In 2002, the Institute for Archaeologyat the University of Cologne, withfinancial support from various Ger-

man agencies, was able to purchase agroup of twenty-five papyri offered forsale by a private collector. Once the fragiledocuments were housed in the ColognePapyrus Collection, papyrologists setabout conserving and then decipheringthem. Scraps extracted from mummy car-tonnage (the richly painted casing, usuallymade of recycled papyrus, laid over thelinen-wrapped body) were edited byMichael Gronewald and Robert Danieland published two years later in a special-ized journal, the Zeitschrift für Papyrologieund Epigraphik. These papyri were part ofan early third-century B.C. poetic antholo-gy arranged thematically, containing pas-sages on aging, death, and song – and theypreserved a breathtaking find, two frag-mentary poems in aeolic metre by Sappho(see Fig. 1). One was formerly unknown;the second could furnish most of the sup-plements needed to restore the text of apreviously recovered fragment. When thereport became more widely known, itmade headlines around the world.

In an article entitled “A New Sappho

Poem” appearing in the June 24, 2005,edition of the Times Literary Supplement(available on-line at http://tls. timeson-line.co.uk/article/ 0,,25337-1886659,00.html), British papyrologist Martin L.West provided details of the discovery

From the Editor: Ave atque Valeby Anne-Marie Lewis

This issue marks the end of my secondand final term as Editor of Amphora. I

have been involved with Amphora almostfrom its beginning. In 2000, the Committeeon Outreach of the American PhilologicalAssociation (especially Executive DirectorAdam Blistein; Jennifer Roberts; and Mar-garet Brucia, my co-editor from 2001-2003) put in motion an outreach publica-tion that would bring the excitement of clas-sics to readers beyond the universities.Amphora, which was named after theGreek and Roman storage vessel of thesame name, has since grown from eight totwenty-four pages and now has readers allaround the world.

Amphora is indeed a collaborativeeffort. My work as Editor-in-Chief has beenmade easier by the support and help ofAdam Blistein; the two Vice-Presidents forOutreach with responsibility for Amphoraduring my editorship (Jennifer Roberts andBarbara Gold); the enthusiastic AmphoraEditorial Board; and our designer SuzanneLashner, who takes raw material for eachissue and turns it into a thing of beauty.And where would Amphora be without ourmany wonderful authors, who have provid-ed articles and reviews, and without ourreaders, who have kindly shared, over theyears, their praise for our efforts and theirbest wishes for our continued success?

Amphora’s current Assistant Editor, T.Davina McClain (Louisiana Scholars’ Col-lege at Northwestern State University) takesover as Editor of Amphora in January2008. She will be joined by Diane Johnson(Western Washington University) as thenew Assistant Editor. Please join me in sup-porting them as they continue to bringAmphora to all who love the ancientworlds of Greece and Rome.

WHAT’S NEW IN SAPPHOSTUDIES: THE COLOGNE PAPYRIby Marilyn B. Skinner

A publication of the American Philological Association Vol. 6 • Issue 2 • Fall 2007

Book Review: “Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socrates”. . . . . . . 3

“The Agora” Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEANONSTAGE IN CHICAGO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

THE ANCIENT WORLD AND AMERICANCOINS: THE ARTISTIC INFUSION PRO-GRAM AT THE UNITED STATES MINT . . . 6

Book Review: “Harrius Potter etCamera Secretorum”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

RECREATING THE ANCIENT WORLD ON FILM: A CONFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Capital Campaign News . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Epigrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Book Review: “Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, andAfrican American Literature” . . . . . 10

THE MINOAN TSUNAMI, PART II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Ask A Classicist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

“Amphora” Roundtable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Book Review: “A Mannered Grace: The Life of Laura (Riding) Jackson” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

A NEW ANTIGONE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Did You Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Book Review: “Jason and Medea: A Whirlwind of Ruin” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Parsing The Nowhere Man. . . . . . . . . 23

GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

continued on page 2

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Fig. 1. Sappho Eresia. Marble. Romancopy of a Greek original of the fifthcentury B.C. Capitoline Museum, Rome.Photo credit: Brent Nongbri Image Col-lection, Yale University Divinity SchoolLibrary. Used with permission.

