Category Archives: Classical Antiquity

On Tragedy

hercules - Hercules Fan Art (36796030) - Fanpop

In the words of the eminently fictional Don Draper from Mad Men, “People do things.” We each live our own stories adjacent to one another, some of us more headful than others in our actions and choices. Sometimes, no matter the rationale or forethought, events and situations befall and unfold around us. If we truly are the hero of our own journey, there is a certain amount of agency we ascribe to ourselves–and yet, when tragedy does strike us, we can sometimes be left in bafflement over how we got here. Were we not careful? Did we not consider the risks? How could this have happened to us, aren’t we good people? Why would karma do us dirty like this?

Instead of spiraling into a shrieking cacophony of shame and blame because it happened to you, most people with their wits (and counseling degrees) will rightly point out that though tragic, life gives us lessons and there is something to be learned from our mistakes. If we are to consider these moments of drama a part of the woven story that makes us who we are–the art of our life–then perhaps we should consider ourselves a character in a Greek tragedy.

[A Greek Tragedy] is a play in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he or she cannot deal.

–Collins Dictionary

Scholars disagree precisely on the exact origins of Greek Tragedy (it doesn’t help that we’ve lost a lot of work), but the earliest study of the arts of poetry, tragedy, and comedy come from Aristotle’s writings on Poetics detailing the traditions from Athens which could be found around the 5th century B.C. Aristotle theorizes that the purpose of poetry comes from our innate urge as humans to learn life lessons through imitation and that through this imitation in learning we find great pleasure. Thus, it seems only reasonable that the art of poetry would be born to impart this desire. The Epic (Heroic) Poem is a literary device that far pre-dates Greece, but it’s influence on the development of Greek Tragedy is not lost on Aristotle. But he insists on the distinction where tragedy becomes not just an imitation in narrative like a poem, but in action that is “serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude” and displayed through the agents of “pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions”.

For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality…

-Aristotle, Poetics VI

He goes on to suggest that a successful tragedy is told in which a protagonist who is good suffers an event not out of misfortune, but from error or frailty in character which now brings the prospects of that main protagonist to unfavorable. And to expand on just what he means by a tragic hero being inherently good in order to feel the full weight of this pity–it is one who is morally expressed in virtue(s), consistent, has informed propriety (values with meaning rather than for the sake of it), and one who is realistic (no Superman or impossibly perfect persons). Just imagining someone of these qualities finding themselves dealing with the pain of tragedy because of an error in judgment should already be pulling at your heart strings. Who is the best person you know? Now imagine that person, trying their hardest to do good, ends up losing everything they care about. That’s pretty sad, isn’t it?

The tragic flaw in this case is being married to Theseus…

So again, what’s the point of tragedy? Especially in story telling? Well, Aristotle pointed out that part of the focus is learning through life imitating art–but there is also another component to this kind of drama known as Catharsis which ties the purpose all together. Catharsis in Greek Tragedy involves an ’emotional cleansing’ which occurs due to the empathy invoked by the pity and fear experienced upon witnessing the tragic unfolding of a good person experiencing catastrophe of their own doing. It’s a psychological phenomenon that goes beyond art–emotional release has its foundation in Freudian theory as well, an aid to relieving stress and unconscious tension. Not to mention a ‘good cry‘ releases endorphins meant to make you feel better and more calm afterwards, so there are benefits surely to experiencing tragedy as an audience member.

But since we’re entertaining the thought experiment, what if it feels like you’re hypothetically the tragic figure in your own tale and you’re struggling to reason out what happened to you and why? Oedipus, Medea, Antigone, and more famous characters all spelled about their own undoing in different ways but they weren’t ‘bad’ people though they made horrific mistakes (Well, Medea makes a hard case against her on this one…) These figures were known to harbor admirable traits–strengths and virtues, yet in this case, presenting as tragic flaws.

So what are your tragic flaws?

Aristotle’s 12 Virtues (in ethics)

Courage – Bravery

Temperance – Moderation

Liberality – Spending

Magnificence – Charisma

Magnanimity – Generosity

Ambition – Pride

Patience – Calm

Friendliness

Truthfulness – Honesty

Wit – Humor

Modesty – Ego

Justice – Sense of Right/Wrong

The Nichomachaen Ethics, Aristotle

Now in looking over the above, these all sound like good things right? Well, that’s because they are. BUT do they always lead to ‘good’ things? Not necessarily and therein lies the tragedy–what if someone (or you!) exemplifies one or more of these qualities but in enacting the principle it leads you to pain and suffering? Were you wrong? Maybe. But are you bad? Hell no.

Listen, life is a god damn mess and hard to figure out, that’s why we have stories and art to tell us a little bit about how things can go horribly wrong–even to good people who are simply trying their best. But it might be helpful to try and figure out where the error in judgment came from on your end and decide how to continue walking ahead as the good person you are, not let the tragedy break you, but let it define you in how you move forward in resiliency and compassion. Holding true to your good nature and accepting your loss with grace and accountability.

Did too much patience lead to something walking away from you indefinitely due to inaction? Were you too honest and truthful about something that would have been better left unsaid, something that spelled your own doom once spoken out-loud? Did you give too earnestly, too much of yourself to someone who maybe took too much from you in the end? And maybe you did all of these things anyway because you were too trusting and brave with your vulnerability, only to get hurt badly in the end?

It certainly might seem like your fault when looking at it on the surface–an err in judgment sort of warrants a responsible actor after all–but instead consider it as a learning experience, your life being art. And try to think of how to tell your story in a way that can perhaps also help guide others to not commit the same folly. Your terrible loss and tragedy might just be the thing that saves someone else. Or even you, once you learn the lesson from this and keep on living.

If there’s one thing that you need not be Greek in your tragedy aside from pain and suffering though, is in how you choose to live the ending–you don’t really need to cook your own kids, hang yourself, or marry your own mother to learn anything from your mistakes. Leave that kind of high end drama to the playwrights.

But keep it dramatic

The Latin Cure for Love and Heartbreak

Sappho out here making melancholy and unrequited love look good #goals

Love futue-ing sucks.

We feel lucky enough to have it for a brief fleeting moment and then immediately regret it when we find ourselves flailing on the bathroom floor in a pool of our own tears, clutching our hearts and wearing headphones with crooning lovelorn songs from Andrea Botticelli in our ears. It’s god damn painful and no amount of Chunky Monkey ice cream is enough to numb the ache. Phone-calls to therapists who insist you should stop checking their social media page and bitter, passive aggressive tweets are part of the processing. Going to the gym, out with friends (and binge drinking), and plenty of questionable credit card purchases are all part of the healing. But you’re not the only person to suffer a love lost, to be destroyed by the one person you trusted above all to guard your heart. People have been getting crushed by heartbreakers since humanity invented the ability to string together words in poetry to complain and write about it. So how the hell did people in the past get over this shit before Spotify playlists were a thing?

I just really want to die.

She, crying many tears, left me

And said to me:

“Oh, how terribly we have suffered, we two,

Sappho, really I don’t want to go away.”

And I said to her this:

Go and be happy, remembering me,

For you know how we cared for you.

And if you don’t I want to remind you

…and the lovely things we felt.

Sappho, Fragment 94

The famous Latin poet Ovid might just have the answer. While romping around 1st century Rome under the reign of Emperor Augustus, Ovid made quite a name for himself with his poetry in love and heartache. One of his first works was a collection of lyrical tales about legendary heroines and their lost loves, including praise for Sappho. He wrote his own love poems for his muses and then further clarified his passions with The Art of Love. And, naturally, he began to write about the pain and healing needed afterwards when it all goes wrong in his work the Remedia Amoris or The Cure for Love. So with the help of Ovid (and me) here are some classic ways to overcome heartbreak:

"Come to my teaching, who've been deceived, you whose love has utterly betrayed you."

