Category Archives: Culture

She’s one of the most famous and prominent of the Greek deities. Her symbol – the owl – still stands proudly, millennia later, as an emblem of wisdom.

Yet what do the ancient texts actually say about her? Who is she, and what does she do?

What do we know about the Goddess of Wisdom?

The Iliad and the Odyssey were both of central importance to ancient Greek society. Even today, it is many people’s first exposure to the world of the Classics. Athena’s role in both, while comparatively small in terms of ‘screentime’, is key to the action of the story.

Of the two Homeric poems, Athena plays a much larger role in the Odyssey. She essentially acts as the protector of Odysseus. At various points across Odysseus’ journey, it is Athena’s help and guidance that allow the cunning hero to escape to safety. Moreover, it is Athena’s request to Zeus that allows Odysseus to leave the island of Circe.

Some have taken this to diminish the role of Odysseus himself. The interaction between the human and the divine in Greek literature, however, is more complex than that. Odysseus own qualities of cunning and guile are what win him the approval of the goddess. It is his own resourcefulness that makes him worthy of having a god intervene on his behalf. Odysseus’ own personality is defined by cleverness and using his wits. That these are traits similar to those possessed by the goddess herself is significant.

A direct parallel is drawn between Odysseus and Athena in two incidents that bookend the epic. Early on in the Odyssey, Athena appears to Odysseus’ son Telemachus in disguise. Towards the end of the epic, it is Athena that allows Odysseus to take on the form of a beggar, which allows him to re-enter Ithaca disguised.

Athena’s presence in the Iliad is notably less prominent. Nevertheless, she also acts as something of a guide to Achilles at key moments throughout. For instance, she is present at the infamous quarrel of Agamemnon and Achille over Breseis which opens the epic. She helps stay the anger of Achilles, preventing him from killing Agamemnon outright!

Athena was, naturally enough, the patron of her namesake city, Athens. The Festival Dionysia, where Greek tragedies were staged, actually took place in Athens. So, the audience for Greek tragedies consisted primarily of Athenians. The characterisation of Athena in Greek tragedies is, unsurprisingly, consistently positive.

Perhaps Athena’s most important role in Greek Tragedy is in the Eumenides by Aeschylus. Athena appears in the third and final play of the Oresteia trilogy, where she effectively acts as a judge in the world’s first courtroom drama.

The deciding vote as to whether or not Orestes should be considered guilty of his crimes is granted to Athena. The ruling frees Orestes from punishment by the Furies, while also granting the Furies a place of honour in a new system of justice.

This ruling is seen as representing in dramatic form perhaps the greatest Athenian invention – democracy.

Athena also appears in a number of Euripides‘ plays, such as Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, The Suppliants and Ion. In each of these plays, she acts in the role of deus ex machina, a term that literally means ‘god from the machine’.

Although that term might conjure up the sort of imagery you’d see in a Marvel or Matrix movie, it’s real meaning is much more straightforward than it might sound.

The ‘machine’ is in fact the mechane, a sort of crane that formed part of the ancient Greek stage. It was a heightened platform, placed physically above the action of the rest of the scene, to signify to the audience that the actor was playing a god.

Whenever the drama has reached a point near the climax of the story, and all the play’s problems seem unsolvable, a god appeared on this stage. They then go on to very effectively resolve the conflict of the play, by telling each of the characters what they must do. It’s not always been a popular technique in tragedy – Aristotle was critical of the convention of the deus ex machina in his treatise on tragedy, the Poetics. Today, many would still agree with him. Yet it is a fitting role for Athena to fulfil. It’s consistent with how Athena is characterised throughout ancient literature, while also wrapping up the stories of the tragedies

There is, of course, an even more vast body of myths that surround Athena. Many of these belonged to the lost poems of the Epic Cycle. We still know many of these stories – for instance, that she was one of the three goddesses Paris had to choose between in the “Apple of Discord” story. Yet so much is also lost. Perhaps the real wisdom is found in the words of Socrates – “I know that I know nothing.”

“Whatever words are here, read on to the end.

How could reading this letter hurt you?

Indeed, my words might even give you pleasure.

These letters carry my secret thoughts over land and sea,”

So writes Ovid in the Letter from Phaedra to Hippolytus from his magnificent work, the Heroides. Here, Ovid explores some of the greatest (and some of the most tempestuous) romances of Greek mythology: Odysseus and Penelope, Dido and Aeneas, and Theseus and Ariadne, amongst others. Despite its obvious appeal, however, the Heroides has been unjustifiably neglected and overlooked.

