It's a Don's Life (7 page)
Authors: Mary Beard
6 November 2006
I couldn’t quite believe my ears when I was listening to the Archbishop of Canterbury head to head with John Humphrys on his
new radio programme.
For those of you who don’t follow the highlights of BBC Radio 4, Humphrys – the rottweiler of the
Today
programme and a religious sceptic – has a new series in which he interviews faith leaders to see if they can provide some
convincing reasons to believe. Part of the appeal of this is to see whether he gives these venerable gentlemen the kind of
treatment he usually metes out to some hapless junior minister. ‘Let me be quite clear. You’re claiming that God does not
have a beard.’
First up was Rowan Williams. He’s a very clever man, who held a lectureship in Cambridge and a Chair in Oxford before moving
on to higher things. The interview in fact had more of the feeling of a Cambridge supervision than a
Today
programme grilling. But Williams got into severe difficulties at various points.
After coming close to denying that serious violence had ever been committed in the name of Christianity, he eventually admitted
the Crusades had been ‘a bad episode’ – which is a classic example of being economical with the truth. And he really didn’t
seem to have the bottle to tell Humphrys, who was pressing him on this issue, that unless he mended his religious ways he
was liable – according to the rule book – to end up in a rather fiery place after death.
But this isn’t why I was really interested, it was because of what Williams had to say about the relations between pagans
and Christians in the Roman empire – a subject which is close to my own academic patch.
It was in the context of whether Christians have a track record of forcing their views on others, either now or then. Williams
seemed to feel on safer ground with the early church than with the modern world. To quote him, as I remember (and helped out
by the script on the BBC website):
It’s what happened at the very beginning of the church’s life. The church didn’t simply blaze out into the Greco-Roman world
saying, ‘Here’s the truth. You must believe it.’ They said, ‘Look – this is what
you
say, and that’s very interesting as it echoes with what
we
say; and, if we talk this through, you might find that what you’re saying has a much fuller expression in what we’re saying.
If this is Williams’s view of relations between Christians and pagans (or, should we less prejudicially say ‘polytheists’?),
then he’s been reading a different selection of early Christians texts from me. There may be some parts of high-minded Christian
philosophy that see things in these terms. And St Augustine certainly had a soft spot for classical Roman learning (especially
Cicero). But most of the surviving tracts purvey a mixture of horrified outrage (at such ideas of animal sacrifice to the
Roman emperor) and knockabout ridicule (of, for example, the goings-on of the various immoral gods and goddesses).
He must have read them – so has he simply forgotten the writings of that hard-line Christian ideologue Tertullian, who certainly
had no truck with any part of traditional paganism? And has he forgotten the rather more appealing Minucius Felix, who tells
a whole series of jokes about just how stupid is the idea of a multitude of gods in human form? And what about the pagan reaction
to all this? Even if it wasn’t as continuous a persecution as we often imagine, some Christians really did end up with the
lions.
The touchy-feely view of Greco-Roman ecumenism has, I am afraid, more to do with the generous, academic tolerance of the Archbishop
himself than with anything thought or practised by the motley crew of fundamentalist early Christians and what some Romans
saw as an ancient Jihad.
Comments
Always nice to catch a glimpse of an archbishop with his truth-pants round his ankles ... He’s claiming authority for what
he sees is desirable by asserting it was like that ‘in the beginning’. A not unusual sleight of hand. If historiography were
studied properly, as a branch of rhetoric, there’d be a word for it. Or maybe there is already?
SW FOSKA
Being in exile in America, I did not hear the Archbishop, but I must say that the sentence of Rowan Williams which you quote
seems to me to sum up rather neatly the massive
Praeparatio Evangelica
of Eusebius, an author to whom he alludes rather frequently in his
Arius: Heresy and Tradition
(one of the few accounts of the Arian controversy that is both learned and readable). Both Eusebius and the quoted sentence
of Dr Williams are concerned with what pagans
said
, not with what they
did
. Your own work, Professor Beard, has been concerned much more with what Romans did, and that Christians (pardonably?) found
at best so irrational that they were prepared to be killed as the penalty for not taking part in it.
OLIVER NICHOLSON
13 November 2006
Classicists have to take any opportunity they can get to put – or keep – their subject on the map. So when a nice man from
the
Today
programme rang up to say that they wondered if I would like to compare the fate of George Bush to a Greek tragedy, I could
hardly say no.
The idea was that in the very same week that Saddam had been sentenced to death he had also (albeit indirectly) delivered
a humiliating blow to Bush in the mid-term elections. It is indeed the kind of tragic reversal that Athenian dramatists discussed,
and I quickly agreed to do a 3 minute radio essay.
But which tragedy was I going to choose for the closest parallel to GW?