Don’t Suffer For It

Love, having read the name and title on this book,

said: ‘It’s war, you declare against me, I see, it’s war’.

‘Cupid, don’t condemn your poet for a crime, who has so often

raised the standard, you trusted him with, under your command.

Ovid, Part 1: Words with Cupid, and the Task

Ever feel as if you were being punished by the person you loved? As if the simple crime in having feelings is why you deserve their cruelty and to suffer the pain for it. Yeah, me too–people suck more than heartache sometimes. But remember–there is nothing wrong in loving someone. Love is a gift, always. It is not your fault and even if their words cut you deeply, left you with fresh wounds, someone unwilling to accept love has their own issues to sort out. As Ovid would say, “Let him rejoice in happiness, any eager man who loves and delights in love: let him sail with the wind…why should any lover hang from a high beam, a sad weight, with a knotted rope round his neck? Why should anyone stab himself with cold steel?” And further, “You, be content with these tears, with no guilt for death: it’s not fitting for your torch to plunge beneath greedy pyres.”

The take away? It’s their loss. Don’t lose yourself too. Love is good and it’s a blessing to have it.

Keep Busy

Let your swift mind encompass what it is that you love, and withdraw your neck from the collar that hurts you. Halt its beginnings: it’s too late for the doctor to be called, when the illness has grown stronger through delay.

Ovid, Part II: Treat it Early: Fill Your Time with War or Law

Alright, so people in the Classical Era were probably not stalking each other on Instagram, but certainly there were plenty of ‘accidental’ run-ins at the market or pleading for reconciliation through open windows. This is essentially the leave it and don’t wallow too much phase. Ovid insists that the sooner someone tries to move on the better–that the longer one puts it off, the more danger there is in prolonging the pain. “When tears are over, and the sorrowful spirit’s done, then grief can be given expression in words. …so when you’re ready for my medical arts, first ban idleness, on my advice.” He suggests that coping in gambling, drinking, and languid sleeping won’t help either–the best bet is to dedicate yourself to learning or a craft. Bettering yourself is part of the cure.

Don’t dwell too much in the agony, start immediately by loving yourself.

Get in Touch with Nature

Any care will give way to those cares. …sow the seed for your harvest, in the earth you’ve ploughed, see the branches bowed with the weight of apples, so the tree hardly bears the weight it carries. See the flowing streams with happy murmurs: see the sheep grazing on the fertile grass.

Ovid, Part III: You Can Also Farm, Hunt, or Travel

Love and loss are a part of life. Reminding yourself of your place in it is crucial. You are a human being that can think, feel, and be. You are part of this process and journey permeating in this universe and you are alive for it. Surrounding yourself with the reminder of other living things as you–things that are simply being will remind you to appreciate your ability to do the same. Also, go somewhere new, take yourself out of your comfort zone and experience a different perspective. Get out of the place you are in now to find a new you. “You only need to journey far, though strong chains hold you back, and start to travel distant ways: you’ll cry, and your lost girl’s name will oppose it, and your feet will often stop you on the road: but the less you wish to go, the more you should go: endure it, and force unwilling feet to run.”

Life is also a gift and to be a part of this process, is itself, an art. Take yourself willingly on this journey, face it with bravery, and don’t allow fear to hold you back from making the changes to take new steps forward.

Don’t Bother with Tricks

No pains will be charmed away to ease the heart, conquering love won’t be put to flight by burning sulphur.

Ovid, Part IV: But Forget Witchcraft!

Back in the day, there was plenty of rituals and sacrifices to be made to gods and spirits. Love potions, charms, you name it. They didn’t work. Today we have workshops and internet experts declaring their services to help you ‘win back your ex!’. Manipulation tactics, no-contact rules, and player’s handbooks–none of this allows for healing if you’re holding out hope and trying to play games.

Don’t do it. It’s unproductive and doesn’t help you grow.

Nobody is Perfect

She prizes others, despises my love…let all this embitter your every feeling.

Ovid, Part V: Contemplate Her Defects

Remember, they hurt you. Rejected you. Threw away your gift and stomped on your heart like you were nothing. That’s not cool, right? So why keep pretending they were this wonderful person when they treated you poorly in the end and don’t appear to care about you anymore at all? Take your care for yourself instead. Ovid seems to take it to extremes on how to deflate the idealized version of your former lover, fresh with insults and other admonishments, but I think reminding yourself of what they did is enough (and far more healthy).

Don’t hold on to someone who has shown you that they don’t deserve you.

Date Someone New

So far I’ve answered Envy: tighten the reins, more resolutely, and ride your course out, poet.

Ovid, Part VI: Now About Sex

Listen, we all know the adage “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.” Ovid suggests the same. In fact, he encourages many.

Do you and do everybody else too, I guess.

Don’t Let Them See You Bleed

Pretend to what is not, and that the passion’s over, so you’ll become, in truth, what you are studying to be.

Ovid, Part VIII: Be Cool With Her

Be Chill. There is nothing more unbecoming than someone ripping their heart out Indiana Jone’s Kali Ma style and shoving it in their ex-lover’s face so they know just how badly they hurt you. Listen, unless they are a psychopath or a narcissist–they likely know. And if they don’t? Go back up to the other parts where you need to remind yourself how cruel they are then and they don’t really deserve any more of your attention. “Don’t let her be too pleased with herself, nor have the power to despise you: be brave, so she gives way to your bravery.”

Take back your power and hold your head high.

Protect Yourself

Let love fail, and, vanishing, dissolve into thin air, and let it fade away in gentle stages. But it’s wrong to hate the girl you loved, in any way: that conclusion suits uncivilised natures.

Ovid, Part XI: Now, Keep Away From Her

In the process of healing, this person still has the power to hurt you. They are unsafe. More poisonous words could infect you, false hopes could set you right back to the beginning, or their indifference could result in its own unique kind of pain. Don’t hate them, don’t treat them poorly if your paths are to cross–you both shared something special with one another at one time. But be careful not to open yourself up to more pain on their behalf, especially if they still have enough influence over you to cause further harm.

Stay away until enough time has passed for full healing. Show them your scars, not your fresh wounds.

Be Healthy and Eat Well

So don’t drink at all, or drink so much your cares all vanish: if it’s anywhere between the two it’s bound to do you harm.

Ovid, Part XVI: The Doctor’s Last Advice

The best way to feel better is to feel good. Mind your diet, eat healthy foods and though Ovid doesn’t mention it, get your sad butt to the gym and make it a fab one instead. There are plenty of foods that increase dopamine and serotonin production which will surely make you feel happier. Also, limit drinking and avoid falling into the trap of numbing yourself.

Heal the heart by healing the body.

Favourite Poet, 1888 - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Wait, how many lovers did Ovid just tell us to have?!

And another suggestion from me? Write blog posts. I’m sure Ovid would approve.

Cicero versus Cleopatra

What happens when two colossal figures of history, famous for their power and influence, meet at a party for the first time?

At the age of 60-years-old, Cicero had lived quite a full life in Roman politics by the time 46 BC sluggishly rolled around. In fact, the famous orator shared a lived experience similar to that of the Roman Republic up to this point. Both had become disillusioned by frequent civil unrest, battered by enemies foreign and at home, and had both struggled with financial hardships. And like the newly minted dictator of Rome Julius Caesar, Cicero had also just dumped his long-term partner in favor of a wealthy teenager. He needed the money, I suppose.

