A publication of the American Philological Association Vol. 1 • Issue 2 • fall 2002

From the Editors REMEMBERING RHESUS by Margaret A. Brucia and Anne-Marie Lewis by C. W. Marshall

uripides wrote a play called Rhesus, position in the world of myth. Hector, elcome to the second issue of Eand a play called Rhesus is found leader of the Trojan forces, sees the WAmphora. We were most gratified among the extant works of Euripi- opportunity for a night attack on the des. Nevertheless, scholars since antiq- Greek camp but is convinced first to by the response to the first issue, and we uity have doubted whether these two conduct reconnaissance (through the thank all those readers who wrote to share plays are the same, suggesting instead person of Dolon) and then to await rein- with us their enthusiasm for this new out- that the Rhesus we have is not Euripi- forcements (in the person of Rhesus). reach initiative and to tell us how much dean. This question of dubious author- Odysseus and Diomedes, aided by the they enjoyed the articles and reviews. ship has eclipsed many other potential goddess Athena, frustrate both of these Amphora is very much a communal project areas of interest concerning this play enterprises so that by morning, when and, as a result, it is too often sidelined the attack is to begin, the Trojans are and, as we move forward into our second in discussions of classical tragedy, when assured defeat. issue, we would like to thank those who it is discussed at all. George Kovacs For me, the most exciting part of the have been so helpful to us: Adam Blistein, wanted to see how the play would work performance happened out of sight of Executive Director of the American Philo- on stage and so offered to direct it to the audience. Each night, the actor logical Association (APA); Jennifer Roberts, coincide appropriately with a conference playing Alexandros would come back- Chair of the Outreach Committee of the on canonicity that I was organizing in St. stage, removing his mask as soon as he John’s, Newfoundland. It also presented was out of sight of the audience. It was APA; our anonymous readers; and the opportunity for me to act in an handed to someone as he continued Suzanne Lashner, our designer, who has ancient play, which I had never done walking from stage right to the stage left made Amphora look so stylish and appeal- before. The design and stagecraft deci- entrance. He removed the pale shift he ing. And we thank, most of all, the authors sions were the director’s. I was pleased wore, handed it to me, and took an from our first two issues who have helped that roles would be doubled and masks identically cut garment in blue-gray, the us make such a promising start. used even though the performance color associated with the Greeks in this space was intimate – a small black-box production. He continued walking a few We have, as you may know, named our theatre with around eighty seats. The paces and, as he adjusted the chiton on publication after the amphora, the shipping open casting call attracted interested his shoulders, the stage manager would jar that carried a variety of commodities all students as well as those with more act- strap boots onto him, and I would place over the ancient world. This second issue of ing experience, including several who, the Alexandros costume on the props Amphora brings articles and reviews that like me, had acted in a summer Shake- table and hand him the jowly, darker we hope you will find both useful and speare company. mask of Odysseus, which he would pull Rhesus takes its action from the night onto his face, pausing to adjust it in a delectable. Within, you will find a poem forays related by Homer in the tenth full-length mirror. He would then wait – on Medusa, and articles on Athenian book of the Iliad, itself a book of ques- that was the delicious part, the wait – for tragedy, Catullus, viticulture, John Updike, tioned authorship. The characters in the Athena to finish her short speech (668- Greek sport, and a classics Web site. Our play verge on the familiar. But the play 74) and leave the stage, whereupon, as reviews will take you to fictional represen- does not present the characters in their Odysseus, he would make a hurried tations of two notable figures from the heroic molds. The paternalistic Aeneas entrance stage left, fleeing the chorus of and the single-minded Hector are sentries who entered in pursuit. Over Roman world, Cleopatra and Catilina. developments of their Homeric selves the course of the run, the wait grew to Amphora needs more of your articles and further serve to isolate the play’s continued on page 2 and reviews. If you are interested in writing for Amphora, or if you have any sugges- Book Review: “SPQR II: On Translating the Poetry tions for future articles or reviews, we The Catiline Conspiracy”...... 3 of Catullus ...... 12 Viticulture and Film Review: would love to hear from you. There are Classical Idealism...... 4 “Cleopatra” (1963) ...... 13 many ways that you can share your One Writer’s Classics: Notable Web Site: thoughts on the study of classical antiquity John Updike’s Harvard ...... 6 “Maecenas: Images of Ancient Greece and Rome”...... 15 with our readers: Do you have any insights Book Review: “Catilina’s Riddle” ...... 8 Guidelines for Watching Medusa...... 10 continued on page 6

Inside Contributors...... 16 Why Greek Sport History?...... 10 Remembering Rhesus continued from page 1 several seconds that, for us backstage, looking out, towards the audience. That seemed even more protracted. was where the Achaean fire beacons It is possible in antiquity that an actor were located and where Aeneas imag- playing Aeneas and Rhesus would also ines the chariots would break in an ill- play Odysseus and Alexandros, and that prepared attack. he, therefore, would be responsible for My next character was the Thracian the backstage technical challenge just horseman Rhesus, who arrives with a described. There are many ways, howev- flourish: In our production, the entry er, that the roles in Rhesus can be divid- was accompanied by a fanfare from the ed among three actors. In our produc- Soviet-era Red Army Chorus. My new tion, the roles of Aeneas and Rhesus mask had been on for over a minute by were combined with that of the Chario- that point and my costume changed into teer, and I was cast in these parts. Part of the gold-embossed red and leather com- what I discovered through this produc- bination that characterized the Thra- tion was the subjective observation that cians (see Fig. 1). An implausible dou- changing characters was not merely a ble spear extended my reach by several matter of changing the externals of feet and served as an emblem for the Fig. 1. C. W. Marshall as Rhesus. mask, costume, and posture. For me, the pomposity of the character. My opening Photo by Erin Whitney. masks and the language would initiate lines as Rhesus (388-92) were a slow, an internal process of character develop- haughty introduction whose syllables ment. I had expected that masks would invited me to puff out my chest that lit- leaving Rhesus behind, leaving him dictate a mode of delivery: That had tle bit further and strut with more of a amidst the slaughter I was coming been my experience directing others in swagger. Whatever preparation I under- onstage to describe. masked productions of ancient plays. went backstage, it was the initial speech I can’t tell you how much fun it was This happened, but perhaps it hap- that established the character of Rhesus, delivering the Charioteer’s long speech- pened because it is what I had expected. focusing me on becoming him: It was es. The first (756-803) is descriptive, What I had not realized was how a char- the act of speaking the lines that facili- recounting the attack of the Greeks acter’s opening speech would impose on tated the transition from one character upon the Thracians. With touching con- me, as an actor, aspects of a character’s to the next. Rhesus’ assurance to Hector cern for his horses, the Charioteer out- individuality, making me experience that “I speak directly and to the point. I lines his initial response and seems to each character in unique ways. am a straightforward man” (422-23) blur his dreams with what he saw when My first appearance in the play came could not have sounded more hollow – newly awakened. The vision he has of as Aeneas. Aeneas’ entrance comes after or so it seemed to me, hearing Rhesus’ two wolves attacking the camp (not a he has been awakened, and he urges a tortured syllables echoing within the dream at all, as the audience knows, but measured response to Hector’s impulse mask in a voice like my own, but not Diomedes and Odysseus disguised in to act. One paradox the play presents is sounding quite the same. Rhesus pro- pelts) was accompanied by a gesture that all might have gone well, if only vided counterpoint to Aeneas, and the that had earlier been used by Rhesus Hector had followed his convictions. It Thracian’s gung-ho attitude and arro- indicating where he intended to attack is only by allowing the Greeks time to gant sense of self-worth again make and, before that, by Aeneas indicating act that Trojan defeat is assured. Hector pause. It is only when Hector where the Greek camp lay. The audi- Despite this, Aeneas claims intellectual and Rhesus find a common enemy in ence had nowhere to look but at the superiority to Hector (105-8) and so the person of Odysseus, about to appear Charioteer, and the masks of the Chorus goads him into compromise. My por- in the next scene, that they can agree. concentrated the focus of the whole trayal of Aeneas developed from the My final role was the Charioteer. The stage on him. The Charioteer is wound- mask that I wore. The masks for our Charioteer had already been seen by the ed fatally, and his last act is to honor his play had been designed for this stage audience, a silent presence escorting master by remembering Rhesus to the and were particularly close-fitting, with Rhesus, and had been played then by Trojan allies and to the audience. Rhe- very obvious straps, as if defying the an extra, as a muta persona. The individ- sus does not deserve such respect (not audience with their theatricality. Built ual playing the Charioteer in that scene based on what the play presents, at on the same mold as was used for Hec- even shaved his head to match my own least), but he receives it from the Chari- tor, Rhesus, Dolon, and Odysseus – the pate so that the transition would be oteer. Description gives way to accusa- look of a generic, mature male, individ- smoother when I assumed the role later tion as the Charioteer censures Hector, ualized only by the way it was painted – in the play. Like Aeneas, the Charioteer his social superior (833-55). The produc- the mask pressed close against my face, has been awakened in the night, now by tion undermined the dialectic of Greek a constant reminder that I was, from the the marauding Greeks. Continuity is and barbarian by placing the Thracians audience’s perspective, someone else. It therefore established but, unlike my between the dark-skinned Greeks and also changed other details. The narrow previous characters, the Charioteer is pale Trojans: The ruddy complexion of eyeholes removed any peripheral vision given voice before he enters the stage. the Thracians marked them clearly as and made every step more carefully His cries from backstage, like the open- belonging in neither camp, as, in effect, measured. I had not realized until well ing speech of Rhesus, serve to establish a third race, and anticipating the blood into the rehearsal process how little, as the parameters of the individual. I that would be shed. This blood was still Aeneas, I would see Hector when I was screamed in pain, wearing the mask, dripping from the Charioteer’s hands in talking to him. I found I was always from backstage. As I did so, I was also the final scene. 