A Theatre of Justice:
Aspects of performance in Greco-Roman oratory and rhetoric
University College London, 19-20 April 2012 (Gordon House, Room 106)

The notion of “performance” has recently attracted considerable scholarly attention both in literary criticism and in cultural history. In
fundamentally “performative” societies, such as the Greek and Roman, a “performance” approach seems to be a sine qua non for the understanding of the nature of several genres. Oratory is, certainly, among them: for the Greeks and Romans, oratory was not primarily something they wrote or read, but something they performed before the audience. Despite the significant scholarly advances that have been made on the area of oratory in/as
performance, there is still a lot more to be explored, further questions need to be asked and answered.

Our postgraduate conference aims at bringing together not only classicists, but also students from other fields of study such as law, reception and theatrical studies, in order to present their on-going research work in this fertile area.

Registration is now open for the conference and those interested in
attending will find details on the webpage of UCL department of Greek and Latin: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/news-and-events (where there is also the full conference programme and a compilation of titles and abstracts of papers)

For questions about the conference, please feel free to contact Andreas Serafim (andreas.serafim.10 AT ucl.ac.uk) or Beatrice Da Vela (beatrice.vela.10 AT ucl.ac.uk)

Keynote speakers:
Ian Worthington (University of Missouri)
Edith Hall (King’s College London)

Speakers:
Alice Bonandini (Università degli Studi di Trento)
Andreas Serafim (University College London)
Arina Patrikova (University of Oxford)
Beatrice Da Vela (University College London)
Bogdan Cristea (University of Leeds)
Brenda Griffith-Williams (University College London)
Emmanuela Schoinoplokaki (University of Crete)
Evan Jewell (Macquarie University)
Guy Westwood (University of Oxford)
Jakub Filonik (University of Warsaw)
Janet Mowat (University of Toronto)
Kamila Wyslucha (University of Wroclaw)
Laura Viidebaum (University of Cambridge)
Maria Galanaki (University of Crete)
Matthew Kears (University of Birmingham)
Michael Hardy (King’s College London)
Nefeli Papakonstantinou (University of Paris-Sorbonne)
Tzu-I Lao (University College London)
Verena Schulz (University of Munich)

In the wake of Super Bowl shenanigans last week which seemed to eclipse the half time show in press coverage later,  Law Professor Ira Robbins was on NPR’s All Things Considered and suggesting that the gesture isn’t considered obscene any more … in the introductory bits he did give some history:

CORNISH: So, to start, where does this gesture come from? And how far back in history do we have to go to find people taking offense to it?

ROBBINS: If you go back in recorded history, it’s about 2,500 years, although there are apocryphal stories that it goes back even further. The Greek playwright, Aristophanes, refers to the middle finger in his play, “The Clouds,” basically treating it as a phallic symbol.

We see this in Roman literature, as well, and Roman history. In fact, the use of the middle finger was so prevalent in those times that they gave it a special name. They called it the digitus impudicus, meaning the impudent finger.

• via: Flipping ‘The Bird’ Just Isn’t Obscene Anymore, Law Professor Argues

Interestingly, way back when rogueclassicism was young (and hosted on a different platform), we mentioned a case in Houston wherein the court decided ‘flipping the bird’ did not constitute disorderly conduct. At that time, we also mentioned that folks might want to check out a Straight Dope page for more Roman precedents for the gesture, and happily that’s still where it was almost a decade ago. What isn’t so easy to get to now, however, was a discussion of the Greek side of the gesture which we had on the Classics list, which was once our only bit of ‘social media’ (and so easy to remember where you were chatting about it). That convo now languishing in the Internet Archive, so to make it more ‘available’, I’ll reproduce the discussion (From June 10/11, 2002):

Initially, amicus noster, the late James Butrica asked:

A colleague is wondering whether the Greeks had a specific term for what the Romans would have called the digitus infamis. I haven’t been able to come up with anything better than “mesos” (which might not even be right, if the thumb wasn’t considered a finger).

