̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Greek

Ancient Greek ‘pop culture’ discovery rewrites history of poetry and song

ta385 — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 11:45:00 +0000

New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that ‘stressed poetry’, the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already in use in the 2nd Century CE, 300 years earlier than previously thought.

Epic dictionary re-defines Ancient Greek including the words which made the Victorians blush

ta385 — Thu, 27 May 2021 05:00:00 +0000

Recently published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press, the Lexicon provides fresh definitions and translations gleaned by re-reading most of Ancient Greek literature from its foundations in Homer, right through to the early second century AD.

Introducing up-to-date English, the new dictionary clarifies meanings that had become obscured by antiquated verbiage in Liddell and Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon which was first published in 1889.

Editor-in-Chief, Professor James Diggle of Queens' College said: “We don’t call βλαύτη 'a kind of slipper worn by fops' as in the Intermediate Lexicon. In the Cambridge Lexicon, this becomes 'a kind of simple footwear, slipper'.”

̽��ֱ��team has also rescued words from Victorian attempts at modesty. “We spare no blushes,” said Diggle. “We do not translate the verb χέζω as 'ease oneself, do one's need'. We translate it as 'to shit'. Nor do we explain 'βινέω as 'inire, coire, of illicit intercourse', but simply translate it by the f-word.”

̽��ֱ��two volumes are set to become instantly indispensable for Classics students as well as an important reference work for scholars.

̽��ֱ��team used online databases – the Perseus Digital Library and later the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae – to make this huge corpus more easily accessible and searchable.

̽��ֱ��researchers pored over every word, working steadily through the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet to build up a clear, modern and accessible guide to the meanings of Ancient Greek words and their development through different contexts and authors. ̽��ֱ��Lexicon features around 37,000 Greek words drawn from the writings of around 90 different authors and set out across more than 1,500 pages.

̽��ֱ��project, which began in 1997, was the brainchild of the renowned Classical philologist and lexicographer John Chadwick (1920–98). ̽��ֱ��initial plan was to revise the Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. An abridged version of a lexicon published in 1843, it has never been revised, but until now has remained the lexicon most commonly used by students in English schools and universities. It was hoped that the project might be completed by a single editor within five years.

Diggle was then chair of the project's advisory committee. He said: "Soon after work began it became clear that it was not possible to revise the Intermediate Lexicon; it was too antiquated in concept, design and content. It was better to start afresh by compiling a new lexicon.

“We didn’t realise at the time the magnitude of the task, and it was only because of advances in technology that we were able to take it on. We then had to appoint additional editorial staff and raise a huge amount of financial support. It took us over 20 years because we decided that if we were going to do it we must do it thoroughly.

“At the outset of the project I undertook to read everything which the editors wrote. I soon realised that if we were ever to finish I had better start to write entries myself, and for the last 15 years or more I was fully occupied with it and did little else – it took over my life.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Greek Lexicon takes a fundamentally different approach to its Victorian predecessor. While entries in the Liddell and Scott lexicon usually start with a word’s earliest appearance in the literature, the Cambridge team realised this might not give its original, or root, meaning. Instead, they begin their entries with that root meaning and then in numbered sections trace the word’s development in different contexts.

Opening summaries help ease the reader into the longer entries, setting out the order of what is to follow, while different fonts signpost the way, helping the reader to distinguish between definitions, translations, and other material, such as grammatical constructions.

̽��ֱ��team tackled countless other interesting and challenging words, including πόλις, which will be familiar to many in its English form 'polis'. Diggle said: “Our article shows the variety of senses which the word can have: in its earliest usage 'citadel, acropolis', then (more generally) 'city, town', also 'territory, land', and (more specifically, in the classical period) 'city as a political entity, city-state', also (with reference to the occupants of a city) 'community, citizen body'.”

“'Verbs can be the most difficult items to deal with, especially if they are common verbs, with many different but interrelated uses. ἔχω, (ékhō) is one of the commonest Greek verbs, whose basic senses are 'have' and 'hold'. Our entry for this verb runs to 55 sections. If a verb has as many applications as this, you need to provide the reader with signposts, to show how you have organised the material, to show that you have organised the numbered sections in groups, and to show that these groups follow logically one from the other.”