2 In the intimacy of the theatre, the Book Review: Charioteer’s sufferings could be felt by SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy all. Audible gasps accompanied my scream (following 798), as I collapsed to by Martha Malamud my knees. The mask magnified the John Maddox Roberts. SPQR II: The Catiline The notion that without a strong foreign labored breathing. As words returned, my head shot up at a contorted angle as Conspiracy. Thomas Dunne Books, an enemy, Rome is in danger of rot from within I stared across the audience. As with the imprint of St. Martin’s Minotaur (212-674- was widespread in the Roman period (we previous characters, I found that most of 5151), 1991. Pp. 278. Paper $13.95. may note that this idea had particular reso- my lines were delivered to the audience ISBN 0-312-27706-7. nance in the post-cold-war period of the as much as to any character on stage. As early 1990’s when this book was published). the Charioteer, I barely saw the Chorus ohn Maddox Roberts has written The book is set in the tumultuous days of the of Trojan sentries upon whom I was “numerous works of science fiction,” dependent to maintain the mood of the J late Roman Republic. The Catilinarian con- according to the copy on the back cover of speeches. The Charioteer dies on stage spiracy that forms the focus of the novel is (following 876). Although Hector wants the paperback edition of The Catiline Con- seen as the turning point in Roman history; him removed (877), in this production, spiracy. Perhaps his best known works to the moral of the story, for the Romans and the appearance of the Muse, Rhesus’ date are his contributions to the popular for Roberts, is that the defeat of a foreign mother, interrupted the removal. The series of novels featuring everyone’s threat led to disaster for the body politic. Charioteer’s corpse therefore remained favorite barbarian, Conan, including on stage after the final exit of the Cho- But the portentous beginning and the Conan the Rogue, Conan and the Man- rus, a death that heralds the day of occasional reminders of the disasters await- defeat awaiting the Trojans. hunters, Conan and the Amazon, Conan ing Rome impinge little on the story itself, The opportunity to act in Rhesus gave the Bold, Conan and the Treasury of which is pure pulp fiction, of the historical me a new appreciation for what the Python, and Conan the Marauder. His detective variety. The detective plot of the ancient actors experienced. Certainly works range from science fiction to histori- novel features the multiple murders of the decisions that were made (by the cal fiction to fantasy: He is a prime exam- director, by the designer, and by each of respectable members of the banking class, ple of a man unchecked by writer’s block. the actors) were not always those made highlighting the class conflict and political in antiquity. That is only to be expected A competent writer of dialogue (when he chaos of the late days of the Roman Repub- since our production was being targeted doesn’t use it as a vehicle for indigestible lic. A rather improbable hybrid of the well- at a different audience, with a very dif- bits of historical information), he has done connected aristocratic hero of the British ferent understanding of myth and a dif- a fair amount of historical homework detective novel and the noir private eye, ferent relationship to the performance (though his Latin, sprinkled irritatingly space. Some features of ancient per- Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger is about, needs a proofreader). Still, reading formance are worth preserving, and they our man on the street: a young quaestor on clearly enhance the audience’s apprecia- this book was like reading a “series” novel the make (in more ways than one), pos- tion of the stage action. In assigning like Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. While not sessed of a variety of relatives who come many roles to one actor, the director can unpleasant, the experience is not memorable. into the plot (a device also used, though to craft a through-line for the actors to fol- Roberts begins this installment in his better effect, by Lindsey Davis in her series low, which is then available to the audi- detective series with the line, “That summer ence as one means of understanding the of detective novels featuring Marcus Didius we received the news that Mithridates was play. Previous productions of Greek Falco). The relatives range from his stern drama had convinced me of the impact dead . . . He was the most consistent of father to his cousin Caecilia, whom he masks and doubling can have on an enemies and we would miss him.” Roberts encounters early on in the book as she kicks audience. Looking through the eyes of is working with the familiar theme of the her pretty feet in the water of a swimming Aeneas, Rhesus, and the Charioteer, great empire, destined to rule others, cor- pool and says (in the sort of turgidly inform- however, showed me the effect that rupted from within. His Rome is superior to these things have on the actor as well. ative dialogue that dooms so many histori- all its rivals and fit to rule: cal novels), “Don’t be silly. I was married C. W. Marshall teaches in the Department off because our family and the Crassi want- of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Who was left to threaten Rome? . . . The ed to mend fences after being at odds for East, from Cilicia to Palestine, was under Studies at the University of British Colum- so long and with Pompey coming back bia. Rhesus was performed in the Basement the Roman heel, only remote Parthia soon. I am just a knucklebone on the great Theatre, at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. remaining independent. To the south, John’s, Newfoundland, October 16-19, Egypt was a joke, fat and indolent as an game board of politics” (26). 2001. Directed by George Adam Kovacs, with overfed crocodile. Africa and Numidia A sudden rash of murders of men of the masks by Hallie Rebecca Marshall, it was were muzzled . . .To the north were equestrian class attracts the attention of our some Gallic tribes that had not yet been produced by MASC: Modern Actors Staging hero, whose quaestorship leaves him under- civilized, wearing long hair and trousers Classics. James Morwood’s translation of employed: Rhesus is available in the Oxford World’s and providing the comic playwrights Classics series. Part of this research was with good material for laughs. The answer, of course, was that we funded by the Social Science and Humanities Over the next week, there were four Romans would ourselves provide the Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). more murders. All of the victims were enemy. (2) continued on page 5 3 Viticulture and Classical Idealism by Victor Davis Hanson he distinctive resinated flavors of farmer by providing in-season fresh fruit expertise was not surpassed until the Tmany present-day Greek wines and juices, storable raisins, and non-per- nineteenth century with the rise of bac- are an acquired taste and may ishable wine. That versatility of the teriology, soil chemistry, and plant biolo- date back to antiquity when herbal, grape prompted the seventh-century gy. In short, ancient Greek viticulture spice, and resin preservatives were first poet Alcaeus to advise, “Plant no other was little different from the farming pro- used to maintain wine quality during tree before the vine” (fr. 342). The key tocols – animal-drawn implements, cast- storage and transport. But the taste of problem with viticulture was (and still iron tools, and the use of copper, sulfur, retsina is only one aspect of the history is) one of achieving balance. Increased and lime – that my own grandfather fol- of viticulture in ancient Greece. This harvests lowered fruit quality: The lowed on our present-day California history of grape production is one worth farmer who produced a heavy crop was farm in the early twentieth century. charting because it illuminates both likely to find it sour or with an improper Grapes were pressed into wine, in agricultural practice and cultural ideolo- ratio of sugars to acids. And although the same manner as wheat was threshed gy in the ancient Greek world. heavy pruning and thinning could pro- and milled into flour, and olives were Vinifera grapes (vitis vinifera sativa) duce good grapes, it was often at the pressed into oil, usually on the farm dur- were known to the Mycenaean Greeks. cost of having such a small harvest as to ing the classical period. Processing The mythological account of Dionysus’ bankrupt the grower. The farmer had to ensured that the small growers were not importation of the vine from Asia find water to keep the vines alive but only food producers in the polis but also Minor, made famous in Euripides’ Bac- not over-irrigate and thus ruin quality. purveyors of finished, rather than raw, chae, perhaps corroborates the evidence He had to plant in soils that were rich products in the city proper. It is rare in for wine that appears on the Linear B enough to support plentiful clusters but history when agriculturalists have some tablets. The remains of storage vessels not too high in nitrogen to promote rank say in how their harvests are sold; thus, also indicate that, by the second millen- growth. This constant need for modera- the nature of the finished produce from nium B.C., grape growing was firmly tion and balance became the creed of the Greek triad and the prominence of entrenched on the Greek mainland the farmer and permeated the mind of the farmer in the military and economic under the auspices of the palaces. Yet it the ancient viticulturalist. life of the polis perhaps explain much of was mostly with the rise of the polis (the the stability and prosperity of the Greek city-state) between the years 800 ancient Greek countryside itself. Root- and 300 B.C. that species of superior Rooted to his ed to his vineyard and orchard, with title domesticated cultivars, which produce to his land, the ancient Greek viticultur- larger and better quality fruits, became vineyard and alist was ready as a hoplite to serve in truly ubiquitous. With new ideas of pri- orchard, with title to the polis militia to protect his invest- vate property, constitutional protec- his land, the ancient ment. With his daily life cycle governed tions, and a growing anti-aristocratic by the weather, the seasons, and the ethos, the mesoi, or “middle ones,” and Greek viticulturalist religious calendar, he was independent georgoi, or “farmers,” of classical Greece was ready as a hoplite and autonomous, and so perfect fodder discovered how to graft more productive for consensual government. scions onto wild rootstocks and thus to serve in the polis The Greeks of the polis saw viticul- planted vineyards everywhere from the militia to protect his ture as emblematic of classical culture at Black Sea to Crete, and from southern investment. large. The stable populations, local Italy to northern Asia Minor. The wide councils, sturdy yeomen, and fiercely variety of soil and weather conditions in independent rural communities of clas- Greece and Italy allowed for regional sical culture were the natural dividends specialization; the Aegean islands, the The Greeks translated their first-hand of the time, patience, expertise, and bay of Naples, and Rhodes earned, as experience of grape-growing into a more investment necessary to grow good they do today, a Mediterranean-wide abstract and theoretical knowledge of grapes. Vine-growers are idealized as reputation for premium vintages. the proper combination of climate, soil, dependable, though crusty, sorts in Grapes, along with olives and grains, and vine species necessary to produce comedies such as Aristophanes’ Acharni- also became embedded in Greek cultur- premium grapes. They did not know ans and Menander’s Dyskolos. The liveli- al life as part of the so-called great triad about microbes and viruses but, through hood of seaside communities that spe- of Hellenic agronomy, an agricultural long observation and careful collation of cialized in export might depend on the diversity that helped to make the empirical observation, they managed to success of the autumn vintage, which ancient rural household self-sufficient treat crippling vineyard diseases and was a paramount factor in state policy. and the city-state prosperous. combat pests. Their treatises, such as The small northeast Greek city-state of The Greeks of the polis had quickly