J.F. Gannon responded:

You are right about mesos. At least you have the support of the Scholia ad Nub. 653. Dover does not have much to say in his commentary and cites no parallels. It is tempting to think the Athenians might have thought of it as the daktylos aischros but I do not know of any text that supports this. But if I were a betting man…

Ernest Moncanda added:

There are several references in the literature to “daktylos mesos” as has been pointed out, and surely Dr. Gannon’s suggested “daktylos aischros” sounds convincing. For the act of “giving” the finger, we have “skimalizein.” For the “eskimalisen” of Arist. Pax. 549, the scholia explains this as to hold up the middle finger: skimalisai gar esti kuriOs to ton meson tOn daktulOn eis ton prOkton ton orneon embalein. Burton, in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night writes: “Debauchees had signals like Freemasons whereby they recognized one another. The Greek ‘skematizein’ was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs; hence the Athenians called it ‘katapygon’ or sodomite and the Romans ‘digitus impudicus’ or ‘infamis,’ the ‘medical finger’ of Rabelais and the Chiromantists–though properly speaking ‘medicus’ is the third or ring-finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses.”

Erasmus (Adag. III.iii.87) writes: “Eskimalixthai. To be a target for the finger. Eskimalixthai se XrE, you should be a target for the finger. This insulting gesture was used to convey supreme contempt. Eskimalisai in Greek is to display the middle finger while keeping the others closed, to show disrespect…..Hence too that line in Juvenal” (10.53) [alluded to in Adag. II.iv. 67-68]: “Bade her go hang, showed her his middle finger-nail.” Erasmus says that Suidas who discusses the word (E. 3150. He also cites Pax, 549) uses it more elegantly and more like a true proverb. (Have our hard working “SOL” brothers reached this yet?).

To which James Butrica responded:

Naturally I got the TLG on the case and turned up what has been reported here, and more, though nearly all of it can be traced to two passages of Aristophanes and the comments that it generated, in a sort of mini-history of Atticism in later Greek.

I’ll have to do another search to find exactly where eskimalikhthai turns up in Greek literature, but “eskimalikhthai se khrH” is one of the proverbs in the collection of Michael Apostolius, with an entry only similar to what Erasmus gives: “of those who deserve hubris:’skimalisai’ applies when, wanting to insult someone, they extend the middle finger, draw the others together, and show them to him: properly it means to insert the finger into the bum of a bird.” (There’s a slight grammatical incoherence here, with both plural and singular forms used in reference to the same person(s).)

Hesychius s.v. siphniazein says that the word means “katadaktulizein,” i.e. “to finger up,” and reflects the slander that the Siphnians (of the fabulous Siphnian treasury at Delphi) were pederasts, and he gives the aorist infinitive siphniasai as having the same meaning as skimalisai. Later his entry for skimalisai defines it as katadaktulisai. The Atticist Lexicon of Moeris says that skimalisai is the Attic equivalent of katadaktulisai in other dialiects. Photius also notes the equivalence, but defines skimalisai as “to finger up in unseemly fashion” (askhHmonOs). Similarly, Phrynichus defines katadaktulizein as “shamelessly [aselgOs] touching the seat of someone nearby with the finger” and says that skimalizein is the Attic equivalent.

The scholion on Acharnians 444 glosses Aristophanes’ skimalisO with “with the small finger so that I might touch their womanish bums,” and notes that properly it refers to using “the small finger” to find out if birds are carrying eggs. The scholion to Peace 549 is a little different, saying (in the exact same words found in Michael Apostolius) that it refers to putting a finger up a bird’s bum (no purpose expressed) but also refers to extending the middle finger and drawing the rest together as an insult (pretty much as in Michael again).

Much the same language can be found at Suda epsilon 3150, s.v. eskimalisen; first, however, it says that the word means to put the middle finger together with the “big” one (i.e. the thumb) and strike as an insult (is this a finger-snap?), then it gives katadaktulizein as a synonym, and then the finger in the bird-bum and the extended-finger insult.

A second Suda entry, sigma 606, s.v. skimalisO, provides much the same information as the Acharnians scholion — not surprisingly, since the Suda entry evidently exists simply because Aristophanes used the word. In fact, the two passages in Aristophanes seem to have generated pretty much everything else said about this verb, with the exception of an anecdote in Diogenes Laertius’ life of Zeno (7.17). It appears that Zeno was at a banquet, third in sequence on a couch. Zeno kneed a neighbour who had just stuck his foot in his own neighbour’s bum, and asked “So what do you think the one above you is having done to him by you?” (ti oun oiei ton hupokatO sou paskhein hupo sou?). The Loeb translation of Hicks takes this all somewhat innocently, with kicking and nudging, but skimalizO seems after all to be somewhat more intimate — in this case perhaps a “foot-goose.” (Hey, wasn’t Kevin Bacon in that movie?)

