Month: April 2009

Performing Thucydides

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

This one was mentioned on the Classics list last week but I didn’t note by whom (apologies) … Some excerpts from a lengthy piece in the San Antonio Current:

Our cities grow in size, our awareness of the world around us increases, technology steadily advances, but some things remain immutable, chief among them human nature. The cliché says those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, but perhaps it’s less a problem of knowledge than our own inherent failings and short-sightedness. Though airwaves abound with cop reality shows and courtroom dramas, crime abides. Ancient religious teachings continue to be used as justifications for violence. And, despite the many fruitless wars revisited in texts dating back thousands of years, we still plunge into quagmires with logic-defying frequency, suggesting rationality has nothing to do with it at all.

These are a few of the insights gleaned from Athens v. Sparta, a fascinating 15-track musical condensation of the Peloponnesian War based on Thucydides and Xenophon’s recounting of the conflict. A combination pop-opera, Greek drama, modern allegory, and historical CliffsNotes created by Trinity University history grad and musician Charlie Roadman, the album resonates on several levels and is likely unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It details how Athens’ cultural hubris, faltering democracy, self-serving oligarchs, indifference to its allies, and ill-considered military adventurism resulted in a war doomed by poor prosecution and overextended forces.

[…]

The album intersperses narration from Thucydides’ text, read by Ken Webster, creative director of Austin’s Hyde Park Theatre, with singing by Kevin Higginbotham and atmospheric backdrops painted with guitar strums, effervescing loops, skittering beats, and shimmery washes of melody that melt easily into the woodwork. Roadman fashioned the music from the contributions of 19 musicians who call either Austin or San Antonio home. He describes it as “downtempo pop,” and it isn’t far removed for electronic chill-out music, giving the 2,400-year-old history lesson a ghostly futuristic sheen.
[…]

The album’s genesis goes back to 1991, when Roadman and Buttercup singer Erik Sanden were assigned Thucydides and Xenophon’s couple-thousand-page tome, and blew off reading it until three days before the final. Justifiably concerned, they crammed by reading alternate chapters then recounting the events to each other, effectively halving the assignment. The story stuck with them, and eight years ago Sanden bought Roadman the definitive edition of the text, The Landmark Thucydides, edited by Robert Strassler.

This encouraged Roadman to write a song about Pericles’ funeral oration, a rabble-rousing rant that provoked the Athenians into war, reminding them of their glorious history and suggesting that “judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom, and freedom of valor, never decline the dangers of war.” It was still more a lark than obsession at this point. “I was just writing songs about whatever amused me, history, news, or National Geographic,” Roadman says.

A few years later, he wrote another song based on the Peloponnesian War, “Life in the Spartan Army,” and then another, and decided to dedicate an entire album to the war. Comparing it to Christo wrapping the Reichstag, he admits that, “I pretty much knew it was an absurd thing, and that’s what attracted me to it. Just the absurdity of doing something I was laughing about the second I thought about it.”
[…]

The finished product impressed everyone involved, many of whom had only played on part of the album, and hence couldn’t see the big picture. Roadman held an initial CD release in Austin, which sold out and concluded with a standing ovation. Webster echoes many of the participants when he says, “I didn’t know there would be that kind of an audience for it.”
[…]
This is Roadman’s hope as well. He’s already booked to play the Texas Classical Association Conference in Austin in October, and is considering putting together a study guide to go with the disc. He’s hoping that it will engender more conference invitations. “That sort of appeals to me, because, after playing, instead of sleeping in a van we get to stay in a nice hotel,” he says.[…]

Olympians Up To Their Old Tricks?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Double take headline of the week was:

Catherine Keener Has A Baby With Zeus

… which now appears to have been “corrected” to:

Catherine Keener Has A Baby With Poseidon

I suspect the watery one is just covering up for the well-known proclivities of his brother, who probably just wants to avoid another Europa … Io … Semele … Callisto (etc.) type situation … Of course, given what Poseidon is said to have fathered, CK might be worried in either case …

Scylla and Charybdis Origin?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

A piece on the discovery of a vast colony of black coral in the Straits of Messina (which will, no doubt, affect Berlusconi’s bridge plans … and also makes me wonder if we’ll soon be hearing of some shipwreck discoveries), has an interesting closing bit:

The town of Scilla, near the site of the coral discovery, was described by the ancient Greek writer Homer, as being home to a six-headed sea monster named Scilla. The monster flashed three rows of sharp teeth in each of its six heads and rumbled along on 12 feet.