“During the long flow of success he met grave setbacks from time to time–exile, the collapse of his party, his daughter’s death and his own tragic and bitter end. But of all these disasters the only one he faced as a man was his own death…However, weighing his virtues against his faults, he was a great and memorable man. One would need a Cicero to sing his praises.” Livy

Everitt, A. (2004). Cicero: The life and times of Rome’s greatest politician. Prince Frederick, MD: RB Large Print. Pg. 318

But unlike Cicero, Julius Caesar’s paramour wasn’t just any rich young woman. [1] She was the sovereign ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt–Pharaoh, Queen, and Goddess Isis–and now at the age of 22-years-old, Cleopatra was the last thing standing between her people and absolute Roman rule (her sniveling little brother nothing more than a bedazzled ornament with no real power). She did all she could to secure her life and kingdom a place of assured ‘independence’, going so far as to give birth to Julius Caesar’s only son Caesarion just to cement the deal. Or not, as some sources believed, presuming the child could be another’s as Julius was thought to have been infertile. Either way, Caesar was sure the child was his (and so did Mark Antony and Octavian when it mattered later). So when Julius brought his new mistress and baby back to Rome, the elite were in quite a stir–who was this foreign woman who had captured the heart of Caesar? 

And perhaps none were more curious than Cicero, a man who until this point had been the one known to enrapture a room. 

“Her own beauty, so we are told, was not of that incomparable kind which instantly captivates the beholder. But the charm of her presence was irresistible: and there was an attractiveness in her person and talk, together with a peculiar force of character which pervaded her every word and action, and laid all who associated with her under its spell. It was a delight merely to hear the sound of her voice.” – Plutarch

Everitt, A. (2004). Cicero: The life and times of Rome’s greatest politician. Prince Frederick, MD: RB Large Print. Pg. 225

Cleopatra certainly had an image to uphold and upon her arrival in Rome, unleashed an arsenal of exotic creatures and treasures: Egyptian fabrics, mosaics, gold beakers, cinnamon, leopards, fragrances, most things the people of Rome had never seen before. And yet, despite this, she still kept a seemingly low profile. Caesar lived with his wife Calpurnia near the Forums while his sovereign mistress resided in a villa on the Janiculum Hill–deliberately taking no part in Caesar’s Triumph procession of his ‘conquest’ of Egypt (instead allowing her rival and sister Arsinoe to be paraded around as a prisoner). And Cleopatra, for all her wit and influence, was still a fish out of water. Changing temporary address from the beauty and extravagance of Alexandria to that of a backwater Rome and finding herself a woman in a culture where that idea inspired little confidence or respect compared to her own, she was perhaps rightly disenchanted by the whole ordeal. She also had to deal with the fact that everyone knew who she was (or thought they did) where she knew no one at all. Rome was a city of gossips and few secrets, afterall, and none were more eager to talk than Cicero.

Cicero Denounces Catiline, Cesare Maccari 1889

As his recent marriage showed, Cicero was a bit desperate to change his fortune. And with the gilded benefits of a new young wife, he was also seeking to add friendships with the elite and famous to the retinue of his network like he was some kind of Classical Instagram influencer. Among them would have surely been the exotic Queen of Egypt who took Rome by storm and with her sparked fashion movements, political reforms, and cultural intrigue. So it’s no surprise that Cicero would have attempted to ingratiate himself with the woman everyone in Rome was talking about. The only problem was, Cleopatra would have been less than admissible to any overtures from a man who talked so much shit about her father before her and her current beau Caesar, she’d have wrinkled her nose at the smell of such fakery and desperation wafting off of Cicero.

“I detest the Queen.” – Cicero

Schiff, S. (2011). Cleopatra: A life. New York: Back Bay Books. Pg. 130

Perhaps he thought it would be cute to ask her for the favor of giving him a book from the glorious library of Alexandria. To which Cleopatra, perhaps like any woman at a party trying to get away from the incessant chatter of a dude she wants to stop talking to, appeased him with a ‘sure’ and tried to move on with her life–you know, like trying to keep the last vestiges of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt intact. The girl was kinda busy. 

Banchetto di Cleopatra, Alessandro Allori 1570-71

But if no follow through from Cleopatra on the book situation was enough to spur the cynical pettiness Cicero was most famous for, it was surely the perceived snub of the Classical equivalent of neglecting to call the next day that killed her in Cicero’s eyes forever. Also perhaps with the intent of rubbing salt in the wound, Cleopatra sent an emissary to Cicero’s home (and without that stupid book) and called upon not Cicero, but his best friend instead–who was a fairly smart and interesting person himself. Cleopatra basically went all Mean Girls ‘and none for Gretchen Wieners, bye!’ on Cicero and made a show of it. This was surely meant to scald Cicero and it got the job done, how dare this insolent foreign queen not recognize the brilliance of the greatest orator in Rome?! Cleopatra was dead to Cicero from then on. Something tells me she didn’t really care.

Gretchen Wieners, the original conspirator

As insurmountable as his hate was for Cleopatra from this point on, Cicero didn’t have the gumption to talk any shit about her until she had already left Rome. Like any gossipy bitch, he waited until her back was turned before the vitriol was poured. It also must be noted that this is when most people would be eager to hear it, as the Queen found herself fleeing home to Alexandria after a bunch of Caesar’s friends got together for a good ol’ stabbing and left her baby daddy bleeding to death in Pompey’s Theater. She was probably never going to come back after that, either.

“The arrogance of the Queen herself when she was living on the estate across the Tiber makes my blood boil to recall.” – Cicero

Schiff, S. (2011). Cleopatra: A life. New York: Back Bay Books. Pg. 121

With the death of Caesar, the frenzied revenge of rioting and murder led by Mark Antony, and the general mystery around Cleopatra’s purpose in Rome altogether–she was still the talk of the town, even while back home in Alexandria. This could also largely be due in part to the fact that Cleopatra was visibly pregnant when she left. If Caesarian being the son of Julius Caesar secured any legitimacy of a claim, Cleopatra giving birth to a child that had been conceived in Rome was surely to be an even bigger problem in what was soon to erupt into a civil war over the rightful heir to Caesar’s power. It would seem a lot of people were worried about the potential for a new son to be born. Unfortunately, poor Cleopatra seemed to have experienced a miscarriage which prompted Cicero to remark in a letter to his friend Atticus: “I hope it’s true about the Queen and that Caesar of hers” about the possibility of her loss. What a dick. 

I suppose parting as enemies, there was never much hope for reconciliation. Cleopatra was back to square one politically and had to forge a new pathway and position, which happened to be one practiced repeatedly, hey-o, with Mark Antony. And Cicero continued to rail against the dissolution of the Roman Republic crumbling around him–making his opinions known far and wide despite whoever he angered. So it should come as little surprise that Cicero ended up a named enemy of the Second Triumvirate by Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus and a retinue of killers were dispatched to Cicero’s place of residence to shut him up forever. [2]

Fulvia y Marco Antonio, o La venganza de Fulvia, Francisco Maura y Montaner 1888

But for those who know their history, Cleopatra’s fate wasn’t about to fare much better. So I guess losers do go to parties after all.

  1. Modern estimates have Cleopatra remembered as the 22nd richest person in history with a net worth of $95.8 billion (putting her just behind Jeff Bezos today). This is, of course, impossible to calculate with complete accuracy.
  1. As the story goes, after his death, Cicero’s head was given to Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia who was said to have pulled out his tongue and repeatedly stabbed it with a hairpin as the last act of revenge against his critical speeches.  

Fact Check it, yo!