that by Theophrastus on establishing Akanthos sued for peace when its grape learned that grapes were uniquely the vineyard and the later derivative harvests were threatened by Brasidas adapted to all sorts of difficult terrain. Latin works by Cato the Elder, Col- and his Spartan invaders (Thucydides, Vines produced well on poor soils, with- umella, and Varro, attest to the Greek History of the Peloponnesian War 4.84.1-2). out much irrigation, and were resistant mastery of viticulture, from vine trellis- Similarly, Aristophanes (Acharnians 512) to extremities of temperature and ing, fertilization, pruning, and pest man- writes that Acharnian viticulturalists humidity. Mature vineyards, along with agement to the intricacies of wine press- outside Athens were especially critical grain and olives, gave autonomy to the ing and processing. Such a level of of Athenian leaders once their vineyards 4 were left unprotected before the annual Book Review: SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy Spartan invasions of Attica in 431-25 continued from page 3 B.C. Quite simply, as Homer noted about the Cyclopes (Odyssey 9.133), the equites. Even for Rome, this was some- hers. Well, I suppose when I’m her age Greeks believed that foreigners who did thing unusual and the city was abuzz. I’ll need a strophium too, but what’s not cultivate grapes were barbarians, One was bludgeoned, one had his wonderful about a pure silk stola is that that is, tribal and nomadic folk who did throat cut, one was stabbed, and the it combines the advantages of being not possess the political machinery or fourth was found floating in the Tiber, decently clad with those of being long-acquired expertise to ensure a sta- drowned. This last may have been acci- naked.” (134-35) ble climate for viticulturalists. dental, but after five clear murders, In Hellenistic and Roman times (323 nobody was ready to believe that. (105) Women characters are treated perfunc- B.C.-A.D. 500), agriculture in the Greek torily. Aurelia, the main female character world, in general, and viticulture, in par- John Maddox Roberts knows what sells and the step-daughter of the villain, Catilina ticular, became increasingly divorced paperbacks, and that is a succession of typ- from the classical ideal of agrarianism (Roberts keeps the Roman spelling of prop- ical genre scenes. As the mechanics of the and civic virtue. Viticulture evolved into er names), is notable for her breasts, one of a more efficient cash enterprise through plot proceed, we see our hero in a number which is described at one point as “prodi- which large absentee estate holders, by of “Roman” settings: at a triumph, at private gious,” and little else. Her main function in the use of slave gangs and skilled over- dinner parties, in the twisted back-streets of the plot is to play the shady lady of the noir seers, grew grapes aimed at particular Rome, at the Circus, in the Senate, on the detective story; while our hero is seduced specialized wine markets, often at great battlefield. Roberts combines judiciously distances and throughout the Mediter- by her charms, he also discovers that she is administered violence, sex without guilt or ranean. Athenaeus, writing around A.D. implicated in the murders. Here we see her 200, for example, provides a compre- consequences, and the requisite lashings of as the incarnation of femininity: hensive catalog of choice regional wines typical Roman excess in diet and behavior: that attests to the sophisticated com- I had seen the little statues that the Red mercial nature of Greek viticulture in The first platter set before me and the Sea sailors bring back from India. These Roman times. Yet even as exports grew, diners near me, for instance, consisted depict the handmaidens of the gods, viticulture ceased to be part of a vibrant of hard-boiled and baked eggs of many called yakshi. They have huge hemispher- Greek countryside, which for the most species of birds in a framework of pas- ical breasts that have no sag like mortal part suffered continual depopulation try, ascending tier upon tier, forming a flesh, and waists small enough to span due to emigration, banditry, and oppres- model of the great Pharos lighthouse at with both hands. Their hips and buttocks sive taxation. The second-century A.D. Alexandria. Perfumed oil burned in a are likewise round and everything about Marathon estates of Herodes Atticus bowl at its crest . . . A trireme sailed by them is a supernatural exaggeration of produced fine wines in abundance. But rowed by roast suckling pigs, which the feminine, yet they are as graceful as such latifundia left the countryside a dif- slaves dressed as sailors transferred to gazelles. They are more sensuous than ferent sort of place from that landscape the table. Roast fowl were brought, with the attendants of Venus and I had always once inhabited by the thousand or so their feathers replaced so that they regarded them as mythical, yet now I saw rugged yeomen of classical times. appeared to be alive, but they had been a living yakshi before me. (188) cunningly joined to the bodies and tails of mullets, so that they looked like mythi- Victor Davis Hanson is a professor of When not distracted by beautiful young cal, hybrid sea creatures. (21) classics at California State University at aristocratic women with large breasts bare- Fresno, and the author of several books on ancient, military, and agrarian history and In addition to his attention to food, ly covered by sheer imported fabric, Decius culture, mostly recently Carnage and Cul- Decius reveals an interest in Roman attire, is a stalwart Roman doing his best to ture (2001) and An Autumn of War together with a willingness not to be ageist uphold the mos maiorum, the way of the (2002). He is currently visiting Shifrin in his appreciation of feminine charms, as ancestors. He takes on the assignment of Professor of Military History at the United this bit of dialogue demonstrates: penetrating the Catilinarian conspiracy and States Naval Academy for the 2002-3 discovers a bizarre connection between the academic year. I thought that it was Aurelia whom I saw conspiracy and the murdered bankers. As coming to greet me, but I was mistaken. the book reaches its climax, he participates The woman crossing the atrium was her in the ritual contest and sacrifice of the mother, Orestilla. She was still a great October Horse, involving a bloody and vio- beauty, and with none of Aurelia’s lent race with the severed head of the sacri- abstracted air. “Mother looks wonderful in hers, don’t ficed horse (another set piece, with little you think?” connection to the plot). The decapitation of “Yes, but not as stunning as you.” I was the horse provides Decius with a rare enjoying this. moment for contemplation: “That’s because she hasn’t yet realized the possibilities of the material.” But, then if there is no sadness, of what She smoothed the silk downward, draw- value is the sacrifice? How could the god ing it taut. “For instance, she’s wearing take pleasure in an offering for which the a strophium and a subligaculum under continued on page 7 5 From the Editors ONE WRITER’S CLASSICS: continued from page 1 JOHN UPDIKE’S HARVARD on the future of classics in this technological world? Is there an ancient author, work of by Ward W. Briggs, Jr. classical scholarship, or archaeological site hat follows is an account of John Huston Finley, Jr. (1904-95), that you’d like to draw to our readers’ Wthe Harvard Classics Depart- son of an associate editor of The New attention? Have you been significantly ment during John Updike’s York Times, was the incumbent Eliot moved or influenced at some point by your student days (1950-54). In an era when Professor of Greek. He was a principal study of classical antiquity? Are you work- classics fears marginalization, it might author in 1945 of “General Education in ing on a project where classics intersects be well to look back at a department a Free Society,” known popularly as the and time when classics attracted the “Harvard Red Book,” Harvard’s plan to with another discipline? What, in your cream of the undergraduate population meet the educational needs of students opinion, are the most important unresolved and boasted a number of high-powered in the post-World-War-II years. With questions in the study of classical antiquity? scholars who were also gifted and dedi- one of Updike’s favorite teachers, Harry If these questions inspire you (or if you have cated teachers. One famous English Levin (1912-94), Finley developed the any other topics that you’d like to pursue), major, who mentions taking only one model course of the new General Edu- we would like to share your insights and Latin class, has captured not only some cation Program, Humanities 2, which of these people and their subjects, but made clear to generations of Harvard thoughts with the readers of Amphora. has caught the flavor of that era. Updike students the centrality of Greek litera- appears not to have been close to any of ture in the educated life. Students were Margaret A. Brucia teaches Latin at Earl the classics professors or maintained here introduced to the growth of the L. Vandermeulen High School in Port Jeffer- friendships with the classics students he epic from Homer through Vergil, Dante, son, New York. A former chair of the came into contact with. Nevertheless, and Milton. Part of Finley’s legend was Advanced Placement Latin Committee, she his sympathy with the classical world to address his class (frequently over and its presence in some of his major 1,000) with the help of a single index has also served on the APA Committees on works seems to be an outgrowth of the card. The legacy of his teaching out- Education and Outreach. Her scholarly pur- eminent role classics played in the shines his two major publications, Thucy- suits include Augustan literature and Roman humanities curriculum in the 1950’s. dides (1942) and Pindar and Aeschylus topography. Updike’s class of 1954 yielded a (1952). In addition, he was master of remarkable number of notable classi- Eliot House, a home for Exeter grads Anne-Marie Lewis teaches in the Pro- cists: two presidents of the APA like Reckford, who says of him, “John (Michael Putnam and Kenneth Reck- Finley was an enormously generous and gram in Classical Studies at York University ford), two Goodwin Award Winners, devoted housemaster as well as a bril- in Toronto, Ontario. She is currently work- (Putnam and Calvert Watkins), and one liant and charismatic teacher. He could ing on a book dealing with astrology in Humboldt Prize winner (William M. transform a student’s life with one or Roman politics and on an edition of the Calder III). Thomas Cole, Steele Com- two sentences of simple but profound translation of Aratus’ Phaenomena by the mager, James Coulter, Robert Goar, advice.” Finley is likely the model for Elizabethan poet Nicholas Allen. David Pingree, and Froma Zeitlin (Rad- Updike’s “Professor Varder” in cliffe) fill out the list. They came from “Humanities Course,” which appears in varied backgrounds, but several were The Carpentered Hen (though his name children of privilege, quite the opposite echoes that of Thornton Wilder, the of Updike, who commented that “[t]he Norton Visiting Professor, who taught private-school boys, launched by little the second half of Humanities 2 in the Harvards like Exeter and Groton, tend spring of 1951). The first stanza reads: to glide through this [freshman] year and to run aground later on strange Professor Varder handles Dante reefs, foundering in alcohol, or sinking With wry respect; while one into a dandified apathy.” can see Classicists were among the leading It’s all a lie, one must admit students at the university. Indeed, The “beauty” of the “imagery.” among the eight members of the class of 1954 who enjoyed the rare and honored Until he married at the end of his junior privilege of being inducted into Phi year, Updike lived in Lowell House, Beta Kappa in their junior year, along where John Petersen Elder (1913-85) with Updike, were four classics majors: was resident tutor in classics, later non- Cole, Commager, Reckford, and resident tutor and associate. He was Watkins. The success of these classics chairman of the department during students is due in no small part to their Updike’s Harvard years and taught Fig. 2. From Inside the Athenian native ability and secondary-school Catullus and Horace (1950-51), Treasury. Delphi. Photographed by training, but a significant factor was the Lucretius (1952-53), and History of Leo C. Curran in 1957. Photo avail- presence of some extraordinarily gifted Latin Literature in the Roman Empire able at http://wings.buffalo.edu/ teachers of undergraduates in the (spring 1953). Kenneth Reckford calls AandL/Maecenas/greece/delphi/ Harvard department. 