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and a translation of the restored secondtext. Twelve lines of verse on theCologne papyri partially overlapped withright-hand verse endings already knownfrom the second-century A.D.Oxyrhynchus papyrus no. 1787, printedin the editions of Lobel (1925) and Voigt(1971) as Sappho fragment 58. Thepapyri indicated, furthermore, that a newpoem began with what had been line 11of fragment 58 and concluded with line22, comprising twelve lines in six two-linestanzas (see Fig. 2). Eight of the lineswere virtually complete, and the sense ofthe others could be inferred from theremaining words. Up until then onlythree of Sappho’s poems were intactenough to be appreciated as literary com-positions. Now there are four.

The new text is often called the“Tithonus poem,” because it employsthe myth of Tithonus to underscore theinevitability of human aging. Eos, god-dess of the dawn, fell in love withTithonus, a handsome young Trojanprince, and carried him off. She askedZeus to bestow immortality on her con-sort but neglected to ask for eternalyouth as well. When Tithonus grew oldand enfeebled, she shut him away in achamber, where, unable to die, he bab-bles on endlessly. For Sappho’s contem-porary Mimnermus (fr. 4) this was a caseof a fate worse than death. Sappho,however, gives the tale a different slant.Addressing a chorus of young girls(παιδες), the speaker of the poemlaments her debilities – white hair,depressed spirits, weakened knees –then rhetorically checks herself: “Yetwhat can I do?” (αλλα τι κεν ποειην;).Growing old is part of the human condi-tion. Even a goddess’ love could notpreserve Tithonus from decay.

It is not easy to render Sappho’stwelve deceptively straightforward linesinto English. Several translators havealready tried with varying degrees ofsuccess. Here is my attempt, whichmakes no pretensions to either literalaccuracy or elegance:

You, children, strive after the violet-robed Muses’

beautiful gifts, and the tuneful, clear-ringing lyre.

As for me, old age has now pounced upon skin once soft,

and my hair, formerly black, has turned snow-white;

my spirit weighs heavy, my knees do not bear me up

that were long ago quick in dancing like little fawns.

Often I groan at these things. Yet what can I do?

Ageless, yet human – one cannot be both.

Tithonus, they used to say, Dawn of the rosy arms

bore off to the ends of the earth, gripped by desire,

when he was handsome and young. In time, nevertheless,

grey age caught up with him, though he had an immortal wife.

In line 10, the papyrus is damaged andthe reading debated. From the inktraces, it would appear that what isrequired is an active or passive partici-ple modifying “Eos” and expressing anaction she performs, or which is per-formed upon her, as a result of eros. Ihave supplied “gripped,” though thereis no paleographic evidence for it,because of the imagery of overtakingand seizing elsewhere in the poem. Eos“went and bore off” (βαµεν’. . .ϕεροισα[ν) Tithonus, but old age also“laid hold” (επελλαβε) of the speaker’sbody and eventually “reached andcaught” (εµαρπσε) Tithonus. Age, likeEos herself, is a predator.

Meanwhile, West’s verdict upon theconclusion merits quotation in full:

Sappho is very economical with themyth, giving it just four lines and ending the poem with it. At first sightit might seem a lame ending. But thefinal phrase gives a poignant edge tothe whole. Tithonus lived on, growingever more grey and frail, while hisconsort remained young and beautiful– just as Sappho grows old before acohort of protégées who, like under-graduates, are always young. Thepoem is a small masterpiece: simple,concise, perfectly formed, an honest,unpretentious expression of humanfeeling, dignified in its restraint. Itmoves both by what it says and bywhat it leaves unspoken. It gives us noground for thinking that Sappho’spoetic reputation was undeserved.

Yet this reading has not commanded fullassent, for momentous papyrological findsinevitably disrupt the communis opinio andcreate further unresolved issues.