  • Everitt, A. (2004). Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. Prince Frederick, MD: RB Large Print.
  • Schiff, S. (2011). Cleopatra: A Life. New York: Back Bay Books.
  • Reinhold, M. (1981). The Declaration of War against Cleopatra. The Classical Journal, 77(2), 97-103. Retrieved August 16, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/3296915
  • Jones, P. J. (2006). Cleopatra: A Sourcebook. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

The World in the 4th Century BC

The beginning is the most important part of the work – Plato, The Republic [1]

How do you sum up over 4,000 years of recorded human history in one short blog post? The answer is, you can’t.

If you think about it this way, you and I are a mere 2,375 years removed from the moment in time when Alexander drew his first breath. For people living in the 4th century BC, they were even more further removed from the past than that. Someone from that time period might be looking at the Pyramids of Giza, which were built around 2500 c. BC, as old crumbling relics of history no different than a local Roman might view The Colosseum today. It’s just always been there for as long as anyone can remember. The history of the world by the time of the Iron Age was vast, complex, and in some cases, already lost. The game board in which history had played out over centuries had already seen its share of blood and decay–but perhaps what we can do is look at the score card of the pieces already positioned, the ones primed for Alexander’s taking. Most of these players should already be well known to you.

Let’s start first with the world of the Greeks, of which Alexander’s home, Macedonia, is a part of. But perhaps not without some contention, which we’ll get into.

Battle of Marathon, Georges Rochegrosse (1859)

Most of the famous history of Ancient Greece had already come to pass. The legends of famous warriors and the tales of the Trojan War are of a time long ago. A hundred years prior, the Greek city states found themselves facing invasion from the Persians led by Darius the Great and then followed by Xerxes I. Many well-known stories came from these events. Athenians and their allies defended Greece in the Battle of Marathon in the first invasion. Spartan King Leonidas I and his army died failing to defend Thermopylae in the second. The wars eventually culminated in a resounding strategic victory for the Greek city-states lead by Themistocles in the Battle of Salamis and then the decimation of the Persian army in Platae by the Greek allied forces. During these wars, Macedon was a vassal kingdom of Persia, having pledged allegiance early on in Darius’ invasions when a general commiserated with the then king of Macedon Amyntas I. Prior to the invasions, according to Herodotus, there was already some sense of xenophobia when it came to recognizing the Macedonians as Greek–one of their athletes was unable to participate in the Olympic Games for this very reason. It wasn’t until the lineage of the Macedonian Kings was traced back to Argos, and thus the demi-god Heracles, were they accepted as one of their own and the athlete could compete in the Olympics. [2] Following Persia’s defeat in the Greco-Persian wars, however, Macedon became an independent kingdom once more.

Prior to the Persians being expelled from Greece, the Delian League had been established by Athens which formed an alliance between city-states in opposition to Persia and their continued incursions on Greek territory. This ended up giving Athens a considerable amount of power when they started collecting tributes and using the funds for their own purposes which prompted outcry from their rival Sparta. Soon the Greek world fell back into war but this time they fought against each other in the Peloponnesian War. Sparta sought assistance from the Persians, bringing them back into the foray. Though some parts of Macedonia were tributaries to the Delian League, the kingdom of Macedon ultimately sided with Sparta and waged war against Athens. After 27 years–a plague in Athens that killed Pericles and a disastrously embarrassing defeat in Sicily by Alcibiades–the war was officially over in 404 BC with the Spartans emerging victorious. [3]

File:Plague in an Ancient City LACMA AC1997.10.1 (1 of 2).jpg

Plague in Athens, Michiel Sweerts (c.1652-c.1654)

The Spartans, however, ruled with an iron and tyrannical fist. Their control was short lived when the Corinthian War broke out in 395 BC and those meddling Persians once again gave their assistance–this time to Athens and its allies. The Spartans were finally crushed by the end of 362 BC during the Theban-Spartan war. Again, the tides of power had shifted to another and the city-state of Thebes became top dog in Greece. [4] Constant years of war and destruction, shifts of hegemony, and broken alliances left the Greek world a smoldering landscape ripe for the taking. The slumbering lion of Macedon was about to emerge with Phillip II leading its charge…

You might be wondering about another spunky, imperial up-start lying in wait across the Ionian Sea. The Romans at this time were still playing as a Republic and were busy conquering their neighbors and expanding their military power. They had yet to even see the start of the famous Punic Wars, beginning in 264 BC, which pitted them against Hannibal and his Alps conquering elephants. That reminds me though, Carthage must be destroyed. [5]

Taking a journey now to the Anatolian peninsula (or modern day Turkey), we quickly see the far reach of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The Greeks weren’t the only people these conquerors had been antagonizing–by this time in the mid-4th century BC, the Persian Empire had taken control over the entirety of Western Asia. This included Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Sinai Peninsula (though Egypt having recently rebelled, became temporarily free from Persia’s grasp), the Caucasus, and, of course, the Iranian Plateau. Many Kingdoms and Empires had fallen to the Persians–from the Medians (who toppled the Assyrians), to the Phrygians, and the Babylonians. The Achaemenid empire was the largest the world had ever yet seen and set the stage for other expansive empires like the eventual Roman one centuries later. In fact, what many credit as successes for the Roman Empire at the height of its power, were modeled after the Achaemenid Empire’s practices. With many different cultural backgrounds and religious faiths in its borders, the empire incorporated all of them with the freedom to continue practicing but unified under an official language with an intertwining system of road ways and an ancient postal service. It became the template for a successful massive empire and by this time, despite any losses in war or recent rebellions, was still incredibly strong and centralized. Prior to the birth of Alexander, the current king of the Achaemenid Empire was Artaxerxes II–who was involved with a number of the conflicts with the Greeks noted above, in particular, the Theban-Spartan war in which he ultimately sided with Thebes. [6]

Queen Tomyris and the Head of Cyrus the Great, Mattia Preti (1680’s) This legendary founder of the Achaemenid Empire is said to have met his end to the equally legendary Scythian queen Tomyris.

Moving past the borders of the Achaemenid Empire lay powers unfamiliar to some in the western world. The Indus valley had already seen thousands of years worth of human history, Siddhartha Buddha had already walked the earth, and, hell, they were so advanced at this time, they had already invented plastic surgery centuries earlier. [7] In this region, there were 16 kingdoms and republics that were known as the Mahājanapadas and the Vedic orthodoxy was falling out of fashion with the rise of Buddhism and Jainism. But there wasn’t exactly a sense of unity between them, as the kingdoms frequently warred with each other for dominance. One of these kingdoms, the Magadha, were perhaps the most imperial out of the bunch, conquering swaths of territory and forming a dynastic rule. It was within this kingdom that Siddhartha Buddha was said to have lived and gained enlightenment. The Magadha were a fiercely devout people with a penchant for using early examples of tanks in the form of mace-wielding chariots to get their way and, as usual, marked the end of a dynasty with a bloody affair. For our purposes now, we see the Shaishunaga Dynasty at the seat of power having emerged victorious among the Magadha with King Mahanandin as their leader. [8] However, a certain bastard son named Mahapadma Nanda was ready to make his violent claim…

If we look a bit further, the Chinese were too busy partaking in the epic Warring States period to pay too much attention to the potential of a dashing Macedonian conquering around next door..

With the stage set and the match lit, what is about to befall all of this territory and history other than something spectacular and shocking? A Macedonian King will soon sweep across the land like a raging fire but, first, we start with his maker.

For a man is nothing without his father.

On to Part 2…

Fact Check it, yo!