This work is a collection of 21 fictional letters. The first fifteen letters are presented as being written by women (all mythical except for the final letter, which is by a fictional version of the Greek poetess Sappho). They are each addressed to their current or former lovers from whom they have been separated. Letters 16-21 are known as the Double Heroides, as they contain three letters from mythical heroes, all followed by a response from their respective female lovers.

These letters are all written in elegiac couplets: a pair of sequential lines in poetry in which the first line is written in dactylic hexameter (typical for epic poetry) and the second line in dactylic pentameter. The authenticity of some of these letters, however, particularly the Double Heroides, has been questioned. Yet most critics accept that 1-14 were written by Ovid.

This work is innovative in many aspects. Ovid made a significant change in shifting the perspective of an elegiac poem to a female one. Elegy was all about personal experiences and desires, and an individual’s feelings, but usually from a perspective of a male lover. Instead, Ovid lets women speak up and offer their own perspective. Yet we must be a more careful than to assume that Ovid was some kind of an initiator of the fight for the female voice, however significant this change might be.

Speaking of innovation, Ovid did something else that was not common for this type of poetry. He took mythical material, most common in epic and tragedy, and retold it in the elegiac manner, putting love at the center of attention.

The reception of the Heroides has varied greatly (and it continues to vary to this day). It achieved great popularity in the Middle Ages. Yet tastes and expectations change over time, and starting with the 19^th century, these fictional letters began to receive a lot of criticism.

One of the greatest objections to Heroides is its artificiality. What this criticism fails to acknowledge, however, is that these letters are not written in an attempt to sound like genuine letters. They are the product of a poet with well-rounded rhetorical knowledge, and a great sense for innovation. Ovid uses the epistolary form as a literary device, placing particular aspects of the mythical narrative in the center. This allows us to hear from the perspective of some of the more marginalized characters and figures from Greek mythology.

Many critics have found these letters too monotonous, as they have similar narratives with too much repetition across them. We cannot deny that there is repetition in Heroides. However, this is not accidental. Although Ovid’s heroines are saying the same things, they are doing it in slightly different ways. Moreover, the authors of different letters are alluding to each other and referring to the words of their respective comrades in suffering. This kind of intertextuality shows that Ovid’s repetition was not accidental, but rather a deliberate literary technique.

Even though the main themes of these letters are almost the same, and despite the fact that the characters are saying similar things, the tone of these letters is not the same. One would expect all of them to be sad and demonstrate the typical tragic pathos. However, some of these letters are tragicomic, and some are incredibly witty and humorous, while still preserving the tone of suffering and evoking compassion among the readers.

So whether you want to experience cathartic emotions or laughter, or even better, a roller-coaster of both, read Ovid’s Heroides. In any case, you will not regret it!

Ovid, Heroides, The Latin Library

P. Murgatroyd, B. Reeves, and S. Parker (2017) Ovid’s Heroides: A New Translation and Critical Essays, Routledge

L. Fulkerson (2005) The Ovidian Heroine as Author; Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides; Cambridge University Press

If you want to read more about Ovid, this month’s edition of our magazine, Classical Wisdom Litterae, focuses on the famed poet. Get your subscription NOW!

There is no doubt that the Romans drew a lot from the Greeks. This included their love of theatre.

Roman theatre took a while to take hold, but once it did, it was popularised across the Empire and evolved over the centuries. The Romans adopted many of the Greek gods, so the mythological plays of Attica were a natural choice for the Roman Theatre. However, the Romans had a bloodthirst that was unrivaled by the Greeks, and overall they preferred a violent comedy to the slower and more philosophical tragedies.

That was not to say that Roman theatre was void of popular tragedies. The earliest surviving tragedies by Ennius (239 – 169 BC) and Pacuvius (220 – 130BC) were widely circulated and therefore, preserved for later audiences.

It was the Greco-Roman poet and former slave Lucius Accius (284 – 205 BC) that popularised theatrical Tragedy and introduced Greek Tragedy for Roman audiences. The Romans liked the adaptations so much that they used Lucius’ translations of Homer’s Odyssey as an educational book for over 200 years.

The physical structure of the theatres is the first tell-tale sign of how the Greek plays were adapted for a Roman audience.

Greek theatres were traditionally carved out of hillsides, whereas Roman theatres were built brick by brick from the ground up.

This was not because the Greeks were incapable of building magnificent theatres; history has left us with some astounding examples of ancient Greek architecture. The Greeks preferred hillsides because they did not use backdrops or props. Hillsides overlooked the city, and most of the Greek plays were set in Athens.