One of the very problems raised bythe “New Sappho” has to do with itsending. The ninth line of the poem fromthe combined Cologne papyri, whichcontains the names of both Tithonusand Eos, overlaps with line 19 of frag-ment 58, where only the last two words,“rosy-armed Eos” (βροδοπαχυν Αυων),

are preserved. Scholars already knew,then, that fragment 58 contained an allu-sion to the Tithonus myth, although theprecise context was unclear. Further-more, the text on the Oxyrhynchuspapyrus appears to continue on for anumber of lines after the mention ofEos. Two of the ensuing verses could berestored from yet another source. Lines25 and 26 of fragment 58 are quoted bythe Peripatetic moralist Clearchus ofSoli, whose remarks are transmitted inAthenaeus’ Deipnosophistae (15.687b).Arguing that refinement must be accom-panied by moral excellence, Clearchuscites two lines of Sappho to prove hispoint. There the speaker, presumablyrejecting other options, affirms, “But Ilove elegance (αβροσυναν).” Somethingis then said to have obtained for her thesplendor and goodness of the materialworld, though we are uncertain whetherit was an intangible quality, “love oflife” (ερος τωελιω), or instead the actualgod Eros. Previous editors of Sapphoassumed that the poem on P. Oxy. 1787had concluded with this aphoristicpronouncement.

When lines 25 and 26 are taken aspart of the poem, they change themeaning of the Tithonus exemplum com-pletely. Earthly beauty, it is thenimplied, compensates for the losses ofold age. Such an optimistic attitudeseems consistent with the positiveexpectations about poetry and the after-life expressed in numerous other Sap-phic passages, like fragment 150: “Formourning in the <house> of those whoserve the Muses is not right; such thingswould not be fitting for us.” However,

WHAT’S NEW IN SAPPHO STUDIES: THE COLOGNE PAPYRIcontinued from page 1

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Fig. 2. The “New Sappho Papyrus” (P. Koln. Inv. 21351 and 21376), whichcan be viewed at http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/PK21351+21376r.JPG. Photo courtesy of Institut für Alter-tumskunde, Universität zu Köln. Usedwith permission.

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the new Cologne papyri call that long-established textual reading into doubt,for they unquestionably show a newpoem commencing after the referenceto Tithonus’ “immortal wife” in line 12.

Several explanations of the inconsis-tency between the two witnesses havealready been tendered. Since theCologne papyri come from a thematical-ly structured anthology, its compilermay well have chosen to abbreviateselections, leaving out material deemedirrelevant. Some experts have thereforeargued that the Cologne text is a trun-cated version of the actual poem, or,alternatively, that both the longer andshorter versions circulated orally as sep-arate performance scripts. Others, whileagreeing that the lyric does concludewith verse 12, posit a covert allusion toTithonus’ eventual metamorphosis: inlater sources, he is turned into a cicada.Because it sings incessantly whileallegedly living on dew and sheddingold age along with its skin, the cicadabecame a symbol of artistic immortality.Tithonus’ transformation, if implied,would look forward to Sappho’s ongoingfame. Thus the aesthetic tension hasthree possible resolutions: each providesa psychologically satisfying closure, butas philosophical responses to old age,they differ profoundly. There is noemerging consensus, as yet, on whetherthe twelve-line text is complete or not,or whether we are meant to recall whatultimately happened to Tithonus.

Just enough is left of the lines beforethe “Tithonus poem” to reveal that inthem, conversely, Sappho explicitlyanticipated her own posthumous sur-vival. There she calls for celebration:“let there be revelry.” She then envi-sions herself in the underworld,endowed with honor, “as is fitting,” andmarveled at by the dead, as now she isby the living. “If, taking up the clear-ringing harp . . . I sing, Muse, beautifulthings.” So closely do the last two linesresemble the opening lines of theTithonus poem that the first editorstermed them a “prelude” to the nextone. Whoever assembled the anthologymay have put them together for that rea-son. We might note that Horace refers toSappho’s account of the underworld inOdes 2.13.21–32, where he too imagineshimself in the realm of the dead observ-ing both Sappho and her countrymanAlcaeus singing as the shades marvel(mirantur) in reverent silence. Havingthe actual context of Horace’s intertex-tual allusion helps us understand whyhis own ode modulates from thoughts ofthe unexpectedness of death (the poet

Book Review: Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socratesby Andrew Reece

M. D. Usher. Wise Guy: The Life and Phi-losophy of Socrates. Illustrated by WilliamBramhall. Farrar Straus Giroux(fsgbooks.com), 2005. Cloth $16.00. ISBN 0374312494.