[1] Plato, The Republic. Book I. 377-B [x]

[2] Herodotus, The Histories. Book 5. 22

[3] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

[4] Xenophan, Hellenica Book 7, ch. 5 [x]

[5] Beard, M. (2016). SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.

[6] Axworthy, M. (2016). A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind.

[7] Sushruta Samhita, Book 1, Ch. 9 [x]

[8] Singh, Upinder. (2008) A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century [x]

What’s so Great about Alexander?

 

Alexander the Great fighting Darius III mosaic found in the ruins of Pompeii, House of the Faun (100 BC)

 

Imagine that everyone knows your name.

It doesn’t feel that intimidating, right? If you’re sitting in a bar called Cheers or you are perhaps from a small town, everyone knowing your name isn’t that unusual or profound. But now try to think about what it might be like for the whole world to know your name. Suddenly, we can envision the weight a name like Queen Elizabeth II or Brad Pitt carries, but now try to consider an entire world collectively remembering one for more than a few decades. Not just the names of a handful of villains in the past century with weird facial hair, or a line of presidents or monarchs centuries before. This name has been permeating in the collective memory of the planet’s inhabitants for thousands of years. Think beyond religious figures, before emperors. Keep going back further, this is a name that has never been forgotten. The world has hoisted this name on its shoulders since it was first spoken, it is perhaps the most famous one ever given. All of us have heard it.

Maybe now we can imagine a little bit of what it might be like to leave behind a legacy like Alexander the Great.

“…after reading some part of the history of Alexander, he sat a great while very thoughtful, and at last burst out into tears. His friends were surprised, and asked him the reason of it. ‘Do you think,’ said he, ‘I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?‘” – Plutarch describing Julius Caesar learning about Alexander the Great. [1]

There is perhaps no figure in history that has left a mark quite like Alexander did. The scar of his exploits some 2,000+ years ago can still be found today. Visible in Greece and Egypt, stretching through the Middle East, and reaching its tendril as far as India. As if a god had stabbed a dagger into the Earth and tore it across the world.

Alexander was not the first great warrior in history. The likes of Narmer, Leonidas, and Sun Tzu all having fought their way on the planet before him. He was also not the first to forge an empire, many like the Zhou Dynasty or the Achaemenid Empire were already dying of old age by the time Alexander was born. He was also not the first conqueror or the first man to be named ‘the Great’, even Cyrus who lived hundreds of years before could not claim this honor for himself either. Alexander cannot even be called the first to be immortalized into legend, kings like Gilgamesh or Achilles living on in fable long before.

So, then, what exactly makes Alexander so Great?

That’s the question I’ll be exploring in this series. Who was Alexander and why is he perhaps the most famous figure in world history? Are his achievements worthy of our admiration, does he deserve the pedestal centuries worth of other successors have bestowed on him? Is his legacy mourned as a tragic figure having died so young like the ancient world’s James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, or Kurt Cobain? Is there truth at all to the much derided theory that Great Men shape human history?

To find these answers, we should start from the beginning…

Stay tuned for Part 1, where we’ll look at the state of the world in the 4th century BC, the Kingdom of Macedon in context, and life before Alexander became king.

Pissing off the Romans: Vespasian’s Urine Tax

Image result for vespasian roman emperor

You can’t spell Vespasian without ‘P’

It’s that time of year, folks. Some of us dread tax season, while others have already excitedly processed our W-2 forms and gotten our refund checks already snugly cushioned in our savings account where they will soon be pilfered and turned into euros for next month (Rome and Athens here I come!). No matter how you feel about it, what all of us likely have in common is combing through any possible tax refunds available–and sometimes we stumble across some truly confounding tax laws in the process. Around the world, you can find a “Fat Tax” on junk food or a “Cow Flatulence Tax” on…well. But one of my favorite ones, of course, brings us back to a time when things were so much more delightfully weird thanks to the ever bizarre behaviors of the people living in the Roman Empire.

When they weren’t busy guzzling putrid fish sauce, the practice of collecting pee from urinals in Rome was so popular that some Roman Emperors saw a golden opportunity to cash in. Among them was Vespasian who ruled the empire in the 1st century AD and would otherwise be most famous for starting the construction of The Colosseum, but will now forever be immortalized instead as the guy who taxed the piss out of Rome. [1]

Image result for latrines in ancient rome

Shootin’ the shit at Roman latrines. Oh come on, this joke is solid!

The Urine Tax (Vectigal urinae) specifically targeted public collection of urine that was done in Rome’s Cloaca Maxima or great sewer system. The Cloaca Maxima was one of the earliest examples of a sewage system built in the world proving that the Romans certainly knew how to ‘keep their shit together’, which perhaps is a credit to how long the Roman Empire managed to last for as many centuries as it did. These collectors or cleaners would take what urine was left behind in public latrines (the how is a process I’m less inclined to know for the sake of my own innocence) and would sell it to a buyer which is where the taxation came into play. The individual looking to purchase the urine for who knows what purpose is the one who would be charged the additional tax. You’re probably asking yourself, why in the great stabbed Caesar would anyone need a batch of random pee? Well, you’re in for a treat, I guess.

Turns out the use of urine was an industry in and of itself back then and urine was quite the lofty ingredient for all kinds of chemical processes. Urine was primarily included in the uses of tanning, wool production, or even as a whitening product (seems counter-intuitive, I know) with the ammonia helping clean togas. [2] Even more extensive were its supposed medical uses…

 

Image result for pliny the elder

Sigh, this beer tastes like piss doesn’t it?

According to Pliny the Elder, essentially the father of encyclopedias and good friend of Emperor Vespasian, urine could be used to cure all sorts of ailments like sores, gout, dog bites, skin irritations, burns, rectum diseases, chaps on the body, head ulcers and scalp diseases, and whatever else could likely be submerged in the yellow elixir. [3] Before we completely write off the old crazy man and thank Mount Vesuvius for taking him and his pee-cures off this planet forever, every single one of us has heard that if you’re stung by a jellyfish the best way to deal with the pain is let it all out on the sting spot like a Coldplay song (It was all yellllowwww) despite doctors telling us not to do this–so apparently urine’s reputation as a cure-all has persisted through history with or without Pliny’s personal contribution. Hey, it’s still better than what the Ancient Egyptians used for contraception.

The loathsome character of a few, such as dung and urine, may originally have been due…to the conviction that life-essence was in them in a concentrated form. …it is just possible that the use in medicine was partly due to the obvious value of manure as a fertilizer. –H.S. Jones, Ancient Roman Folk Medicine [4]

So why is Emperor Vespasian so strongly associated with this Urine Tax since it seems not unusual to a people that see nothing wrong with slathering pee all over their heads, especially since it was unsurprisingly the madman Nero who started the tax in the first place? That would be thanks to a common phrase that goes, “Money Does Not Stink” which is attributed to Vespasian and can still be found referenced in popular works like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, for example. According to Suetonius, as the story goes, Vespasian’s son and future Roman Emperor Titus lamented to his father on how disgusting it was to consider a taxation on waste from public toilets. Vespasian’s response was to hold a coin under his son’s nose and ask if the smell of it offends him as well. Titus admitted that it did not, to which Vespasian replied, “Yet it comes from urine.” Born then was the Latin Pecunia non olet or “money does not stink” which essentially means to say, despite where it came from or how it was accumulated, wealth retains its value. [1]

Thanks to Emperor Vespasian’s continued efforts toward the taxation of urine from Roman latrines, his name is still used today to denote public urinals which can still be found all over Italy (Bagni Vespasiani!) and France. I suppose his son Titus got the last laugh in this regard–perhaps if Vespasian had listened to Titus, his eternal legacy would have been his name on all built amphitheaters instead.

