Uncovering Writing

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fun read, though I did skim a bunch in the middle. I made many highlights for future reference. I will say it was a pleasure in that I would consult Greek, Latin and English versions of the Iliad & Odyssey when Strabo referenced them. Classicist fun!

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An enjoyable book that I have to say I started skimming through after about 130 pages. It is definitely a good reference and will find a place on my shelf. At times it felt like People Magazine, but that also made these emperors more human. While the veracity of the stories is debatable, it is a contemporary reference that bears consideration.

I enjoyed reading that many of the emperors were multilingual, e.g. Tiberius who read and wrote poetry in Latin and Greek and was well-versed in mythology (70-71, p. 132). Gaius Caesar (“Caligula”) quoted Homer to visiting kings: “Let there be one Lord, one King!” (Caligula 22, p. 146). The line referenced is from the Iliad (2:204). I pulled down my Greek & Latin edition of the Iliad and found the line right there. So very cool.

Having just finished Mary Beard’s SPQR, I was acquainted with many of the personalities mentioned, which helped immensely. I wouldn’t come at this book without having had one or more introductions to the history of the early Roman Empire.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mary Beard writes an engaging, fun and accessible history of Rome from its “founding” in 753 BCE up to 212 CE, the year that the emperor Caracalla made every free inhabitant of the empire a Roman citizen. The prologue drew me in immediately. The book reads like a set of introductory classics lectures by a professor who knows her material and can effectively communicate it to a diverse audience. There is something in this book for everyone. The “Further Reading” section at the end (pp. 537-562) is worth the price of entry by itself.

I enjoy that she sprinkles in Latin with translations throughout the text. She also goes into the etymologies of many words, sometimes clinically (e.g. “candidate”, p. 32), and sometimes with gusto (e.g. aborigine, p. 78). She covers not only the overarching themes or battles, but also delves into the daily life of people throughout the Republic and empire. Rich and poor, powerful and slave, urban and provincial, Latin and Greek, and so on, all make an appearance.

Mary Beard brings history, archaeology, political science, economics, psychology, literary studies, and many other tools to her work and this makes the book very enjoyable and useful. I thoroughly enjoyed her incorporating the works and backgrounds of so many writers of history, literature and poetry. Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Livy, Cicero, both Plinys, and so many more make appearances in the text. One phrase that stuck with me was from Tacitus summing up “the Roman imperial project: ‘they create desolation and call it peace’, ‘solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant’” (p. 516).

Many of the problems that Romans faced are still present today: risks of falling into debt, power focused on small class of wealthy individuals, corruption, manufacturing “the other” and demonizing them, double standards of morality, etc. The Roman project does not provide solutions to these problems but it is good to engage with them to see how humans have addressed them in the past and what we can try to do today.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a way to start off 2017. Charles Martin’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses has skyrocketed into my list of favorite books. I savored each page and made sure I was calm and focused each time I sat down to read so that I wouldn’t miss anything. If I had to quote the best part, I’d say it was: “My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed / into new bodies … and if there is truth in poets’ prophesies, / then in my fame forever I will live” (Book I:1 - Book XV: 1112).

I enjoyed Ovid’s grouping of history into four ages: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron. In the beginning, we had beauty, no need for laws, peace and nature. By the time we find ourselves in the Iron Age, we have war, greed, and despoiling of nature in furthering of those two desires. Ovid writes that in the age of Iron we dig in the ground to unearth gold and iron, the latter to kill and secure the former (p. 20).

I was fascinated with all the origin myths of the gods and heroes of the classical world. I am thankfully to have come to Ovid after having read so many other things from Greek and Roman mythology. Encountering Ovid first would have been confusing and not as wonderful an experience. As I’m a huge Homer fan and of the larger Epic Cycle, I enjoyed the “Ajax versus Ulysses” section of Book XIII, which deals with the awarding of Achilles’ armor after his death at Troy. I also enjoyed Pythagoras’s thoughts on the moral imperative of vegetarianism in Book XV. I loved seeing the seeds of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe (Book IV, p. 125). Ovid didn’t invent this theme of forbidden love but I was so surprised reading this section that was written almost 1600 years before Shakespeare’s play.

The only part of this translation I didn’t enjoy was the “rap” part in Book V with the “The daughters of Pierus.” It just seemed full of pandering to stereotypes. One thing I found troubling, not with Ovid or the translation but with the mythology, was a thought I had in Book XI (though it built up over the entire work). Were all females, either goddesses or woman, raped to produce the male “heroes” of the classical world?