Many or most of us make our firstacquaintance with Socrates in Plato’s

shorter and more dramatic dialogues, espe-cially those that depict or foreshadowSocrates’ imprisonment and execution.These dialogues present Socrates as a slybut humble devotee of truth, an inquisitor ofpolitical and religious convention, and acourageous and attractively cantankerousman of principle. Plato’s Socrates cheerfullymulls the Big Questions of life with interlocu-tors both friendly and hostile, and readersdelight when Athens’ gadfly sinks his teethinto the latter variety, like Gorgias’ Calliclesor Republic’s Thrasymachus. As Socrateshimself observes in Apology, young folksparticularly enjoy seeing proud men whoare convinced of their own brilliancemethodically divested of that opinion bySocrates’ needling; they then find them-selves eager to try their own hand at reduc-ing petard-hoisted adults to absurdity. With-out a doubt, young teens are especiallydrawn to the more subversive side ofSocrates, and surely there are legions of uswhose abiding relationship with Platobegan when we were fifteen, following themaster of irony as he dismantled Euthy-phro’s smug piousness. If our own efforts atrefuting our parents’ hidebound insistenceon merely conventional behaviors (keeping

to curfews, say, or tucking in our shirts)came up short, certainly we were to beencouraged in the general inclination to testassumptions and traditions.

Now even younger readers, who maynot be ready for Plato but can still appreci-ate the story of a character revered for hisintegrity, frugality, and intellectual humility,will enjoy this introduction to Socrates byauthor M. D. Usher and illustrator WilliamBramhall. Usher draws on several biogra-phical sources, including Xenophon’s Mem-orabilia and Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of

Eminent Philosophers, to craft his narrativeof the stages of Socrates’ life from “a curi-ous boy, and cheeky too” through to hisimprisonment. The adult Socrates of WiseGuy, however, most resembles Plato’s heroin Apology, Crito, and Gorgias, while thechild is an imaginative re-creation. As inthe text, so also in Bramhall’s lively illustra-tions, this Socrates encourages young read-ers to be curious about ideas, to wrinkletheir brows at pompous elders, to delight in

continued on page 20

continued on page 15

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This Socrates encourages young

readers to get their priorities straight.

The Agora Online: Keep Up to Date on News andEvents in Classics

To find out the most up-to-the-minute information about classical events allover the U. S. and Canada, go to the APA website (http://www.apaclassics.

org) and then go to the quick link (bottom left) for The Agora of the APA: Newsand Events. There you will find up-to-date information on plays, movies,videos, and museum exhibits, articles on aspects of classics, websites of note,and a link to The Dionysiac, a free electronic newsletter listing performances ofclassical and classically-inspired plays as well as conferences and otherannouncements relating to performance (an initiative of the Committee onAncient and Modern Performance of the APA).

Barbara K. Gold, APA Vice-President for Outreach

Chicago is a great theater town. Inthe United States it is secondonly to New York as a center of

theatrical production (as the well-knownChicago improv comedy troupe “Sec-ond City” acknowledged in namingitself ironically in 1959). Famous Chica-go theater companies include the Good-man, the Steppenwolf, and ChicagoShakespeare Theater. Hundreds ofother venues offer everything from tour-ing shows (Shubert), new plays (Chica-go Dramatists), women’s ensembles(Redmoon), Latino theater (TeatroVista), and musicals (Marriott) to per-forming horses (Noble Horse). Newcompanies spring up frequently;http://illyria.com/theatre.html offers acomprehensive list of Chicago theatercompanies, with links.

Performances drawing on ancientMediterranean material have a long his-tory in Chicago. At the 2008 APA meet-ing in Chicago, Kathryn Bosher is pre-senting a paper on Chicago productionsdealing with classical themes between1868 and 1930 (Section 56: ClassicalTradition II, Sunday, January 6, 2008,11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.). During recentyears, when productions of ancientdrama around the world have becomemore numerous than at any time in his-tory, Chicago has seen many such pro-ductions, including Hillbilly Antigone(Lookingglass, 2005) and Hecuba inFrank McGuinness’ translation (Chica-go Shakespeare, 2006). In Fall 2006,Lyric Opera of Chicago offered a bril-liant production of Gluck’s 1779 operaIphigénie en Tauride. The stripped-down,highly physical staging, with three barewalls, and principals and chorus alike inblack, was entirely in keeping withGluck’s “reform” opera, which discard-ed the operatic conventions of his timeto probe to the emotional core ofEuripides’ drama. In 2007, there was anexplosion of shows based on ancientMediterranean material, including themusical adaptation of The Frogs byShevelove and Sondheim, staged as itwas intended to be done, in a swimmingpool (Pegasus Players); The Love of theNightingale, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s1983 interpretation of the Philomelastory (LiveWire); and Frank Galati’sOedipus Complex, which includes Freudas a character (Goodman).

