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Narrated Slideshow Twelve

[SLIDE 1] (brief silence)

Welcome to Narrated Slideshow number twelve our very last slideshow. [Sound effects:
Cheering crowd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaxVwD-HvNU.] Hey! I thought youd be sad
the course is almost over. [Sound effects: RDG playing F. Chopin, Piano Sonata 2 in B flat minor, 3rd
movement bars 3 and 4.] Well, maybe not quite that sad. Cant we just find a happy medium? In
any case, this week were going to learn that while Greek poetry was composed orally and recited in
public for aural consumption, Roman literature (like our own) was a literate product, committed to
paper and intended for consumption by a reading audience. This enabled Roman writers to play
word-games far more subtle than Greeks could use.
We have only to set foot in Rome, and we know were in a different world from Greece.
While Greek and Roman names both usually have perfectly transparent meanings, Greek names
tend to be very positive, such as Sophocles (famous for wisdom) or Aristotle (best attainment),
Roman names were like Cicero, which means garbanzo bean [SLIDE 2] (here we see white and
black varieties with a loony for scale) and hence wart the name, having been held by one of
Romes most eloquent speakers, has come into English as cicerone, meaning a tour-guide. The
Roman poet whom we know as Ovid was formally Publius Ovidius Naso (Naso means nose) [SLIDE
3], and at least two unrelated clans used the name Flaccus, which means flaccid which is just
wrong in so many ways!
This nomenclature translated into the willingness of visual artists to move away from the
Greek desire to express physical perfection [SLIDE 4] to embrace realistic, warts-and-all depictions,
as with this coin of Emperor Vespasian [SLIDE 5] a tendency their Renaissance descendants were to
take to the nth degree [SLIDE 6].

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The idea that physical peculiarities such as warts, big noses or flaccid extremities could be
inherited, and hence serve as distinguishing traits of entire families is illustrated by the story
[Macrobius Sat. 2.3] that some of Emperor Augustuss servants found a commoner who looked just
like him, and brought him before the Emperor to show him the marvel. Why, said the Emperor,
Has your mother ever been in Rome? No, the man replied, But my dad sure has.
As I said a moment ago, while Greek poetry was composed orally and recited in public for
aural consumption, Roman literature was intended for reading. This enabled Roman writers to play
word-games far more subtle than Greeks could use. Pages 233 to 234 of the textbook present us
with Ennius line [SLIDE 7], He split his brain in two with a rock. In this line the rhetorical figure the
Romans called tmesis or cutting namely inserting a new word in the middle of another word or
fixed phrase, as for example in Wayne the Great One Gretzky -- is used to express the actual
bisection of a brain.
Our next example comes from the physics textbook written (surprisingly to us) in verse by
Lucretius. Lucretius is a follower of the philosopher Epicurus, who wasnt exactly an atheist he
believed that gods exist, just that they dont give a damn about the world. If gods dont run things,
Epicurus asked, then what does? He found an answer in the theory of the much earlier thinker,
Democritus, who had claimed that the world consists of atoms, or super-small bits of stuff that
combine at random to make the objects with which we are familiar, including ourselves. (By the
way, it was Democritus who coined the word atom, which we still use today. The word has
changed meaning in Greek, where it now means individual, as in this sign from an Athenian
elevator [SLIDE 8], which reads, Attention: no more than four individuals allowed which
incidentally gives you some idea of the size of your typical Greek elevator.) As proof that the same
atoms make up seemingly different things, Epicurus had pointed to a log, which looks very different
when it is on fire from when it is not, and yet must be made up of the same basic bits [SLIDE 9].