Almost all of Ovid’s metamorphoses (transformations) are of beings (gods or humans) being turned into flora or fauna. There are physical changes, mental fogginess, and the loss or change of spoken language. This death of personality can also be seen as a birth of sorts, whereby a new object comes into being, sometimes one beloved like various birds, trees or streams.

I’ll close this review with a note I wrote on the inside cover of my edition: “What wonder, to write when Homer, Ovid, Virgil and Horace wrote. To describe the world when it was new.” As a writer, I hope to try reinvent this newness and address it with my simple prose and verse.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an extremely readable work that taught me many new things and also brought up memories of long-ago classes. When Gibbon is on, he is the master of prose and points. This work still has much to teach us and remind us. One thing that popped out was his belief that isolation and xenophobia hastened the ruins of Athens and Sparta (p. 55). Wise words for those in America, Britain and elsewhere, who would turn their eyes inward and create artificial barriers between members of the single human race.

Gibbon writes a great deal about religion, especially the rise of Christianity and its impact on the decline and eventual fall of the Empire. He frames his task as: “The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings” (p. 261).

Chapter VIII (XV-XVI in the original) is hardcore, discussing literally fanatic Christians and how much they actively stood apart from all others (p. 271, etc.) This included refusing to participate in civil and military service. Polytheists asked why these Christians shouldn’t have to contribute to the public welfare (p. 291). Virgil, Homer, poetry, music or even sayings in Greek or Latin, were seen as evil, demonic and corrupting (p. 272). Prior to the rise of this sect, Rome respected, or at least tolerated, many religions, incorporating foreign gods of conquered peoples into their own pantheon. Christians had no respect or toleration for any other religion but their own. Early Christians were not as persecuted as the later Church claimed (p. 325), though harsh repression did occur at the end of Diocletian’s reign (p. 326). Finally, under Gratian and Theodosius, Christianity was made the privileged religion and paganism was outlawed (p. 547).

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up The Nature of Things (De rerum natura) since I was curious to see a verse form applied to what amounts to a lecture. I enjoyed engaging with Lucretius and his treatise on Epicurean philosophy and science. I think A. E. Stallings did a great job translating the text and rendering into rhyming fourteeners. I think it made the text flow more easily and pulled me through the work.

Epicurean philosophy posits a materialistic world, one where natural science is applied to understand the world and its processes. The world is made up of indivisible atoms and all events and processes are merely the effects of their movement, hence there is no need for supernatural explanations (p. ix). It also espouses a pursuit of pleasure, not a hedonistic approach, but one of the abstract joys of philosophical contemplation and friendship.

What strikes me as impressive is how things Lucretius describes are still true today. He notes how jaded people have become to the natural beauty around them: “Behold the pure blue of the heavens, and all that they possess, / The roving stars, the moon, the sun’s light, brilliant and sublime– / […] Now, however, people hardly bother to lift their eyes / To the glittering heavens, they are so accustomed to the skies” (II: 1030-1031, 1038-1039). And some people never change: “For idiots admire things all the more / when they discern them hidden in tangled words, and set great store / In anything that tickles the ear, in phrases dyed a shade / of purple” (I 641-644).

On religion, Lucretius writes “More often, on the contrary, it is Religion breeds / Wickedness and that has given rise to wrongful deeds” (I: 83-84). And “So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong” [I:101]; a line Voltaire said was so important it would last as long as the world (p. 241).

The ideas are intriguing, Stallings translation is strong and the introduction by Richard Jenkyns is wonderful.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Like several other reviews of this book, I thought it should have been two short volumes instead of one. The two authors tell two stories, alternating chapters between each other. The stories are very different in that Noel tells the story of the actual manuscript over time while Netz focuses on the mathematical content of these found Archimedes items. Their authorial voices are very different so it’s a sudden jerk as you go between chapters. I’m not sure if better editing would have helped as these were just two distinct stories to be told.

Netz’s hagiographic view of Archimedes put me off throughout his chapters. I’m sure this is mostly due to having devoted, necessarily, an incredible amount of time and effort on this one important project. But, it seems as if that focus pushed out other considerations of the material. It seems that Netz knew what he wanted the manuscript to say and then finds examples of his ideas in the material, instead of the other way around. He might be right but I didn’t feel he made his case as best as he could.