Professor Robin Osborne, Chair of the Faculty of Classics, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Faculty takes enormous pride in this dictionary and in the way Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press have aided us and produced it. It’s a beautiful piece of book making.”

“We invested in the Lexicon to make a contribution to the teaching of Greek over the next century. This puts into the hands of students a resource that will enable them access to Ancient Greek more securely and easily.

“It is hugely important that we continue to engage with the literature of Ancient Greece, not as texts frozen in a past world, but which engage with the world in which we live. There’s been continual engagement with them since antiquity, so we are also engaging with that history, which is the history of European thought.”

̽��ֱ��project’s attention to detail also extended to the Press and the typesetters, who took immense care to ensure that consulting the Lexicon would be an easy and pleasurable experience, right down to a specially-created text design. Diggle and his fellow editors inputted their entries for the Lexicon in xml, using a complex system of more than 100 digital tags to ensure each element was automatically rendered in the correct format.

This also allowed for a constant feedback loop between the editors, the Press and the typesetters, with proofs reviewed and corrected, and the style and content honed as work progressed.

Michael Sharp, the Lexicon’s Publisher, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Greek Lexicon is one of the most important Classics books we have ever published. It represents a milestone in the history of Classics, the ̽��ֱ�� and the Press. I am elated, relieved and immensely proud of the part the Press has played in supporting this project.”

Professor Diggle said: “ ̽��ֱ��moment of greatest relief and joy was when I was able to sign off the very, very final proofs and say to the Press ‘It’s finished. You can print it’. You can’t imagine what it was like, to realise that we had finally got there; I literally wept with joy.”

For 23 years a team from Cambridge’s Faculty of Classics has scoured Ancient Greek literature for meanings to complete the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, a monumental piece of scholarship and the most innovative dictionary of its kind in almost 200 years.

It took over my life

James Diggle

Sir Cam

Professor James Diggle

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Cambridge and Heidelberg announce major project to digitise treasured medieval manuscripts

sjr81 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 17:10:35 +0000

Centuries-old manuscripts feature the works of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and Euripides.

Epic issues: epic poetry from the dawn of modernity

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 10:00:42 +0000

Maybe it was the language, architecture, codified legal system, regulated economy, military discipline – or maybe it really was public safety and aqueducts. Whatever the Romans did for us, their reputation as a civilising force who brought order to the western world has, in the public imagination, stood the test of time remarkably well. It is especially strong for an Empire that has been battered by close historical scrutiny for almost 2,000 years.

̽��ֱ��reputation, of course, has more than a grain of truth to it – but the real story is also more complex. Not only did the Empire frequently endure assorted forms of severely uncultured political disarray, but for the kaleidoscope of peoples under its dominion, Roman rule was a varied experience that often represented an unsettling rupture with the past. As Professor Mary Beard put it in her book SPQR: “there is no single story of Rome, especially when the Roman world had expanded far outside Italy.”

So perhaps another way to characterise the Roman Empire is as one of cultures colliding – a swirling melting pot of ideas and beliefs from which concepts that would define western civilisation took form. This is certainly closer to the view of Tim Whitmarsh, the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, who is the principal investigator on a project that has examined Greek epic poetry during this period.

“This is perhaps the most important period for thinking about where European culture comes from,” says Whitmarsh. “We really are at the dawn of modernity. To tell the story of an Empire which remains the model for so many forms of international power is to tell the story of what we became, and what we are.”

His interest in the Greek experience stems partly from the fact that few cultures under Roman rule can have felt more keenly the fissure it wrought between present and past. In political terms, Ancient Greek history arguably climaxed with the empires established in the aftermath of the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). In the period when this poetry was written, from the first to the sixth centuries CE, the Greek world had been annexed by the Romans.

Yet the relationship between the two cultures was ambiguous. Greek-speaking peoples were subordinate in one sense, but their language continued to dominate the eastern Empire – increasingly so as it became a separate entity centred on Byzantium, as Christianity emerged and as the Latin-speaking west declined. Greek remained the primary medium of cultural transmission through which these changes were expressed. Greek communities therefore found themselves linked closely to their past, while also coming to terms with a fast-metamorphosing future.