 

Fact Check It, Yo!

[1] Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum–Divus Vespasianus, c. 110 C.E., P. XXIII, Translated by J.C. Rolfe, The Loeb Classical Library, Obtained via Fordham University: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/suetonius-vespasian.asp

[2] Witty, M. (2016), ANCIENT ROMAN URINE CHEMISTRY. Acta Archaeologica, 87: 179-191. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0390.2016.12170.x

[3] Pliny the Elder, Natural History; 28.19, chap. 18 – Remedies Derived from the Urine: http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Plin.%20Nat.%2028.18

[4] Ancient Roman Folk Medicine Author(s): W. H. S. JONES Source: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 4 (October, 1957), pp. 459-472 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24619369

Thumps Up for Roman Gladiators

Jean-Leon Gerome Pollice Verso.jpg

Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down) by Jean-Leon Gerome 1824-1904

The image of a Roman gladiator’s fate being decided by a thumbs up or down is iconic–one that can be recalled in many Hollywood films including Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and the famous painting Pollice Verso by Jean-Leon Gerome. Many may find themselves familiar with the painting but might not know that the image above became the basis for our pop culture idea of a crowd of plebeians jeering and viciously stabbing their thumbs downward– signaling that they wished for the defeated gladiator to pay for his loss in combat with his life. It is also where Ridley Scott drew his inspiration while directing his movie epic, blessing us with one of the best Joaquin Phoenix performances before Joker danced his way down a flight of stairs.

But, like most beliefs cribbed from famous works–this one turned up false.

Joaquin Phoenix Commodus GIF - JoaquinPhoenix Commodus Gladiator GIFs

Histastrophe’s barometer of historical accuracy as determined by an ego-maniacal Hercules impersonator.

If one were to find themselves judging the outcome of a gladiatorial match in a Roman arena (look, I don’t know your life), it might be helpful to know that if you were to signal with a thumbs up that everything is cool and kosher and you totally don’t wish any ill-will towards the defeated combatant–you might be that idiot screaming in surprise when the loser ends up spurting blood everywhere because your poor judgment resulted in his swift execution. You just sentenced that dude to death, man!

According to Anthony Corbeill, Classics Historian and author of works such as Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome, whomever was in charge of administering the judgment of death over the defeated combatant would use ‘the hostile thumb’ or infesto pollice and that it would have been turned upward rather than down. [1] We learn this from 1st c. AD orator/teacher Quintillian who wrote that:

“Even in the fierce arena the conquered gladiator has hope, although the crowd threatens with its hostile thumb.” – Quintilian, Book 11 Institutio Oratoria [2]

We have a couple of reasons to suspect what this would look like–there are a few examples in Roman works that describe orators using certain gestures that were thought of as somewhat obscene. This hostile thumb was also described by Apuleius in his aptly named Golden Ass “like an orator, shutting in the two lowest fingers, extending the rest straight out, and beginning calmly with the infesto pollice.” [3] Naturally, this sort of position would suggest the thumb would be pointing upwards rather than down. Go ahead and try it the wrong way–I’ll wait. Quintilian often remarks on orators who speak with an uplifted hand being rather fond of using the hostile thumb as well–similar to those who enjoy ‘flipping the bird’ which is another gesture that was well in use in the Roman Empire. Both the thumbs up and the middle finger represent phallic imagery and aren’t thought of as particularly kind things to do with one’s hand, least of all one that would denote mercy.

“…numerous examples attest to gestural language outlasting spoken language.” – A. Corbeill, Thumbs in Ancient Rome: ‘Pollex’ As Index. [1]

Interestingly, there’s a great deal of thought and attention in Roman writings put on the power of the thumb. In possibly the most Italian thing ever, the common belief in Rome was that gestures contained a stable essence. Many Roman writers waxed poetic on the thumb (pollex) and were quick to point out the similarity with another Latin word pollet which meant “has power”. Roman writer Macrobius believed the thumb had moral superiority over the other fingers like it was some sentient, Twitter hashtag activist simply because it didn’t take as kindly to ornamentation. Methinks Macrobius simply never found a decent thumb ring. Other writers thought the thumb held power and sway over the remaining fingers by this virtue alone. Some weirdos thought the thumb was somehow connected to sexual organs and thus had regenerative powers because that makes a whole lot of sense. But not as much sense as Pliny the Elder who prescribes the right thumb of a virgin in curing someone of epileptic shock. Basically, Romans were crazy about their thumbs and, oddly, the rest of the ancient world was pretty sure that the thumb was simply connected to the hand. You know, like a normal finger ought to be. [1]

“…the thumb, either as the primary agent or acting by itself, has complete control over grasping and controlling, as if it were the guide and moderator of all things.” – Lactantius [4]

With this kind of obsession, and it stands to reason that gestures survive in cultural context better than verbal language does, it should be no surprise that throughout the timeline of Italian history, there are mentions of an erect thumb pointing at objects or people as one of scorn–from Dante’s Renaissance all the way up to the 20th century–some form of the Hostile Thumb lived on. It’s not even uncommon in other neighboring countries to view the ‘thumbs up’ as a sexually offensive one and it wasn’t until World War II and the influx of American G.I.’s that the cross-contamination of the gesture changed in Italy. [1]

So if you wanted to save a gladiator, what gesture would you use?

Medaillon de Cavillargues –  The inscription reads STANTES MISSI which means ‘released standing’. Depicting an act of mercy for both combatants signaled with a closed fist type gesture. [1]

Remember that the thumb has otherworldly powers, especially over the other fingers. There’s a whole thing from Pliny the Elder which discusses a ‘well-wishing’ thumb exists in proverb where one means to show approval when pressing down the thumb on something, like a hand or upon an enclosed fist. Because these are the Romans we’re talking about, of course pressing the thumb on things held a power in and of itself. Pressing a thumb on things might even cure you of pains and other ailments, and certainly pressing your thumb on your fist would save the life of a gladiator in the arena who maybe lost the fight because he ate too much garum sauce and was a bit sickly. Let him fight another day!

“Raising the hands and closing the fists, therefore, were expressions of power capable to concede life.” Michel de Montaigne [4]

Now, since we’ve gotten this far, I’m sure most of you are well and myth-busted and smartly know that the thumbs up is an ancient signal for death in the gladiatorial arena. For those left feeling a little skeptical still (I get it, magical thumbs are weird) I’d ask you to think on another well-known gesture you are already familiar with that similarly employs the hostile thumb.

How about the “You’re dead” gesture, cutting the throat with a thumbs up like a sword?

Image result for thumbs up cutting throat gesture gif

Yeaaaaaah–maybe rethink your thumbs ladies and plebes.

Fact Check it, yo!

[1] Corbeill, A. “THUMBS IN ANCIENT ROME: ‘POLLEX’ AS INDEX.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 42, 1997, pp. 1–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4238745.

[2] Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria. Book XI: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/11C*.html

[3] Apuleius, The Golden Ass: https://archive.org/stream/TheGoldenAss_201509/TheGoldenAsspenguinClassics-Apuleius_djvu.txt

[4] Corbeill, A. (2004). Nature embodied: gesture in ancient Rome. Oxford: Princeton University Press.

The Roman Vomitorium – A Regurgitating Myth

Colosseum

The Colosseum should just be renamed ‘The Vomitorium’ so people finally get it.