Rating this was a bit tough as I was much more interested in the discovery and recovery of this palimpsest. I’d rate the topic a 4. I’d give 3 for Noel’s chapters on the history and work on the physical item. I’d give Netz’s chapters a 1-2. So, overall, I went with 2 for this work.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first time I returned to Virgil’s Aeneid since the late 1980s. I’d read Robert Fitzgerald’s translation in a college classics course. In high school, I’d read Homer’s Odyssey and absolutely adored it. In college, just before the Aeneid, I re-read the Odyssey and read Homer’s Iliad for the first time. I didn’t like the Iliad as much, but in recent years, and with different translations, I’ve grown to like it more. But, I detested the Aeneid. I thought it was a cheap rip-off of Homer, trying to compress both of his works into the single Aeneid, and doing a poor job of it. If Goodreads existed back then, I’d have given the book one star and moved on.

However, after much time and reengagement with Greek and Latin classical works, I decided to try the Aeneid again. This time, I chose John Conington’s mid-19th century translation. I really enjoyed his verse. In the great preface, he praises John Dryden’s translation, a copy of which I picked up for a few dollars not long ago. Conington notes that from time to time, new translations are a good idea to bring modern language in to reignite interest in a story and also to bring new insights into the text that have been learned since the last major translations (p. viii). While I was reading this edition, I kept by my side Seamus Heaney’s 2016 posthumous translation of Book VI, as well as Dryden’s 17th century version and a copy of the Aeneid in Latin. It got to be a bit unwieldy at times, but it was a lot of geeky fun!

Books I-VI are laid out a bit like the Odyssey and Books VII through XII are similar to the Iliad. For Virgil, the Odyssey is that of Aeneas, a son of a god (Venus) and a Trojan prince (Anchises). He leaves Troy after the fall, and eventually makes his way to the shores of Italy. In the second half, he works to establish what will eventually grow into Rome and the Roman Empire. As Virgil tells his story, we do learn more about the Trojan war (including how it ended) and even hear about one of Odysseus’s crew left behind after Odysseus blinded Polyphemus, the Cyclops.

Virgil’s work, on one level, is a political one. His patron was Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. From notes I read elsewhere, the Aeneid can be read as both subversive of the new Emperor and reaffirming his place as a great leader. Virgil also works in other political issues, such as giving history to the struggle between Carthage and Rome (set in play by Aeneas sneaking away and Dido’s suicide, Book V). On a more Greek vs Roman level, I felt there were direct comparisons made between Aeneas and Homer’s Odysseus and Achilles, wherein Virgil always seems to show Aeneas in a better light.

I thought the translation was worth 5 stars, the “Odyssey” part of the Aeneid worth 4 and the “Iliad” part worth 3, so I thought I’d go with 4 stars for the experience as a whole.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nicely done translation with an excellent note by Heaney at the end that explained how he worked on this volume. The story is very good and I’ve been lucky to have see different versions performed live. Sophocles’s story still resonates today in how power can be used and abused.

One line of the play that really hit strong was Antigone explaining that her brother would not be upset by her burying her other brother: “The dead aren’t going to begrudge the dead” (p. 33).

Heaney writes in his note that “Greek tragedy is as much musical score as it is dramatic script” (p. 79). I would generalize this to all poetry in that the performance of verse (be it play or poetry) is a major component of the work.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As soon as I heard this was going to be published, I had it on my “must get” list. I got my copy the day it was released and just sat down last evening to read it. It exceeded my expectations, which is a hard thing given that my “levels” were set based on Heaney’s wondrous translation of Beowulf.

The text was stunning in its beats and pace, effortlessly pulling me from the opening line through to the last word. I loved that the Latin text was on the facing page. I tried to read words here and there, surprising myself at times, and increasing my desire to learn Latin more fully.

What a translator Heaney was. To make the story come alive in a different tongue, and to excite in me the interest to learn the original language. I don’t know if a translator can receive a higher honor.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While reading Pliny, I felt as if I were in an alternative world where he was a reincarnation of Herodotus writing Wikipedia entries. Pliny also reminds me of the bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin, in that his excitement is infectious. Pliny’s breadth and easy writing style soften the blow that at times he’s a little confused and, at other times, flat out wrong. Pliny was not doing original research. He collected broadly from the ideas and writings available to him and added his own analysis. This was a fun romp through one of the original prototype encyclopedias.

I found interesting facts on paper (Book XIII, 68-91), bay leaves (XV, 137), olive trees (XV, 1-11), women painters (XXXV, 147-148), and perfume (XIII, 1-25). I liked reading about mercury (XXXIII, 99), mostly because I liked reading its Latin name argentum vivum, literally living silver. Finally, even in the year 77, women were interested in removing wrinkles and making their skin soft, using the craziest of concoctions, e.g. ass’s milk (XXVIII, 183).