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Lucretius expresses this idea by saying, in lignis flamma latet, flame hides in logs. Whats
wonderful about this is that the word for fire, ignis actually is hiding in the word for logs, lignis!
Our next example is from Horace describing those hack-writers whose work is full of sound
and fury signifying nothing. He expresses this idea by alluding to the fable of Aesop entitled, The
Mountain in Labour in which all the roaring and moaning of childbirth resulted in what Horace here
calls a ridiculus mus, contemptible mouse. This is a joke, because the word mus, mouse is one of
the very few monosyllables in Latin, a fact underscored by the impressive adjective that precedes it.
Our last example, again from Horace, is another meta-commentary about poetry. Never
try, he advises, to imitate the high-flown and flowery style of the Greek poet Pindar, or else youll
crash and burn into the sea like Icarus (remember the story: his father Daedalus, an avid inventor,
helped his son escape from jail, if not by actually tarring and feathering him, then by coating his
wings with wax and gluing feathers to them; Icarus was able to fly away, but forgot his fathers
advice not to fly too close to the sun: the wax melted, the feathers fell off, and the boy himself
plunged into that part of the Mediterranean just off the coast of zmir, Turkey that ever after has
borne his name, the Icarian Sea). Heres a picture of the incident [SLIDE 10]. Can you see Icarus -or at least whats left of him? Its a bit like trying to find Waldo. Here, Ive circled him for you [SLIDE
11]. The joke here is that the name Pindarus occurs broken apart and floating on the rest of the
sentence PINnis, vitreo DAtuRUS just as the body of Icarus broke apart and floated on the sea.
Now that weve talked just a bit about Roman humour in general, I want to turn our
attention to the fragments of the novel, The Satyricon by Petronius [SLIDE 12]. Not only does the
novels title allude to a kind of food, but the biggest fragment of it we possess is devoted to the
dinner-party at Trimalchios house. It might help a bit, therefore, if we imagined what a typical
Roman banquet would have been like. For one thing, it would have been chaotic. [SLIDE 13] Heres
the mosaic floor from a Roman dining-room showing what the floor itself would have looked like
after a feast. Thanks to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, which buried the towns of Pompei and

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Herculaneum, some actual Roman food even survives to us, admittedly a bit the worse for wear
[SLIDE 14]. Other food can be reconstructed from surviving ancient recipes. Here, for example
[SLIDE 15], is a tasty appetizer of pomegranate-seeds and bird-entrails. And here [SLIDE 16] is some
yummy lamb stuffed with cheese. This last dish is especially relevant to Petronius, because the word
satire means a kind of stuffing, much as we use the French for stuffing, farce to describe a kind
of comedy. But Petronius spells the title of his novel Satyricon with a y rather than an i to show
that hes thinking not just about farces, but also about satyrs, those sasquatch-like creatures who
wandered the woods of ancient Greece and Italy following the god Bacchus and devoting themselves
to pleasure, before passing out, as we see here [SLIDE 17].
The opening of the novel is lost, but were pretty sure that at the beginning the main
character, Encolpius did something to offend the god Priapus. Priapus isnt one of the real big
Roman gods, the kind that get to live on Olympus, but he has his role to play as the protector of
gardens. In fact it was common for Romans to erect and that IS the operative word a statue of
Priapus in their gardens, where he would work like our scarecrows to keep the birds away, but while
our scarecrows rely on birds fashion-sense to be grossed out by patched jeans and straw hats,
Priapus is gross in a totally different way [SLIDE 18]. For some reason or other, Priapus moved from
being merely a garden-god to being also the god of male sexual potency. Because Encolpius has
offended him, the god retaliates throughout the novel by making the man impotent. Like those epic
heroes before him, Odysseus and Aeneas, Encolpius wanders the world trying to escape from his
curse. In this way the novel has ample opportunity to parody the conventions of ancient epic.
But Petronius is a full-service satirist, and spares some of his barbs for other literary genres
as well. Most obvious of these is drama. The theme of make-believe runs throughout the novel with
the sham-projects and scams of all sorts that the hero and his friends get up to, including slitting
their throats with stage-razors (the kind that are now made of rubber) and even threatening to
castrate themselves with the same instrument. In the Dinner of Trimalchio episode, the waiters