Of course, the Romans were not in Athens and therefore incorporated the use of backdrops and stage props to propel audiences back to ancient Greece. This also allowed to make the play more of a spectacle (in fact, the word spectacle derives, from the Latin Spectaclum meaning Public Show).

The Romans copied much of the Greek when it came to storytelling and performance. There were some differences but the basic concepts remained the same, and many of the Greek plays were translated for Roman audiences.

When the Roman translation of Homer’s Odyssey first hit the Roman Theatre scene, it was quickly followed by Achilles, Ajax, the Trojan Horse, and later popular comedies such as Virgo and Gladiolus.

The Romans were not without original imagination when it came to playwriting, but most of the early plays were modelled after 5th-century Greek tragedies. Later comedies favor the newer style of comedy popularised under Alexander the Great that focused not on the epic tales of the gods but on the deeds of everyday citizens.

Seneca was a known Stoic, and a great admirer and scholar of Greek philosophy. So how much Greek culture did Seneca consciously or unconsciously absorb into his plays?

Only eight of Seneca’s plays have survived to this day, Furens, Hercules, Medea, Phaedra, Troades, Oedipus, Thyestes, and Agamemnon. Hercules Oetaeus and Octavia are regularly accredited to Seneca, but are likely not his original work.

While it is probable that Seneca’s plays were performed within his lifetime, historians are not certain of this. What is certain is that the plays had a profound impact on theatrical history. Seneca exclusively wrote tragedies based on Greek myths.

The Romans got from Seneca’s plays what they could not get anywhere else, the opportunity to be both entertained and to learn from the philosophical master.

Seneca’s plays struck a chord with the masses and are still enacted to this day. They remained popular across medieval Europe and throughout the Classical renaissance.

His plays differ from the original Attica (Greek Athenian) plays in that they follow a five-act form instead of the traditional three, and they incorporated rhetoric structures that argued for a particular point of view or philosophical stance.

Seneca entrenched his plays in turmoil and personal conflict, and he focused on social and political issues that were relevant at the time and remain relevant to modern audiences. Known as fabulae crepidatae (Latin Tragedy with Greek subjects) Seneca’s characters were the mythological Greek characters of old, but each story was presented as a reflection of the audience’s mental state and condition of the soul.

Unlike the Attica plays, Seneca’s stage rarely gave way to the gods. Instead, inspired by the plays of Euripides and Sophocles, Seneca’s plays were bound with witches and spirits, and all manner of mystical and esoteric symbolism that resonated with this audience.

Seneca wrote his works primarily to be spoken, not enacted. However, later Roman taste preferred colorful plays to long-drawn-out auditory pieces, so actors were introduced along with costumes, props, and choruses.

As time passed and the Roman theatres grew larger and more grand, the spoken word became increasingly more difficult to hear, so the plays eventually incorporated the choir and orchestra to guide the audience’s feelings and emotions, rather than solely relying on Seneca’s rhetoric alone.

Seneca’s plays were written to affect the human psyche, and explore the moral and philosophical territory.

Like Shakespeare, Seneca did not write for a specific place or time, but through dialogues and soliloquies, his plays could be re-enacted at any point throughout history, which is a testament to their popularity and longevity.

It’s hard to pin the ultimate ending of the Roman Empire to a single cause. Of course there is no single date we can point to but rather a gradual collapse over hundreds of years. In the 3^rd century the Empire was split into East and West, and by the 6^th century the Western portion of the Empire was reduced to a collection of ‘barbarian’ rump states leaving the Eastern Empire to endure alone, eventually coming to be known as the Byzantine Empire, though it’s inhabitants no doubt continued to consider themselves Romans for some time. The rising influence and power of Germanic tribes such as the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the slave shortage that came after the expansion of the empire slowed in the second century CE (thus damaging the Roman economy), the excess and opulence of the Emperors and the corruption such behaviour encouraged at the highest levels of government, and many more factors all played their part in the decline of the Western Empire, but what of the East? 

