Thea Lawrence on ancient perfume and the myth of Myrrha at Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery

In conjunction with their most recent exhibition, The House of Fame, the Nottingham Contemporary is running a series of (free!) study sessions, grouped under the alluring title of A Darkened Room: On Feminism, Rituals, Death and the Occult. For the first of these, I ran a session entitled ‘Incense, perfume, incest and (im)pietas’. The session was built around a reading of Ovid’s version of the myth of Myrrha, from book 10 of his Metamorphoses. Narrated by Orpheus as an example of ‘crimes provoked by women’s lust’, this is the longest extant version of this myth, and invites a whole host of readings (as Ovid always does).

The tale of Myrrha is about as salacious as myth gets – the eponymous Myrrha develops a distinctly un-daughterly passion for her own father, King Cinyras, and, under the cover of night and with the (questionably overenthusiastic) assistance of her devoted nurse, manages to trick said father into bed. After several busy nights of blissful (or wilful) ignorance, Cinyras finally discovers the identity of his lover, which forces Myrrha to flee for her life from his sword-brandishing anger. Weary and heavily pregnant with her own half-brother, Myrrha begs some unspecified gods for an end to her suffering. Some deity hears her prayer, and transforms her into the myrrh tree, thus suspending her forever between life and death, ensuring that her incestuous crime will not pollute either realm. Sometime later, Myrrha-the-tree gives birth to Adonis, who is immediately anointed with the fragrant tears of his mother, myrrh.

Myrrha (half woman half tree) giving birth to Adonis, engraving by L. Desplaces after C. Cignani (16th- 17th century)

Although Ovid’s characterisation of Myrrha is complex and sometimes sympathetic, she is in many ways the embodiment of Greco-Roman stereotypes about the weaknesses and excesses of women. She is unable to control her excessive and unnatural desires, and resorts to trickery to fulfil them. Cinyras, meanwhile, is exempted from any blame, despite an eagerness to hop into bed with a stranger as young as his daughter (at the very moment his wife is observing ritual celibacy) which to modern eyes is at least somewhat seedy. The myrrh which she weeps after her transformation is an important constituent of many ancient perfumes, which were themselves deemed to be both (immorally) erotic and deceptive, concealing the natural stench of the body it adorns even as it works its seductive influence upon others.

‘Myrrha and Cinyras’, Virgil Solis (16th century)

The central text served as an excellent springboard into broader conversations about ancient (and modern) attitudes towards the taboo of incest, the role of metamorphoses in myth, and myrrh as a highly-prized perfume and incense. One of the great joys of the session was the diversity of approach and perspective brought by those in attendance. One attendee, who sells a variety of products containing myrrh, felt that discovering that it had such an ancient and disturbing myth behind it had caused her to look at it in a new light. She was still wrestling with the problem of how to view a substance with such a long and complex cultural history. This was a response to the myth stayed with me – in my own research into myrrh in Greco-Roman antiquity, a central question is the degree to and ways in which Myrrha’s story might factor into the attitudes of those using the real substance. It had never occurred to me that it might also have an impact upon those working with myrrh today. In fact, the whole session was a poignant reminder of the ways in which discussion of sources like Ovid’s tale of Myrrha, and of the ancient practices and social attitudes to which they are connected, is only enriched by the presence of a wide range of perspectives – including and perhaps even especially from those who do not inhabit my specific academic bubble.

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Edmund Stewart considers some of the common pitfalls in essay writing in Classics and Archaeology

Here at Nottingham, as at most universities, it is essay season. We await with great hope and some trepidation the arrival of our students’ dissertations. In preparing for this moment, both students and staff may wonder what it is that makes a good, or even a bad essay. Of course, there are the mechanical aspects of academic writing, which are relatively easy to learn (how to best structure a paragraph, how to format references etc.) but more important is how to make a good, or bad, argument. Here I review some of the top mistakes that are certain to irritate even the most serene of supervisors. Feel free to add some more below.

1. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence 

A good student knows we always need evidence to support our arguments. So, if there is no evidence for something, then it never happened and the date of our earliest evidence for x or y is also the date at which it first appears. Never mind that we have very little evidence for anything in the ancient world and in general the later the period, the more evidence we are likely to have.

2. Add an evolutionary theory or historical moment

Pick a period. This period is the end of a process of evolution. Everything before this period leads inevitably to this one great historical moment and is less advanced and more primitive. Everything after it is decline and decay (unless your period is the present day, in which case we are probably fine: brave new world, people!). Make sure you also pick a momentous period in which everything changes (probably democratic Athens or the reign of Augustus). A new mode of thinking arrives that was completely impossible before and all the hoary old ideas from earlier times are totally abandoned as obsolete. Religious belief, for example, is clearly impossible in a modern world post-Darwin: it is all evolution.