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are really mime-artists who perform for, and sometimes fall on the diners, like the zanies of later
Italian commedia dell arte whose pratfalls or lazzi typically involve the threat of injury [SLIDE 19].
Other theatrical events mentioned in the novel are Fortunata dancing a cancan [SLIDE 20], and
Quartillas maid painting Ascyltus face purple with wine-lees, the earliest form of theatrical mask,
which seems not even yet to have lost its appeal [SLIDE 20].
Encolpius, I have said, is under a curse. Not having access to Viagra to find relief, he is
reduced to arguing with his penis and insulting it. He calls it his Achilles heel and prays that it may
become another Protesilaus. (Protesilaus, by the way, was a Greek, who joined the Trojan War
expedition on his wedding-day. There was a prophecy that whichever side drew first blood would
eventually lose, and no sooner had Protesilaus set foot on Trojan soil, than he died by a spearwound in his chest. The gods took pity on him, however, and let him come back to life for one day,
so he could celebrate his honeymoon with his widow, before going to join the shades below forever.
Now theres a job for a ghost-whisperer! Would Jennifer Love Hewitt celebrate a honeymoon with
me, do you think? I can feel myself starting to pass over into the light just thinking about it!)
In connection with Aristophanes plays, I suggested that literary parody is the highest form
of humour. One of the nicest examples of literary parody in this novel surprisingly placed in the
mouth of the otherwise crass Trimalchio is the story of the invention of unbreakable glass (a kind
of foundation-myth of plastic) in Satyricon chapters 50 and 51, which parodies Platos myth
according to which Thoth, the Egyptian god of libraries, whose theriomorphic form is the bird, ibis
[SLIDE 22], revealing to the pharaoh his invention of writing, and being chewed out instead of
rewarded, because now no-one would bother actually to remember anything.
Id like you stop the slideshow now and consider this vase-painting, which youll recall
from last weeks slideshow [SLIDE 23]. The exercise Im about to give you recaps the second
exercise we ever did in this course (Im sure you remember the question well: What was the
Greek conception of the ideal human body?). Hopefully now you will be able to bring some more

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sophisticated tools to bear on the question and so measure for yourselves how far you have come
in the last twelve weeks. This vase comes from the shrine in Thebes, not far north of Athens
devoted to an enigmatic group of gods called the Cabeiri. Other paintings from the same
sanctuary include the following [SLIDES 24, 25, 26]. Id like you to go back to the first Cabeirian
slide I showed you, of the little guy running with a thunderbolt, and prepare to discuss the
following questions in your next Group Learning Session [SLIDE 27]:

ANTS: The figure on the vase is black. Does that make the vase-painter a racist? Have a look at
Frank Snowdens book, Blacks in Antiquity.

BIRDS: The figure on the vase is circumcised, a practice alien to Greece and Rome. Does this
make the vase-painter culturally insensitive? There is a would-be objective test of cultural
sensitivity called the Intercultural Development Inventory. For Greco-Roman attitudes toward
circumcision, see Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality and Frederick Hodges article, The Ideal
Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome.

CENTAURS: The figure on the vase is a dwarf. Does this make the vase-painter politically
incorrect? Have a look at Robert Garlands book, In the Eye of the Beholder.

DOGS: The figure on the vase represents either the Greeks highest god, or someone
impersonating him, as the mythic figure of Salmoneus once did. In either case, does this make the
vase-painter guilty of impiety? See Walter Burkerts Greek Religion.

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ELEPHANTS: The figure on the vase is brandishing is a thunderbolt. Why doesnt it look like the
zigzag thunderbolts we know from Saturday morning cartoons? One clue: you might want to
investigate thunderstones or belemnites.

FROGS: My former Head of Department has argued (though not so far as I know in print) that the
figures on the Cabeiric vases are apotropaic, and are not supposed to be funny at all. What does
apotropaic mean, and do you agree or disagree with his theory?

GOATS: To the best of our knowledge, Zeus never appeared as a character in Athenian drama,
whose tragedians and comedians were quite happy to bring other gods on stage, or dangle them
over it in the machine. Vase-painters however, seem to have had (as here) no qualms about
painting him, though usually in a more respectful manner. Why is there this difference between
the two art-forms in their treatment of this central figure?

HORSES: This and the other similar vases come, as Ive said, from Thebes. Though Thebes was
very powerful in Mycenaean times, and figures prominently in many Greek myths, by the Classical
period it had become a cultural backwater, whose citizens other Greeks referred to as pigs (Pind.
Ol. 6.90, fr. 83 sub fr. 75 Maehler) to denote not so much squalor or laziness, as stupidity. Do you
think these vases could ever have been made or appreciated in the cosmopolitan centre, Athens?
Once youve done, Id like you to start Part Two of the slideshow.