Well, there are two factors that had an enormous impact upon the Eastern Empire that are often overlooked and which I believe we should be paying much closer attention to, after all, as George Santayana wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

You see, the Roman Empire rose to prominence during a period of warm, wet, temperate weather in Europe which was vital for the necessary agrarian production which allowed the empire to grow to encompass an immense, urbanized population, but so too did the climate play a factor in Rome’s ending. Investigations into the Earth’s ice sheets, known as ice-core research where scientists drill deep into the Earth’s ice caps to investigate climate in ages past, have revealed a large amount of volcanic activity in the 530s and 540s CE. This activity is thought to have triggered what is known as the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age’ which brought cold temperatures that endured for well over one hundred years. The particulates fired into the atmosphere by these eruptions caused more reflection of the sun’s light and ultimately cooled the climate across the world. This in turn led to years of poor harvests which catalysed a famine across the Eastern Empire just at the time Rome’s enemies were growing bolder. 

Ultimately this sudden shift in climate may not impact us in the same way it did the Eastern Empire in the 6th and 7th centuries, and indeed under the guidance of Emperor Justinian I the Eastern Roman Empire, now Byzantine Empire in the historical record, did have success in reconquering some of the lost lands of the Western Empire, for a while. We have more secure food chains, more robust technology, but will that be enough to weather the changes that we face? Will we be able to overcome the challenges on our own horizon?

Another factor in the decline and ultimate fall of the Empire is the rising influence of pestilence and plague that coincided with the Late Antique Little Ice Age. The highly industrialised and urbanized society of the Empire allowed it to develop a powerful economy needed to fuel its war machine and diplomatic influence, however the high density also created perfect conditions for bacteria and disease to develop and spread. The interconnectedness of the empire too was both a boon and a curse as while it cultivated trade and mobility it also allowed infection to spread more quickly between cities and regions than they may have otherwise. 

In fact, the Empire was rocked by outbreaks of brutal disease and infection in the centuries immediately after the onset of the climatic changes brought on by the Late Antique Little Ice Age in the form of the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Cyprian, and finally an outbreak of Bubonic Plague under the emperor Justinian. While it recovered between each successive outbreak the body-blows took their toll and in the aftermath of each epidemic the Empire found itself a little more wounded, a little more beaten down, than it had been before. 

As Heraclitus of Ephesus was known for espousing, the only constant in life is change. The world today is vastly different to the 6^th century, but we must not be complacent or over-enamoured with our own ideas of power in the face of Western hegemony. We are on the cusp of a new age of change, spurred by climate change and humanity’s growing technological developments. Can we learn from our past to take steps to ensure the security and prosperity of not just Western nations, but humanity all across the globe? Can we adapt to the new normal and still maintain the geopolitical status quo? Consider the balance of power of our modern world, how long do you think it will last? Forever?

Where does history end and myth begin? It’s a question that often doesn’t have a clear answer. Even in ancient times, the answer could prove elusive. Such is the case of Horatius and his heroic stand against the Etruscans. It’s a story that has endured through the centuries, recurring in all sorts of cultural works, perhaps most notably in Victorian Britain.

In 1842 a young Thomas Babington Macaulay produced a collection of narrative poems while he was serving as a member of the Governor-General of India’s Supreme Council during the period of British rule in the region. The poems are written in the style of ancient ballads and four (from a total of six) recount several heroic and legendary episodes from Rome’s early history. The work captures the essence of ancient ballads, such as the Iliad, in a way few others have. The collection became immensely popular in Victorian Britain and the poems and the themes within have continued to feature in popular culture ever since.

The first of these poems, Horatius, is a retelling of the story of how Publius Horatius Cocles, an officer in the Roman army in the 6^th century BC, held the only bridge across the Tiber during an attack from an Etruscan army under Lars Porsena. It’s a beautiful story of heroism in the face of overwhelming odds and Macaulay’s poem brings it to life in a visceral way. However, there is some contention around the events, and even the existence of the titular hero. I’ve included an exert from the poem below, with the second passage now seen as the most iconic of the poems seventy verses.

It’s impossible not to be roused by such a powerful ideal, but is it just fanciful? An imagined legend? Well, the story itself was not created by Macaulay and in fact is recounted by many ancient historians including; Plutarch, Polybius, Livy, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. However, each telling is slightly different, and each author is several hundred years distant from the stated dates of the events themselves. 

Accounts do agree that, after a battle in the field, the Roman army was forced to retreat across the Sublican Bridge (or Pons Sublicus in Latin) while the Etruscan army pursued. Horatius was a junior officer charged with guarding the bridge and when he realised the Roman army was in full retreat moved to block the Etruscans and defend the span. He didn’t initially fight alone and was joined by two more senior officers, Spurius Larcius and Titus Herminius Aquilinus, though accounts differ on why they joined him, with Livy claiming Horatius shamed the pair into assisting in the defence, with others such as Dionysius indicating they joined him wilfully. 

