Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

I had read a few articles by Mary Beard previously, and figured I’d give one of her books a chance. She is an academic with the classical Roman and Greek eras as her specialty, and her writings on history and culture are always enlightening. Plus, as a feminist and a woman in a male-dominated field, she has taken some nasty attacks from bigots over the years. 

 

That said, this book was not at all what I was expecting. This is probably not her fault so much as the practice of blurbing books without reading them. 

 

What this book is, is a collection of book reviews for books about the various topics she covers. It is not, as teased, a particular examination of the controversies in various areas of classical studies. So, an unusual book, and not quite what I was expecting. 

 

The good news is that within these reviews (which have been reworked a bit for the book, adding, among other things, the connections between the different people, places, and events discussed), are contained a wealth of information about the topic. 

 

So, for example, in the review of books about Cleopatra, you get the background of what we actually know from primary sources, and what is later myth. This is the case for every topic in the book. Thus, I learned a lot, even if of most of the books she reviews (and sometimes eviscerates), are at an academic level above my usual reading. 

 

The book is divided into five sections, based on a combination of eras and topics. The first is all about the ancient Greeks. The second, the Republican Era of Rome. The third, the Roman Empire. Fourth, the lower and middle classes in Rome. Fifth, the modern era - all the people who appropriated the trappings of Empire, the tourists, the archaeologists, and so on. 

 

There are a total of 31 chapters, plus an introduction and afterword to tie things together. I can’t even begin to explain the scope of the book, but anyone who finds history fascinating will probably find something to like in this book. 

 

I’ll share a few bon mots from it. 

 

The preface talks a bit about the purported “death of the classics” - which is a trope every bit as classic as Aristotle’s whinging about young people having no manners or respect. If anything, the Greek plays are having quite a revival both on stage and on screens. In this section is an on-point observation. 

 

What has caused this decline attracts a variety of answers. Some argue that the supporters of Classics have only themselves to blame. It’s a ‘Dead White European Male’ sort of subject that has far too often acted as a convenient alibi for a whole range of cultural and political sins, from imperialism and Eurocentrism to social snobbery and the most mind-numbing form of pedagogy. 

 

This isn’t wrong, as she notes. Particular the use of Greek and Latin as gatekeeping for social distinctions in the British Empire. Which is why certain “classical education” advocates seem to be a bit too nostalgic for Empire and white supremacy. Beard also points out that this meant a shockingly narrow education, with everything from math to science to anything modern in ideas left out. (Brownie points to her for an excellent dig at notorious nativist Victor David Hanson in this section…) 

 

Beard also looks at the nostalgia for the past that obscures just how big the gap in values and culture between our world and the ancient one really is - an issue for religious nostalgia as well. 

 

The sense of loss and longing that I described is, to some extent, for the culture of the distant past, the fragments of papyrus from the wastepaper baskets of Oxyrhynchus. But not solely. As the nostalgic rhetoric makes absolutely clear, the sense of loss and longing is also for our predecessors whose connections to the ancient world we often believe to have been so much closer than our own. 

 

Moving on to the actual reviews, one that stood out was on the question of Thucydides. Considered one of the first true historians - if one who repeated rumors and made stuff up to suit his purpose - the question of translation is the most difficult. His writing is ridiculously convoluted, and its meaning is unclear to literally anyone who has tried to read it. And this isn’t just because of the time gap. Even in his day, critics complained about it. Beard quotes this gem. 

 

But however we choose to excuse Thucydides, the fact remains that his History is sometimes made almost incomprehensible by neologisms, awkward abstractions, and linguistic idiosyncrasies of all kinds. These are not only a problem for the modern reader. They infuriated some ancient readers too. In the first century BC, in a long essay devoted to Thucydides’ work, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic and historian himself, complained - with ample supporting quotations - of the ‘forced expressions’, ‘non-sequiturs’, and ‘riddling obscurity’. ‘If people actually spoke like this,’ he wrote, ‘not even their mothers or their fathers would be able to tolerate the unpleasantness of it; in fact they would need translators, as if they were listening to a foreign language.’