Epic poetry, which many associate with Homer’s tales of heroic adventure, seems an odd choice of lens through which to examine the transformation. Whitmarsh thinks its purpose has been misunderstood.

“In the modern West, we often get Greek epic wrong by thinking about it as a repository for ripping yarns,” he says. “Actually, it was central to their sense of how the world operated. This wasn’t a world of scripture; it wasn’t primarily one of the written word at all. ̽��ֱ��vitality of the spoken word, in the very distinctive hexametrical pattern of the poems, was the single way they had of indicating authoritative utterance.”

It is perhaps the most important tool available for understanding how the Greeks navigated their loss of autonomy under the Romans and during the subsequent rise of Christianity. In recent years, such questions have provoked a surge of interest in Greek literature during that time, but epic poetry itself has largely been overlooked, perhaps because it involved large, complex texts around which it is difficult to construct a narrative.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Whitmarsh and his collaborators set out to systematically analyse the poetry and its cultural history for the first time. “We would argue it’s the greatest gap in ancient cultural studies – one of the last uncharted territories of Greek literature,” he adds.

̽��ֱ��final outputs will include books and an edited collection of the poems themselves, but the team started simply by establishing “what was out there”. Astonishingly, they uncovered evidence of about a thousand texts. Some remain only as names, others exist in fragments; yet more are vast epics that survive intact. Together, they show how the Greeks were rethinking their identity, both in the context of the time, and that of their own past and its cultural legacy.

A case in point is Quintus of Smyrna, author of the Posthomerica – a deceptive title since chronologically it fills the gap between Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, even though it was written later. Quintus’ style was almost uber-Homeric, elaborately crafted to create an almost seamless connection with the past. Yet there is evidence that, having done so, he also deliberately disrupted it. “His use of similes is quite outrageous by Homer’s standards, for example,” Whitmarsh says. ̽��ֱ��reason could be Quintus’ painful awareness of a tension between the Homeric past and his own present. Conflicted identity is a theme that connects many poems of the period. ̽��ֱ��poet Oppian, for instance, who wrote an epic on fish and fishing, provides us with an excellent example of how his generation was seeking to reconceive Greek selfhood in the shadow of Rome.

̽��ֱ��work ostensibly praises the Emperor as master over land and sea – a very Roman formula. Oppian then sabotages his own proclamation by questioning whether anyone truly can command the sea’s depths, a feat that must surely be a journey of the intellect and imagination. Having acknowledged the Emperor’s political power, he was, in effect, implying that the Greeks were perhaps greater masters of knowledge.

̽��ֱ��researchers expected to find that this tension gave way to a clearer, moralistic tone, with the rise of Christianity. Instead, they found it persisted. Nonnus of Panopolis, for example, wrote 21 books paraphrasing the Gospel of St John, but not, it would seem, from pure devotion, since he also wrote 48 freewheeling stories about the Greek god Dionysus. Collectively, this vast assemblage evokes parallels between the two, not least because resurrection themes emerge from both. Nonnus also made much of the son of God’s knack for turning water into wine – a subject that similarly links him to Dionysus, god of winemaking.

Beyond Greek identity itself, the poetry hints at shifting ideas about knowledge and human nature. Oppian’s poetic guide to fishing, for instance, is in fact much more. “I suspect most fishermen and fisherwomen know how to catch fish without reading a Greek epic poem,” Whitmarsh observes. In fact, the poem was as much about deliberately stretching the language conventionally used to describe aquaculture, and through it blurring the boundaries between the human and non-human worlds.

Far from just telling stories, then, these epic poems show how, in an era of deeply conflicted identities, Greek communities tried to reorganise their sense of themselves and their place in the world, and give this sense a basis for future generations. Thanks to Whitmarsh and his team, they can now be read, as they were meant to be, on such terms.

“ ̽��ֱ��poetry represents a cultural statement from the time, but it is also trying to be timeless,” he adds. “Each poem was trying to say something about its topic for eternity. ̽��ֱ��fact that we are still reading them today, and finding new things to say about them, is a token of their success.”

Inset image: Wine jar made in Athens around 535 BC. © ̽��ֱ��Trustees of the British Museum.