PART TWO
[SLIDE 28] Welcome back to Part Two of our slideshow, in which we learn that one of the
main sources of humour is the sidekick. In this part of our slideshow I want to consider four

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characters in the Satyricon, who, though not so important as Encolpius, are nonetheless crucial in
advancing what passes for the plot of the novel, and revealing various facets of our anti-hero.
The first of these is Ascyltus, Encolpius travelling companion, and rival for the affections of
the boy, Giton. The work apparently started in a grove of Priapus in Marseille in Provence, France,
but by the point where we pick up the story in the surviving portion of the novel this trio finds itself
in Pozzuoli, a town in the appropriately hellish sulphur-smelling Phlegraean Fields near Naples. Early
on, Encolpius and Ascyltus get separated and, being unfamiliar with the town, Encolpius can no
longer remember how to find his hotel among streets that probably looked something like this
[SLIDE 29], so he stops a stranger and asks her, Excuse me, do you happen to know where Im
staying?. In the real world this may not be the best strategy, but in the demi-monde conjured up by
Petronius, this plan works perfectly well. The woman gives Encolpius the once-over and realizes that
such a low-life could only be staying the towns dodgiest brothel.
Though he rejoices in a Greek name that sublimely means, undisturbed Ascyltus is a
supreme moocher. Back in week five we met the theme of clothes-stealing that runs like a leitmotiv
throughout Greek and Roman literature. Ascyltus figures in an interesting inversion of this theme.
Ascyltus has sewn his coins into the hem of his characteristically threadbare cloak (remember
that the ancients didnt have pockets), and, seemingly worthless though this rag is, someone has
stolen it and is trying to sell it in the marketplace. Ascyltus, therefore, is forced to steal a really nice
cloak and try to trade it for his old threadbare one. This trade seems too good to be true and
arouses the original thiefs suspicions. There then follows a reverse process of bargaining in which
Ascyltus tries to adjust the price hes offering until it gets low enough for the seller to accept.
As Encolpius love-interest, Giton is a walking parody of Zeus boyfriend, Ganymede [SLIDE
30]. (An aside for fans of The Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Tolkien,
C. S. Lewis and other literary types used to meet once a week to read each other their works in
progress at a pub in Oxford called the Eagle and Child or more colloquially the Bird and Baby

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after its shingle, which represents Zeus in the guise of an eagle abducting the lad to be his nudgenudge, wink-wink cup-bearer.) Anyway, Giton offers a far less edifying picture of pederasty than
that which poets tried to portray with Zeus and Ganymede. For instance, at one point early in the
novel, when Encolpius gets drunk and passes out, Ascyltus has his way with Giton, and the next
morning the two adults have a falling out. Giton, however, has decided he prefers sex with the
cheating Ascyltus, and will go with him rather than staying with his long-time lover, Encolpius.
Trimalchio is not really a side-kick of Encolpius, but because he appears as his host at a
dinner-party in only one episode (albeit the best preserved one) he is a lesser character. Trimalchio
is a sort of Jay Gatsby character [SLIDE 31]. Though totally uneducated, and a former slave, he has
grown very rich, and delights in throwing banquets in his palatial residence. I imagine his diningroom to look a bit like this [SLIDE 32]: this is actually a photo of the house the wealthy Classicist
Thodore Reinach built for himself in the ancient Greek style at Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the Azure
Coast. Like many whove earned their own wealth, Trimalchio is eager to display it. For example,
rather than having his monogram on his silverware, he has had each piece stamped with its weight
instead. Not all of his displays are equally successful, for he also has brought to the table a bottle of
wine whose label reads 100 years old [SLIDE 33], which must clearly be fake for how did the
vintner know his bottle would be opened exactly a century later?
The last supporting character to consider is the poet Eumolpus, who is so lacking in skill that
people throw stones at him whenever he begins to recite. (The custom of throwing rotten tomatoes
and any websites named thereafter had to wait for Columbus to bring that fruit back from the
New World.) Yet, Muse-less poet though he is, Eumolpus proves surprisingly skilled as an actor,
when he impersonates an infirm old man during the captator-episode in Croton at the end of the
novel as we have it.

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Id like you to stop this slideshow now and prepare for your very last exercise. The very
last thing I want you to do in preparing for your Group Learning Sessions is to think back over the
whole course and ask yourself the following three questions:
1) What is the most interesting thing youve learned in this course?
2) What have you learned in this course that has been most helpful to you either in other
courses or in the real world? And finally
3) What is the funniest thing youve learned in this course?
Once youve answered these questions, please watch the last part of the slideshow.