 

Another review looks at different books on the assassination of Julius Caesar. Part of Beard’s approach looks at the problem of taking sides. There really are no good guys in the story, and it is difficult to find any evidence of what the average Roman thought of the whole affair. Certainly there are those who try to build a case that the common person would have approved of the murder. 

 

We should probably distrust this kind of conservative wishful thinking. A vociferous section of the political elite may have felt excluded, even humiliated, by Caesar’s increasing control over the institutions of state. But Caesar’s reforms, from corn distribution to settlements for the poor overseas, were popular with most of the inhabitants of Rome, who no doubt regarded elite ideas of ‘liberty’ as a convenient alibi for self-advancement and for the exploitation of their less privileged fellow citizens. 

 

This seems rather apropos. I seriously distrust those who most blither on about ‘liberty’ in a way that makes it clear they use that term to mean their right to exploit their fellow humans. 

 

The chapter on the books about Cleopatra also contains a gem, quoted from Stacy Schiff’s book. 

 

‘Luxury is more easily denounced than denied.’

 

Another one I found particularly interesting was the chapter on Boudica and the British rebellions against the Romans. Again, Beard has a nuanced view of history, which refuses to glorify any one side. 

 

This is a world in which Romans and British mix and depend on each other, and it is hard to be certain exactly which side anyone is on. But even if there is a smattering of good Romans and bad natives, there is no doubt at all which side the reader is meant to be on. I found myself not so sure. [Manda] Scott makes it impossible to back the Roamns, who - as an occupying power - rape, pollage, and exploit. But at the same time, Breaca’s shamanistic weirdos (not beyond some horrible acts of violence themselves, when it suited) only confirmed my view that life in Britain under the rebels, had they been successful, would not have been much fun either. All too often, even the most glamorous rebels are just as unappealing, under the surface, as the imperialist tyrants themselves.

 

If anything, this book certainly points out the flaws in any glorified view of ancient human nature. And also seems to parallel all too much in our own times. On the point above, neither the French colonialists nor the Khmer Rouge were particularly fun to live under, to use just one example. 

 

Another great line comes from the chapter about the turbulent days of the Empire after Nero’s death. Due in part to the lack of clear rules of succession, four emperors ruled briefly, before being bumped off in turn. Beard mocks the way historians insist on the euphemism of “The Year of the Four Emperors” to avoid say what this really was: a civil war. 

 

Speaking of snarky lines, the chapter on Hadrian’s Villa contains this one:

 

The question is partly where (or how) to fix the dividing line between the upmarket elegance of an emperor and the decadent vulgarity of a tyrant. 

 

I mean, we can generally agree on where Trump’s taste falls on this line, but what about Hearst and his Castle? 

 

A bit of snark is directed at historical writers who need to fill space where there is little evidence to go off of. 

 

Where has all the information come from? Quite simply, how has he filled the pages? The way historians of the ancient world have always done, by a combination of scholarship, conjecture and fiction. 

 

The chapters on commoners in the Roman world are pretty fun too, and both illustrate how little we know, but also how much humans are humans throughout time. I mean, fart jokes transcend time and place. Anyway, this bit about how soldiers were kept out of the city itself has a great line. 

 

True, under the one-man-rule of the Empire, there was a small special militia stationed in the city: the Praetorian Guard, whose job it was to protect (or sometimes assassinate) the ruling emperor. 

 

I’ll end with a musing on why the old writings still fascinate us. Beard doesn’t exactly dismiss the universality of the masterpieces of the past, but she does speculate that they have influenced us in ways we do not always acknowledge. 

 

It would have been useful to get a glimpse of some opposition to the current theatrical enthusiasm for all things Hellenic. What of the argument, for example, that ancient tragedy is more the problem than the solution, and that part of the reason why Western culture deals so ineffectively with the horrors of war, or the inequalities of gender, is that it cannot think through these issues outside the frame established in Athens more than two millennia ago? 

 

Definitely something to think about. (And also, check out my index of poetry and drama for my thoughts on the various Greek plays I have seen over the course of this blog…) 

 

I suspect this book won’t be for everyone, but I found it quite interesting, if not exactly what I expected. Beard is incredibly knowledgeable about her history, and makes it come alive for the reader. 

 

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