Epic poems telling of cultures colliding, deeply conflicted identities and a fast-changing world were written by the Greeks under Roman rule in the first to the sixth centuries CE. Now, the first comprehensive study of these vast, complex texts is casting new light on the era that saw the dawn of Western modernity.

Each poem was trying to say something about its topic for eternity. ̽��ֱ��fact that we are still reading them today, and finding new things to say about them, is a token of their success

Tim Whitmarsh

Achilles killing Penthesilea, as described in the epic poem Posthomerica written by Quintus of Smyrna in the 3rd century CE; detail from a wine jar made in Athens around 535 BC

Yes

Terme Boxer makes an entrance at the Museum of Classical Archaeology

sjr81 — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 00:47:20 +0000

Beginning life as a bright-white plaster cast, the Terme Boxer has been recently restored by former Fitzwilliam Museum technician Bob Bourne; his transformation from chalky whiteness to burnished bronze giving visitors the chance to see a magnificent replica of Hellenistic Greek sculpture in close detail.

̽��ֱ��original Terme Boxer is one of the finest examples of bronze-cast sculpture to have survived from the ancient world. Found in 1885 on the south side of the Quirinal Hill in Rome, where it had been carefully deposited, it is believed to be a Hellenistic original, but could date to any time between the fourth and first centuries BCE.

Sitting on a rock, this bearded fighter rests his weary body after a bout of boxing. Ancient boxing was a brutal sport. He wears fur-lined gloves to protect his hands, but has still taken a battering. Wounds cut into his skin and bruises swell from beneath the surface; his broken nose, cauliflower ears and hardened muscles are evidence of a long career. ̽��ֱ��impact of this rare example of a fully preserved bronze is not just realistic, but visceral.

Dr Susanne Turner, Curator at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Boxer is a wonderful addition to our atmospheric cast gallery. It's not just a beautiful sculpture, it's also a real reminder of the sheer breadth of classical sculpture, which ranges beyond the familiar idealised youths and naked Aphrodites to encompass hyperbolic Hercules, babies squashing geese and, indeed, battle-worn boxers who look like they've seen better days.”

Most bronzes have been lost to us, so much more easily melted down and transformed into new objects than their marble and stone counterparts. So special is the original that it is currently one of the star pieces in the exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World at the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

̽��ֱ��Museum of Classical Archaeology is open 10am-5pm on weekdays and 10am-1pm on Saturdays during ̽��ֱ�� term-time.

A heavyweight addition has joined the ranks at the Museum of Classical Archaeology after a cast of the Terme Boxer was placed on display.

It's not just a beautiful sculpture, it's also a real reminder of the sheer breadth of classical sculpture.

Susanne Turner

Bronzing the Terme Boxer

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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How classical sculpture helped to set impossible standards of beauty

amb206 — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��efforts we make to shape our bodies to meet ideals border on the extreme. Earlier this summer advertisers of weight loss products enraged thousands of London tube-goers by asking: Are you body beach ready? ̽��ֱ��accompanying image showed a pitifully thin model in a tiny bikini. A recent survey points to a six-fold upsurge in the number of men using anabolic steroids, widely known to have damaging effects, to boost their muscles in the quest for a body of a Greek god.

Where do ideas about beautiful bodies come from? In her recent book, Dr Kate Nichols, a researcher at CRASSH, explores the connections between beauty and morality, nudity and nakedness through the prism of public responses to the classical sculpture brought to the masses by the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. In 1854 these plaster cast representations of gods and heroes, many of them without a scrap of clothing, ignited fierce arguments that continue to trickle into contemporary discussions about bodies and perfection, what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Nichols also looks at the debate about obscenity that arose specifically from displays of naked male sculpture at the Crystal Palace. To modern eyes, classical sculpture is the height of respectability, embodying tradition and (as the British Museum titled its recent blockbuster show) ‘defining beauty’. But this wasn’t always the case.

“Nude male sculptures had been on display in the British Museum since the early 1800s, with no complaints. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace attracted more than twice as many visitors as the British Museum – some 2 million each year, and from a truly mass audience of all social classes. For many, the idea of nudity being displayed to such mass audiences was profoundly shocking,” says Nichols.