In either case, all accounts attest that ultimately Larcius and Herminius retreated as the Etruscan army bore down upon the crossing, leaving Horatius alone. Horatius, piling the dead into a wall to help him hold back the Etruscans, demanded that his men destroy the bridge to stop the enemy from crossing. The legend says that all Rome watched on as Horatius defended the span, quilled with arrows and stabbed by spears, until at last the bridge was sufficiently sabotaged that neither the Etruscans, nor Horatius, could cross. The city had been defended and the enemy army waylaid at the expense of Horatius’ life… or so it seemed. For in many accounts (and indeed the poem by Macaulay) Horatius dove into the Tiber and managed, despite his injuries, to swim against the current and arrive safely upon the banks where he went on to be celebrated and venerated by the people of Rome. 

This is where the accounts begin to significantly diverge however, as some recount that Horatius did indeed give his life in sacrifice. For example, in book 6 of his Historiae, Polybius writes “The bridge once cut, the enemy were prevented from attacking; and Cocles [Horatius], plunging into the river in full armour as he was, deliberately sacrificed his life,​ regarding the safety of his country and the glory which in future would attach to his name as of more importance than his present existence and the years of life which remained to him.”

In the accounts where he did survive Horatius was heavily injured in the defence of the city, being hobbled, and losing an eye (which is where he gets his second name, Cocles, meaning one-eye) and was no longer able to serve in the military though he was rightly honoured for his bravery as described in chapter 10 of book 2 of Livy’s ‘History of Rome’. “The state was grateful for so brave a deed: a statue of Cocles was set up in the comitium, and he was given as much land as he could plough around in one day. Private citizens showed their gratitude in a striking fashion, in the midst of his official honours, for notwithstanding their great distress everybody made him some gift proportionate to his means.”

Whether you accept Horatius’ heroic death, or prefer to believe he swam to safety, it is a fantastic story of sacrifice and heroism to be sure, but perhaps a little too fantastic. In fact, there are several historians, ancient and more contemporary, who doubt it’s veracity. Indeed, in chapter 10 of book 1 of Florus’ ‘Epitome of Livy’ he writes “Then appeared those Roman prodigies and wonders, Horatius, Mucius, and Cloelia, who, if they were not recorded in our annals, would now appear fabulous characters”. Even Livy, one of the sources most recounted when discussing the story of Horatius, is ultimately doubtful of the veracity of the legend writing in chapter 10 of book 2 of his ‘History of Rome’ “though many missiles fell over him he swam across in safety to his friends, an act of daring more famous than credible with posterity.”

More interesting still, the 19^th century German historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr considers that not only are the characters of Horatius, Larcius, and Herminius a dramatisation, that they are in fact allegorical. In volume one of his book ‘Historical Lectures: Rome’ Niebuhr writes that “We may safely deny the historical character of all that is told in this war: it has a thoroughly poetical appearance.” before going on to state “Here three Roman heroes stand against them; Horatius Cocles, Sp. Lartius, and T. Herminius, – in all likelihood a personification of the three tribes.”

Niebuhr is referencing the three Romulean Tribes of ancient Rome, the Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres. These three tribes represent the three ethnic groups of ancient Rome and were established by Romulus not long after the founding of the city. The Ramnes were the native group to the region, named for Romulus. The Tities were originally the Sabines who entered the city in arms after the abduction of many Sabine women by the Romans. They were led by their King, Titus Tacitus, who, after the interjection of the abducted women, reached a peace with Romulus with the pair jointly ruling Rome for a time where the tribe took on its new name, the Tities, named for Titus Tacitus. The final group, the Luceres, possibly represent the Etruscans though historians are unclear on exactly where the name originates.

Niebuhr, in a passing comment, expresses that the three heroes in the story of Horatius represent each of these tribes, with Horatius, the first and ultimately bravest and most daring of the three, representing the Ramnes, the native Romans. In this way, the whole story could be taken to be allegorical, a retelling of the foundational mythology of Rome, rather than an accounting of true events. This is certainly an interesting take, indeed many of the accounts of early Roman history were written when Rome was ascendant and there is some belief among scholars that these stories are used to justify the later Roman conquests as it could be seen that the Romans were simply righting past wrongs as they expanded their empire. 

What do you think? Is the story of Horatius Cocles one that exceeds credibility, or do you believe the legend start to finish? Is it a recounting of true events, or simply allegory, propaganda, written well after the supposed fact to justify Roman interests? Like so much of history, we may never know for certain.