Classics Salon!

[cahn]

So yeah, anyone who has been around this DW for more than a very little while has known that we had a salon in which we discussed Frederick the Great in particular and 18th-century Enlightenment figures in general.

But nooooow we are going to have a Classics salon!

My Classics background is, er, well, I guess my Classics history is pretty much on par with or somewhat worse than my general non-US historical background (read: I know almost nothing, with some random pockets of slight layman knowledge), and my Classics literary background is signficantly worse than my general literary background (no real reason, it's not like I had a vendetta against it or anything, I think I just didn't happen to have a good entry point). I've read the Odyssey last year and the Aeneid reasonably recently, and the Iliad not so reasonably recently (perhaps this will be the impetus for me to check out the Wilson translation), and Ted Hughes' translation of selected Metamorphoses.

Please feel free to tell me what books I really ought to be looking at next! (I believe there has been some discussion of Plutarch?) Feel free to wax eloquent about your favorite translations, whether it's something I've already read or not! Also please free to tell me any of your favorite Classics history you want, because I probably don't know it :)

(This is not supposed to be just for mildred_of_midgard and selenak, although of course I expect them to be prime contributors. I know that many of you, probably all of you, know a lot about Classics that I don't know, so please inform me! Tell me your favorite things! :D )

Comments

Re: Suetonius: The Lives of the Caesars

[cahn]

Ah! Yeah, like I think I said above, I need to read I, Claudius again, but I do have a base there.

Sadly, Suetonius other notorious work, "Lives of the Great Whores", was lost to posterity because the medieval monks let us down by not transcribing it.

Monks! Come on now! Surely you could have come up with some... metaphorical... reason why you could have kept it!

I knew about it in theory because it does get mentioned in every (current day) biography of a Roman, pretty much, but it's one thing to do so and another to get textual examples at book length.

Haha, yeah, like I said above, I've actually heard of this, but it's still utterly bizarre to me because of being just SO substantially different than the way I look at the world.

and you can argue against this that the Romans were great at adopting, and saw those relationships as completly the equivalent of biological family relationships.

Huh, interesting. I could see the Romans being into full disclosure, though, so adopting someone where you knew adoption was taking place might be OK while being a cuckold was not?

(God knows what Suetonius would have made of Commodus fighting gladiators himself.)

Omg, I think this factoid shows up somewhere in a Rick Riordan book. (In one of the series, various not-so-nice Roman emperors are brought back to life. Nero, Commodus, and... I forget the third one.)

Indeed - since she was never a woman to keep quiet about the details of her outrageous sex life - she would have made a great song and dance about it.

OMG. I laughed. Suetonius!

(Giving your love up for Rome: following the Aeneas model!)

Public duty over private happiness?

Wow, no, I didn't know that letter at all! That's amazing.

Re: Suetonius: The Lives of the Caesars

[selenak]

Not having read Rick Riordan, my guess is Number 3 could be either Elagabolus, Caracalla or Caligula. These usually make the worst Emperors list. Something to remember which was which (not Caligula, you do know about Caligula):

Commodus: the one with the gladiators. Played by Joaquin Phoenix in the movie. Was the son of Marcus Aurelius, thereby ending the run of the “five good Emperors” (Nerva - the guy instrumental in offing Domitian -, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius) who had all adopted each other as a grown man showing ability. Managed to make the Empire go from “peak condition” to “decline and fall”. As opposed to Nero, definitely did not get flowers on his tomb post murder.

Caracalla: into soldiers the way Commodus was into gladiators. Killed his brother Geta in their mother Julia Domna’s arms. Built still famous baths in Rome and made everyone within the borders of the Empire a citizen, but had zero economic skills and massive sadism issues. Killed anyone who dared to laugh at him and then some, including lots of people in Alexandria. Got murdered and replaced by the first non-noble Emperor, a general named Macrinus.

Elagabolus: Grandson of Julia Domna’s sister Julia Maesa whom Maesa cunningly claimed to have been Caracalla’s illegitimate son (he wasn’t). Was fourteen when his grandmother, aunt and mother managed to turn the family fortune around, because they got the better of Macrinus by presenting young E to the troops who changed sides and made him Emperor. Within the next few years, E managed to outrage pretty much everyone in Rome - imagine teen becoming all powerful worst case scenario - , including his grandmother, who eventually replaced him by his even younger cousin Severus Alexander. By murder, natch. Famous E misdeeds include drowing guests in rose petals, being into changing his sexual identity, letting himself be topped, raping people of both genders and marrying a Vestal virgin - and trying to introduce the god from his hometown to Rome as surpassing Jupiter.

