between the rock and the cold, cold sea

I will miss peaches after Tuesday. They are sweet and juicy and taste like summer, like nothing in Ireland: ripeness flooding the tongue, rich and yellow and stinging on a cut lip.

Yesterday, I went out for a walk. The sky had clouded over grey and threatened rain: there was a pleasant coolness about, and in consequence I headed up to the acropolis. But no sooner had I reached the Place Of No Shade (big, white, treeless, no, it has no shade), did the sun come out. I refused to be cheated of my walk, and so, in consequence, I ended up slightly enpinkened last night.

Hey, back home rain means no need to wear sun cream all day. How was I to know it was all a fakeout, here?

But at least I'm not one of lobster brigade. It's already fading to tan.

I spent today, with the exception of a brief trip out to get more protein, working on a powerpoint and some supplemental information for my conference paper. Wrestling with this for hours - with something that will take twenty minutes to give, with a small list of extra information probably no one will even read - it occurs to me how much hard work and effort go into making things look easy and effortless. I thought I knew this already: but not, it turns out, quite viscerally enough.

Tangentially related: I am going home on Tuesday. I am going home because I do not have enough cope - nor, to be entirely honest, enough cash - to put stage two of the Greek travel plan - have fun and a holiday - into action. I now have forty euro to get home on, or a little less. Grant me no disasters, O Hermes, for it is as yet twelve days until I get paid, unless the freelance cheque comes promptly on Monday.

Extract of a letter of M. Cornelius Fronto to M. Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. Late 164/early 165 CE. [220-223, Van den Hout, 1954]

Fronto to Antoninus Augustus.

Through all my life fortune has pursued me with sorrows of this kind. For, leaving out my other bitter experiences, I have lost five of my children and the timing of my losses has been particularly wretched, since in each and every case the child I lost was my only one. I have suffered such a series of bereavements that I have only ever had a son when I had lost one. So it is that always when I lost children I have been denied any comfort from those who were left behind; fatherhood and recent grief went together.

...Now, with the loss of my grandson, my own grief is multiplied by the grief of my daughter, the grief of my son-in-law.

One of the things that's rarely brought home to me with any immediacy is the extent of child mortality in antiquity. Fronto (a Roman citizen born at Cirta in Numidia, a man of letters in both Greek and Latin) was a wealthy man, tutor to Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius, suffect consul in the year 142. This litany of his losses, brief though it is, is a reminder.

The ancient world is not a wealthy one. Not by our standards. Oh, the senatorial classes of Rome had furs and silks and silver dining services, funerary busts in marble, horses, land, temples whose upkeep they undertook, exotic imported spices from across the Indian Ocean, unguents from Ethiopia and the Arabian peninsula. They're the 0.1% of the ancient world, the senators and the equestrians and the wealthy freedmen: and even they were vulnerable to the very same diseases as everyone else.

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Hippocrates, Epidemics 1.4.9

Criton, in Thasus, while still on foot, and going about, was seized with a violent pain in the great toe; he took to bed the same day, had rigors and nausea, recovered his heat slightly, at night was delirious. On the second, swelling of the whole foot, and about the ankle erythema*, with distention, and small bullae (phlyctaenae); acute fever; he became furiously deranged; alvine* discharges bilious*, unmixed, and rather frequent. He died on the second day from the commencement.

Hippocrates, Epidemics 1.4.13

A woman, who lodged on the Quay, being three months gone with child, was seized with fever, and immediately began to have pains in the loins. On the third day, pain of the head and neck, extending to the clavicle, and right hand; she immediately lost the power of speech; was paralyzed in the right hand, with spasms, after the manner of paraplegia; was quite incoherent; passed an uncomfortable night; did not sleep; disorder of the bowels, attended with bilious*. On the fourth, recovered the use of her tongue; spasms of the same parts, and general pains remained; swelling in the hypochondrium, accompanied with pain; did not sleep, was quite incoherent; bowels disordered, urine thin, and not of a good color. On the fifth, acute fever; pain of the hypochondrium, quite incoherent; alvine* evacuations bilious; towards night had a sweat, and was freed from the fever. On the sixth, recovered her reason; was every way relieved; the pain remained about the left clavicle; was thirsty, urine thin, had no sleep. On the seventh trembling, slight coma, some incoherence, pains about the clavicle and left arm remained; in all other respects was alleviated; quite coherent. For three days remained free from fever. On the eleventh, had a relapse, with rigor and fever. About the fourteenth day, vomited pretty abundantly bilious* and yellow matters, had a sweat, the fever went off, by coming to a crisis.