Nothing makes me want to hurl more than oft repeated historical misunderstandings. ‘Christopher Columbus discovered America’ is a saying that forces me to eat copious amounts of cake to feel sane, hearing “Napoleon Bonaparte was really short” and I can be seen adding glasses of wine to the mix, and listening to another geographical wizard exclaim that “Cleopatra was Egyptian” and now I’m trying to find the nearest room to chuck it all up in–which if I were living in the Roman Empire would be convenient, right? Except they didn’t actually have a room for this as is popularly believed.

An illustration found in The Washington Post before Google existed.

‘Vomitorium’ sounds like one of those words one could easily decipher. It’s Latin and clearly using the root word for ‘vomit’ and ‘orium’–so a functional place to vomit. The mind puzzles over what exactly a ‘vomit place’ could be and knowing the extravagant splendor of Roman indulgences of the elite class–wouldn’t it make sense that in between all of those supposed orgies, Emperor assassinations, and dishes slathered with garum sauce, the Romans would require a room in which to purge their feast-ly contents just so they could go back to eating and partying anew?

Sure, if there was any evidence of it.

Unfortunately, the reality of what a ‘vomitorium’ actually is amounts to a much more mundane truth. The term does derive from the same root of the word vomit, in this case “to spew forth” which is exactly what the function of a vomitorium serves as, just not in keeping a toga party raging until dawn. In Roman amphitheatres and stadiums, it became necessary to create a passage way in which a large crowd of people could leave as quickly and efficiently as possible–exactly like the contents of a stomach after consuming those questionably cooked fish tacos from last night. When you’re a civilization of bread and circuses, evacuating a stadium like projectile pea soup ala The Exorcist certainly becomes a high priority in architectural ingenuity. [1]

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Don’t even think about puking in me, culus

So where did this retched misconception come from other than a misunderstanding of architectural terminology and why did it continue to be hurled around as a ‘fun fact’ of Roman history? First, let’s start with the primary sources.

…but all naked and panting as they are, the instant they leave the bath they seize hold of large vessels filled with wine, to show of, as it were, their mighty powers, and so gulp down the whole of the contents only to vomit them up again the very next moment. This they will repeat, too, a second and even a third time, just as though they had only been begotten for the purpose of wasting wine, and as if that liquor could not be thrown away without having first passed through the human body. – Pliny the Elder on ‘Drunkenness’, BOOK XIV. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FRUIT TREES. [2]

The usage of the word ‘vomitorium’ doesn’t appear until the 5th century AD when it is used by the Roman writer Macrobius in his work The Saturnalia to describe these passageways in stadiums as being designed to ‘disgorge’ an audience from the venue. Seems as if the word itself should have been able to survive into modern times intact with its original meaning then, but instead it was muddled with other accounts and hurled together into the misconception it is today. [3] We can look at the works of Seneca the Younger, a lucrative philosopher of Stoicism (A philosophy also noted for it’s teachings in discipline and freedom of passions), in which he lambasted the indulgence of certain Roman’s in a letter to his mother Helvia where he metaphorically implied that “They vomit so they may eat and eat so that they may vomit.” which seems to have been taken as a literal source of evidence by later centuries of writers who believed this to prove the need of a purge room like the infamous ‘vomitorium’. [1]

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Yo, Dickus Manickus–you gonna eat that?

This misunderstanding is not helped either by satirical works such as the Satyricon which scholars believe was written by Petronius, a courtier of Nero, in the 1st c. AD. Yeah, that guy of reputable shenanigans. Petronius describes a dinner celebration in which the patrons were not only busy fornicating in an orgy but also throwing up the contents of their feast. Even if this were a work of non-fiction, and one that would have been applied to a particularly abominable Emperor, he does not mention a specific room where these events would have supposedly taken place. Other writers such as Cassius Dio, Cicero, and Suetonius mention specific stories in which vomiting after excess had taken place (Julius Caesar was said to partake in purging antics) but, again, no mention of a puke room specifically. [1]

Sure, there is also Aulus Cornelius Celsus who recommends vomiting as a medicinal treatment where he suggests that “…after a dinner of many courses and many drinks of diluted wine a vomit is even advantageous” but continuing to clarify “When anything in the dinner is felt to disagree, he should provoke a vomit, repeating it the next day“. So this is not necessarily meant to suggest that one should be purging the contents of their dinner just so they could resume ingesting as much as they desire immediately after. Also, not to mention, Celsus is a practitioner of the imbalances of humors and prescribes vomiting to ease in the plethoric and bilious. And even then, he specifically states -“I allow that vomiting should not be practiced for the sake of luxury…no one who wants to keep well, and live to old age, should make it a daily habit.” So this supposed practice of binging and purging wasn’t exactly one that was encouraged either. [4]

Yet, despite ‘vomitorium’ clearly being used to describe architecture in its first usage and the lack of a ‘purge room’ being mentioned in sources detailing acts of vomiting among Romans, we get to the 20th century where Aldous Huxley publishes his novel Antic Hay in 1923 which serves as a comical narrative lampooning the lifestyle of exorbitance among the London elite.

“The door of his sacred boudoir was thrown rudely open, and there strode in, like a Goth into the elegant marble vomitorium of Petronius Arbiter…”  Ch. 18 [5]

It’s here that Huxley calls back to the Satyrion as mentioned earlier and applies the term ‘vomitorium’ incorrectly to the salacious acts of binging and purging described by Petronius. From here the association of a room in where Romans would purge their food and resume their feasts enters into the pop culture lexicon and Aldous Huxley is credited with creating a brave new world of alt-historical realities. [6] Almost one hundred years later and people are still regurgitating the same misconception–an idea further perpetuated by any clever writer who thinks the concept of a ‘vomitorium’ a sick one to include in their works or just passed around by people who heard it secondhand.

Clearly, the misuse of ‘vomitorium’ is about as contagious as the stomach flu. Let’s do us all a favor and keep the myth down so we don’t all get sick with a case of ‘being wrong’, yeah?

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Partying it up Bacchus style

Fact check it, yo!

[1] Alice P. RADIN Fictitious Facts: The Case of the Vomitorium: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20030320192257/http://www.apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/03mtg/abstracts/radin.html

[2] Pliny the Elder, BOOK XIV. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FRUIT TREES, Ch. 28: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:phi,0978,001:14

[3]  Macrobius, The Saturnalia: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Macrobius/Saturnalia/home.html

[4] Celsus, On Medicine, Book III: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Celsus/3*.html

[5] Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay, Ch. 18: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/huxleya-antichay/huxleya-antichay-00-h.html

 

 

 

 

Roma Day 1: Espresso, per favore?!

I have a tendency to weep over beautiful things. If I happen to witness a tender moment between two people who love each other–be it family or partners–I’ll get choked up. The same thing happens to me when that Warner Brother’s logo zooms in among fog and John William’s Hedwig theme starts playing. Crying over things that deserve our appreciation is nothing new to me it would seem, so it should have come at no surprise to anyone that I began tearing up the moment our plane from JFK finally touched down in Rome. Or that when I first got to stand in the open air outside, a beautifully sunny 65+ degrees with the smell of Spring in the air, I wanted to hold my mother and cry tears of joy. And, of course, the moment our taxi driver took us through and under the first walls of Rome my eyes started brimming–because I knew I was back again.

Everything here is Art

Two years ago, I barely got to see Rome and it broke my heart ever since. I remedied a similar circumstance with Paris just this last year with my mother in tow and wanted to do the same this time around as well. My father overheard our plans to visit Rome, Florence, and Venice, however, and decided that he wanted to be apart of it as well–to see the things of the Roman Empire and to stand at the Colosseum where gladiators once stood. I’ve been versed in the history of Rome since I was a child thanks to my father’s general interest while growing up, so a part of me thought it only right that he should get to see these things with me too.

