Tales from the Triclinium: How to Be a Hit at a Roman Dinner Party
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® A publication of the American Philological Association Vol. 10 • Issue 1 • Summer 2012 Tales from the Triclinium: Book Review: Follow How to Be a Hit at a Your Fates series Roman Dinner Party by Diane Arnson Svarlien Ed DeHoratius, The Wrath of Achilles. by Philip Matyszak Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2009. Pp. ix, 62. ISBN 978-0-86516-708-7. t was not unusual to pick up a para- site in the public toilets of Rome. $12.00 (pb). The Journey of Odysseus. I Bolchazy-Carducci, 2009. Pp. x, 116. However, the Roman parasite ate with you, unlike the modern version, ISBN 978-0-86516-710-0. $12.00 (pb). which just eats you. In fact, the word is The Exile of Aeneas. Bolchazy-Carducci, formed from the Greek words para 2010. Pp. x, 113. ISBN 978-0-86516- (with) and sitos (food), and the original 709-4. $12.00 (pb). All in the Follow Your parasite was a companion at your table. Fates series, with illustrations by Brian “Why does Vacerra hang around the latrines all day?” asked the satirist Mar- DeLandro Hardison. tial in the first century CE. He went on to answer his own question: “He’s not he visionary Argentinean writer Jorge sick, he’s looking for a dinner invitation” TLuis Borges is often credited as the spiri- (Martial 11.77). tual ancestor of the World Wide Web, Martial can ask this question because hypertext, and the role-playing gamebook. using a Roman latrine was a jolly social Fig. 1. Archaic Greek psykter, sixth occasion on which the participants sat century B.C.E. The Metropolitan Museum In his 1941 story The Garden of Forking side by side and exchanged chat, gossip, of Art, Gift of Norbert Schimmel Trust, Paths, Borges invents a labyrinthine novel and invitations to a coming dinner— 1989 (1989.281.69). Image © The Met- that defies the ordinary rules of narrative: ropolitan Museum of Art, reproduced even as they disposed of the previous “In all fictional works, each time a man is by permission. one. confronted with several alternatives, he A guide to Roman etiquette stipu- chooses one and eliminates the others”; in lates that the number at a dinner party it behooved the host to assemble a scin- should follow “Varro’s rule” and be tillating gathering of parasites to impress this work, “he chooses—simultaneously— more than the Graces (three) and fewer his fellow guests. Indeed, Martial him- all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse than the Muses (nine) (Aulus Gellius self was an eager volunteer for the role futures, diverse times which themselves also Attic Nights 13.11). There were those a of parasite, and would afterwards com- proliferate and fork.… The Garden of Fork- Roman might want to invite—his ment favorably or adversely on the con- ing Paths is an enormous riddle … whose duct of his host and the quality of his guests—and those he brought in to theme is time” (trans. Donald A. Yates). make up the numbers—the parasites. food. He triumphantly refers to getting Because then, as now, dinner parties such an invitation as cenam captare—the Borges’ characters, like Sophocles’ Ajax, discover that time can change an enemy to were about a great deal more than food, continued on page 6 a friend, a friend to an enemy. In 1979, R.A. Montgomery and Edward The Glory that was greece .....................2 A Tale of Two Neropoleis: Social Packard launched the Choose Your Own Networking in Ancient Rome............14 Adventure series of children’s books, Capital Campaign News ...............................3 Love Is a Rhythmical Art: whose popularity is still going strong. In e Summer Beach Reading Ovid in Limericks ...........................................16 these books, written in the second person, for Classicists....................................................4 Book Review: “The Horse, the reader makes a series of choices lead- Book Review: “Diogenes” .............................5 The Wheel, and Language” .....................18 ing to different outcomes. Boston-area Latin Goethe and Tacitus.......................................8 Resumption of Publication..................21 teacher Ed DeHoratius has now adapted Insid Where in Athens Did Paul See the A Note From Your Editors.....................23 the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid to the Altar of the Unknown God? ..............10 choose-your-adventure format. Brian GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS ...........24 Ajax in America .................................................12 DeLandro Hardison, winner of the 2008 continued on page 7 The Glory That Was Greece by Mary Pendergraft he Glory that was Greece and “TGrandeur that was Rome”— what a great line! It has served as a title for reviews of books and restaurants, for articles on history, travel, and current events, and for educational resources of various kinds. Its source, of