3. Apply a theory

If you want an argument that is definitely original, but almost certainly questionable, follow this simple recipe. Take one canonical author (say Euripides or Virgil); add an obscure theory no one has heard of (you can source these in most good sociology departments); mix well and then half-bake; serve lukewarm. Remember, always twist facts to suit theories, not theories to suit facts. Any evidence that falls outside the theory can be ignored: it is obviously impossible for more than one thing to have happened in any given place and time. The best models can be applied to every Greek polis and the whole Roman Empire.

4. Develop an unconscious confirmation bias

If, alternatively, you want an argument that is certain to be unoriginal, work on your confirmation biases. If people have been saying the same thing on a subject for a hundred years, why bother to ask questions? Alternatively, if an idea was questioned by a scholar of some authority a hundred years ago (e.g. Wilamowitz or Mommsen), keep well clear. Ideally your life’s work as a scholar should be to defend the views of your supervisor’s supervisor’s supervisor, to whom you owe so much.

5. Keep your logic circular

A text can most easily be explained by the historical context when the evidence for that context is itself the text. For example, in the society known to Homer honour was really important, and this is why it is a key theme in the Iliad.

6. It’s all Propaganda

Use this word regularly and try to put it into the title of your dissertation. It shows that ancient literary texts (especially Euripides’ Troades or the Aeneid) have only one message and one purpose and it was all about Augustus or Athenian democracy. Duh.

7. Historicize

The easiest way to understand a text (especially if you do not have time to read it) is to understand the original audience. You can of course assume that all audience members always have identical opinions on a text or performance. If those audience members happen not to be available for comment because they are dead (i.e. if they are Greeks and Romans), you can find out what their views were by studying the social context. Look for any important contemporary political events: your text is probably a social commentary on them (clearly Pride and Prejudice is all about Napoleon and Sauron in the Lord of the Rings is basically Hitler).

8. And most importantly . . . never define your terms

Everyone knows what discourse, ideology, aristocracy, class, patriarchy, gaze, objectification, propaganda (keep using it) etc. mean, why bother to define them? It simply wastes words.

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Lynn Fotheringham previews the latest Greek drama production on campus 

Five years ago Lakeside Arts and Nottingham New Theatre inaugurated a new collaborative project which gives theatre-loving students the opportunity to work with the Lakeside’s professional team on a production. The first play chosen for production was Aristophanes’ Lysistrata – using the Penguin translation by our own Alan Sommerstein – which allows a large cast, and specifically a large cast of women, to be involved in the production (see my post on the 2015 New Theatre Women of Troy for the perennial problem of finding parts for women). The project was a great success – one student even got to write up her experience for The Guardian, and Emma McDonald, who played Lysistrata, has gone on to stage career. The Lakeside-New Theatre partnership has been repeated every years since, with plays as diverse as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and last year’s Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale. Along the way they’ve included a Greek tragedy, Sophocles’ Oedipus (in Steven Berkoff’s version), which I wrote about here.[7] This year, director Martin Berry has decided to revisit the Lysistrata.

Last week, the final week of rehearsals, I had the opportunity to sit in. As if to demonstrate the versatility of these ancient plays, it’s going to be very different from the way it was in 2013. That was the first occasion when Martin directed Greek drama, and he came up with an innovative ‘way in’ to the play, inspired by the knowledge that the audiences would contain plenty of A-level Drama students: the initial set-up was a classroom in which the play was being studied, where one day the students decide that the only way to get to grips with the material is to push aside the desks and start performing it. You can see archive production photos as well as the fabulous poster and even a short video of rehearsals here. In a similar way, the production of Oedipus started with the actors talking to the audience about the experience of dramatising the play. It was, by the way, one of the funniest productions of Oedipus I have ever seen – deliberately so, I hasten to add – until the moment when suddenly the truth was out and things weren’t funny any more.

In both of these productions the Choruses were delivered as speech rather than song, and Martin acknowledges that much of the Chorus-material was cut. One of the things he wanted to do this year was really to get to grips with that aspect of ancient drama. He says that it’s only now, on this third production that he’s felt ‘comfortable with the chorus, both personally and in terms of feeling able to guide the students towards it’. Composer Lawrence Cuthbert was brought in to create new music for all the Choruses, exploiting a range of pop-py, punk-y styles to characterise the opposing forces of the women and the men who clash in this play, with the women instituting a sex-strike in order to force the men to end the war. Martin has lots of experience directing professional companies in musicals, both at the Lakeside and elsewhere, and this production is set outside the ‘Acropolis nightclub’ – I got to see the set on Friday, and it’s a wonderfully evocative blend of ancient and modern.