Part Three
[SLIDE 34] Welcome back to the very last part of our very last slideshow! In this segment
well learn that Petronius isnt the only Roman poet who wrote works of satire. In this section I want
to look at two works: Senecas Apocolocyntosis and the anonymus Piglets Will.
The Stoic philosopher, Seneca was the emperor Neros tutor, and when Neros predecessor
as emperor, Claudius died, Seneca wrote this nasty description of his death and funeral. The title of
this little book plays on two ideas. One is the notion of apotheosis, which was the idea that
certain human beings could become gods at the moment of their deaths. In Greek myth only one
person was so honoured, namely Zeus son Heracles. The vase-painting you see here shows Athena
swooping down from Olympus on her chariot to carry Heracles off from his funeral pyre, which
contains his armour and is still smoking on the ground below.
Romans were more liberal in allowing apotheoses to occur, and began to think that any
emperor deserved such a posthumous fate. Fans of Dan Brown will know that this tradition
culminated in Constantino Brumidis painting, The Apotheosis of Washington in the rotunda of the

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Capitol Building in Washington D.C. [SLIDE 35]. The first Roman emperor so honoured was well
the first Roman emperor. This coin [SLIDE 36], struck four years after his assassination by his heir
and successor Octavian, bears the inscription Julius the God.
Now Greek thinkers, including Senecas stoic master, Zeno thought it preposterous that
(Heracles aside) a mere man could become a god, and indeed Julius Caesar was known in the east
not as Julius the god, but as Julius the demigod. Moreover, unlike the more mythologically
based poets, for whom the Olympians were really just bigger, better looking human beings, the
Stoics believed that there was only one God and that he must be as perfect as his creation, the
universe, and that therefore he must be a sphere [SLIDE 37].
Therefore, if Claudius could be apotheosized at all, he would have to be transformed into a
sphere. Now thats actually not too far off for Claudius, who was pretty round to begin with. Into
what sphere would he most plausibly be turned? Maybe a kolokynthe or pumpkin. (We have to
pause here for a short botany lesson. Our Halloween pumpkin was unknown to the ancient world,
being of South American origin. The vegetable we mean here is more correctly called a gourd, the
thing that often served, hollowed out and emptied, as a calabash or water-jug [SLIDE 38]). Whatever
its precise botanical referent, the comparison was an insult, suggesting general emptiness. Senecas
title results from nailing together the two words apotheosis and kolokynthe and means something
like pumpkinification.
If the idea that at the moment of death Claudius was transformed into a pumpkin seems
harsh, we must recall that he was never a handsome or popular emperor. Indeed, perhaps the only
reason he survived the internecine killing that characterized his family was that he was so unlikely
ever to become king: stuttering, limping and afflicted with a serious palsy. Heres how Derek Jacoby
portrayed him in the BBC production of Robert Graves I Claudius in the mid 1970s. In this scene
[SLIDE 39] the hapless future emperor is forbidden by his grandmother, Livia from giving a public
reading of the history of Rome he has written:

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CLAUDIUS:

Im bo bo bo bo better, when Im. Rehearsed.

LIVIA:

So is a trained monkey, but he still looks and sounds every inch a monkey.

C:

Whye es, GrandmuTHA.

L:

Get that head of yours to stop twitching! Id have it off. And stuck on a pole
thatll fix it.

C:

The- the- the- thank you, GrandmuTHA.

Ill let you read in the textbook about the details of how Seneca pillories the poor fellow.
Ill also let you read for yourselves the very last work in our course. People have been
captivated by the charm of talking pigs for years, from Wilbur in E. B. Whites Charlottes Web [SLIDE
40] which is even more famous than his other best-seller, Strunk and Whites Elements of Style
through Babe of the same-titled 1995 movie [SLIDE 41] to Paul Shiptons recent books with a nice
Classical theme, may I note The Pig Scrolls and The Pig Who Saved the World [SLIDE 42]. Of course
in our cute childrens stories of talking pigs, the pig never gets eaten, much less has to contemplate
his mortality by writing a will!
I think thats about it. As German professors are wont to say at the end of a course, Thank
you for your attention!
[SLIDE 43] Cheers.