At times like this, my colleagues are truly wonderful. It would be quite understandable if they were to say: ‘If you want
to thrust yourself forward on to the nation’s radios, that’s fine ... but don’t expect us to help you out.’ But actually we
are all happy to lend a hand and knocking the question around produced some good leads very quickly.
I had wondered about concentrating on Sophocles’
Oedipus
. The idea would be that Oedipus killed his long-lost father in an incident of ancient road rage – and it was that action
which later brought him down, when it was revealed that he had inadvertently married his mother. But father-killing seemed
to bring in Bush senior rather awkwardly and probably muddied the waters.
Sophocles’
Trachiniae
(‘Women of Trachis’) looked a neater fit. The story here is that Heracles kills the centaur Nessos (who has tried to rape
his wife, Deianeira). As the centaur dies, he gives Deianaira some of his blood, which he says will keep her husband from
loving anyone else. When Heracles is later unfaithful, she uses the blood to kill him. The trouble with this is that hardly
anyone is remotely familiar with the Trachiniae and getting it across in a 3 minute piece wasn’t going to leave much time
for Bush.
So, talking it over during lunch in college, I settled on Euripides’
Bacchae
. The reversal is there good and clear: King Pentheus of Thebes sentences to death the god Dionysos (in disguise as a ‘Lydian
stranger’) who has infected the women of the city with his weird Eastern religion and enticed them out to roam wild in the
mountains. But the stranger/Dionysos breaks out of prison miraculously and encourages Pentheus to go to the mountains to see
for himself. There he is torn limb from limb by a posse of women led by his mother.
True, Saddam is not a god in disguise. But there are some other features of the
Bacchae
that resonate nicely with the Bush problem: it is partly set up as a clash between West and East; the older and wiser statesmen
of Thebes advise Pentheus to resist the use of force (preferring talks and a negotiated settlement); and much of the debate
hinges on the theme of Pentheus’ unwillingness even to try to understand cultural norms other than his own.
It went out on Saturday morning when the nation slumbered, just before ‘Thought for the Day’ (indeed my husband, still in
bed, thought it WAS ‘Thought for the Day’). But I’d love to know if anyone can think of a better parallel. Indeed, was mine
plausible at all?
Comments
Generally can’t hack these attempts to lend portentous epic aura to predictably crap public débâcles. Would prefer to gaze
upon them calmly without festooning them with unbecoming pity or wonder. The present predicament reminds me more of something
from
Tom & Jerry
than Euripides.
SW FOSKA
I’m surprised you didn’t go for something around the Trojan War
– Agamemnon
(Clytemnestra as the avenging Democrats, perhaps) or
Women of Troy
.
PAUL STEEPLES
Surely Aeschylus’
Persae
? Overweening monarch of a vast empire sees his troops overwhelmed by a tin-pot (in his view) anarchic (in his view) republic
which has incurred his wrath by interfering in the internal affairs of his empire and burning one of his cities (Sardis).
DAVID KIRWAN
22 December 2006
If you venture deep inside the pyramids, as I did on my Egyptian ‘holiday’, you find that the inner chamber smells very strongly
of piss. It’s a predictable act of desecration, I guess. But it does tend to encourage a speedy visitor turnaround.
In general, though, the pyramids sprang lots of surprises. And they offered the possibility of pleasures (or transgressions)
that would be decidedly off limits back home.
Let me say to begin with that, unlike so many ‘Wonders of the World’, they do not disappoint. They are absolutely vast and,
at least if you view them from one direction, they give every impression of being isolated in the trackless desert.
Visitors are not encouraged to look the other way, where the huge silhouettes appear not against the background of the camel-dotted
sands, but against the suburbs of Cairo – and, in particular, against the distinctive colours of the Kentucky Fried Chicken
outlet (Pyramids branch). It doubles with Pizza Hut if you go upstairs.
But, smell apart, the best bit was climbing inside, right into the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid. This is what British
Health and Safety regulations would long ago have put a stop to. The climb is steep, with just a handrail and ridged wooden
planking to help you. It’s fantastically hot, even in December. And for a good stretch of the way you have to crouch down
and almost crawl along a low passage to reach the heart of the monument.
Heaven knows what would happen if you didn’t make it. There wasn’t a defibrillator, alarm, or any other of the paraphernalia
of the nanny state in sight. It makes it all seem faintly ridiculous that some governmental Risk Assessment doesn’t allow
the average visitor even to touch the stones of Stonehenge (might they fall down?), but insist that we gawp from a safe but
boring distance.