6 ac570021.html his Catullus and Horace “the magical Book Review: SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy course that converted many of us to the continued from page 5 continuing study of classics.” In the words of his doctoral student, Michael givers felt only indifference? I never saw In short, this is a competent piece of Putnam, Elder was “one of the most tal- much point in sacrificing pigeons and generic historical fiction with a reasonably ented teachers of Latin poetry in the other such inferior victims, but the sacrifice entertaining hero and a readable style – it group of outstanding critics of classical of the October Horse has always marked literature to emerge in North America for me one of the noblest links between will get you through a couple of hours at the after the Second World War.” the Roman people and their gods. And airport. However, it lacks depth and, despite Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics were why should an old racehorse want to the Roman props (the strophia and subligac- taught by the Plato scholar William grow old and feeble? Better to perish this ula, the October Horse, and the trireme way, and then join the herd of the gods. Chase Greene (1890-1978), the first made of suckling pigs), it doesn’t feel particu- American to win the Newdigate Prize at Woe to the people when we forget these larly Roman. Students may find it useful in Oxford during his Rhodes Scholarship. duties owed to the gods. (154) Although Updike did not take this helping them to make sense of the events course, he did publish “Publius Though this is clearly meant to reflect Roman and characters of the Catilinarian conspira- Vergilius Maro, The Madison Avenue religious feeling, it sounds more like the sort of cy, but it provides less of an introduction to Hack” in The Carpentered Hen: paganism found in the Conan series. Romans Roman history and culture than the works of Colleen McCullough, Steven Saylor, and It takes a heap o’ pluggin’t’ make a seldom, as far as I know, reflected upon the classic sell, sadness of sacrifice, or imagined the victims Lindsey Davis, or the startlingly beautiful Fer folks are mighty up-to-date, an’ joining the herd of the gods. novel by Jane Alison, The Love Artist. jittery as hell; The ending of the novel is flat and leaves They got no yen to set aroun’ with Martha Malamud teaches in the Vergil in their laps some loose ends dangling. As Decius uncov- When they kin read the latest news in ers more about the conspiracy and reports Classics Department at the State University twenty-four-point-caps. back to Cicero, events unravel at Rome, and of New York at Buffalo and is the editor of Catilina flees the city. One loose end is the the journal Arethusa. This poem referred to the recent adver- tisement by the Heritage Club of a abrupt disappearance of Aurelia from the story. In the penultimate chapter, Decius deluxe edition of the Georgics with these mphora (ISSN 1542-2380) is published twice a words: “The people were mighty hun- bids farewell to her (evincing little intelli- Ayear by the American Philological Association gry, for there was a famine in the land.” (APA). The APA, founded in 1869 by “professors, gence in her earlier appearances, she friends, and patrons of linguistic science,” is now The other Rhodes Scholar was seems idiotically unconcerned by Catilina’s the principal learned society in North America for Mason Hammond (1903-2002), the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, exile), and then ponders her fate: literatures, and civilizations. While the majority of descended from a Mayflower family and its members are university and college classics a classmate of Finley and Dow in the teachers, members also include scholars in other legendary Harvard Class of 1925. Ham- Despondently, I turned and walked disciplines, primary and secondary school teachers, toward the Forum. I knew that I would and interested lay people. The APA produces sev- mond was one of the few Americans to eral series of scholarly books and texts; the journal take a first in Greats at Oxford (1927). never see her again, unless she were Transactions of the American Philological Association; He returned as Pope Professor of Latin hauled back to Rome in chains, for exe- and an annual meeting each January in conjunction cution. I prayed that she, at least, would with the Archaeological Institute of America. Language and Literature (1928-73) and All of the APA’s programs are grounded in the published The Augustan Principate in get out of this alive. I had ceased to rigor and high standards of traditional philology, 1933. Although he attracted some care about her guilt. I no longer saw with the study of ancient Greek and Latin at their innocence anywhere I looked. (245) core. However, we also aim to present a broad view notable graduate students (chiefly Ram- of classical culture and the ancient Mediterranean say MacMullen), he was not known for world to a wide audience. In short, we seek to pre- Does she survive, or doesn’t she? The reader serve and transmit the wisdom and values of classi- his teaching of undergraduates. cal culture and to find new meanings appropriate to In some years, undergraduates taking never finds out, at least not in this installment the complex and uncertain world of the twenty- beginning Greek would have encoun- first century. of the series. Roberts moves right on to the The APA’s activities serve one or more of tered the crusty epigraphist/archaeolo- final battle and never picks up this thread of these overarching goals: gist Sterling Dow (1903-95). He culti- • To ensure an adequate number of well-trained, the plot. Similarly, the narrator’s asides early vated undergraduates and graduates for inspirational classics teachers at all levels, on in the book suggest that Julius Caesar will kindergarten through graduate school; whom the subjective generalizations of • To give classics scholars and teachers the tools Finley and the literary appreciations of play a major role in the novel but, although they need to preserve and extend our knowl- edge of classical civilization and to communi- Elder and Cedric Whitman (1916-79) he does appear, he is by no means central. cate that knowledge as widely as possible; held less appeal. Whitman, the author of Indeed, as if noticing the same thing, the nar- • To develop the necessary infrastructure to Homer and the Heroic Tradition (1958) achieve these goals and to make the APA a rator leaves open the question of the nature model for other societies confronting similar and influential studies of Sophocles and of his involvement in the Catilinarian conspir- challenges. Aristophanes, offered Homer to The APA welcomes everyone who shares this acy: “Was Caesar involved? He was certain- vision to participate in and support its programs. advanced Greek students. In the fall of For further information, please write to the Ameri- 1950, Robert A. Brooks (1920-76) ly capable of it, but I do not think his defense can Philological Association at 292 Logan Hall, offered Sallust and Tacitus, concluding of the conspirators was evidence” (245). University of Pennsylvania, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304, or at the e-mail his short career at Harvard in the next More, much more, of Caesar will be seen address: [email protected]. The APA Web term with a graduate course in Roman later in the series, but his presence in this site is at www.apaclassics.org. satire. novel is unsatisfying. continued on page 8 7 One Writer’s Classics continued from page 7 Book Review: Catilina’s Riddle An English major, Updike names government at Wesleyan College and by John T. Ramsey only one classicist from whom he took a then president of Skidmore College.) course, Eric A. Havelock (1903-88), an Henry, called “Hub,” describes his two- Steven W. Saylor. Catilina’s Riddle. St. English leftist who had written cogently year employment cleaning the glue out on Catullus. In “Apologies to Harvard of plywood-gluing machines. He says: Martin’s Press (1-888-330-8477), 1993. The Phi Beta Kappa Poem, 1973,” Updike Pp. 480. Paper $6.99. ISBN 0-312- mentions “crossing [the Yard] to Latin / “It’s very soothing work. The inside 98211-9; or Ivy Books (1-800-733-3000), Under Cerberean Dr. Havelock / in of a gluer is an excellent place for a Division of Ballantine Books, 1993. Pp. revolving Greek quotations in your Sever 2.” This was presumably Latin 1. 480. Paper $6.50. ISBN 0-8041-1269-X. At this time, Havelock’s important work head. I memorized nearly the whole of on Plato was yet to come. Havelock, his the Phaedo that way.” He gestured toward his desk, and Orson saw that n Catilina’s Riddle (1993), Steven Saylor student Tom Cole recalled, tried and many of Henry’s books were green failed as chairman both at Harvard and Loeb editions of Plato and Aristotle, Ipresents the further adventures of his fiction- Yale “to restore to a broadened and in Greek. Their spines were worn; al detective Gordianus, who was introduced modernized classics curriculum some- they looked read and reread. For the in Roman Blood (1991) and given an encore thing like the central role in humanistic first time, the thought of being at Har- in The Arms of Nemesis (1992), two histori- studies which the discipline had tradi- vard frightened him. tionally enjoyed.” cal novels, like the present one, set in the age Updike brought with him an interest The books turn out to be worn because of Cicero and Caesar. In his 1993 novel, in myth and religion of the sort treated they were bought secondhand. Saylor sends Gordianus into an early retire- by Arthur Darby Nock (1902-63), the When Orson asks Hub why he came ment in the Etruscan countryside. When the Frothingham Professor of the History of to Harvard, he replies, “Two reasons, story opens, it is June 1, 63 B.C. Gordianus, Raphael Demos and Werner Jaeger.” Religion in the Harvard Divinity his wife Bethesda (a former slave, partly of School. Updike’s light poem “Comp. Demos (1892-1968), Alford Professor of Religion” in his Telephone Poles (1963), Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Jewish ancestry, purchased from Alexandria), describes the universal condition of man Civil Polity, was a Greek who had come his sixteen-year-old adopted son Meto (also a that gives rise to religion. “It all begins to Harvard in 1913, where he washed former slave), and his six-year-old daughter with fear of mana. / Next there comes dishes and may have been the only jani- Diana are living on a farm approximately the love of tribe,” concluding in the tor of the Lampoon building to become a half a day’s ride north of Rome on the Cas- chaired professor. He occupied a mag- fourth stanza: sian Way. Lucius Claudius, a grateful patri- nificent study in Adams House, where This worshipped One grows so Putnam resided. He edited two books cian client, willed this farm to Gordianus enlightened, of Plato’s writings and published The and, thanks to Cicero’s adroit management Vast, and high He, in a blur, Philosophy of Plato in 1939. He was of the case on behalf of Gordianus, the Explodes; and men are left as devoted to undergraduate teaching and attempt of the Claudian family to contest the frightened seemed, to many, the embodiment of will was unsuccessful. Gordianus’ property in Of mana as they ever were. Socratic reason and wit. Etruria is surrounded on all four sides by Jaeger, described by his student Updike’s Harvard career began with Louis Feldman as “the most influential Claudian estates, and all of these Claudian what he called “the compression bends classical