The photo above shows the women in action in rehearsal, throwing body and soul into their parts as they fight for peace. But in the midst of all the anger there’s a more reflective moment when they explain to the audience why they have as much right as the men to give advice to their city. They list all the civic duties they have performed over the course of their lives – all the religious rites of passage that young Athenian women growing up would experience. The music slows and becomes lyrical, the frenetic dancing dies down as they solemnly recite. It was, for me, an incredibly moving moment in the midst of the bawdy and frenetic stage-action of Aristophanic comedy, a reminder of the religious context of all this drama. It doesn’t have quite the same effect as that turn from humour to tragedy in the Oedipus, but that’s appropriate too: this is a different kind of play.

If it had that kind of effect on me in a black-box studio with the actors in street clothes, I can’t wait for the finished version, with costume and lighting and all the trapping to enhance the performances. Buy your tickets now! (Students: if you’re willing to volunteer to distribute/collect audience-questionnaires, I’m prepared to pay for two tickets per show – e-mail cadre at nottingham dot ac dot uk.)

(Lysistrata runs Tuesday 24th-Saturday 28th April, 7.30pm, with Saturday matinee at 2pm. Tickets are £15 waged, £13 unwaged, £11 restricted view and £5 for Nottingham University students presenting a student-card.)

Images (c) Lakeside Arts

Top-right: the women in action in rehearsal

Middle-left: director Martin Berry leads the cast in a reading of the play

Bottom right: promotional poster

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Alex Mullen considers bilingualism and violent interactions in the Lancaster Cavalry Inscription

I have been thinking again recently about the north-western Roman horse rider reliefs, which are concentrated in the Rhineland and, to a lesser extent, Britain (now boasting over 20), and have a primarily military focus. My favourite is that of Insus, found in Lancaster in 2005. The tombstone has been dated to c. AD 100 and its relief depicts a proud-looking mounted eques brandishing the head of a decapitated naked enemy who is kneeling below. The tombstone was discovered around 8 m from the Roman road leading south from the fort. Ironically, given the featured decapitation, Insus’s head has been separated from the rest of the scene in one of the two major fragments. It reads:

Dis | Manibus Insus Vodulli | [fil]ius ciue(s) Treuer eques alae Aug(ustae) | [t(urma)] Victoris curator

SIMON JAMES’S RECONSTRUCTION OF HOW THE TOMBSTONE MAY HAVE LOOKED ORIGINALLY (BULL 2007 P. 20)

‘To the shades. Insus, son of Vodullus, citizen of the Treveri, cavalry man of the cavalry regiment Augusta, [troop] of Victor, curator.’ (Roman Inscriptions of Britain vol. III 3185)

Insus, a citizen of the Treveri, whose main population centre was Augusta Treverorum, modern Trier (Germany), stands out with an impressive plumed helmet, a cloak fanned out in the wind fastened by a rosette brooch, and a chunky sword in his right hand. His horse, also neatly kitted out, rears up and bears its teeth. Compared to the crouched figure, still gripping his sword, but with his eyes firmly closed in his decapitated head, the Treverian exudes movement and power.

The closest comparison to this Lancaster carving can be found in the Ribchester inscription-less rider stone, found in 1876, in which the rider, this time with spear rather than sword and no beheaded adversary, and horse are so similar that some have suggested the same sculptor produced both. The representation of a beheaded adversary is unusual, with only a couple of other examples of decapitation in iconography attested anywhere from Roman Britain; the closest parallel in Britain for the decapitation may be the Bridgeness ‘distance slab’ which shows a rider plus lance and four adversaries, including one decapitated in one of the two aedicula on either side of the inscription (Roman Inscriptions of Britain vol. I 2139).

BRIDGENESS ‘DISTANCE SLAB’, ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS OF BRITAIN VOL. I 2139 

Insus can be compared with his comrade Apollinaris, also from Trier, whose epitaph, found in the eighteenth century in the excavation of a cellar in Pudding Lane (now Cheapside), Lancaster, closely parallels that of Insus, though no associated iconography is attested (the stone is only known from a manuscript drawing).

