing, touching and ‘number on the Intellectual Power of Man, published in words’ imply a kind of verifiable knowledge, 1785, referred to both mathematics and the accessible, in principle, to anyone through clear study of what he called ‘the operations of the procedures based on seeing, touching, and mind’ as ‘sciences’.18 measurements. Thus, for Reid, science referred to, roughly The explication does not refer explicitly speaking, any systematic and rigorous to ‘natural phenomena’ or to ‘the external
Humanities Australia { 59 There is no reference here to pursuing knowledge through ‘doing things to some things’ (as in experimental science). Furthermore, while there are references to a high standard of knowledge (in c) and to a special approach and method (in d), there is no reference to empirical investigations like those relying on the proverbial ‘eye and hand’ in the tradition
(right) of the great seventeenth-century experimental Joseph Wright scientists (as we would call them now) like of Derby, An Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Experiment on the Royal Society of London in general.19 a Bird in the Air Pump.
Image AS PER THE COVER Conclusion OF ANNA’S RECENT BOOK, Experience, Evidence, and Sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English (New York: world’, but restricts science’s goals to providing There is a pressure on speakers of English Oxford University Press, 2010). knowledge ‘about things’ (rather than people). to regard ‘natural sciences’ as the paradigm This is further narrowed, by implication, by the of all knowledge – at least all knowledge that references to the empirical method (ultimately modern societies should value and pursue. based on the senses, such as seeing and As we have seen, the Italian Vico held the touching). The reference to ‘doing many things Frenchman Descartes responsible for the undue to some things’, too, evokes laboratory research absolutisation of that particular paradigm. and the like, where scientists manipulate In fact, however, neither Italian nor French ‘things’ of certain kinds, in order to obtain (nor other European languages) have absorbed knowledge of a kind that can be derived from this absolutisation in the way English has. such experimental approaches. There is also a The semantic change that the English word reference here to people knowing ‘things of some science underwent in the last two centuries kinds’ well: the scope of science may be limited or so makes empirically-based knowledge of (e.g., it excludes intimate knowledge about the external world seem central to all human people’s thoughts, feelings and experiences), but knowledge, and self-evidently so. at least the knowledge provided by it is expected Of course speakers of English are not at to be well established and clearly articulated. the mercy of their language and many of In all these respects, the present-day them can recognise the value, and the need meaning of science is different from, for for, intellectual pursuits aiming at kinds of example, that of the German Wissenschaft, the knowledge different from ‘scientific knowledge French science or the Polish nauka, as shown in of the external world’. But the pressure of the following explication: modern English suggests to them, in a subtle and insidious way, that really, there is no Wissenschaft knowledge like ‘scientific knowledge’, and a. some people do many things for a long time that if one wants to focus on ‘people’ rather because they think like this: than ‘things’ one should at least model one’s b. ‘it is good if people can know many things endeavours on those of the ‘scientists’, and to about things of many kinds try to practice ‘social science’, ‘cognitive science’, c. it is good if they can know these things or some other ‘science’. Equally, there is pressure well’ on funding bodies like the Australian Research Council and on government policy frameworks d. these people do these things not like other people do many things like the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative to see excellence in research Component (b) shows that those pursuing and scholarship through the prism of the ‘Wissenschaft’ aim at comprehensive priorities and expectations of ‘science’, in the knowledge extending over many domains. modern English sense of the word.
60 } Humanities Australia It is important, therefore, for those working 8. Ibid., p. 25. in ‘the humanities’ to explain their priorities 9. Claudio Veliz, The New World of the Gothic Fox: and expectations to their colleagues in ‘science’ Culture and Economy in English and Spanish and to society at large. It is also important for America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 13. linguists to draw attention to the historically- 10. Ibid. shaped semantic peculiarities of the modern 11. Ibid. English words science, sciences, scientific and 12. Berlin, p. 22 scientists – peculiarities which may sometimes 13. Martin Malia, ‘Judging Nazism and prevent speakers of modern English from Communism’, The National Interest, Fall (2002), making up their own minds about the kinds p. 78. of knowledge necessary for human beings and 14. See Cliff Goddard, Semantic Analysis: A Practical their societies to flourish. ¶ Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, revised 2nd edition 2011); Anna Wierzbicka, Semantic Primitives (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1972); Anna Wierzbicka, Semantics: Anna Wierzbicka FAHA, FASSA, Primes and Universals (Oxford: Oxford born and educated in Poland, is University Press, 1996); Meaning and Universal Professor of Linguistics at the Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings, Australian National University. ed. by Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka She is a Fellow of the Russian (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002); Semantic Academy of Sciences and the Primes and Universal Grammar: Empirical Findings from the Romance Languages, ed. by Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds Bert Peeters (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Honorary Doctorates from Marie Curie-Sklodowska 2006). See also the NSM homepage
The Fellows’ Library of the Australian Academy of the Humanities contains a wide collection of modern and historical publications reflecting the authoritative and richly diverse output of humanities scholars in Australia and internationally. Many book publications of or about Fellows have been donated to the Academy over the years, and the Academy welcomes the following lately released books that have been recently donated:
Joseph Lo Bianco, Bruce Bennett, Brenda Niall, Stephen Knight, Jane Orton, and Susan Cowan, The Riddle of Merlin: Knowledge Gao Yihong (eds), Santosh K. Sareen, Father Hackett and Power Through China and English: Asha Kanwar (eds), (Canberra: National the Ages Globalisation and Of Sadhus and Library of Australia, (Ithaca: Cornell the Dilemmas of Spinners: Australian 2009) University Press, 2010)
Identity Encounters with * Donated by * Donated by (Bristol: Multilingual India Brenda Niall AO FAHA Stephen Knight FAHA Matters, 2009) (Noida: HarperCollins
* Donated by Publishers, India, Joseph Lo Bianco 2009) AM FAHA * Donated by Bruce Bennett AO FAHA
62 } Humanities Australia Publications by, or about, our Fellows are always sought for the Academy Fellows Collection. Such generous gifts help the library to remain a relevant and up-to-date repository for humanities research. Books received during 2011 will feature in the next edition of Humanities Australia, provided they were published during or after 2010 and are by or about an Academy Fellow.
Anna Haebich, Jim Davidson, Susan Sheridan, John Clark, Murdering A Three-Cornered Nine Lives: Postwar Asian Modernities: Stepmothers: Life: The Historian Women Writers Chinese and Thai The Execution of WK Hancock Making their Mark Art Compared, Martha Rendell (Sydney: University (St Lucia: University 1980 to 1999 (Perth: University of of New South Wales of Queensland Press, (Sydney: Power Western Australia Press, 2010) 2011) Publications, 2010)
Press, 2010) * Donated by * AAH Publication * AAH Publication the UNSW Press Subsidy Scheme Subsidy Scheme * Donated by Anna Haebich FAHA
Humanities Australia { 63