Pliny is still relevant today. He writes how many people are focused on the accumulation of wealth rather than the enrichment of the mind (XIV, 4-5; XXXIII, 8, 48). He calls out doctors for focusing on how much they could charge instead of working to cure and aid their patients (XXIX). He takes joy in calling out the evils of drinking, especially to excess (XIV, 142) and even jokes how that with beer, “We have even discovered how to make water intoxicating” (XIV, 149).

Pliny says that the two greatest crimes against human life were the first person to put gold on his fingers and the first person to introduce coinage (XXXIII, 8, 42-43). In an astute discussion of mining, Pliny writes:

We penetrate her [the Earth’s] inmost parts, digging into her veins of gold and silver and deposits of copper and lead. We search for gems ... by sinking shafts into the depths. We drag out Earth’s entrails; we seek a jewel to wear on a finger. How many hands are worn by toil so that one knuckle may shine! If there were any beings in the nether world, assuredly the tunnelling brought about by greed and luxury would have dug them up. (II, 158)

This is the land in which we drive out our neighbours and dig up and steal their turf to add to our own, so that he who has marked his acres most widely and driven off his neighbours may rejoice in possessing an infinitesimal part of the earth. (II 175)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This reader was just a joy to work through. A nice selection of classic Greek and Latin texts, with the original language opposite an English translation. It was fun to try to remember some of my Greek and also to try to work through some Latin that I could figure out from experience, English vocabulary and knowing a little Spanish. I’d read some of the pieces, but most of the Latin selections were new to me.

I really enjoyed Terence’s play “The Brothers” (p. 126) with regard to how to raise children: the authoritarian vs the loving way. Cicero’s “On Duties” (p. 132) was excellent. One thing he wrote was that one should not enrich themselves by stealing from their neighbors. I thought of the idea of the “social contract” and was pleased to see that this work has had such an impact up through today.

It was very exciting to read Pliny the Younger’s letter about the eruption of Vesuvius that killed his uncle, Pliny the Elder (p. 207). To read a first hand account, even though it was written many years after the eruption, was thrilling. It rooted a historical experience into a personal frame.

And finally, I loved the Latin phrase that Virgil coined in his Aeneid (p. 152): “Timeo Danous et dona ferentis” … ‘I fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts.’

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was happy to find an eBook version of Horace’s Odes that were translated by John Conington. I have his Aeneid queued up on my shelf and it’s always neat to read multiple works translated by the same person. You kind of get a feel for how they see the original language. But, having found a cool copy of what I wanted to read, I wasn’t overly thrilled with Horace. I’m glad I read this and will turn to it again in the future, I am sure. At least to read two odes that dealt with the seasons and were beautiful.

Book I, Ode 4 (“Solvitur Acris Hiems”) was a wonderful homage to the coming of spring, surely something that many of the Romantic poets must have read and enjoyed:

The touch of Zephyr and of Spring has loosen'd Winter's thrall; The well-dried keels are wheel'd again to sea: The ploughman cares not for his fire, nor cattle for their stall, And frost no more is whitening all the lea.

Naked the Nymphs and Graces in the meads The dance essay: "No 'scaping death" proclaims the year that speeds This sweet spring day. Frost yields to zephyrs; Summer drives out Spring, To vanish, when Rich Autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,— Winter again!"

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a fan of the Iliad and Odyssey, I was very excited to pick up this book. I was also interested since I studied some classical Greek in university and still have a yearning to retake up those studies. The Loeb series is a perfect solution. The left hand page includes the original text (in Latin or Greek) and the right hand page is an English translation.

The Iliad and Odyssey were part of the Trojan epic cycle, a collection of eight related epic stories. The lost six pieces only remain in fragments, summaries or commentary from various scholars writing much later than when the stories were composed. Sadly, this is all we have, but it is really exciting stuff that fills in the blanks, for me at least.

