between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Sic transit gloria Venus.

So. Today the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens held a day school at Trinity. "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: the sea in the ancient Mediterranean."

I went, of course. Who wouldn't? (If there's anyone here who says, "Me!" this is your cue to stop reading.)

Being acquainted with three of the speakers, slightly acquainted with a fourth, and aware of the reputation of a fifth, I knew it was going to be interesting. Since Members of the Public could also come, I didn't realise how. (Members of the Public are Scary. I'm sorry, but it's true.) But there were a good bunch of my classmates there, too - well, five - so there was the promise of socialising. And food.

Professor (Emeritus) John Dillion is the Institute's director, founder of the Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition at TCD, and has quite the bibliography. He was the first speaker, talking about "Man and the Sea in Homer's Odyssey," and the man knows how to tell a story. He just settled himself down in a chair at the front of the room and talked about the Odyssey, and way that Zeus and Poseidon and Aeolus and pretty much any divine being can whip up a storm, and just the sea-related travails of Odysseus. And geography, and travellers' tales, and how there are resemblances to icebergs and northern climes in a Mediterranean story.

After this there were biscuits, tea&coffee, and fruit juice, and socialising, which included a bit of catching up with one of the speakers who taught me all 2007/08, and an introduction to the very energetic professor who chairs the IIHSA's managing committee. And biscuits. Did I mention the biscuits? There were chocolate biscuits, and biscuits with the nice chewy jam, and biscuits with raisins in. Lots of biscuits.

Eventually, the organisers herded us all back inside the right room, and it was time for the next speaker, Dr Emma Saunders, whose, "Picturing the Sea: Marine Imagery in the Aegean Bronze Age," involved a slideshow with lots of interesting pictures of Minoan Marine Style pottery and the Dolphin Fresco from Thera. Also pictures of argonautica argo and octopus vulgaris and how right - or wrong - the pictoral depictions were. There was some interesting stuff about shells, use of shells in ritual and as trumpets/horns - not by any means mutually exclusive.

Next up, Dr Christine Morris, one of my favourite lecturers, with "Denizens of the Deep: the sea in Greek myth and religion." Alas, time was running short before lunch, so her lecture was slightly truncated, but she presented - with pictures - much interesting knowledge regarding the relationship of Herakles and Theseus to the sea and to the descendants of Poseidon - many of the monsters Herakles encounters in his labours are related to Poseidon - and how the sea operates as a liminal space and a rite of passage for young men.

I had lunch with my people, and then we went back to our crowded, warm room while the taxi-drivers processed with horns and drums in Nassau Street on their protest route.

Dr Philip de Souza was the first speaker after lunch. There are a handful of lecturers at University College Dublin who are involved in studying war in antiquity: de Souza does a good deal on Greco-Roman piracy and naval warfare. He was giving an introduction to "War, Trade and Piracy" and the inter-relationship of the three in antiquity: how trade could lead to conquest and conquest drive the need for trade and revenue; how what's called piracy changes depending on who's doing the calling, and just how big were the Athenian naval harbours? Very interesting stuff.

Next was Dr Jo Day, who is another lecturer I love to listen to. (Alas, she'll be a postdoc fellow in Illinois next year, so the archaeology society won't be able to afford to transport her to come talk to us.) Her paper was on "A pretty kettle of fish: eating seafood in the ancient Mediterranean," and encompassed Greek and Roman, archaeological and literary evidence. And recipes. The main sources for Greek fish, in literary terms, comes from Athenaeus, who preserved fragments of a guy called Archestratos, who was into food in a big way. The main Roman source is On Cooking by one Apicius. Whose recipes include such examples as,

"Pieces of cooked womb, of fish, of chicken, warblers or cooked thrush breasts. Chop all this thoroughly, except the warblers. Mix raw eggs with oil. Crush pepper, lovage, moisten with garum, wine, raisin wine, and set to warm in a saucepan, and bind with starch, after you have added all the chopped meats and let it come to a boil. When it is cooked, remove with its juices, with a spoon, and rearrange in a serving dish in layers, some with peppercorns, some with pine kernels. Place under each layer as a base a sheet of pasta, and put on each sheet one ladleful of the meat mixture. Finally pierce one sheet with a reed and place this one on top. Season with pepper. Before you put all these meats with sauce into the saucepan you should have bound them with the eggs. Serve in a bronze dish."

Some of the recipes are much... odder... than that. Fun times.

The final speaker was Dr Amanda Kelly, a former Fulbright Scholar, and current postdoctoral research fellow at Trinity. Her paper was an examination of Late Antiquity trade links between the Mediterranean and Ireland, as revealed by pottery evidence, "Fine wines afloat in the Mediterranean: trade, status and inebriation." I regret to say I paid much less attention than I could have wished: the room was warm and stifling enough that I had a hard time keeping awake. But, interesting, amphorae from the region of Antioch have been discovered in fragments on elite sites in Ireland, amphorae which suggest the transportation of Syrian wine this far. Some very, very interesting stuff.

And then! We repaired to the departmental headquarters to partake of free food! Professionally catered, by a gentleman who is also on the managing committee of the IIHSA, and donates his services to their events.

Gorgeous free food. There was quiche - lovely quiche, I had a ham and cheese one - and citron custard pielets and raspberry and custard pielets, and chocolatey bites, and crispy tasty things that looked like dried rosepetals, and pomegranate and raspberry cordial, and apple and melon drinks, and wine, and things - sweets - that were small and round and flavoured and had like meringue and jam in them. And there was talking. Apparently Dr Saunders has an interest in diving, so we could compare notes on octopi. And I had an interesting, if all-too-brief (because college security wanted everybody out by half five) chat with Dr de Souza, and numerous other interesting peoples whose names eluded me.

There was too much food. So everyone who was leaving was encouraged by the authorities to liberate some. I stayed to help clean up - because my mates were helping, so of course I did, too - and still managed to get a good helping of chocolatey bits and two half-empty bottles (litre or litre and a half) of pomegranate and raspberry drink, and a raspberry and custard pielet, which the parent will appreciate, because damn are those things tasty.

It was fancy food. I've never been to a reception that had that much, and that fancy, food on offer.

So after all that, my classmates and the younger speakers and some postgrads and postdocs repaired to Lincoln's Inn for more socialising. Which devolved into a discussion of the summer's coming big geek films, and why none of us students went to last night's Trinity Ball. (The answer: dresscode = stupid, headline bands = unknown, and campus = full of seven thousand people at least half of whom are guaranteed to be assholes. Drunk assholes. Also, Portaloos.)

I drank water and didn't stay long, though. It was already a long day.

Anyway. That concludes the "What I did with my Saturday, by hawkwing_lb, age 22 and five-sixths." What about the rest of the world?

I think I will take up Latin, because this is cool.

From here:

silentium: silence, stillness, quiet, repose, obscurity.
silentium: (religion) faultlessness, perfection.