I wouldn’t care to guess which potent variety of hashish Burton was using when he spun out the nonsense quoted above about “debauchees.”

We might also point to a photo of a statue of Venus being unpacked at the Michael C. Carlos Museum (Venus Flipping the Bird), which we didn’t mention in that Focus Magazine cover thing (Venus Still Causing a Stir)… I seem to recall we had at least one other conversation on these sorts of things on the Classics list (mostly from the Latin side); if I find it, I’ll add it.

ADDENDUM (a few hours later) … Just found this lurking in my mailbox with a bit of ClassCon too:

• When did the middle finger become offensive? (BBC)

ADDENDUM (the next day) … as I catch up on my rss feeds, I note that James Warren of Kenodoxia fame has also been waxing on this subject: One-fingered salute

From the Wanderer:

One of the big decisions for students entering Old Rochester Regional (ORR) Junior High School next fall is which foreign language they will elect to study for a year and a half. Usually this decision is heavily influenced by the advice of friends, parents, and older siblings, as the elementary schools do not offer language classes during school hours.

But for the past few years, Latin and Spanish teacher Marcia Ross of ORR High School has been working with the principals of Old Hammondtown School, Sippican Elementary School, and Rochester Memorial School to create after-school enrichment programs through which students can explore the three language programs available at the junior and senior high schools – Latin, Spanish, and French. This past week, the first four-week session of language classes at OHS ended.

This particular partnership, between the Classical and Modern Languages Department of ORR and OHS, developed from the organizational teamwork of Ms. Ross and OHS Principal Matthew D’Andrea.

From the ORR end of things, Ms. Ross helped high school students create their classes and provided both resources and advice for lesson planning, which the students-turned-teachers accomplished independently. Mr. D’Andrea, from the OHS end of things, made classrooms available after-school for the language classes to use, and the front office of OHS helped the ORR students locate supplies for their pupils’ projects.

Last year, the schools partnered to offer a single eight-week session of after-school language classes. This year, however, it was decided to have two four-week sessions divided by the February vacation, thereby giving the students and volunteer teachers a break to explore other extra-curricular interests. The first classes began the week of January 8 and ended the week of January 29.

This year, classes focused primarily on Latin and Spanish. With the support of sophomore Ruhi Raje and fellow senior Katie Holden, I taught a Latin class to an assorted group of 10 fourth, fifth, and sixth-graders who already had extensive knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology.

The goal of the class, the three of us decided, would be to teach our students about Latin through the eyes of a gladiator. The lesson content was primarily based in culture, as the grammar of Latin is not discussed in full until the upper level Latin classes at the high school. There was no way that Ms. Raje, Ms. Holden, and I could teach elementary-aged students about conjugating verbs and declining nouns without permanently scarring and scaring them.

Besides, we had agreed at our first meeting that the culture of the Romans is incredibly rich and rather weak in the high school’s program of study; it would be an excellent subject for our students to learn.

Ms. Holden and I were novices to this after-school language program; Ms. Raje was not, as she had taught a Spanish class the year before. Our classes were only an hour long, but we always ended up putting twice that amount of time into our lesson planning. We spent the January vacation creating an outline for our four classes and figuring out how to build from one lesson to the next.

In the days leading up to each class, we’d visit the spare room in the language hallway of the high school where Ms. Ross kept books and binders full of readings, crosswords, arts and crafts projects, and games. Using a collection of four books designed for teaching Latin to young children, we’d photocopy pages and arrange them by theme in a packet for our students to complete and take home. We’d sometimes borrow a box containing whiteboards, dry erase markers, and erasers so that our students could practice their lessons – they were very helpful in our lesson on Roman numerals.

The first week was spent covering Roman mythology and the Latin roots that appear in the Harry Potter series. Ms. Raje, Ms. Holden, and I were pleasantly surprised to see how familiar our students were with the mythology. They had already learned about the gods, goddesses, and myths of the ancient Greeks, so we used that knowledge to teach them about the Roman version. The students were also adept at identifying the Latin roots that J.K. Rowling used for her spells and characters’ names. Our students were surprised to learn, for example, that Severus Snape’s name comes from the Latin adjective “Severus,” which means “severe” or “stern” in English.