Re: Suetonius: The Lives of the Caesars

[cahn]

It was Caligula! (This was a failure just of my remembering the Riordan plot, not that I didn't remember Caligula himself. Commodus had been new to me, though.) BTW, I don't recommend Rick Riordan for adults -- I'm glad my 10-year-old is reading him, and I didn't dislike the ones he made me read, but it's a little too, hm, middle-grade for me to really recommend, and certainly not to someone who actually knows about Classics!

Famous E misdeeds include drowing guests in rose petals, being into changing his sexual identity, letting himself be topped

This is totally sending me. Again, not able to suppress my twenty-first-century instincts!

Re: Suetonius: The Lives of the Caesars

[selenak]

I think I did link this before, but check out the Evil Emperors Song from Horrible Histories for more.

Rick Riordan

[mildred_of_midgard]

Haha, I was chatting a couple weeks ago with a Classics professor, who recounted a story that happened to him a few years ago in a Greek myth course he was teaching:

Student: *refers to Percy Jackson*
Prof: Who's that?
Student: Omg. Who else in this class is only here because of Percy Jackson?
Every student: *raises their hand* (with one exception, and she was from China)

The next day:
Prof: *brings a boxed set to class and slams it down on his desk*
Prof: Challenge accepted!

And he ended up reading them to his kid. :'D

The prof's verdict was that they were fine, but I don't think he loved them. So pretty similar to your verdict.

Re: Rick Riordan

[cahn]

Haha, that is a great story! Go prof!

Now, my kid did read D'Aulaire's Greek Myths before he read Riordan, buuuuut if he took a Greek myths class it would definitely be because of Percy Jackson!

They are fine! And they definitely rank in the top half of things my kid has made me read. But yeah.

Re: Rick Riordan

[selenak]

Like I said, I haven't read them, but I am following the tv show on Disney, and find it charming and clever in how it uses the myths, way better than Disney used to use them (no Hades-is-the-devil nonsense, for starters, nor Zeus as a white-haired, white-bearded benevolent patriarch). But as entertaining as I find it, it hasn't compelled me yet to want to read the books.

Re: Rick Riordan

[mildred_of_midgard]

I only saw the first movie, and yeah, it was fine, but it didn't inspire me to pick up the books or watch anything more.

Me, throughout the entire movie: "The son of the sea god keeps denying that he stole the thing. Has anyone tried asking the son of the god of stealing things? Seriously, tho, have you tried??"

Lol.

Elagabalus

[mildred_of_midgard]

Famous E misdeeds

Or, perhaps more accurately, Cahn, famous misdeeds attributed to E. Much of the historiography on him comes from the Historia Augusta, which is definitely the Nancy Goldstone of its time, if not worse (it may have been intended as fiction), and much of the rest comes after E's murder by people who had a vested interest in portraying him as deserving to be overthrown (think Richard III). Some brief prior discussion Selena and I had on the subject.

The famous rose petal scene as depicted by Alma-Tadema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus#/media/File:The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus.jpg

Per the Historia Augusta: "In a banqueting-room with a reversible ceiling he once buried his guests in violets and other flowers, so that some were actually smothered to death, being unable to crawl out to the top."

Like you do!

Re: Elagabalus

[cahn]

Heh, I mean, that picture really does bring home that if it were true that would have been A LOT of flowers :P But gosh, tabloid history is definitely sensationalistic!

Re: Elagabalus

[selenak]

You have no idea. There are some incredibly horrible details in what Suetonius claims Tiberius was up to on Capri in his last years, some of which involve babies (not as in small kids, though they are there, too, but as in literal babies). (The depressing thing is that on the one hand, this could be like those "Hillary is running a pedophile ring from a Washington, DC Pizza restaurant's cellar" stories making the rounds in Rome about their weird Emperor who won't come back from the island where only a very few people are allowed to visit.... or it could be the truth, because sadly, in this day and age, we do know there are people doing this.

Tabloid history offers both the fun part of sensationalistic ("Nero and Otho had sex with each other AS ADULTS!), the ridiculous as in the rose petals business... and the makes-you-throw-up part.

Re: Elagabalus

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, seriously, I only read Suetonius once, twenty-five years ago, and I've never been able to obtain enough brain bleach to forget about Tiberius and the babies.

Suetonius does hedge his bets as to whether it's credible, though, doesn't he? Am I remembering right?

Re: Elagabalus

[selenak]

There is an “it is claimed” early on in the entire ghastly paragraph, yes. Without saying who does the claiming; as mentioned, it’s only the Augustus biography which stands out with source-of-sexual-slander notations.