Dis Mani|bus | L(ucius) Iul(ius) Apol |linaris | Trever an(norum) | XXX eq(ues) al|ae Au[g(ustae)] |h(ic) [s(itus) e(st)]

‘To the shades. Lucius Iulius Apollinaris, the Treveran, 30 years old, cavalry man of the cavalry regiment Augusta lies buried here.’ (Roman Inscriptions of Britain vol. I 606)

Both Insus and Apollinaris presumably joined the ala on the Continent before it was transferred to Britain. Insus is not a Roman name and its presentation here in non-tria nomina format and with no reference to veteran status may suggest that Insus has been killed whilst still serving. The most straightforward assumption is that Insus has died in Britain and that the headless enemy is a Briton. Given what we know about bilingualism in the north-western provinces, it is likely that someone named Insus, son of Vodullus, from Gaul in c. AD 100 came from a family that was at least partly Celtic-speaking. Trier was capital of Gallia Belgica and we know that the Celtic languages of northern Gaul were closely related to the British Celtic spoken in Britannia. This Treveran citizen, who is proudly presented in a north-western Roman military and Latin guise, would perhaps have found much more in common linguistically and culturally with the beheaded Briton than this portrayal might lead us to believe. Our work on multiple identities and bilingualism in the Roman empire can sometimes be neglectful of the violence and trauma of some of the changes that pitted communities against one another. This monument is a reminder of some of those violent entanglements.

For more information on Alex Mullen’s ERC-funded project Latin Now see here.

Further reading:

Bull, S. 2007. Triumphant Rider: the Lancaster Roman Cavalry Tombstone. Lancashire Museums. See pp. 39–51 of this volume for an overview of other horse-rider tombstones and fragments found in Britain.

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Edmund Stewart on Boris Johnson’s latest allusions to the ancient world

In a recent interview with the Times, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson once again looked to the ancient world in an effort to explain modern Russia and its relations with the West.

“I was reading Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. It was obvious to me that Athens and its democracy, its openness, its culture and civilisation was the analogue of the United States and the West. Russia for me was closed, nasty, militaristic and antidemocratic – like Sparta.”

The Greek historian continues to be as influential as ever in the minds of today’s statesmen and has even given his name to the so called ‘Thucydides trap’. This is the doctrine that current and emerging powers are inevitably drawn into conflict. The resulting comparison between ancient Athens and Sparta and the modern USA and Russia or China is truly disturbing.

Oligarchs and Tyrants 

Yet is this equation between the militarism of Sparta and the belligerence of Putin in the Ukraine and Syria truly warranted? The Peloponnesian War, as Thucydides describes it, saw a clash between proponents of two different constitutions, democracy and oligarchy, each backed by two major powers, Athens and Sparta. The modern battle of ideologies – between democracies who look to the USA for leadership and the dictators, like Bashar al-Assad, who depend on Russia – resembles superficially the world of Thucydides. But that does not mean that Sparta is like modern Russia. On the contrary, Sparta was an oligarchy with a balanced constitution, by which power was distributed between a number of parties, including not one king but two, as well as the five ephors elected to represent the citizen body. In Russia, on the other hand, one man holds a grip on power that is almost total: Vladimir Putin. Since 1999 he has based his legitimacy on legal magistracies: the positions of Prime Minister and President of the Russian federation. Yet in reality his power rests on the theft of property, both public and private, the corruption of the judiciary and the use of force, as Garry Kasparov has well documented. He has most probably ordered the murder of opponents, such as Boris Nemtsov and Alexander Litvinenko, and imprisoned others, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and, most recently, Alexei Navalny. Russia was certainly never a democracy, but it was once an oligarchy, in which a few powerful men controlled much of the state’s interests, especially in oil and gas. Putin has further enriched loyal supporters and driven into exile those oligarchs who could not stomach his rule, such as Khodorkovsky. The Greeks had a word for this kind of behaviour too and it is not oligarchy: it is tyranny.

Tyrants in Athens: The Pisistratidae

The tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who murdered Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus and were popularly (and incorrectly) credited with freeing Athens from tyranny.