We have the Cypria, which covers the origin of the Trojan war and goes up to the beginning of the Iliad. Next is the Aethiopis, which starts after the end of the Iliad. It details the death of Achilles, his funeral games, the fight between Odysseus and Ajax Telamon and then the latter’s suicide. Next up is the Little Iliad. This covers the death of Paris, also known as Alexander. (That little alternative name fact I did not know.) This is also the story that has the Trojan horse and the sack of Troy. After that, we have The Sack of Ilion, an alternative telling of the sack of the city. It syncs up more closely with how the fate of Troy is described in the Odyssey. The fifth lost epic is called The Returns, which runs concurrently with the Odyssey. It covers the drowning of Ajax the Lesser due to some sacrilege he had committed earlier, as well as the murder of Agamemnon and other returns. The final lost piece is the Telegony, which is the sequel to the Odyssey. In it, we learn of three more sons of Odysseus, one born of Penelope, one of an inland queen he married after the Odyssey timeline, and one child born of the god Circe, where Odysseus stayed for a year on his roundabout way home from Troy. This last child ends up unknowingly killing his father, bringing closure to a prophecy about Odysseus’ end.

This volume also includes fragments from the Theban cycle, poems on Heracles and Theseus, other related epics and some fragments that have a claimed, though not necessarily proved, connection to Homer.

It’s a fine collection, although by its very nature, it is fragmentary. This is not a book to pick up for an introduction, but it is a welcome addition and an absolutely fun read.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Riddle of the Labyrinth was just spectacular and one of the fastest reads I’ve had in a long time. I spent a few hours on a plane and then an evening finishing this fantastic story of the intersecting lives of three individuals that helped to decipher the ancient Mycenaean Greek script Linear B.

The thing that drew me to the book, and its focus, was Alice Kober, an American classicist whose work on Linear B laid the groundwork for its eventual decipherment by the British architect and amateur linguist Michael Ventris. She reminded me of Rosalind Franklin, whose work on DNA led the way for Crick and Watson but who never got the recognition she deserved. Sadly, another feature they both shared was an early death. Margalit Fox goes a long way to give Kober the credit she deserves.

The book offers so much to a wide variety of readers. A bit of biography on Arthur Evans, Alice Kober and Michael Ventris. A great puzzle in deciphering the symbols of Linear B. A cursory study of archaeology in the Mediterranean area. An exploration of the inner workings of the academy and how research gets done. A recounting of daily Mycenaean life, as recorded in the Linear B tablets. And just a good story of how humans need to solve puzzles, sometimes just to solve them, sometimes just to know that an answer is attainable. This is a human spirit book.

Personally, each part of the book touched me deeply. I studied Greek, classics and anthropology in high school and college. I wanted to do it as a career at one point. That world still enthralls me. Once, in London, I saw the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. I looked at it and was just blown away. It was a doorway to another world, a world filled with people that really existed, so long ago. It was inspiring. Writing, my chosen profession now, is a continuation of this very human story. We record things through symbols onto some for of recording device. We convey ideas and meaning, be they recording inventories or contemplating our existence.

On a more mundane matter: wow, three books in 2014 and all five stars. This bodes well for 2014!

Robert Fagles passed away last Wednesday, March 26th. For recent college students or classics lovers, you would know him from his work translating three books of the Western canon into beautiful contemporary poetry. When I was in high school, during the Dark Ages, I read the Odyssey. It was laborious to read and I never felt that I found the “epic” part of the poem. In college, I read the Iliad and several other translations of the Odyssey, as I went through my period as an English major and then a Classics major. I read Richard Lattimore, Robert Fitzgerald and Albert Cook’s translations of Homer’s works. While I grew to love these epics, it was hard work. I hoped that someday a translation would arrive that would make it accessible and exciting to readers, so that they too could enjoy and contemplate tales of war, hubris, wandering, love and honor.

In the 1990s, I heard about a new translation from Robert Fagles. Diane bought it for me for Christmas, one of the few things I actually knew I wanted (I’m usually so noncommittal and rarely give suggestions for gifts). When I cracked open the crisp hard cover, I was immediately drawn into a fantastic story. Fagles succeeded where I think Lattimore and Fitzgerald failed. Homer came alive and leapt off of the pages, making the story feel real and immediate. I flew through the book, even reading passages aloud to Diane. I compared some portions I particularly liked with other translations and really felt that Fagles captured the essence of the poem without losing the content and context. I even reread it a few years later.

Currently, I’m reading his Iliad. Interestingly enough, I think I unknowingly picked it up to read (out of my stack) on the day he died. I don’t think I’ll venture into his Virgil, but that’s a personal preference (I think Homer did it best and Virgil was a poor imitation of the former’s work). The only person I’d compare as a translator to Fagles is Seamus Healy. In particular, Healy’s translation of Beowolf that captured the story but made it accessible for a modern audience. But, for now, we have Robert Fagles fabulous works. I hope you might find a moment and give them a chance. They are definitely worth it, not for reading a “classic” but for reading a great story.