On 8 May 1854, the Times published a letter addressed to the directors of the Crystal Palace. Designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the palace had been moved from Hyde Park to the south London suburb of Sydenham. Here, the building had been reassembled to house an exhibition which aimed to bring art and culture to the masses. ̽��ֱ��objects on display were arranged, in a series of giant ‘courts’, to tell the story of civilisation through art and architecture.

Signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and several bishops, the petition asked that the plaster casts of nude male statues on show in the Greek Court be fitted with the ‘usual leaf’ to reflect the way in which certain parts of the body are covered in daily life. ̽��ֱ��‘usual leaf’ is a rather endearing reference to the fig leaves which are frequently employed to preserve the modesty of artistic representations of the male human figure.

“From the 16th century onwards, various Popes had insisted on deploying fig leaves to cover the genitals of male sculptures on display in public spaces in Italy. In 16th-century Florence, Michelangelo’s David was a particular point of contention,” says Nichols.

Reactions to the letter in the Times were mixed. ̽��ֱ��newspaper itself scoffed at the need to recreate the “earliest fashions of paradise” – but the bishops got their way. A specialist company was commissioned to make plaster fig leaves to cover the genitals of a number of male statues.

̽��ֱ��Greek gods and heroes who found their genitals disappearing beneath pieces of foliage included the bulgingly muscular Farnese Hercules, the contorted figures of Laocoon and his sons, and the svelte Apollo Belvedere. “ ̽��ֱ��casts of all three had been made from celebrated sculptures housed in Italy and were key points of reference for the educated elite taking the Grand Tour in order to broaden their aesthetic horizons,” says Nichols.

" ̽��ֱ��request from the Archbishop and his supporters was a thinly veiled way of saying that working-class visitors, and those untutored in classical art, would be unable to appreciate on a suitably cerebral level, the purity and beauty of classical sculpture. It’s an admission that you need to absorb a set of cultural techniques in order to look at art works – it’s not innate.”

̽��ֱ��heated discussion about what we might today call the ‘appropriateness’ of nude sculpture was embedded in questions that provoked passionate feelings in Victorian society. ̽��ֱ��Victorian public was not familiar with art works showing undressed bodies. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace’s exhibition of the human form in plaster to a mass audience coincided with a growing concern with sexual morality.

“In the 1850s, activists were raising awareness of the problems associated with prostitution and discussing methods to control it. ̽��ֱ��year 1857 saw the passing of acts on marriage, divorce, and obscene publications, as state regulation of sexual conduct increased,” says Nichols. ” ̽��ֱ��tensions between what was beautiful, and should be admired, and what was obscene, and should be hidden from family viewing, threw up divides – especially when it came to male nudes.”

Victorian Britain was entrenched in biblical teaching. ̽��ֱ��presence at Sydenham of nude statues, accessible to all classes and all ages, provoked a flurry of vociferous pamphlets from some religious groups. Sensational stories (true and fabricated) were recorded: in 1862 Susan Flood, a young member of the Plymouth Brethren, was apparently so affronted by the nude ‘pagans’ displayed in the Crystal Palace that she smashed several plaster casts with her parasol.

It would be wrong, however, to presume that Victorian society was universally stuffy and prudish. “ ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace was, in some ways, a kind of theme park where people could have fun – there are fabulous photographs of Victorian women on water flumes in its grounds – but it was also the product of a mission to educate the masses," says Nichols.

"I’m fascinated by the ways in which unclothed Greek and Roman sculpture gave rise to two opposing viewpoints – on one hand, as a threat to morality and, on the other hand, as a vehicle for improving and uplifting the minds of visitors.”

̽��ֱ��designer Owen Jones was responsible for selecting the classical sculpture for the Greek and Roman Courts. According to the Times, Jones reacted with ‘horror’ when the Palace directorate capitulated to the demands of the bishops and peers. He had even suggested that money spent at Sydenham "would save many thousands more from being spent on building gaols".

Jones was backed up by other commentators who saw the Crystal Palace contributing to the well-established association between viewing art and elevated moral conduct.

“These dialogues show how art was considered to be a powerful force for good. Belief in the improving power of art was the impetus for the foundation of many galleries in industrial cities. ̽��ֱ��Museums Act of 1845 enabled towns to levy local taxes to fund museums, on the grounds that culture was morally enhancing, and it was on this basis that galleries were founded in towns like Manchester, Birmingham, Blackburn and Leeds,” says Nichols.