In Thucydides’ day there were few tyrannies, but the Athenians could remember a time when they were ruled in a similar way by one family, the Pisistratidae. Like Putin, Pisistratus did not claim to rule the state or own the title of tyrant. Instead he and his family monopolised the key magistracies in Athens and shared them with other powerful oligarchs, particularly the Alcmaeonidae. But as in modern Russia, this pretence of legitimacy served to strengthen their position and was combined with the judicious use of occasional force. In the end, the Alcmaeonidae were exiled too. The tyrant was not someone who held a political office, like a king or president, but merely a man who desired power and wealth to such an extent as to be eventually willing to commit any crime to soothe his greed and the inevitable fear of retribution. Thus the chorus of Sophocles’ play Oedipus the Tyrant tell us that ‘hybris (outrage) breeds the tyrant’, much as Lord Acton held that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. The former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky has shown, in his book The Case for Democracy, that tyrants generally exhibit this common pattern of behaviour, that they support each other in their struggles with their own populations and that they are inherently hostile to democracies and any who oppose their will. By studying ancient political history, as my students do in the Greek Tyrants module at Nottingham, we can see that the tyrant is a figure found not only in many countries, but also in many ages. It is even possible that the Greeks were more alive to the dangers of tyranny than today’s democrats.

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Edmund Stewart on why the recent removal of Hylas and the Nymphs was not merely clumsy but wrong

As has been widely reported in both the national press and this blog, Waterhouse’s masterpiece Hylas and the Nymphs was recently removed from display at Manchester Art Gallery in an attempt to ‘challenge a Victorian fantasy’ of the femme fatale. This was part of a so-called ‘take over’ of the museum by the contemporary artist Sonia Boyce. The gallery has claimed that it wanted to stimulate debate, yet that debate has been peculiarly one-sided: an overwhelmingly negative response has forced the gallery to return the painting. The public, who seemingly quite like art and the Pre-Raphaelites in particular, have taken back their museum. The curators who sponsored Boyce’s stunt are glibly pleased at the ‘fantastic response’ they have received and have again stressed that their aim was merely to prompt ‘a wider global debate about representation in art and how works of art are interpreted and displayed’. Those who opposed the painting’s removal may suspect that this statement is disingenuous or even dishonest.

It is hard to discuss the merits of a painting when you cannot see it and impossible to prompt genuine debate whilst simultaneously fostering ignorance. There was no debate or consultation prior to the picture’s removal. The contemporary art curator Clare Gannaway may, however, have revealed another motive in a statement reported by the Guardian. In discussing the gallery in which Hylas and the Nymphs hangs, and its title ‘In Pursuit of Beauty’, she confessed to a personal sense of ‘embarrassment that we haven’t dealt with it sooner’. You might have supposed she was referring to an unpleasant medical condition, rather than a display of art. One reason for the strength of opposition to Boyce and Gannaway’s actions is a fear that art is being censored as a political gesture or to suit the tastes of the modern curator. That fear may not be unfounded.

Art, and especially contemporary art, is being politicised, for the most part in a leftwards direction. If you doubt this, I would encourage you to peruse the bookshelves of the Tate or Tate Modern shop, as I did recently. There you will find some books on art, but also the complete works of Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, to quote only the most famous of today’s ‘thinkers’. A similar leftwards trend is also observable on university campuses. One study in the USA has claimed that Democrat voters outnumber Republicans by 11 to 1 among academic staff. At the same time, ‘no-platforming’ and ‘safe spaces’ are increasingly deployed to constrain free speech. Those speakers deemed politically incorrect have been met with abuse and even violence on campuses in America and the UK. It should be stressed, however, that this is not exclusively a vice of the left: the ‘alt-right’ would certainly censor if they could and many comparisons have been made with the Nazi seizure of supposedly degenerate art. And despite holding views that are diametrically opposed, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Germaine Greer have both been targeted by student protests. What they have in common is a profound belief in the importance of free speech and it is these values, rather than any specific ideology, that matter most in a democracy.

The removal of Waterhouse’s painting was notably opposed by people of all political persuasions, including the readers of the Guardian. These liberals and conservatives are seemingly united by a conviction that artworks should not be used as weapons in a culture war by any party. This is because art, unlike propaganda, has to be capable of more than one interpretation and it is for this reason that art critics and universities exist. Once you require art to serve a single agenda, then all art becomes suspect. Dmitry Shostakovitch’s commitment to developing uniquely Soviet music did not help him win the approval of Stalin for his opera the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk or prevent its suppression. One may argue, of course, that the curators in Manchester were not acting under the direction of any dictator, but then intolerance does not always require centralised leadership. It is a matter of debate as to whether Henry VIII or puritan fervour was more responsible for the wholesale destruction of English medieval art. Significantly our age is also seeing the return of the popular ‘witch hunt’.

In forcing the return of Hylas and the Nymphs, moderates of all political persuasions have won a small victory. They will need to continue to oppose robustly and with determination censorship of all kinds in our art galleries and universities. For once you start a culture war, regardless of who wins, art will be the loser.