In the second and third weeks, we tackled the ambitious goal of teaching our students the Latin names for animals. Using worksheets, crosswords, a chart, and a game called Vinco, we taught everything from domestic and barnyard animals to the ferocious wild animals that the Romans would import into Italy – such as lions and tigers. We enhanced their vocabulary with a crossword teaching the English adjectives such as “ursine,” which means “like a bear.” The class quickly learned how to take the Latin names for the animals and change the endings to find the corresponding adjectives. The OHS students thoroughly enjoyed the round of Vinco, which is an exact replica of Bingo. Cleverly, “vinco” means “I win” in Latin and the two winners from our class loved shouting it!

In our last class, the three of us taught a variety of cultural facts. We largely focused on the Colosseum, Circus Maximus, Roman theater, and the sheer magnitude and importance of the Roman public bathhouses. Our students were intrigued and shocked by revelations such as the Romans’ method for getting clean — using oil and a metal scraper, called a strigil — and the number of participant deaths in the naval battles staged in the Colosseum.

After learning about the different ways someone could end up becoming a gladiator, our class applied their knowledge to an arts and crafts project that required matching pictures of the four kinds of gladiators to their description. The finished product was a pop-up book entitled “The Mighty Gladiators.”

The capstone to this final class was a demonstration of the different fighting styles the gladiators would use in their combats. With the help of Ms. Holden, the pair of us acted out two battles. The first was between a Thracian and a Murmillo, or a lightly-armed gladiator against a heavily-armed one. Our second battle was between a Retarius and a Samnite; the children enjoyed this fight immensely as I entrapped my opponent, the Samnite Ms. Holden, using my “fishing net,” which was really Ms. Raje’s jacket. At the conclusion of our demonstration, the class unanimously agreed that if they were a gladiator, they would have liked to be a Retarius so that they could fight using a trident and fishing net.

It was a successful end to the first session for our class, as well as for the other Latin and Spanish classes. The volunteers from ORR will begin preparations soon in anticipation of the second session.

• via: ORR Students Teach “A Gladiator’s Latin” (Wanderer)

… an interesting strategy …

The Huffington Post had a burning question this week:

• via Togas On Metro: Do You Have Any Clue What These Dudes Were Up To?.

.. I certainly have no idea, but the original article (with photo) has a really nice video on how to make and fold a toga …

A couple of brief items from Standart are — as often — tantalizingly vague. First:

The strong hurricane which rages near the city of Bourgas made a favour to the Bulgarian archaeologists.
The hurricane has unearthed an ancient Roman town,” mayor of Bourgas Dimitar Nikolov was happy to say.
The merciless wave washed away tones of mud to discover the relics. The finding is located in the northern part of Sarafovo residential district as part of the town lies on the border with a vacation house of the ministry of defense. “We have no idea what the name of the settlement was because it is not described or seen on the old maps and documents. A stone pillar with inscriptions has been discovered and the future excavations will definitely find other written sources to help us learn the name of the place,” the director of the Bulgarian National Museum of History Prof. Bozhidar Dimitrov told the Standart.
In Mr. Dimitrov’s opinion, the settlement had a strategic significance in the past.
“The relics are quite monumental and tell us it was a big town,” Mr Dimitrov states.

• via: Hurricane Unveils Roman Town(Standart)

The original online article has a subtitle referring to a sarcophagus find … that appears to have been dealt with in a separate piece:

The hurricane that has recently hit Bourgas, southern Black Sea coast, has made an unexpected gift to archeologists. The stormy seas unearthed the ruins of an ancient Roman settlement and an adjacent port. Having raged for two days and nights the waves uncovered twelve metres of the frontal walls of a huge building – about 2.5 metres high. The sea has also brought to light something that resembles a stone sarcophagus. Archeologists believe a noble Roman might have been buried in it. A day later, however, some of these same archeologists expressed more reserved views on the finding assuming this could be just the pool of an ancient fountain. Nothing, though, can be known for sure before the sea calms down and archeologists get access to the place.

• via: Stormy Seas Unearth Ancient Sarcophagus(Standart)

That second item is accompanied by a sort of ‘coastal’ photo … not sure if it’s meant to be a photo of the finds or what, but adds the detail that the finds date back to the time of Justinian.

More press coverage:

• Sea Storm Unveils Ancient Town on Bulgaria’s Coast (Novinite)