Nichols’ exploration of responses to representations of the human figure touches on deep-seated notions about the body beautiful – and how idealised body shapes took root in public consciousness with Greek statues in particular setting the parameters for (impossible) perfection.

She reveals that the later 19th-century cult of body building, promoted by Eugen Sandow, took its inspiration from the athletic perfection of Greek figures with their honed-and-toned limbs and impressive six-packs, and the intellectual and moral prowess associated with ancient Greece. It was at the Crystal Palace that Sandow opened his first suburban ‘School of Physical Culture’ for men, women and children in 1899.

“ ̽��ֱ��classically-inspired notion of beauty is emphatically one of idealised white European bodies. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace had a ‘natural history department’, featuring tableaux of models of indigenous peoples from all over the world – some of which were plaster casts of living people,” says Nichols.

“Europeans were notably absent from these displays, and several commentators claimed that Europeans were already represented by the Greek sculptures on show as objects of ‘fine art’, rather than ‘natural history’. This reinforced the racist hierarchy in which white Europeans epitomised beauty and ‘civilisation’, while non-Europeans represented savagery and ‘aesthetic under development’.”

Many were troubled, however, by the fact that both sets of sculptures were undressed. Much of the anxiety felt by the educated elite, on behalf of the uneducated masses who were untutored in art appreciation, turned on the fine distinction between dangerous naked and respectable nude – a boundary which is in many ways artificial, but required – and indeed still requires – constant policing.

“I’m interested in the ways in which the unclothed body in art gained respectability and also in ways that gender differences are played out in responses to male and female bodies in art. Campaigners at the Crystal Palace focused primarily on unclothed male bodies. ̽��ֱ��sculptures of, for example, Venus, were already deemed ‘nude’ and respectable. This disparity continues today – an exhibition of male nudes in Vienna in 2012 caused an outrage – whereas female nudes are ubiquitous and generally unquestioned, safely subsumed into the art historical category of the nude,” says Nichols.

” ̽��ֱ��idea that female bodies are acceptable objects for public scrutiny whereas male ones are dangerous and disruptive says a great deal about the relative power of men and women. ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace debate shows that classical sculpture remained on the borders of respectability in the 1850s, when the public was less familiar with the nude-as-art. ̽��ֱ��Palace’s contribution to the history of the category ‘nude’ lies in its dissemination of the unclothed male form, exhibited as ‘art’, to a wide range of people. But with varying degrees of success as the letter from the Bishops suggests.”

̽��ֱ��link between bodily beauty and classical sculpture is remarkably enduring. In its June 2015 issue, the glossy magazine Tatler asks: How posh is your body? Its satirical answers in relation to the upper-class female body (feet should be gracefully small, limbs honed but not muscled) decree that the neck should be “long, straight and alabaster” – a reference to the gleaming white materials of classical statuary. ̽��ֱ��feet of posh men should be long and elegant, speaking “of authority, and ruling, and staking out the boundaries of the Empire”.

“Ideas and ideals surrounding ‘the body beautiful’ based on classical sculpture are constantly repeated and reinforced in our culture. But there’s often little thought about where such ideas may have their origins. Art historical and archaeological discussions about the beauty of classical statuary developed in the contexts of imperialism, ‘scientific’ racism, and eugenics, and often made active contributions to these discourses. ̽��ֱ��split between the supposedly ‘European’ bodies of Greek sculpture in the ‘fine arts’ courts, and the non-European bodies in the ‘natural history department’ at the Crystal Palace is just one example” says Nichols.

Tatler connects looking classical with ‘the Empire’ and the upper classes – and perhaps implicitly with ‘good breeding’ or at least good social standing. Its feature is tongue-in-cheek and pokes fun at the ruddy faces of toffs who’ve overdone the great outdoors. But, as Nichols adds: “It’s important to think about who’s excluded from these normative and frankly racist definitions of beauty, given credence by their connections to ‘the classical’.”

Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace: Classical Sculpture and Modern Britain, 1854-1936 by Kate Nichols is published by Oxford ̽��ֱ�� Press.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��Crystal Palace at Sydenham c.1910 (Wikimedia Commons); Farnese Hercules, Roman marble version (early 3rd century CE) of a Greek sculpture (4th century CE) (Wikimedia Commons); Souvenir photograph of body building entrepreneur Eugen Sandow posing as 'Farnese Hercules' (with fig leaf) c.1893 (Wikimedia Commons).

What do we mean when we say that someone has ‘classical’ good looks? Are male nudes in art appropriate viewing for family audiences? In looking at the arguments ignited by the opening, in 1854, of an exhibition of Greek and Roman statuary, Dr Kate Nichols explores the ways in which notions of beauty, morality and gender are intertwined.

It’s important to think about who’s excluded from these normative and frankly racist definitions of beauty, given credence by their connections to ‘the classical’

Kate Nichols

An over-dressed Victorian man looking at the nude Venus de Milo.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Understanding the ancient world through language

mjg209 — Fri, 22 May 2015 09:00:00 +0000

Language played a key role in state formation and the spread of Christianity, the construction of ethnicity and negotiating positions of social status and group membership in the ancient world. It could reinforce social norms and shed light on taboos. Yet it is often overlooked as a source for understanding ancient civilisations.

A new book by James Clackson, Reader in Comparative Philology in the Faculty of Classics, uses language as a lens for understanding the ancient world.

Language and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds is about why some languages - Latin and Greek - grew and others shrank and what language can tell us about the way people lived. ̽��ֱ��principal focus is the Greek and Roman civilisations between around 800 BCE and 400 CE. ̽��ֱ��book also catalogues how different states in ancient times managed multilingual populations and it highlights the plethora of different languages that existed at the time. Indeed until the last century of the Roman Republic Latin was a minority language, even in Italy.

̽��ֱ��theme of multilingualism is one which has implications for our current preoccupation with immigration and one which Clackson will address in his forthcoming talk on 29th May at the Hay Festival where he is one of many academics speaking as part of the Cambridge Series.

He will draw parallels between current British anxiety about hearing other languages than English and fears about English being bastardised by other languages and concerns of the Romans about the influx of foreign people and foreign words into the Latin language. “I am interested in the impact of long-term migration on language. In the end, despite concerns, Latin was enriched by migration. Lots of basic Latin words are Greek words and this has translated into the Romance languages such as French where you can trace the impact of Greek in words such as bras, jambe and parler,” says Clackson.

He compares the approach of Greece and Rome to language. Greece had many many minor states, each with their own dialect and often their own alphabet. He says the Greeks were happy to let people speak in other dialects in public places like the courts and lecture rooms. Multilingualism was not an issue. “It was almost invisible. Ancient writers do not generally talk about interpreters or translations. They take it as natural, as something that doesn’t even need to be mentioned,” he says.

It was not until Roman times that something approaching an official language began to emerge. “Roman magistrates, for instance, spoke Latin, even if the audience was Greek-speaking and the speaker could speak Greek. There are documented instances of this,” says Clackson. “It was a way of letting people know who was boss.”

Those in the audience would have to wait for the translation to understand what was being said.

“You can track in Roman times the discussion about how not to sound Greek. In his public speeches, Cicero [pictured] avoids Greek words as much as possible, but in his private letters he is continually using Greek words and phrases. It’s like a different linguistic persona. He said he would never use Greek words in a Latin sentence, but there is evidence that, in private, he did.”

Clackson adds that there appears to have been a gender difference in how language was used, with women who did not have such a public voice, more likely to use native languages.

Despite these differences, there is no written evidence, says Clackson, that language was associated with political resistance to Roman imperialism. Partly this may be because local languages did not have a written system. “If the Romans conquered you, you had to speak Latin and if you wanted to be educated and get on you had to learn Latin,” he says.

People used language fairly pragmatically according to what would get them the best results, he says. “In Roman law, Latin had to be spoken for contracts to be valid so you would be excluded from the economy if you didn’t use Latin, but there was no centralisation of schooling and attempts to impose language in that way. It was not as associated with identity as it is now.”

Nevertheless, the ability to speak the highest form of Greek was also a signifier of status. Many Romans learnt Greek as they saw it as the language of literature and culture.