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Helen Lovatt reflects on Hylas and the Nymphs

A famous Pre-Raphaelite painting by Waterhouse of Hylas and the Nymphs has been removed from its gallery (a gallery entitled In Pursuit of Beauty) by Manchester Art Gallery. According to a recent article in the Guardian the gallery sees ‘the removal itself [as] an artistic act’, designed to stimulate a conversation about ‘how we display and interpret artworks’. Visitors are encouraged to add post-it notes with their reaction to the removal, which is explained as a reaction against the display of gratuitous naked female flesh, against the representation of ‘the female body as a passive decorative art form or a femme fatale’.

There are a number of ironies in this particular action: the image draws on a poem by the ancient Greek poet Theocritus which tells the story of the abduction of the beautiful boy Hylas, Hercules’ boyfriend, from the expedition of the Argonauts to find the Golden Fleece. Theocritus himself probably removed the story from its narrative context in the epic poem of near-contemporary poet Apollonius of Rhodes. In Apollonius’ Argonautica the abduction of Hylas is a turning point in the story of the Argonauts. With the world’s greatest hero, Hercules, on the boat, they could have walked into Colchis and just taken the Golden Fleece. But Hercules is so distraught at the loss of Hylas, that he wanders the countryside endlessly searching for him, so the Argonauts are forced to leave him behind. As a result, they need help when they get to Colchis, the help of another beautiful, complex woman: Medea.

So are the nymphs really the objects of desire in this painting? Is that a heteronormative assumption? And are they really femmes fatales? In Theocritus, the boy is pulled into their watery realm not to drown but to become a child-god, comforted on their laps. Is it even an erotic abduction or are they abducting a beautiful child? Already in the ancient world, the story was rationalised as the accidental drowning of an unfortunate boy, and we have evidence of a ritual related to the myth, in which locals searched the countryside calling for Hylas, and eventually a voice answered them back from the pool.

The story became a staple of Greek and Roman poetry, an image of a hackneyed artistic theme, the loss of the young, the separation between mortals and the divine, desire as impossible absence. Waterhouse captures the story at the moment of its greatest ambivalence and potential: Hylas might be about to flirt, might enjoy escaping (as in Robert Graves’ 1944 novel The Golden Fleece), or the nymphs might be about to violently seize him, Hercules abandoned, the Argonauts obliged to let go of any straightforward heroism for one that involves female help. Hylas is an interpretive blank spot and we must decide what to do with his removal from the picture.

In this situation, it is peculiarly appropriate to remove the picture from the wall and leave a blank space, for viewers to fill with their own ideas. The nymphs need not be sexual objects: they can instead be subjects with their own desires, a celebration of female desire. It’s up to us to choose how we see it, how we frame the excerption.

For more information on Dr Lovatt’s ongoing research project on the Argonauts see here.

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Gary Fisher Reflects on the Importance of Regional Meetings of the Classical Association

I recently had the pleasure of attending a meeting of the Hull & District branch of the Classical Association as a visiting lecturer. The audience comprised the usual sort of individuals that one expects to find at a regional CA meeting: mostly hobbyists and retirees, the majority of whom had no formal education in the Classics. The group was not about to let a lack of formal training stop their interacting with Classics however, and their enthusiasm for the subject made the lecture and subsequent discussion one of the most profitable and interesting experiences of my career to date. In addition to the wonderful welcome I received, the group were able to point to sources and suggest avenues of examination that, in my narrow focus on my specific subject area, I had not considered. By speaking to a non-specialist audience I was able to stimulate and reap the benefits of a discussion that drew on a far broader range of classical sources than one is often able to experience at specialist academic conferences.