Not that the Egyptian Antiquities Service makes a visit to the pyramids any easier than one to Stonehenge. You have to buy
a ticket to get into the main area, pass through the metal detector and by the tourist police with their guns (Egypt gives
a very plausible impression of being a relatively cheery police state, ‘for your protection, sir’ as they say). It’s only
when you’ve climbed up to the entrance way on the pyramid itself that they tell you that you have to buy another ticket, from
somewhere completely different, if you want to go inside. And it’s only when you have got back one more time that they tell
you that you can’t take your camera inside. It would clearly be asking for it to leave your precious digital on the little
shelf suggested (when we went, it was the resting place for just one ‘throwaway’ camera); so you have to climb down again
to leave it in the car – or, as we did, disguise it in a make-up bag.
And all this has to be done while avoiding the pushiest touts (plus camels) anywhere in the world. Exactly what scams they
were trying to pull off wasn’t clear; but scams they certainly were. Our driver insisted, like an anxious parent of thoughtless
adolescents, that we spoke to no one, that we didn’t wander round the back of the monument (where presumably even worse scammers
lay in wait) and that we didn’t hire the first camel from the first Bedouin we saw.
Still, it was probably the most memorable sight I’ve ever seen. And December was the perfect time to visit. Apart from a handful
of intrepid Europeans, most of the visitors were local school parties. The little girls sweated through the passages in their
veils and headscarves. But (much to the annoyance of their teachers) found us rather more exotic and photogenic a sight than
the antiquities.
Comments
The overpowering smell of urea/ammonia is caused more by bat droppings than by human piss, I think.
AJM
29 December 2006
My prize Christmas present this year was an extremely elegant cocktail shaker, plus all the trimmings. And I mean all: four
Martini glasses with flashing stems (improbably acquired from Marks & Spencer); cocktail recipe book; bottle of Cointreau
and bottle of tequila (who would keep tequila in the house if they were not making cocktails?); and, to complete the kit,
12 limes (ditto, as for the tequila).
After a day’s stint in the library, honestly, I need a stiff drink. So this Christmas it’s been good-bye gin and tonic or
a delicate glass or two of white wine; and hello Blue Lagoon and Moscow Mule.
What I like about cocktails is their total artfulness. There is nothing remotely ‘natural’ about them. In fact, the whole
point is to get as far from the appearance and the taste of the ‘real’ ingredients as you can. I mean, there is no purpose
whatsoever to blue curaçao except to turn some other innocent spirit that glorious shade of luminescent blue. Of course, it
adds to the alcohol content, but it didn’t need to be blue to do that.
There is also something wonderfully democratising about cocktails. OK, some mixtures are more naff than others. Those who
fancy a nice dry Manhattan might well turn their noses up at a Tijuana Taxi. And a bit of snobbery comes into the making of
Martinis (though even the latest Bond movie pokes fun at the ‘shaken or stirred?’ obsession). But there’s none of that pretentious
wine mythology involved. You don’t have to sniff them or discuss the year. You just drink them. If you like the taste, you
have another; if not, you change the mixture.
The history of the cocktail is a bit of a mystery. It certainly doesn’t go back beyond the nineteenth century – and there’s
a strong hint that disguising the taste of the foul home-brewed spirits under Prohibition had something to do with their popularity.
It struck me, in the middle of my second Margarita the other evening, how much the ancient Romans (the rich ones, at any rate)
would have enjoyed the art of the cocktail if only they had thought of it.
Romans were refreshingly uncultured when it came to alcohol. They mostly mixed their wine with water and/or honey, and they
didn’t much care about vintages (except when they fell on an important political anniversary). So far as I know, they hadn’t
invented spirits – for drinking, that is. With uncharacteristic innocence, the only use the ancients found for distillation
was industrial cleaning.
But it’s the colour of cocktails that would most have appealed to those (bad) emperors who put such efforts into dining. The
emperor Domitian hosted a marvellous ‘black dinner’ in the 80s ad – with not just the food colour-coded, but the skin of the
waiters, too. Even better were the excesses of my own particular favourite Elagabalus, emperor between 218 and 222 ad. He
did all you could hope a bad emperor would do (he is even said to have had a surgical sex change). But one of his specialities
was banqueting. Apart from the famous trick with the rose petals (they were sprinkled so profusely that they smothered the
guests), he was said to be especially keen on the ‘themed’ dinner party. Every day of the summer he gave a banquet in a different
colour, now a green one, the next an ‘iridescent’ one, then blue.
Just think what fun he could have had complementing all this with Blue Lagoons, or a glorious green St Patrick’s Day – a daring
concoction of crème de menthe, Chartreuse, whiskey and Angostura bitters.
(By the way, if you were drawn to read this blog by its title, I guess you will now realise that I was referring to the cocktail,
Sex on the Beach: 1 oz. peach schnapps,
oz. vodka, topped with cranberry and orange juice ...)