Not not far from Scylla’s cave, on the opposite Sicilian shore, lived another sea monster, Charybdis, who sucked passing ships into its vortex along that narrow stretch of water.

Together, Scylla and Charybdis made the Strait of Messina one of the Mediterranean’s most insidious passages: ships sailing there were almost certain to be destroyed by one of the monsters. Could the black coral have contributed to the region’s lore? Perhaps only indirectly, said Salvati.

“Indeed, there are very strong currents right where the black coral was found. I doubt there could be a direct link with the myth since the coral grows too deeply to be seen from the surface. However, many unknown marine species appear to live at that depth,” Salvati said.

Adrienne Mayor, a folklorist who authored “The First Fossil Hunters,” a book which explores the connection between Greek and Roman myths and the fossil beds around the Mediterranean, found the discovery of black coral colonies near the mythical Scylla “intriguing.”

“Ancient authors such as Aristotle, Vergil, Pliny and Pausanias described the Mediterranean as the home to many different species of sea monsters, giant octopus and squid,” Mayor told Discovery News. “Giant eels were reported by tuna fishermen between 1740 and the early 1900s — maybe they live in the deep underwater ravines lined with black coral!”

Mary Beard on Roman Publishing

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Our favourite Cambridge Don has a nice piece in the New York Times on getting published in ancient Rome … here’s a tease:

Bookstores in Rome clustered in particular streets. One was the Vicus Sandalarius, or Shoemakers Row, not far from the Colosseum (convenient for post-gladiatorial browsing). Here you would find the outsides of the stores plastered with advertisements and puffs for titles in stock, often adorned with some choice quotes from the books of the moment. Martial, in fact, once told a friend not to bother to venture inside, since you could “read all the poets” on their doorposts.

For those who did go in, there was usually a place to sit and read. With slaves on hand to summon up refreshments, it would have been not unlike the coffee shop in a modern Borders. For collectors, there were occasionally secondhand treasures to be picked up, at a price. One Roman academic reported finding an old copy of the second book of Virgil’s “Aeneid” — not just any old copy but, the bookseller assured him, Virgil’s very own. An unlikely story maybe, but one that persuaded him to part with a small fortune to acquire it (rather more, in fact, than the combined annual wages of two professional soldiers). The risks on cheaper purchases were different. A cut-price book roll would presumably have fallen to pieces as quickly as a modern mass-market paperback. But worse, the pressure to get copies made quickly meant that they were loaded with errors and sometimes uncomfortably different from the authentic words of the author. One list of prices from the third century A.D. implies that the money needed to buy a top-quality copy of 500 lines would be enough to feed a family of four (admittedly, on very basic rations) for a whole year. If you settled for an inferior job, you could get a 20 percent discount.

… we’ll see how many Classicists grumble when they read “millenniums” … personally, I’ve always wondered how many literate Romans actually ‘read’ as opposed to having someone read to them (and not even in a ‘performance’ sense). If I think about it too hard, I start thinking of the ancient literate slave as the Roman equivalent of an iPod Touch, with a longer battery life.

Iliad Reading with a Twist

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a worthy project I could see Latin/Classics clubs adapting and/or emulating … from the Indy Star:

Latin students from North Central High School will use the tale of an ancient war to launch their own modern war on poverty.

From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday at Kids Ink Bookstore, 56th and Illinois streets, Indianapolis, there will be two dozen students taking turns reading Homer’s Greek classic about the Trojan War, “The Iliad.”

Students under the leadership of Latin teacher Steven Perkins have collected pledges of five cents per line of poetry read aloud; there are 700 lines in the English translation by Stanley Lombardo. Readers will wear specially made T-shirts designed by North Central student Zoe Smith.

Kids Ink will extend its hours for the day and will provide a donation box for visitors to contribute, as well. Proceeds will go to the Shepherd Community Center in downtown Indianapolis.

To learn more about Reading the War on Poverty, visit http://nclatin.org/reading_war_poverty.html