Hippocrates, Epidemics, 5.75

Telephanes, son of Harpalus and his freedwoman, got a sprain behind the thumb. It grew inflamed and was painful. When it desisted he went into the fields. On his way home he had pain in the lower back. He bathed. His jaws became fixed together towards night and opisthotonos developed. Saliva, frothy, passed out through the teeth with difficulty. He died on the third day.

*alvine: of or relating to the stomach
*bilious: gastric distress; of, relating to, or containing bile; characterized by an excess secretion of bile
*erythema: redness of the skin caused by dilatation and congestion of the capillaries, often a sign of inflammation or infection.

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Working, as I am, with the archaeological remains of Greek healing sanctuaries, I find it hard to keep the omnipresence of mortal sickness and disabling injury in the ancient world in the forefront of my mind. We don't live with similar mortality factors, not anymore. Not with odds like they did.

Someone in your living family would have suffered an injury that crippled a limb, either related to industry or to war; someone (or several someones) closely related to you would have died in childbirth; nearly everyone has lost children or siblings to childhood illnesses; very many people have recurring eye diseases which eventually progress towards blindness (if they reach their fifties, if not sooner). Phthisis - wasting, which probably in a lot of cases means TB - is common. Malaria's not unusual. Typhus (aka jail fever) and typhoid fever not infrequently reach epidemic proportions.

But for all that, there are men - and occasionally, women too - who live to their seventies and eighties. Okay, so fifty and sixty counts as old, but if you're a man, and not a slave or a migrant labourer (migrant labourers include mercenaries), the ancient world's not hell. You don't have buckets of material goods (a few pots, a few utensils and knives, the tools of your trade - which if you're a woman probably includes a loom - blankets, the clothes you stand up in and maybe something for festivals) and you're probably carrying around a toothache (and hoping the infection doesn't go into the bone and rot your jaw: see Epidemics 5.100) and one or two unfixable health problems, but you might have a reasonable life.

But whoa. The omnipresence of things that will fuck you over.

It's necessary to remember that.

For the record, my translation of Sokolowski 13, A regulation relating to the priesthood of Asklepios. Before 133 BC. Marble stele. Inschr. von Pergamon no. 251.

Errors of translation are all mine. (If anyone wants to run with it, consider this version mine under C.C. copyright, but possibly someone else somewhere has a better English version. I just don't know where to find it.)

In the prytany of Kabeiros, the twentieth day of the month of Pantheios, the boule and the demos [the council and the people - ed] formed a judgement, by the judgement of the strategoi, concerning the office of priest of Asklepios, that it is to fall in every year to the son of Asklepios [the Asklepiade, also translated physician - ed] and to the descendents of the son of Asklepios.

By Agathe Tyche, it has seemed good to the boule and the demos: that the priesthood of Asklepios and of the other gods who are set up in the Asklepieion [is to belong to] a son of Asklepios or descendents of the son of Asklepios in every year, and the one who holds the priesthood is always to wear a wreath, and to take also gifts of honour from all the victims which are sacrificed in the sanctuary, a right thigh and the hide and the other trapezómata [meal-bodies? dictionary, you have failed me!] of all those having been provided to the gods: he is to enjoy the fruits and the holy {precinct of Asklepios.........}