Learning from Metal Detectorists

Professional classicists, for all our talk of not wanting to act as ‘gatekeepers’ of the classical tradition and instead promote broader engagement with the ancient world, may at times appear to be uninterested in such groups of amateur enthusiasts. I recall once hearing an early career researcher ask ‘why on earth would [she] want to speak to a bunch of retired Latin teachers?’ when discussing the idea of visiting a CA branch as a speaker. A similar attitude was once prevalent in the relationship between professional archaeologists and their own amateur counterparts, metal detectorists. The animosity between these two groups is well-documented, with professional archaeologists accusing metal detectorists of destroying archaeological information by decontextualizing and not properly recording their artefactual finds. This divide has been much ameliorated since the foundation of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in 1997. The PAS is a largely volunteer-based organisation that seeks to bridge this gap between professionals and amateurs to the benefit of British archaeology at large. By cultivating close relationships with metal detecting societies, the PAS has worked to ensure that the work of hobbyist archaeologists has enhanced the work of archaeological professionals, rather than detracted from it. The organisation sends representatives to metal detecting societies across the country to ensure all detectorists are aware of the geographic information they need to record when unearthing an artefact. Finders are then encouraged to submit their finds to their local PAS ‘Finds Liason Officer’ to be identified, photographed, and recorded on a database by a team of PAS volunteers. In its twenty years of existence the PAS has generated a database of 1,314,476 objects at the current time of writing. This database is publicly accessible and has provided a valuable resource for archaeologists, amateur and professional alike, to identify broad trends in artefact distributions.  The PAS allows metal detectorists to continue in their hobby and generate collections of found artefacts, and even enjoy the service of having a professional archaeologist identify their finds. It simultaneously allows professional archaeologists, who despite their skill and training can only cover so much ground, to use the information generated by detectorists, rather than their finds being lost to a private collection. Perhaps more importantly though, by placing archaeologists in direct contact with detectorists, it has broken the silence that existed between these two groups and encouraged dialogue about approaches to their chosen subject material, to the benefit of both groups. The Portable Antiquities Scheme has so successfully embedded itself in the culture of metal detecting that is has been referenced in BBC Four’s BAFTA award winning series Detectorists, currently enjoying its third and final season.

Harnessing Hobbyists in Classics

As the University of Nottingham’s department of Classics has now merged with the department of Archaeology, it seems a good time to consider how such an innovation might be applied to that of Classics. This is no simple feat. Where the finds of detectorists are easy to quantify according to fields such as location, item type, material, etcetera, it is somewhat more difficult to catalogue to thoughts and theories of classics enthusiasts. Yet if my visit to Hull taught me anything it is of the wealth of this untapped resource upon which professional classicists sit. The field of archaeology is blessed with a community of people prepared to comb the fields of England digging up Tudor spoons, eighteenth-century shoe buckles, and, occasionally, a bronze nummi from the House of Constantine. Classicists are similarly fortunate enough to have access to a huge pool of people who have read more widely of the ancient historians, handled a greater variety Roman coins, and visited more ancient sites, than many professional classicists, often constrained by the necessary narrow focus of professional research, can hope to cover,. The benefits that a professional, specialised classicist might reap from speaking to such a widely-read group is manifest, and I am sure many an early career researcher would find themselves being directed towards a useful source or line of enquiry they would not otherwise consider. Such engagement is also of obvious benefit to these communities of enthusiasts. In places such as Hull, following University budget cuts and department closures, interest in the classical tradition is being kept alive by these groups of keen amateurs. By speaking to branches of the Classical Association, classicists can not only enjoy personal benefits, but also help support the work of these organisations that encourage classical interest in areas bereft of resident professionals. Just as the Portable Antiquities Scheme has helped generate a mutually beneficial relationship between archaeologists and detectorists, the Classical Association provides classicists with an opportunity to strike up a similarly mutually-beneficial relationship with the wealth of enthusiasts that we have at our disposal.

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Melanie Fitton-Hayward announces a new post-graduate journal based at the University of Nottingham

After publishing its first issue in April 2017, LTS editors are busy preparing for the second issue. There’s submissions to sort through, final articles to be edited, book reviews to be collated, peer reviewers to find, and style templates to be applied. Now that we’ve started a new academic year, we are looking to spread the word about our exciting project, and get some new postgraduates on board (Masters or PhD, from any Arts department).

LTS (Languages, Texts and Society) is an online, peer-reviewed, open-access postgraduate journal evaluating how communications, languages and texts are shaped by and shape society, including:

• Innovative methods to produce, collect and study texts
• Texts in professional and educational contexts
• How texts shape experience and cultural legacy
• Translation of languages and cultures
• Cultural impact of performance texts

Being on our editorial board offers a range of opportunities, with roles available within marketing, social media, or simply to act as one of our representatives at events or research groups. Becoming a full editor involves completely overseeing the project, while assistant editors are usually responsible for seeing one article through its peer review process.

As well as recruiting editors, we’re also looking for those who might want to contribute to an issue, whether that’s by writing a book review or article, or by peer-reviewing a submission. LTS welcome articles on any relevant topic (feel free to send us an abstract first, if you want to check before you go ahead with writing) and they should be around 6,000 words.

Alongside articles, our issues include book reviews, which are a fantastic way for you to practise your skills of critical reading and writing. We welcome book reviews on any title relevant to the RPA and published in the last 3 years.

You may also wish to act as a peer reviewer yourself, to practise your skills at reviewing and compare your review with that of an academic. If you register with us as a peer reviewer, we will call on your services if we receive an article which suits your area of specialism.

