though this ship is out to sea I'm content to lie peacefully

[hawkwing_lb]

You will be fascinated to hear, no doubt, that I ran 2.5 miles in 27:30 tonight (for certain values of running, at least) and then proceeded to jujutsu, where I acquired many, many bruises.

Not fascinated? Oh, well. Neither am I, really. I'm much more fascinated by the prospect of actually finishing Lysias On the Murder of Eratosthenes, which I might manage in another two days work or so. I mean, my translation is far from perfect? But it is occasionally comprehensible, and with frequent recourse to the dictionary, I can figure out what the hell is going on here.

One of the things that's interesting to me is how Euphilites, the speaker - or rather, Lysias, writing for Euphilites, the defendant - picks and chooses from the law. The law permits the killing of an adulterer; Lysias wants to imply that it commands so.

The other thing which is rather fascinating is the focus and assumptions of Athenian law. A man who, entering another man's house, commits adultery by persuasion, is guilty of a greater crime - or so says Lysias - than one who commits adultery by forcible rape. Persuasion, it seems, constitutes a greater threat to the integrity of the oikos - and so to male-lineage inheritance, the right to citizenship, deme and phratry membership etc - than force. The Athenian concern with inheritance and citizenship is also in evidence in Demosthenes' Against Neaira, among other places. It's a reminder that completely assumptions may apply in a different time and place.

By modern lights, it's seriously screwed up. Women! Not really people!

...No, wait. "Women are people too" is still a radical position to take, in many quarters.

---

Wrote some fiction today. Not very good fiction, but hey. I have to fit it in around Ancient and Modern Greek. Don't talk to me about my thesis. I'm hoping it'll write itself while I'm not looking. Please let it write itself?

They tell me that taking a couple of days off is occasionally healthy, so I'm trying that. For certain values of off that include Greek, and fretting.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my Latin prof for years 1 & 2--who I love dearly, don't get me wrong--was a big fan of Julius Caesar, and tended to talk about how it was absolutely necessary for him to do (insert any action that involves a lot of people dying) every time because of other wicked people driving him to it, or the need to defend the republic, or what not. And...well. I entirely buy that this can have appeared that way in context? But our friend Historical Context also points out that a Giant Powerful Roman Empire was not necessarily in the best interest of a lot of the people it was ruling (though it certainly was for some), and one really does wonder about the "I had to do this to avoid being put unfairly on trial... therefore, I will start another civil war!" decision as a morally justified action.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed.

(Also, Caesar would have been quite fairly put on trial. Since the whole reason he got his proconsular status extended in the first place was to avoid being tried for his previous irregularities.)

Giant Powerful Roman Empire... yes. Some of the Egyptian material concerning the tax burden is enlightening.

On the other hand, until the fourth century (and later in the east) it did sustain a larger semi-urbanised middle class and greater degree of social mobility than was seen in Europe again until the Early Modern period, so who I am to judge outcomes, really?

It didn't even necessarily suck too much to be a woman, since if you were in a position to avail of the right legal status, you could even own and control your own property. Shocking! Also why I am rather more fondly disposed towards the Romans in general than the Greeks, but "sucked less" =//= "had a good time".

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Yesssss. And this is why I want to take a proper class on Roman history! (I am tempted to audit one next semester, but that would put me at two language classes plus two audited classes, and I suspect that's a bad balance.) Because all I have to go on is what my professors talked about in class, which was often interesting, but biased in its own way. Plus reading a bunch of translated Roman historians, because they're fun.

...actually, if you have any good books to recommend on Roman history--ones that do in-depth discussion of one smaller period or aspect would be more interesting than ones doing a lot of dry overview, so long as they're not too Pop Culture Luridness--I'd really appreciate that. I flail a bit when trying to grapple with the history section in the library, and I've given up on trying to find good written-for-the-casual-reader books on Roman history since that horrible incident with the Catullus biography.

It's sort of entertaining to me, in a sad way, that I've had someone reading my fiction discuss how my protagonists are clearly living in an Evil Empire. Because I basically took the Roman empire, filed some serial numbers off, and then went through a multi-century period of progress that made it a lot less oppressive than the actual Roman Republic. Which still gets held up as a shining example of Moral Virtue In Dark Times by some historians. (I mean, it clearly had a lot of benefits, but...nuance, people! Nuance and complexity and context!)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Mmf. That depends on what sort of period/area you're interested in, and what you're looking for in terms of general interest vs. in depth discussion. And how much dryness you're willing to tolerate.

For an overview of the Roman empire round about the first century CE, Martin Goodman's Rome and Jerusalem is useful from a cultural perspective, because it does the compare and contrast thing. I may have blogged it here in 2010, I think. Goodman also has a book in the Routledge Roman history series which is quite good - better than the others in the same series, at least by me.

David Mattingly, An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman empire is very good on Roman Britain, though can tend to dryness in places; Mattingly also has a book on North Africa - called Tripolitania - which does similar. He's been involved, so I'm told, in excavations in southern Libya and the Libyan desert survey, so he knows his stuff. You'll probably only find Tripolitania through a university library, though.

For an introduction to Roman Egypt, try Parsons' City of the Sharp-nosed Fishes, which is essentially based off the Oxyrhynchus papyri. For the Eastern Desert and its archaeology, read The Red Land - or dip in and out of it, at least. It's very archaeologically oriented, but there's some interesting stuff there. In addition to interesting anecdotes about getting jeeps stuck in the desert... There are also some various intro collections of papyri, which can be fun - they'll be in the biblio in the Parsons book, though, I think. And I do recommend the Parsons book, since it's a good, vivid read.

There are various biographies of the emperors, of course, most of which I haven't read because they mainly recapitulate the Roman historians/literature etc, with extra bits of archaeology and inscription and some analysis. The most recent Marcus Aurelius is supposed to be good. Likewise Birley's Septimius Severus - I can't remember if I ever read much of it, because Roman History is a long time ago. (Birley also did a Hadrian - he seems to be the biography guy. There's also a recent biography of Claudius by Barbara Levick which struck me as dry but tolerable. But I was reading it before an exam.)

If I were at home, where I have a box full of undergrad notes and reading lists, or if I had better idea of where your interests lie, I could go on further.

But seriously? Give me a period or topic, and I'll look out some titles for you. My education on these matters was, I am told, reasonably comprehensive...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

And re: fiction and evil empires: well, yes. Rome is pretty much the model Evil Empire, no?

It had a bunch of good things, like roads! Aqueducts! Semi-decent plumbing! The Second Sophistic floruit of letters!

A legal system where theoretically if you were a citizen you were entitled to a fair hearing and exempt from judicial torture. Although this was much more honoured in the breach under the empire, what with all the informers and the agentes in rebus. (But unless you were wealthy or connected, you didn't really need to worry about the informers. No profit in it!)

On the other hand, slavery. Oppression. Military exactions - which get complained about in the papyri all the time, as the soldiers basically exceed their authority and steal shit and beat people up. And in practice, you needed pull and influence to get anywhere at all.

Sometimes it strikes me as not really all that different from today, just with worse medical care, more slavery, a lot more "This is for your own good, unruly slave!" more restrictive social norms, and more options for getting horribly dead...