...to fall to [him] in every year, and the son of Asklepios is to be also exempt from public burdens, of all which the city gains possession over [my translation uncertain at this point], and in the remainder, the one who holds the wreath is always to proclaim publically, and the priest is to have the priviledge of the front seats in all the assemblies/contests: and the priest is also to charge of orderly behaviour according to what is sacred, as it seems good to him, to be lord fairly and sanctioned by divine law over the slaves of the sanctuary, so that these in every year may stand by steadfast with the son of Asklepios and the descendents of the son of Asklepios, to discharge the sacrifices on taking oath for the city in the agora in the presence of Zeus Saviour at the altar, and to swear the offices which indeed abide in those who the city has reckoned to be a son of Asklepios and the descendents of the son of Asklepios:

and the strategoi in the prytany of Kabeiros are to have charge of it, in order that the oath may be completed just as it has been written. They are to engrave and set up this decree on three stone pillars, and to set one of them in the sanctuary of Asklepios in Pergamon and another in the sanctuary of Athena in the acropolis, and the third in Mytilene in the sanctuary of Asklepios. This decree is also to be recorded in the laws of the city, and they are to make use of the same authoritative law in every year.

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42 lines of Greek translated, in a process which took four hours spread over several days. (Because I make stupid errors after an hour.)

At this rate, the other inscriptions will take me forever.

I have achieved a second draft of my conference paper, "The Experience of Entrance at the Pergamene and Koan Asklepieia." Hopefully this is a near-final draft.

Maybe now I will feel less useless and depressed. Next thing to do, make powerpoint with sanctuary plans.

There are four weeks left during which I must take classes. It will be a great relief when I can sit down to do research without having to keep up with Greek homework also. Perhaps then I will be able to write again.

Interestingly - and in things which give me hope - I wrote a whole paragraph of fiction today.

( Read more... )

Not that it'll go anywhere. But, hell. Writing that in half an hour made me feel a hell of a lot better than I have in at least a week or so.

Damn the world for being so big and inimical anyway.

Well.

I was going to sit down with a pot of Darjeeling tea this evening and work on relating a Pergamene inscription (fortunately translated into English by A. Petsalis-Diomidis) to the ground-plan of the sanctuary. But after staying up late to read Among Others, and visiting my grandmother in the presence of both my uncles to present her with her 83rd birthday gift, I seem to have contracted an urgent need to nap. Most distressing.

The second century plan of the sanctuary is offering several fascinating items to consider. Not one, but two crytoporticoes, which both terminate just outside a rotunda which may well be modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. Baths, a gymnasion - which is probable, and I'm going to have to sit down with the damn German excavation report, not just the nice labelled pictures, to figure it out a little better - a library and a theatre, and let's not leave aside the temples themselves (four of them) and the incubation complexes. And the latrines, and the covered Sacred Way with a(nother) bath complex just below a crossroads.

Galen claims that there were competitions in dissection at Pergamon, and I wonder whether this was actually at the sanctuary. I really still don't know enough about this.

Oh, well. More reading ahead of me. But now, napping.

Snow is really quite baffling.

Hopefully there will be sufficiently little of it tomorrow that I can pop into town and collect a last couple of books from the library before the Christmas closure. (I tried yesterday. Spent 2.5 hours not getting anywhere, due to SNOW which had COMPLETELY SCREWED our public transport system. The bus turned around and went back, eventually.)

If I can get that done, and this sneezy schnoz/icky cold clears up soonish, I'll have clear decks for making a productive go of the season of joy and good cheer. It seems to be a good way to spend the darkest part of the year: settle in with a stack of academic books and try to produce a workable Chapter 1 by mid February.

I also have a bunch of Greek to do, a couple of articles that hopefully someone will pay me for (money situation: not getting better, but I am not panicking yet, because something will turn up (it damn well better)) and some fiction to write so I can pretend I still think of myself as a writer. Which I do, damnit.

And the gym reopens over the holiday period, so just as soon as I get this cold gone, I can start reclaiming the (very large) stretch of ground I've lost.

We're supposed to get a thaw for Christmas. I'm looking forward to not shivering my socks off. I do not have the clothing for constant sub-zero temperatures. (And can't afford to buy new clothes till the end of February. So not yay.)

Anyway.