scholar in Germany during the cousins have made it very plain that they of the freshman year.” The triggering period between the world wars and in resent their new neighbor – all, that is, except incident may have been his first America thereafter,” had come from encounter with his freshman roommate for the lone female, Claudia. She is an inde- Berlin, where he was a student of practi- Edward Allen (“E. A.”) French, a clas- pendent matron, ahead of her time in main- cally every great German classicist of sics major (now a minister in Stellen- taining control over her own affairs and prop- the time, most importantly Ulrich von bosch, South Africa). French was a Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931). erty without the oversight of a male guardian. unique spirit, who, with his friend The author of important studies of the She, at least, is on speaking terms with the Calder (both in Finley’s Eliot House), growth of Aristotle’s thought, and the hero Gordianus, and she even shows him became a devotee of Werner Jaeger history of Greek culture, and an editor (1888-1961), walking him to and fro on some neighborly good will. Through her, of the works of Gregory of Nyssa, Jaeger errands around campus and in town, and there is some hope that a peaceful coexis- taught Aeschylus and Demosthenes, having lunch with him. French forms tence of sorts can be worked out with Manius and a survey for undergraduates, Greek the basis of one of Updike’s two Har- Tragedy (1952-53). Claudius to the north, Publius Claudius to the vard short stories, “The Christian French and Updike parted ways after west (where already a dispute has arisen Roommates.” In the story, Orson their freshman year, although Updike over water rights to the stream that divides Ziegler, with his life meticulously sometimes came for meals to Eliot planned, comes to Harvard from South the properties), and Gnaeus Claudius in the House. Harvard had begun a certain Dakota and is roomed with Henry hills to the east across the Cassian Way. process of refining the boy from a Penn- Palamountain, who had hitchhiked from The forty-seven-year-old Gordianus had sylvania farm, a process he described in Oregon and was in search of God. “Apologies to Harvard” as to “chew / welcomed his bequest from Lucius Claudius (Joseph Cornwall Palamountain, Jr. And chew and chew for one quadrenni- as providing an unexpected opportunity to [1920-87] was the senior tutor at Adams join the landed gentry and escape from the House, who later became a professor of continued on page 14 8 dangers and intrigue of the capital, which vor of what it must have been like to live in conveys all these points as part of a speech he had come to loathe. He has retired from that tumultuous period. He demonstrates a put into the mouth of Cicero (377). his former profession of “Finder” and left the thorough mastery of the ancient sources, The book includes three maps/plans (of assisting of advocates as a private investiga- and he uses his creative imagination to fill the fictional estates in Etruria, the city of tor in the capable hands of his elder adopt- in the gaps with the most plausible fiction. Rome, and most of Italy) and is equipped ed son Eco, now twenty-seven and happily Everything from the Roman calendar to with a helpful one-page Nomenclatura that married in Rome. It takes Saylor only a few Roman elections, Roman topography, and explains succinctly the spelling of proper pages to plunge the reader into this exciting Roman family life is presented so vividly, so names and the system for reckoning days period of Roman history: The orator Cicero naturally, and (what is especially appreciat- of the month in the Roman calendar. The is consul; the patrician Lucius Sergius Catili- ed) so accurately that this novel makes an work is divided into four parts: It begins na, Cicero’s former rival for the consulship, excellent companion piece to a Latin course with the scene on the farm, then moves to is campaigning aggressively to win the on either Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae or Rome for Meto’s “coming of age” ceremo- office for the following year (62 B.C.); and Cicero’s Catilinarian orations. It can also ny, then shifts back to the farm, and finally there is talk of armed revolution being be read as part of a general course on alternates between Rome, the farm, and the inevitable, whether or not Catilina is suc- Roman culture. I have used Catilina’s Rid- northern front where the hero and his family cessful at the polls. Gordianus had hoped to dle with great success in both types of become swept into Catilina’s army and the distance himself from such concerns, but his courses at the University of Illinois at Chica- final battle. What is particularly admirable old employer Cicero refuses to allow him to go: in the fall of 1998 in an upper-level about Saylor’s treatment of Catilina is the enjoy his retirement undisturbed. By page Latin class, and in the fall of 1999 in a gen- deft way he captures what must have been 22, the dashing young Marcus Caelius, a eral course aimed at first-semester college a powerful force of charisma emanating protégé of Cicero and Marcus Crassus, students who had no particular background from Catilina and yet does not lose sight of pays Gordianus a visit. He conveys a confi- or previous interest in Roman culture but the fact that Catilina was himself an enig- dential and urgent request straight from simply wanted to sample the field. ma. Saylor makes his position clear on this Cicero (at least so he claims). To Gordianus’ The historical slips are generally so infre- issue in an “Author’s Note” at the end of astonishment, he is asked to play host to quent and relatively minor as scarcely to the novel (461-63). Catilina whenever Catilina makes his fre- matter. For instance, the thirty-three-year-old I have sampled three other Gordianus quent journeys to the north of Etruria where Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus could hard- novels in addition to this one: The Arms of his follower Gaius Manlius is raising a rag- ly have been a candidate for the praetor- Nemesis (1992), which is set the shadow of tag army. Gordianus naturally distrusts ship (172-73) since the minimum age the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 71 B.C.; Caelius, a professed double agent who requirement for that office was thirty-nine. The Venus Throw (1996), which revolves explains that he is pretending to be a follow- Also, politicians were not at liberty to give around the trial of Caelius in 56 B.C. and er of the revolutionary Catilina while secret- speeches wherever a crowd gathered his intrigues with Clodia; and A Murder on ly working for Cicero. All of Gordianus’ (195). The Romans had no right of assem- the Appian Way (1997), which is set in 52 protests and resistance, however, are in bly, and crowds were tightly controlled by B.C., after the murder of Publius Clodius. I vain. Gordianus’ little daughter Diana the magistrates, who alone could call a have enjoyed them all but have to confess makes the shocking discovery of a headless public meeting or assembly. To take one that Catilina’s Riddle remains my favorite. corpse in the stable soon after Caelius’ final not so minor example, Saylor twice departure and, as a consequence, Gor- (371, 377) gives the false impression that John T. Ramsey (Ph.D. 1975, Harvard dianus reluctantly decides that it is best to the new statue of Jupiter that Cicero had University) has been on the faculty at the Uni- yield to the request made of him. He cannot caused to be erected on December 3, 63 versity of Illinois at Chicago since 1975 and help but recall Caelius’ words about a rid- B.C., the very day on which Catilina’s is currently Professor and Chair of the Depart- dle that Catilina had posed to his followers accomplices were arraigned before the ment of Classics and Mediterranean Studies. on the night of their blood oath: “I see two Senate (Cicero, Third Speech against Catili- He is the author of a commentary on Sallust's bodies. One is thin and wasted, but it has a na 20-21), stood “beside” the Temple of Bellum Catilinae (1984) and co-author (with great head. The other body is big and Concord, at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. E. J. Barnes) of the Cicero and Sallust reader strong – but it has no head at all!” This cannot be, because we are informed in the Ecce Romani series. In collaboration In this novel, Saylor has given the mod- by Cicero himself in De Divinatione 2.46 with A. Lewis Licht of the Physics Department ern reader a magnificent shortcut for sam- that this new statue of Jupiter was erected at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he pling Roman culture, doing for Republican on the summit of the Capitoline. Saylor, wrote The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Rome what Robert Graves did for the early however, is well aware of many details Funeral Games (1997), and his commentary Roman Empire in his two novels, I, Claudius connected with the statue – how it was on Cicero's first and second Philippics will be (1934) and Claudius the God (1935). given a new orientation so that it looked published in 2003 by Cambridge University Soon the reader is in the presence of Catili- out over the Forum and the Temple of Con- Press in the Greek and Latin Classics series. na and encountering such major Roman fig- cord below and how Cicero caused the Professor Ramsey can be contacted by e-mail ures as Marcus Crassus and Julius Caesar. erection of this statue to coincide with the at [email protected]. Saylor has a real gift for capturing the fla- revelation of the conspiracy. Saylor nicely 9 Watching Medusa WHY GREEK SPORT HISTORY? by Lois V. Hinckley by Donald G. Kyle

o one ever looked on her unchanged. fter two decades, I am no longer chronology, and Alexander the Great N Aapologetic about studying Greek and the Romans made announcements sport, but I remain conscious of to Greeks assembled at the great games. the need to explain why and how I do Sporting concepts – contest (agon), She had snakes for hair, a permanent so. Therefore, I welcomed Amphora’s prize (athlon), excellence (arete), glory and ever-changing wave that curled and timely invitation to publish this piece (kleos), and physical and moral beauty straightened between the 2002 Winter Olympics and (kalokagathia) – were central to Greek at its own many-headed will. World Cup and the upcoming 2004 culture. Why was Odysseus enraged When the male hero saw her, he Summer Olympics to be held in Athens. when insulted among the Phaeacians as “You study what? Why?” Perhaps my “not an athlete” (Homer, Odyssey 8.159- was turned to stone passions as a young man for sport and 60)? Why did cities laud their athletic forever hard – forever impotent. for antiquity compelled me to study victors with honors, rewards, and even ancient sport. Perhaps, as Polybius said heroization? Why were extravagant, She was a moment of Eternity: of the value of experience for historians impractical chariots so prized, and why a door that only had – poor fools! – (Histories 12.25g), it was useful that I were boxing scars worn with pride? Why a one-way swing. played sports, enthusiastically if not that did athletes pray for “victory or death” successfully. My games certainly taught at Olympia? Why were athletic youths And she dwelt there in marbled halls, me things about myself, about life, and so eagerly courted? Why were women, crowded with statues about human nature. In graduate school, some with names like Hipparete (which (only the best quality stone, as befits the sea I asked my learned and wise advisor, means “Equestrian Excellence”) and god’s lover) Dan Geagan, if a historical study of Elpinice (which means “Hope of Victo- of mortal men in various poses of entry and sport in Athens might make a disserta- ry”), excluded from even watching the challenge. tion, and he replied that “Good history Olympics? is good history – whatever the subject.” Why not study something that stu- No female statues. And so it began. Perhaps by now I dents, and the general public, readily No. should have moved on, as one scholar find interesting and relevant? We’ve On women, you, Medusa, caused