Finally, if you are fortunate enough to speak another language, we would love to publish your translations. These should be of postgraduate articles, already published in a foreign-language peer reviewed journal.

There are also other opportunities – perhaps you’re hosting a conference and would like to publish some papers via our journal. If you can think of any other ways you would like to collaborate with us at LTS, please just get in touch.

If you’d like to find out more, email us on: pg-lts@nottingham.ac.uk, or visit: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/languagestextssociety/.

Editors: Melanie Fitton-Hayward (Classics), Katie Harrison (CLAS), Abdulmalik Ofemile (English), Katrina Wilkins (English).

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Holly Miller discusses her recent work with Sir David Attenborough to investigate the life of a nineteenth-century elephant.

“The elephant is the largest of them all, and in intelligence approaches the nearest to man. It understands the language of its country… It is sensible alike of the pleasures of love and glory, and, to a degree that is rare among men even, possesses notions of honesty, prudence, and equity; it has a religious respect also for the stars, and a veneration for the sun and the moon.”

Pliny, Natural History (VIII.1)

The history and archaeology of human-elephant interactions is a long and varied one. Elephants are hard to ignore (!) and their role in the lives of humans has often been recorded: from the earliest evidence of elephant butchery in the Upper Palaeolithic [1] and in depictions from the earliest city states [2], to Hannibal’s journey over the Alps and historic big game hunting [3]. Their enormous size and power was harnessed on the battlefield, and elephant armies were used by ancient Greece, Carthage and Rome [4]. The Romans more regularly displayed them for spectacle: Pompey’s use of elephants in the animal hunts at the Circus was censured by many ancient writers: Plutarch (Life of Pompey, LII.4), Cicero (ad Familiares, VII.1), Pliny the Elder (Natural History VIII.7.20) and Seneca (De Brevitate Vitae XIII). Cassius Dio wrote the elephants:

“were pitied by thepeople when, after being wounded and ceasing to fight, they walked about with their trunks raised toward heaven, lamenting so bitterly as to give rise to the report that they… were calling upon Heaven to avenge them” (XXXIX.38).

As Pompey was stabbed to death seven years later, perhaps they were. Elephants never forget, after all. These lessons from the Classical writers are particularly poignant given the current plight of the elephant [5], and the archaeological story of our human-elephant interactions is not just about the ancient past, as I showed in “Attenborough and the Giant Elephant” on BBC One yesterday (December 10^th 2017).

Jumbo is perhaps the most famous elephant in the world. His name is now used as an adjective to describe everything from passenger planes to packs of toilet roll. Born in Sudan in 1860 he was captured as a calf and transported to a zoo in Paris, before arriving at London Zoo in 1865 as their first African elephant. Whilst at London he became the pride of the Zoo, often giving rides around the city to children. Jumbo became increasingly aggressive as he reached sexual maturity and the zoo took the controversial decision of selling him to Barnum and Bailey’s travelling circus. Despite major public protests, a petition, and an outbreak of Jumbo-mania, Jumbo was eventually shipped across the Atlantic, arriving in New York to great fanfare in 1882. In America he became centrepiece of the Greatest Show on Earth, a travelling circus that traversed the length of the US and Canada.

Unfortunately, Jumbo died in tragic circumstances: contemporary accounts describe that he was hit by a train while crossing the track to reach his carriage, possibly saving a younger elephant in the process; however, several stories emerged at the time suggesting that his death may not have been an accident. We investigate these events in the programme – I was performing isotope analysis on Jumbo’s bones and tail hair, looking for clues as to his diet and management. Regardless of the results, his story is both captivating and tragic.

To film we spent a week working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a day at the British Geological Survey in Keyworth. Working with presenters David Suzuki (CBC) and Sir David Attenborough (BBC) has unquestionably been a highlight of my career (and life), not to mention getting to work with Jumbo. Rest in peace, big guy.

[1] Clark and Haynes 1970 World Archaeology 1(3) pp. 390-411

[2] Possehl 2002. The Indus civilization: a contemporary perspective

[3] Coutu 2015 World Archaeology 47 (3) pp. 486-503

[4] Belozweskay 2006 The Medici Giraffe

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/elephant-conservation

Images

Top: Jumbo giving rides from London Museum

Middle: Jumbo and his keeper Matthew Scott (Circus poster, ca. 1882)

Bottom: the team with Sir David Attenborough (Holly on the right) – photo by Vik Manchanda, (c) Humble Bee Films

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