course, is Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “To Helen,” first published in 1827. Fre- quently anthologized and included in school texts, for many readers this little poem is the introduction to the wealth of Poe’s writings. Poe spent his childhood in Rich- mond, Virginia, and studied Latin both in English schools and, on his return home, in Richmond; in fact, one of the bills for his textbooks survives. He was a Fig. 2. Wall detail, Sardis, Turkey. member of the second session of the through thirst, I—wrote. Through Bryn Mawr College (MJM-02802). new University of Virginia in 1826, good report and through ill report, I— Photographed by Machteld Johanna where the faculty minutes show that he wrote. Through sunshine and through Mellink. Image © Bryn Mawr College, did well in French and Latin. As an moonshine, I—wrote. reproduced by permission. adult he returned to Richmond to edit The Southern Literary Messenger. So as a Ye gods—did he ever write! The vol- student of classical languages, he offers ume and variety of Poe’s writings is and refers to four more. The leaders, us a most appropriate topic. This essay sobering—especially considering that not surprisingly, are Vergil, at twenty- will review some of the roles that the he died at age 40. He edited journals in three quotations; Horace, seventeen; classical world and students of that Richmond, Philadelphia, and New Ovid, ten; and Cicero, six. Poe’s Greek world play in Poe’s works, to bring out York; he wrote poetry, of course; one quotations are less frequent, and some aspects of his life and reputation that novel—The Narrative of Arthur Gordon have suggested that he shows less inde- resemble the circumstances of poets in Pym of Nantucket; literary criticism; spec- pendent knowledge of Greek than of antiquity, and, finally, to suggest that in ulative philosophical essays; and short Latin. some respects Poe saw himself as stories that include a treasure hunt, For many decades, nonetheless, engaged in the same work we classicists gothic tales of horror, some of our earli- newer scholarly trends have dominated do—as one of us—and to consider est detective stories, early science fic- Poe studies: and Darlene Harbour whether in the end we want to claim tion (including a futuristic tale with a Unrue’s 1995 article provided a sensible him. Greek title, “Mellonta Tauta”), and and welcome reminder of the classical Poe’s characterization of himself is humor. He has been called, quotably, a underpinnings of Poe’s literary imagina- interesting. His earliest book of poetry, one-man modernist movement (by tion, and invited scholars to reconsider which included “To Helen,” was pub- painter Robert Motherwell) and over them (“Edgar Allan Poe: The Romantic lished in Boston, and the author listed the course of a century and a half, his as Classicist,” International Journal of the simply as “A Bostonian”—as he was, by works have been studied not only for Classical Tradition, 1, No. 4 [1995]: 112- birth. As an adult, however, he chose to their own literary qualities, but also as 19). To survey the various genres of his style himself a Southerner, espoused psychological or cultural documents. work, not only the early poems like “To anti-Abolitionist positions, and fre- Although scholars have variously charac- Helen” reveal his fascination with antiq- quently wrote with some asperity about terized his outlook as romantic, gothic, uity; a late poem like “The Raven” what he saw as New England snobbish- transcendental, or gnostic, the impor- does as well. ness regarding southern writers: this tance of Greek and Roman antiquity in Many of Poe’s short stories have epi- even when he was living and working in Poe’s writing has always been clear. grams in Latin or Greek and themes New York. The poem with which this paper began, that reflect the classical world. Here is a He saw himself primarily as a writer; “To Helen,” is an excellent example. In sample from the short story “Bon-Bon,” he claimed that vocation in letters he three short stanzas the poet refers to where the devil has come to collect the wrote soon after leaving Charlottesville. Helen and Psyche, to Greece and soul of the French restauranteur and Many have heard Poe’s own voice Rome, to Naiads, to Nicaea, to weary self-styled philosopher Pierre Bon-Bon. behind that of the narrator of “The Lit- wanderers—in fact, some writers have The pervasive classical references rein- erary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.”: associated it with Catullus 4, on the force the humor of the situation: grounds that the earlier poet’s phasellus Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not is a “Nicean bark.” Early twentieth-cen- His Majesty (said), musingly, “I have the word “ease.”... Through all, I— tury studies produced data on the ubiq- tasted—that is to say, I have known wrote. Through joy and through sor- uity of classical references in his works: some very bad souls, and some pretty row, I—wrote.