Clackson’s research is currently focused on whether the Romans treated Greek differently to other languages, whether they were more open to Greek culture and whether that openness was part of their success.

*James Clackson will be speaking at the Hay Festival at 1pm on 29th May on Migration and Language: Ancient Perspectives.

James Clackson's new book looks at what language use can tell us about ancient societies.

I am interested in the impact of long-term migration on language. In the end, despite concerns, Latin was enriched by migration. Lots of basic Latin words are Greek words and this has translated into the Romance languages such as French where you can trace the impact of Greek in words such as bras, jambe and parler.

James Clackson

Cesare Maccari

"Maccari-Cicero" by Cesare Maccari. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Hay gears up for Greek marathon

bjb42 — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:32:18 +0000

Ancient Greece is all the rage this year as the UK gears up for Olympic fever and this year's Hay Festival [www.hayfestival.com] is no exception. It is putting on a series of debates on classical Greece covering everything from Plato to heroisation and sex.

̽��ֱ��idea for the series came after Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, gave a very popular talk at Hay 2010 on how the Greeks would view contemporary democracy. He will be taking part in three of the 10 Greek Classics sessions this year.

On 7^th June he will speak on the first panel on Herodotus, described in the Festival programme as “the Father of History, who pioneered the systems of ‘inquiry’ and holds a mirror up to our own concerns about East and West”. His fellow panellist is author and Cambridge alumnus Tom Holland.

̽��ֱ��two are collaborating on a new hardback translation of Herodotus for Penguin so at least part of the focus of their session will be the translation process. “Tom is not a classicist. His degree was in English,” says Professor Cartledge, “but he has turned himself into a master historian and translator.”

Tom's books include Persian Fire, the first world empire, battle for the West which draws extensively on Herodotus.

̽��ֱ��new translation, which will be completed by the time the Hay Festival begins, will be printed on high quality paper and will only be out in hardback. There could be an e-version as well, which would be the first digital version of Herodotus.

Later that day Professor Cartledge will also be speaking at a session entitled the Greek Idea. This will cover the aspirations and concepts of civilisation, democracy, drama, virtue, victory, liberty and xenia, and discuss what the study of Classics has meant in the wider world.

̽��ֱ��panel consists of Tom Holland, popular historian Bettany Hughes, ̽��ֱ�� of Warwick philosopher and former Cambridge alumna Angela Hobbs and Professor Cartledge and the session is based on a proposal which Professor Cartledge and Bettany Hughes are putting forward for a 15-part BBC Radio Four series. This will be consist of 15 minute programmes on Greek ideas that have had a major impact down the ages.

̽��ֱ��third session he is taking part in on 8^th June is on Plato with Angela Hobbs, a Plato specialist and a former pupil of Professor Cartledge and Bettany Hughes who has a book out on Socrates, Plato's mentor. Professor Cartledge has also written a chapter on Socrates in his book, Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice. ̽��ֱ��panellists will consider the influence and impact of ̽��ֱ��Republic and ̽��ֱ��Symposium.

Professor Cartledge is a veteran of the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival – now in its fourth year - and last year he was in a discussion with Guardian journalist and author Charlotte Higgins which drew an audience of around 400 people.

“It shows how Cambridge, Classics, outreach and impact are just bubbling at the moment. It's terrific publicity and I'm very thrilled to be taking part,” he says.

He has also written the introduction to ̽��ֱ��Sites of Ancient Greece, a book of aerial photos of Greece published by Phaidon which will be launched on 3^rd May at Heffers and he will be on the Today programme talking about it this week. “There's a huge buzz about ancient Greece right now thanks to the Olympics,” he says.

Next year, the Hay Festival will run a series on Rome which will be organised by Professor Mary Beard.

For the full line-up of the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival, click here. Tickets can be booked through the Hay Festival site.

Following a successful talk at Hay in 2010, Professor Paul Cartledge will be playing a major part in a series of 10 discussions on Ancient Greece at this year's festival, alongside Cambridge's own regular programme.

It shows how Cambridge, Classics, outreach and impact are just bubbling at the moment.

Paul Cartledge

Michailk via Creative Commons

Herodotus

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