suggested, to “serious” topics, or per- always traced our interests (democracy, quite different changes. haps I remain convinced of how serious, theater, and social issues, among others) sometimes deadly serious, games were back to Greece. Sports now are more They would enter to the ancients. As my Austrian friend prominent than ever in our media and Ingomar Weiler has said, “we are simply society. Today Myron’s Discobolus per- pale and stiffly hesitant, ancient historians who happen to study haps rivals the Parthenon as an interna- from years of pedestals, sport.” tionally recognized symbol. However uncertain how to take this trip – their own, Few customs were as essential to questionably, untold millions associate their first – Greek ethnicity, and to the emergence the modern Olympics, with their unfamiliar with the movements of choice, and exportation of Greek culture, as invented traditions and supposedly Hel- after years of being kept on shelves Greek athletics. Can we understand lenic trappings, with ancient Greece. Canadians without hockey, Americans or moved around the marriage board without baseball, Europeans without – these possible queens – soccer? Contrasting themselves with like pawns one trades for castles or for “barbarians” (as in Lucian’s Anacharsis), Few customs were knights. Greeks identified themselves by their as essential to Greek But here athletics, which involved nudity (Plato, ethnicity, and to the they groped, Republic 5.452c and Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.6.5) and emergence and exportation uncertain how they came wreath prizes at panhellenic games of Greek culture, as or why. (Herodotus, Persian Wars 8.26). Any true Greek athletics. Slowly their eyes would lift, their gaze polis, or Greek city-state, had to have a askance, gymnasium as well as a theater (Pausa- heads tilted like a question mark. nias, Description of Greece 10.4.1). Sport You’d stand there patiently. was a panhellenic phenomenon. Greeks Evidence for Greek sport is relatively took their sport with them west to abundant, but, ironically, scholars have At last, their eyes met yours. Magna Graecia and north to the Black often studied that evidence piecemeal – Then Sea and kept their sport throughout the form, the genre, the iconography, came the change. Hellenistic and Roman regions and eras. the aesthetics, the rhetoric – with little continued on page 11 A showplace of Greek pride and identi- attention to the phenomenon itself. Yes, ty, the Olympics endured from the the literary works specifically on sport eighth century B.C. to at least sometime are limited and outside the canon, but around A.D. 400. The later Greek world Homer and Pindar, and their audiences turned to the list of Olympic sprint race and patrons, held sport worthy of (stadion) victors as their universal poetry. Contests abounded in Greek 10 mythology, and semiotics and cultural construction of Watching Medusa funeral games the athletic ideal. My sport course continued from page 10 were a stock spends little time on the athletic events element of themselves and does not dwell upon ancient epic. famous ancient puzzles, such as the As struck spark flowers into flame, Aristophanes, pentathlon, Phayllus’ jump, or the so- as flame flows red-gold along birches’ bark, Plutarch, and called Marathon run. I teach ancient so flooded their pale skins the blush of even St. Paul sport, not ancient sports – sport history, blood often used ath- not sports history. spreading from eyes to face and neck; letic metaphors. We should approach Greek sport not their hair would rise and brighten, thick with Physical educa- as an isolated pastime but as an integral tion was an I part of Greek social, civic, and religious life. issue for Plato, life. Pericles’ Funeral Oration (Thucy- The flood roared onward, downward – whose school dides, History of the Peloponnesian War torso, limbs and feet. arose in the 2.38) applauds Athens’ “plentiful recre- A little larger, taller now they stood, Academy, origi- ations for the mind” and “the many muscles would ripple under rosy skin. nally a public gymnasium, as Aristotle’s contests and sacrifices [or festivals] held Their stance was centered now. The air did in the Lyceum, another gymnasium. throughout the year.” The Old Oligarch Vase painters and sculptors routinely (Pseudo-Xenophon, Constitution of the around them hummed with presence and turned to sport. The Charioteer of Delphi Athenians 1.13, 2.9-10) disapprovingly with potency. and Panathenaic amphoras are master- confirms the popularity of games and pieces, and Nike, goddess of victory, festivals in Athens. Not all Greeks were You would smile, adorns many vases and coins. Archaeolo- intellectuals, or athletes, but almost all return their homage salutation, gists, notably at Olympia and Nemea, were sports enthusiasts. We should take hands and lead them to your rocky cliff continue to find athletic monuments, come down from Olympia, so to speak, equipment, and inscriptions. Cumula- to study local games, monuments, and to turn the four directions, view the world tively the evidence for Greek athletics facilities. Also, we must see Greek sport they’d won is undeniably rich, yet textbooks and in the context of Mediterranean history. for choosing paths in. works on the Greek achievement have, With their regularized public athletic until recently, largely overlooked sport. contests, the Greeks were distinctively Food and drink, a night Greek sport history has come of age agonistic, but to deny that there was of journeying dreams but not without encountering some sport in earlier cultures is anachronistic raised eyebrows. Older classicists from Eurocentrism. on that same height. Oxford and Cambridge (and American Ancient sport and modern sport have With dawn they’d go – emulators), for example, have been striking parallels – corruption, obsession rebirthed from stone to flesh, transformed understandably skeptical. They had with winning, violence, and professional- to person, never to return. played games as schoolboys at ism – but we should not seek lessons Arnoldian public schools and fully and warnings from ancient sport. The Statues remained behind, in marble halls. absorbed an amateurist ideology. As upcoming Olympics in Athens will stim- shown in the brilliant film Chariots of ulate interest in classics and Greek sport, Sometimes Fire (1981), proper sport was supposed but we must not use the ancient you’d flick the duster. to be played, not too well or seriously, Olympics to vindicate or excoriate the for relaxation. To approach sport, which modern Olympics. We should not push Lois V. Hinckley received her Ph.D. from was a diversion from one’s intellectual notions of Olympic revival and continu- the University of North Carolina, Chapel education, as a subject of historical ity if reformulation and discontinuity are Hill, in 1972. She has been a classics inquiry seemed suspect. Today, like the the historical reality. The ancient so-called “critics” of Greek sport from Olympics, and Greek sport overall, merit teacher for thirty years (Princeton University, Xenophanes on, modern academics still and reward attention in their own right. West Virginia University, and University of decry the fame and fortunes of coaches Southern Maine). She is also a folk singer, and athletes, perplexed that society in Donald G. Kyle is Professor and Chair of poet, and songwriter (with a CD coming out general under-appreciates intellectuals. History, and a Distinguished Teaching Fel- in 2003). Her poem “Elpenor's Last Exit” Scholars naturally emphasize the mind low, at the University of Texas at Arlington. A was published in Volume 1, Issue 1 of over the body, but the physicality and Canadian, he received his Ph.D. from McMas- passionate competitiveness of the ter University in 1981, and he has taught Amphora. Her major classical interests are Greeks must be acknowledged and ancient history in Texas since 1984. He has mythology, Homer, Horace, and Greek appreciated. authored Athletics in Ancient Athens lyric. As another facet of the richness of (1987), Spectacles of Death in Ancient Greek civilization, sport makes an Rome (1998), and numerous articles and attractive supplement to, not a substi- book chapters on aspects of the history of tute for, traditional topics. Like other ancient sport. classical studies courses, sport courses can be fun, or rigorous, or both. They can be adapted for different levels, from staging mock Olympics at elementary school field days to pursuing the 11 ON TRANSLATING THE POETRY OF CATULLUS by Susan McLean

hen many excellent and accu- giacs, I have alternated lines of hexame- Although scholars have disagreed about Wrate free-verse translations of ter and pentameter. whether the last stanza should be con- Catullus’ poems exist, it may Rhyme was not part of Republican sidered part of the same poem, the con- seem old-fashioned to try to translate Latin poetics, but it is an important com- trast it introduces – between the irra- his poems into verse with rhyme and ponent of the musicality of English verse tional physical symptoms of his infatua- meter. Yet I have always thought that and is particularly vital to witty, humor- tion and his rational awareness of the Catullus’ poems sound flat and dull in ous, or satirical verse, where the unex- dangers of giving in to it – seems to me free-verse translations. His colloquial pectedness of the rhymes can be part of to be typical of the ambivalence he dis- tone, urbane wit, and biting satire lose the humor, and where rhyme can be used plays in the Lesbia poems as a whole, so much of their punch without the coun- to add emphasis and closure. Rhymes I have chosen to treat that stanza as part terbalancing elegance and skill of his that are too close together can sound jing- of the poem. The Latin poem is in sap- prosody, and the verbal music of his ly and can force the poet to twist the phic meter, which I have translated into poems tends to be lost with the meter. poem’s meaning to fit the rhymes. I have iambic tetrameter with rhymes every On the other hand, most of the existing therefore generally avoided rhymed cou- other line: verse translations of Catullus’ poems are plets, preferring to rhyme alternate lines. from decades (or even centuries) ago Rather than sacrifice meaning for the That man seems like a god to me, and often suffer from inaccuracy, archaic sake of the rhyme, I have, where neces- or greater (if that isn’t rash diction, unnatural syntax, and a tenden- sary, used off-rhymes or resorted to dif- to say), who sits across from you cy to censor or euphemize. ferent rhyme schemes that better fit the and often sees and hears you laugh content. When faced with a poem of Cat- so sweetly – things that rob poor me ullus with an uneven number of lines (a of all my senses. When I see common situation), I prefer to use inter- you, Lesbia, all power of speech It is true, as Robert Frost locking rhymes or a rhymed couplet to immediately abandons me; said, that “Poetry is what is round off the end, rather than increase lost in translation.” My the number of lines to an even number. my tongue is paralyzed; throughout Catullus, scholars believe, was born my limbs a subtle burning flies; translations are no longer around 84 B.C.E. and died around 54 my ears ring with internal noise; Catullus’ poems; they are B.C.E. The two Latin poems below are and double darkness dims my eyes. part of a cycle of connected poems in mine, based on his words. which Catullus chronicled his real (or Catullus, leisure does you harm – you run wild and embrace excess. imagined) love affair with a mistress he Before now, kings and wealthy towns calls “Lesbia.” Catullus 51 is traditional- have been destroyed by idleness. In translating Catullus’ poems, I have ly considered the first poem of the love tried to achieve a compromise, sticking affair and, interestingly, the first three In Catullus 87, on the other hand, closely to the meaning of his lines, stanzas of this poem are a translation of a Catullus seems to be looking back on an adding or leaving out as little as possi- poem written by the Greek poet Sappho affair that has ended. There is a sugges- ble, using a