Books 2010: 56

non-fiction

56. Valerie M. Hope, Eireann Marshall, Death and Disease in the Ancient City, London and New York, 2000.

A series of essays on responses to death and disease in ancient Greece and Rome. The first half of the volume concerns primarily Greek matters, the latter half Roman: but it's a short volume, less than two hundred pages.

I wasn't especially impressed with the Greek papers, but they provided information which was largely, if not stunningly new to me: I knew a little about the Greek concern with pollution but not in detail, nor the way in which concerns for pollution can be put aside for high-status dead, such as heroes. And the chapter comparing the description of plague in Thucydides to the plague in Homer was illuminating.

The Roman papers, on the other hand, were quite fascinating. They focussed on death rather than disease, and the essays by Patterson and Bodel in particular concentrated on the experience of the lower classes; unclaimed bodies, public graves, mass graves, the status of funerary workers and executioners - really, truly, honestly fascinating. Bodel's essay, "Dealing With the Dead: Undertakers, Executioners, and Potter's Fields in Ancient Rome" is a tidy, well-researched little piece of social history which I especially recommend.

BMCR review here, for anyone who wants more in-depth analysis.

(I may, in fact, be in love with the BMCR. They are most marvellously useful.)

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In other news, apparently not taking my fish-oil pills turns me crazy. This is good to know, if a rather belated realisation: I could've done without the week of bad brain chemistry. But, having taken my fish pills, I managed to get me to the gym and actually exercise for the first time since I buggered up my shoulder. 22 minutes for 2 miles: not bad, but still not a marathon.

I'm also reading Aristophanes. You know something? People really haven't changed. Politicians, especially. Also the electorate.

Virtue, it is alleged, is its own reward.

I invite you to guess what I have been doing for the last week. With the exception of Tuesday, where an attack of excessive sleepiness resulted in me going home in the early afternoon and sleeping once I got home (which was, I stress, by that time the early evening, due to how damn long it takes me to get there), I have spent at least three hours (more on the days when I did not have two hours of class) every freaking day in the library. And at least an hour either climbing or in the gym.

I'm still slightly behind in my work. Is this, I ask you, fair or just? Is it right?

(Is it fair that too much of the research material is written in French?)

Also, it will take me days before I can acquire and watch Criminal Minds. That would make a better reward than mere virtue. But insufficient time, I has it.

I made it through another 12-14 pages of Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin orientale de le Mediteranée today. It's not exactly light reading - in fact, it'd be fair going in English, and is quite hard in French, with all the run-on sentences - but it's very educational. I figure if I learn two or three new subject-specific French words every evening, by the time I'm done it'll only be medium-hard reading. (Today's words: hardly, vow [serment], rebuild [remonter], come across [rencontre], come across [retrouver].)

That did take two and a half hours, though.

Running: 1.15 miles in 10 minutes, 1.5 miles in 13:50, 2.0 miles in 19:30. Not too bad, at all.

Cycling: 33 minutes on a cross-country exercise bike programme.

Climbing: seven routes, five of which were 6As, two of which were 5s. Rather pathetic going, actually. But I have the hour of hard work in the gym previous to this as my excuse, to which I will cling.

Vladimir-the-cat has disappeared, possibly by jumping out a second floor window whilst I was out. I do hope he turns up. I've become very attached to him over the last couple of weeks.

But cats. You never know.

I remember someone telling me once that doggedness and determination can make up for native talent, and stubbornness is a perfectly adequate substitute for brilliance.

I hope they were right.

It turns out that the majority of the texts I'll need for my thesis are written in French or German, or are papyrological corpuses which do not have complete translations from the Greek. The German is a loss, of course. But I'm going to be spending the next month with a dictionary and my very rusty bad French, nose down over a copy of Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin Mediteranée and other works by either Francoise Dunand or Jean-Claude Grenier.

There are some English works, of course, and some translations of French ones. Not quite enough, though.

I'm not particularly talented where it comes to picking up languages - hell, I'm clever, but I'm a B student across the board, being honest - so I'm very, very daunted.

Not quite daunted enough to give up, though, so maybe I'm not as clever as I think I am.