Our hotel in Rome is pretty darn swanky

First things first, after finding our way to our hotel courtesy of our lovely taxi driver Luca (my mother made sure to loudly proclaim how cute she thought he was. Don’t worry, we’re sending her to Francis on Friday to atone for her brazenness), we decided to check out a restaurant he recommended to us as having the best pasta in all of Rome–Brazilai Bistrot. Now, we were running on precisely two hours of sleep and had been awake for more than 24+ hours at this point so we were also determined to cram in as much as we could along the way to help stay awake. Before we got ourselves all full and fed, we took a quick stop to say hello to my old friend the Trevi Fountain. I tossed a coin in last time I was in Rome, so I wanted to make sure to let it know that I held up my end of the bargaining fortune.

Afterwards, we started the long walk to our food coma destination. Since our hotel is located in such a prime location here in Rome, I thought we should try to walk everywhere as much as we could. I’m an idiot though and I resented myself pretty quickly into the walk when I was reminded of how exhausted I was from traveling, but we trekked on somehow. Stumbling into the restaurant after a good half hour of shuffling our way around cobbled streets and trying not to pass out, we took a seat and were immediately recognized for the tourists we are! I was determined to practice the Italian I’ve been learning these past few months though and asked if I could try in Italian when our server spoke to us in English. We proceeded to have the rest of our ordering conversation in Italian, so I hope I made my favorite Roman and teacher Ileana proud!

Amatriciana sauce in Rome!

Good and wined, it was hard to miss the lure of the Colosseum poking out and waving at us from down the street after existing our restaurant, so we decided to go pay the Flavian Amphitheater a visit too. We learned from our family in Italy that this whole week is Cultural Week–which means every museum is free except The Vatican. We figured the Colosseum would be insanely busy, especially considering the timing when we decided to stroll up (2 hours before close? Nah maaaan). But even though we weren’t intending on going in for a tour today, we ended up running into a guide who was able to help us skip the line (which was disgustingly long and stuck at over capacity). We figured we had all that pasta to walk off anyway so we went along with his group and decided to do the Colosseum, despite how sleep deprived we were feeling.

I ended up not taking many pictures inside because it was so busy in there with people and I was too distracted listening to our tour guide, but a lot of it was under renovation anyway (which is awesome!). I’ll have to do a proper write-up of the Colosseum some day, but suffice it to say–I thought our guide did a fantastic job bad mouthing the inaccuracies of the movie Gladiator. And I wasn’t about to pick a fight with him when he said the Roman Empire collapsed with the sacking of Rome (though the Eastern half was just fine with Constantinople kicking, k thanks) All in all, it was a good nerdy time.

Lastly, I stuffed my face with pizza and more wine which helped a little bit but now I really need to sleep for like 10 hours so I’ll let you all know how tomorrow goes!

On the Agenda: Lots of Gelato!

A domani!

All Roads Lead to Rome

 

The Appian Way, Rome’s ancient super highway

I’ve wanted to visit The Eternal City since I was old enough to think–when my days were filled with old Hollywood sandal-flicks and my first books consisted of illustrated Biblical scenes with bad guys wearing plume-y galea helmets. Growing up Italian-American, there is a sense of worship-fullness when it comes to Rome–it was the seat of the Roman Empire for centuries and, in generalized terms, my motherland. Rome was where the idea of an Italian was truly born (Quite literally with the Congress of Vienna and in 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy) and it’s history my own. I wanted to be Roman and feel the experience of thousands of years of living in one place in time all around me. In 2016, due to a sudden change in travel plans, I had only enough time in Rome to stand and marvel in front of The Coliseum and to take a quick walk to the Trevi Fountain before hopping into our rental car and cruising to the airport to fly back home. I’m excited to say that I will soon find myself back in less than a week. For, as they say, all roads lead to Rome–including my own.

”Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can image in its full and awful grandeur! We wandered out upon the Appian Way, and then went on, through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls, with here and there a desolate uninhabited house: past the Circus of Romulus, where the course of the chariots, the stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time: past the tomb of Cecilia Metella: past all inclosure, hedge, or stake, wall or fence: away upon the open Campagna, where on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the distant Apennines bound the view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field of ruin. Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque and beautiful clusters of arches; broken temples; broken tombs. A desert of decay, somber and desolate beyond all expression; and with a history in every stone that strews the ground.” – Charles Dickens [1]

So where does the idea that ‘All Roads Lead to Rome‘ come from, anyway? It’s an idiom that’s been passed down from generation to generation essentially meaning–doesn’t really matter how you do it, everything will arrive to the same conclusion. How inspired was this phrase and is there any truth to it?

Image result for paintings of rome

Giovanni Paolo Pannini The Roman Forum (1755)

If we go back far enough, we find the idea appearing in Medieval writings from Chaucer to theologians. Appearing nothing more than a stray observation by French theologian/poet Alain deLille in the 12th century: “Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam” or for those not fluent in dead languages, “A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome.” [2] And, of course, Chaucer being a poet of renown was sure to take inspiration in his work as well to include a mention of the Roman city–

And god wot, that in alle thise langages,

and in many mo, han thise conclusiouns ben suffisantly lerned and

taught, and yit by diverse rewles, right as diverse pathes leden

diverse folk the righte wey to Rome

-Geoffrey Chaucer, Treatise on the Astrolabe [3]

But even here, it seems the idea of roads leading to Rome is similar, in a sense, to my own experience that there is simply a calling to the city–one that many of us–as lovers of History, or food, or vibrant culture, or awe-inspiring art–cannot resist. And even through its long life–from kingdoms to republics, to empires and upheavals, from religious institutions to repeating the order of things all over again in tandem–as history has shown us, there has always been a sense of desire to reclaim the city as one’s own.

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The Milliarium Aureum or Golden Milestone

However, there may be some truth to the phrase as from Cassius Dio [4], Plutarch [5], Seutonius, and Tacitus–we do learn of a column that was commissioned by Augustus Caesar to serve as the convergence point of the Roman Empire. A point where all roads began from and all distances there-in were measured by it, linking the network of the Empire together like a spiderweb. So, in a sense, all roads in the Roman Empire certainly did lead back to Rome.

All roads pointed towards the Imperial City, and started from its Milliarium Aureum. [6]

Either way, I’m pleased to share that my journey once again leads me back to the beating heart of Italy. As with my other travels, I’ll be updating my blog daily with pictures and tidbits so stick around and hit that follow button if you want to keep up with my quick romp through Rome, Florence, and Venice–typically posted at unreasonable hours, of course.

And as the saying goes, I hope that one day, dear reader, your road leads you to Rome as well.

 

Fact Check it, yo!

[1] Cosmo, L. (2017). Rome: Poetic Guide to the Love City of Romulus. Lulu Press.

[2] Alain de Lille, Liber parabolarum (c. 1202AD)

[3] Geoffrey Chaucer: A Treatise on the Astrolabe (c. 1391 AD)

[4] “Now all this was done later in commemoration of the event; but at the time of which we are speaking he was chosen commissioner of all the highways in the neighbourhood of Rome, and in this capacity set up the golden mile-stone, as it was called, and appointed men from the number of the ex-praetors, each with two lictors, to attend to the actual construction of the roads.” – Cassius Dio, Book 54, paragraph 8, line 4. 

[5] “With the remark, then, that he had bought an old house and wished to show its defects to the vendors, he went away, and passing through what was called the house of Tiberius, went down into the forum, to where a gilded column stood, at which all the roads that intersect Italy terminate.” – Plutarch

[6] Schaff, P. The Ante-nicene fathers / the apostolic fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus. (1993). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.