colloquial, natural tone and of Lesbos, who was born around 612 tion of reproach in his reminder to Les- syntax, and avoiding censorship, while B.C.E. In Catullus 51, we see Catullus bia of how much and how truly he loved trying to appeal to the ear by using in the grip of passionate infatuation: her, with the implication that she did verse forms in the English poetic tradi- not return the quantity or quality of his tion. I have made no effort to reproduce Catullus 51 love. But he is also implying that his classical meters because they are poorly love should be considered one of the Ille mi par esse deo videtur, suited to English poetry, which depends great loves of all time: on stressed and unstressed syllables, not ille, si fas est, superare divos, long and short vowels. Instead, I have qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit Catullus 87 written all of my translations in iambic dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis meter, the meter that is most common eripit sensus mihi; nam simul te, Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere in English poetry and that most closely Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi amatam approximates natural English speech [vocis in ore] vere, quantum a me Lesbia rhythms. My iambics contain frequent lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus amata mea’s. substitutions (of anapests, trochees, flamma demanat, sonitu suopte nulla fides ullo fuit umquam foedere spondees, and pyrrhics) for individual tintinant aures, gemina teguntur tanta, lumina nocte. quanta in amore tuo ex parte iambic feet, to avoid monotony. reperta meast. Although I do not use as many different otium, Catulle, tibi molestumst: meters as Catullus did, I have generally otio exultas nimiumque gestis. otium et reges prius et beatas (Latin text from Catullus, Tibullus, and let the length of his lines determine the perdidit urbes. Pervigilium Veneris, 2nd ed., 1988, edit- length of my own, with the result that ed by G. P. Goold; used by permission my lines tend to range from iambic (Latin text from Catullus, Tibullus, and of Harvard University Press) tetrameter to iambic hexameter, with Pervigilium Veneris, 2nd ed., 1988, edit- iambic pentameter being the most com- ed by G. P. Goold; used by permission mon. Occasionally, in translating his ele- of Harvard University Press) 12 The Latin poem is in elegiac couplets, Film Review: Cleopatra (1963) with alternating lines of dactylic hexam- eter and pentameter. I have chosen to by Martin M. Winkler imitate the pattern of alternating lines Sources vary, but each of these parts was of hexameter and pentameter, but in ge cannot wither her, nor custom to have been at least three hours long. iambic meter. To call attention to the “Astale / her infinite sameness.” Thus Mankiewicz’s own cut of the whole film ran balanced, polished quality of the verse, spake a waggish wit, both criticizing Eliza- seven and a half hours. The two parts were I have rhymed all of the lines, in an to be shown in theaters on alternate days. alternating pattern: beth Taylor and expressing the general dis- appointment that met the release of Cleopa- In retrospect, it is painfully obvious that No woman can say truly she’s been tra, one of Hollywood’s most notorious his- such an ambitious project was unrealistic loved as much torical epics. To an extent unique in film his- and impractical, and the inevitable hap- as you, my Lesbia, were loved pened. On the order of studio boss Darryl by me. tory, Twentieth Century-Fox’s mega-produc- No faithfulness in any bond was tion had been off to several false starts, had F. Zanuck, newly returned to power, the ever such undergone cost overruns on a scale that film was ruthlessly cut down to a running as mine, in love for you, has brought the studio close to bankruptcy, had time of just over four hours, to be shown in proved to be. become infamous for the torrid affair of Eliz- one part. It was soon cut even further for It is true, as Robert Frost said, that abeth Taylor and Richard Burton during pro- general release to three and a quarter “Poetry is what is lost in translation.” duction, and finally fell victim to a studio hours. Most audiences saw about half or My translations are no longer Catullus’ power struggle. Nobody who had believed less of what Mankiewicz had intended. poems; they are mine, based on his in the artistic value of this gigantic undertak- Imagine a film twice as long as the 1959 words. People who want to read his ing was satisfied with what eventually Ben-Hur, and you’ll get a good idea of poems must learn Latin to do so. But my translations are intended for an audi- reached the screen. Neither are many film what the size of Cleopatra might have ence that does not read Latin, or does historians or viewers today. But a fresh look been. Imagine a film about as long as Ben- not read it well enough to read much of at one of Hollywood’s last Roman epics until Hur, and you’ll get a good idea of how it. I am therefore trying to make the Gladiator (2000) reveals how astonishingly much was left out of Mankiewicz’s original. translations as appealing and accessible good much of Cleopatra actually is. Viewers Its overall rhythm and structure were to a non-specialist as possible, by clari- can now judge for themselves. The four-hour destroyed. So was some of its continuity. fying obscure allusions and using lan- guage that will sound contemporary – widescreen version, available for some More importantly, so was Richard Burton’s casual, racy, pungent, direct – much as years on laserdisc, has recently been reis- performance. A number of his best scenes Catullus no doubt sounded to his origi- sued on DVD. The set also includes addition- were deleted. Some supporting characters’ nal audience. Few authors have ever al material, such as a two-hour documentary scenes were cut altogether. No wonder that used a wider range of tones in their writ- on the film’s production. the final result is uneven – partly excellent, ing than Catullus did, from lyrical to When he was approached to salvage partly embarrassing, but on the whole still humorous to anguished to scurrilous. There is something in Catullus for all an expensive project that was already in creditable. Elizabeth Taylor came in for readers, if they can only get past the serious trouble, writer-director Joseph L. especially harsh criticism from reviewers, as language barrier. Mankiewicz was not particularly interested. my opening quotation shows. But he took on the project as an easy way All this is unfortunate, because the film’s Susan McLean is a Professor of English of freeing himself from his contract with the director was one of Hollywood’s most literate at Southwest State University in Marshall, studio. (Had he but known . . .) Once on and intelligent auteurs. Mankiewicz had Minnesota. She studied Latin as an under- graduate at Harvard University, where she board, Mankiewicz fell under the spell of pulled off the still unequaled feat of winning won the John Osborne Sargent Prize for his subject and became deeply involved in four writing and directing Oscars in two con- Latin Translation. Her translations of Cleopatra. He also realized that he had to secutive years, for A Letter to Three Wives in Catullus and Horace have appeared in The jettison everything done so far and start 1949 and All About Eve in 1950. After Formalist, The Classical Outlook, and from the beginning. Mankiewicz never lost Cleopatra, he was to make the most sophisti- Blue Unicorn. She is planning eventually sight of the main theme he wanted to give cated screen adaptation of Ben Jonson (The to publish all of her translations of Catullus’ poems in book form. the film, despite endless crises and the Honey Pot in 1967, after Volpone). Unlike necessity to write and rewrite most of the Cecil B. DeMille’s 1934 Cleopatra, which its script during a shooting process that would director intended to be “an epic with sex,” have presented immense logistical problems Mankiewicz’s vision was to create “an inti- even if everything had gone smoothly. mate epic.” This may sound like a contradic- (Mankiewicz later wryly joked that Cleopa- tion in terms, but it is an attempt to integrate tra was “the hardest three pictures I ever character portrayal and plot development made.”) He envisioned nothing less than a closely with the spectacle and action double epic: a two-part film that told the required of epic cinema. Mankiewicz’s story of, first, Caesar and Cleopatra (as Cleopatra, for instance, envisions Rome and Shaw had done) and, second, Antony and continued on page 14 Cleopatra (as Shakespeare had done). 13 Film Review: Cleopatra (1963) One Writer’s Classics continued from page 13 continued from page 8

Egypt as a unified empire civilizing the he marvels at the moving pictures produced um, / And spit me out, by God, a gentle- man.” world – a rather American perspective. by this ancestor of the cinema. Updike’s other full-length Harvard Some of her key scenes take place in the The film’s two epic set pieces, the high- story is “One of My Generation” in tomb of Alexander the Great. Her tragedy lights of their respective parts, also deserve Museums and Women (1972) in which Ed lies in the fact that neither Caesar nor mention. The first is Cleopatra’s triumphal Popper of Nebraska, the narrator’s Antony is a match for her foresight and entry into a majestic Roman Forum. Together roommate after freshman year, is ambition. This makes the film’s last scene with little Caesarion she is enthroned between obsessed with literature. Updike’s pas- sion was also for literature and particu- especially poignant, when Cleopatra is lying the paws of a black sphinx so huge that it larly for the classically-inspired poets of in state on Alexander’s translucent alabaster barely fits through a not entirely accurate the Age of Milton. For his senior thesis, sarcophagus. The scene invites comparison reconstruction of the Arch of Constantine. The however, Updike chose the highly con- with its equivalent in DeMille’s film. DeMille documentary mentioned above twice misiden- genial Robert Herrick (1591-1674), who shows Cleopatra sitting upright on her throne tifies it as the Arch of Titus – o Hollywood, o would later provide the epigraph and in a tableau appropriate for the 1.33:1 mores! Yes, it’s an anachronism, but only a controlling sentiment of his novel Marry Me (1976). aspect ratio standard at the time. churl would not be thrilled by the spectacle. Herrick is perhaps the most Horatian Mankiewicz, by contrast, takes full advan- (Your reviewer can attest to the breathtaking of English poets, and many studies have tage of his wide screen. In close-up, his cam- nature of this scene on the big screen.) The described his Horatian echoes. Updike’s era pans along Cleopatra’s body, dressed in other set piece is Cleopatra’s arrival at Tarsus senior thesis, “Non-Horatian Elements her regalia as Egyptian divinity. In the clos- on her gilded barge, described in detail by in Herrick’s Echoes of Horace,” may at ing shot, Mankiewicz first shows Cleopatra’s Plutarch and Shakespeare. The film shows us first blush seem perverse, but he points out that within the welter of Horatian horizontal body filling the screen. Then the a full-scale sea-going vessel, built at a cost of reminiscences at the heart of Herrick’s camera recedes in a stately traveling shot well over a quarter-million dollars – in 1960’s poetry lies a Christian temperament that with which we take our leave of her. The money! Composer Alex North’s music rein- acknowledges one’s sinful state and shot freezes and turns into a painting mod- forces the grandeur of the moment: we wit- humility, two characteristics entirely eled on Roman wall paintings. Here and at ness no less than a divine epiphany. O rare absent from Horace, who despised the several other moments in the film, this tech- Egyptian indeed! These sequences dwarf vulgar crowd and sang of the untouched life of the lover. The end of his thesis nique, together with its opposite (paintings even the huge set of Alexandria and the Battle sounds a programmatic note for coming to life), effectively and elegantly of Actium. Updike’s later career: demonstrates the grand historical scale of its Much more could, and should, be said subject matter and stylistically anticipates the about Cleopatra. A restoration of the film Compared with Catullus and Donne, ending of Fellini’s Satyricon (1969). according to Mankiewicz’s original vision, Horace and Herrick do not feel deeply. Compared with Vergil and Rex Harrison’s Caesar anchors the first apparently in the works, is highly desirable, Milton, they possess little dramatic half of the film. His performance makes for, all in all, age cannot wither it, nor cus- power. But by writing with care and viewers understand why Mark Antony feels tom stale his achievement. by writing about things, however triv- ial or fanciful, which excited their overshadowed by him long after Caesar’s imaginations, Horace and Herrick death. Mankiewicz turned Harrison into a Martin M. Winkler is Professor of have created some of the world’s most general and politician both battle-weary Classics at George Mason University. Most graceful poetry. and sardonic, if still determined on absolute recently he edited the anthology Juvenal in Updike later wrote, “Four years was power. He gave Harrison a number of English (Penguin Classics, 2001) and the enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to memorable lines, as when after the battle of essay collection Classical Myth and Culture learn, but had been given the liberating Pharsalus Caesar is told that now his word in the Cinema (Oxford, 2001), which was notion that now I could teach myself.” is law. He replies: “Of course. Remind reviewed in Volume 1, Issue 1 of Amphora. While we don’t know the precise nature [Antony] to keep his legions intact. They He frequently lectures and teaches courses of his contact with classical literature at make the law legal.” Mankiewicz also on classical literature and film and has Harvard, he used classical subject mat- ter cleverly in his post-graduate writ- filmed a charming, even whimsical, scene organized three film series for the National ings. Cleopatra is the subject of “Dilem- in which Caesar learns about the ingenuity Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.: Greek ma in the Delta,” and Updike translates of the Egyptian mind. (No cinema audience Tragedy from Stage to Screen, Hollywood’s the beginning of Horace, Odes 3.2: has ever seen it.) When he is shown an Rome, and Antiquity, Myth, and Cinema astrolabe, a telescope, and a zoetrope, (on ancient Egypt). Let the boy, timber-tough from vigorous soldiering, Caesar decides to take only the astrolabe Learn to endure lack amicably, and the telescope back with him to Rome And let him, horseman feared for because they are of obvious military value. his javelin, He leaves behind the zoetrope, a toy Plague the ferocious men of Parthos; unworthy of a conquering hero, although 14 His second book of poetry, Telephone Notable Web Site: Poles, contains “Caligula’s Dream.” In Maecenas: Images of Ancient Greece and Rome 1986, he also published a translation of Iohannes Secundus’ Basium 16 as http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/ “Kiss.” by Leo C. Curran Updike has said that as a boy there was in his household “a kind of running he Esquiline Hill, the highest of Rome’s sculptors. I also thought of Maecenas himself mythology” of the family, and there is Thills, was once the site of the famous Gar- because he had been a collector of poets as little doubt that the greatest classical dens of Maecenas, one of the intimate well as of sculpture. My academic specialty is element in his work is his interest in Roman poets, including Vergil, Horace, and mythology. His nostalgic memory of friends of the emperor Augustus. These were adolescence in many of his early stories no ordinary gardens. The original meaning Propertius, each of whom had Maecenas as a inflated reality to a mythic level. A short of hortus, the Latin word for garden, was the patron in one way or another. When it came story about Tristan and Iseult devel- simple vegetable patch where a Roman time to name my Web site, the gardens of oped into Updike’s novel Brazil (1994), could grow cabbage for his table. The vast Maecenas immediately came to mind, and I the stoning of St. Stephen underlies gardens that wealthy Romans like Maecenas took the name of this collector of ancient art Poorhouse Fair (1959), and the expulsion for my collection of photos of ancient art, of Adam and Eve is at the heart of Cou- made for themselves were not for raising ples (1968). Nonetheless, he felt that cabbage; they weren’t even for prize mainly architecture and mainly Roman. Germanic or Biblical stories did not res- orchids. It would be more accurate to give Creating the site, however, has cast me onate with his generation: “The Greek these grand establishments the name of not in the role of Maecenas himself but rather stories seem to be more universal coin, estate or park or pleasure-garden. They con- in the role of the lowly craftsmen who and they certainly have served to tained parklands, multistoried terraces, elab- labored with backs and hands to create his finance more modern creations than the gardens. Unlike these craftsmen, I do not Hebrew stories.” orate fountains, groves of shade trees, gal- His most straightforward use of myth leries, colonnades, gazebos, and other archi- sweat over the sculptor’s mallet and chisel. is his novel The Centaur (1963), which tectural ornaments. Owners of properties like My tools instead are keyboard, monitor, and Updike explained as follows: these must have spoken of them as “gardens” the Adobe Photoshop editing program. I with the wink of an American millionaire squint my eyes to protect them not from flying I was moved, first, by the Chiron variant referring to his mansion in the Hamptons as chips of marble but from flickering pixels on of the Hercules myth – one of the few classic instances of self-sacrifice, and the a beach cottage. a screen. Photoshop, the standard tool of the name oddly close to Christ. The book I thought of the gardens of rich Romans, imaging industry, has liberated me from the began as an attempt to publicize this like Maecenas, when I was planning to cre- wet darkroom and the brown stains that myth. The mythology operated in a developer leaves on the fingers (although I number of ways: a correlative of the ate a large site on the World Wide Web for enlarging effect of Peter’s nostalgia, a my photographs of Greece and Rome. I had do miss the bracing smell of hypo). With this dramatization of Caldwell’s sense of in mind, in particular, one feature of these software, I can repair deficiencies in images exclusion and mysteriousness around gardens: They were also art galleries for the that could never have been remedied in a him, a counterpoint of ideality to the drab real level, an excuse for a number of display of Greek sculpture in the various set- darkroom with film and paper. Other soft- jokes, a serious expression of my sensa- tings provided by groves, fountains, and ware that I have written myself has eased the tion that the people we meet are guises, other components of the estate. Art collectors, task of writing the 8,000 pages that consti- do conceal something mythic, perhaps tute my Web site. prototypes or longings in our minds. like Maecenas, filled their gardens with copies of the works of the great Greek I had plenty of pictures to work with. Over John Updike was the product of a uni- the past forty-five years, I have amassed sev- versity in a period that cherished the Fig. 3. Arch of Constantine and Colosseum. eral thousand photographs of things Roman Rome. Photographed by Leo C. Curran in classics and clearly imbued its budding and Greek from my visits to Europe. I could 1974. Photo available at http://wings. writers with a love of ancient literature now make this valuable resource available to and its classical philologists with a special buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/rome/ literary sensitivity. However much the arch_constantine/ac741037.html others. Visitors to the digi- classical culture of Harvard helped him tal “vegetable patch” that “become nice,” it is clear that Greek resulted from my labors myth and Roman literature have served will not find the grand him well throughout his extraordinarily embellishments of Maece- long and successful post-Harvard career. nas’ gardens. Teachers, Ward Briggs is Carolina Distinguished students, or any who love Professor of Classics at the University of the classics will find pho- South Carolina. He is the editor of Classical tos to take and use as they Scholarship: A Biographical Encyclope- will. I use only the simplest dia (1990), A Biographical Dictionary of Web design programming North American Classicists (1994), and – my virtual garden is four books on Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, whose biography he is currently writing. continued on page 16 15 Notable Web Site: Guidelines for Maecenas continued from page 15 Contributors strictly organic. Sponsorship: Amphora, a publication spon- Preferred Font/Type Size: Times New There are now over 2,000 images on sored by the Committee on Outreach of the Roman, 12-point. the Web site, and more are coming (see American Philological Association, is published twice a year, in the spring and fall. Greek and Latin: All original Greek and Fig. 2 and Fig. 3). Maecenas now gets Latin (words, phrases, and block quotations) over 1,000 visits each weekday during the Content and Audience: Amphora welcomes should be translated into English. For Greek submissions from professional scholars and names, please use the more common form: school year. By the time you read this, it experts on topics dealing with the worlds of Achilles, for example, not Achilleus. The will have had a total of over half a million ancient Greece and Rome (literature, lan- transliteration of Greek names should be con- visits. Maecenas has achieved world-wide guage, mythology, history, culture, classical sistent within the submission. tradition, and the arts). Amphora is intended for recognition. Over 1,000 Web sites have a wide audience that includes professional Illustrations: Amphora cannot publish a large links to it. 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Initial submissions should be Addresses for Submissions: Submissions Farther afield, there are links to Maecenas double spaced. may be sent either to the postal address below or electronically to the e-mail address below: in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Style Guide: For general guidance about sty- Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, listic conventions, please consult the most Anne-Marie Lewis Editor: Amphora the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, recent edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. For specific guidance, please request the Style Program in Classical Studies and Taiwan. Images from Maecenas have Sheet for Amphora from the editors. 262 Vanier College been borrowed by a museum in Australia, York University Preferred Word-Processing Systems: Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 a classical journal in Canada, and a book Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. CANADA publisher in the Czech Republic. Maecenas [email protected] has even acquired something of a fan club. A teacher from a school in Oklahoma American Philological Association recently sent me a three-page letter of Non-Profit Org. 292 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania U.S. Postage thanks in which each member of the class 249 S. 36th Street PAID has written a personal greeting. Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304 Permit No. 2563 E-mail: [email protected] Philadelphia, PA Maecenas has been assisted by gener- Web site: www.apaclassics.org ous grants from the Classical Association of the Empire State and the Classical Asso- ciation of the Atlantic States. Please drop by and take a tour.

Leo C. Curran was educated at Yale University and Oxford University. Now retired, he spent his professional life teach- ing classics at Yale and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

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