Two Chicago companies are espe-

cially invested in staging ancient drama.One is the Court, a professional compa-ny in residence at the University ofChicago. Nicholas Rudall, actor, direc-tor, translator, and longtime Professor ofClassics at the university, was thefounding director of the Court, whichstaged many of his translations. He hasnow retired, but the tradition continues.JoAnne Akalaitis, who directs frequent-ly at the Court, was born in Chicago andgraduated from the University of Chica-go with a degree in philosophy; she isnow a major director and foundingmember of the avant-garde theatergroup Mabou Mines. Among her classi-cal work for the Court, Akalaitis stagedThe Iphigenia Cycle (Iphigenia at Aulis andIphigenia among the Taurians) in 1997,and her striking production of Seneca’sThyestes in Caryl Churchill’s translationopened the 2007-2008 season. “Theimpulse to make [Thyestes] contemporarywas never on the table,” Akalaitis saysin the Thyestes program. “What was onthe table was Rome itself; the complexi-ty, sophistication, and horror of Romansociety.” She calls the Neronian period(during which slaves and criminals wereexecuted in the arena) “the most per-verse and perverted era of theater that Iknow about” and argues that Seneca’sverse “does not allow us to escape fromthe horror of the event.” (Thyestes pro-gram, 2007). As she often does, in thisproduction Akalaitis combined differentstyles of acting (naturalism, expression-ism), set design (the outline of a classi-cal temple, wall-to-wall carpet), and cos-tume (modern dress, mask, and anIndonesian costume for the Fury).Atreus was the center of attention, as heshould be in Thyestes; actor Mick Weber,using all the ranges of his voice, shiftedabruptly from suavity to manic glee, andhis final appearance in a high-techRoman costume reflected Akalaitis’belief that Atreus is Nero. Even if thereare still scholars who think Seneca’splays could not have been staged inRome, Akalaitis and Churchill have cer-tainly shown that these dramas can bevery powerful in contemporary theaters.

Another important Chicago companyis Lookingglass, which frequently cre-ates new theatrical adaptations of exist-ing texts. The company defines itself ascombining “a physical and improvisa-tional rehearsal process centered on

ensemble with training in theatre,dance, music, and the circus arts, andseeking to redefine the limits of theatri-cal experience and to make theatreexhilarating, inspirational, and accessi-ble to all” (http://www.lookingglassthe-atre.org). Befitting their name, Looking-glass’ first production (1988) was basedon Alice in Wonderland, and the compa-ny’s connections with children’s theaterand story theater remain clear.

The most famous member of theLookingglass ensemble is Mary Zim-merman, who is also a professor in Per-formance Studies at Northwestern Uni-versity in Evanston. She has adapted anumber of nondramatic texts for the the-ater, including The Odyssey (1989-1990),Arabian Nights (1992-1993), and The Note-books of Leonardo da Vinci (1993), but herbreakthrough production was Metamor-phoses, her adaptation of twelve episodesfrom Ovid’s poem translated by DavidR. Slavitt. Opening in 1998 in Chicago,it was produced in theaters nationwideand finally made Broadway, earningZimmerman the 2002 Tony Award forBest Director. The production madevery creative use of a large rectangularpool of water whose depth ranged from afew inches to a couple of feet; it wasused to suggest different ideas: creation,passion, self-absorption, and self-destruction. “Water has transformationalabilities – baptismal, rebirth, sea change– but it’s also a corruptive and corrosiveforce,” says Zimmerman (Metamorphosesprogram, Berkeley Repertory Theatre,1999). This was a theatrically powerful

THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEANONSTAGE IN CHICAGOby Mary-Kay Gamel

4

Fig. 3. The Harpies attack Phineus(Lawrence DiStasi). Argonautika, Octo-ber 18-December 23, 2006, Chicago’sLookingglass Theatre Company. PhotoCredit: Liz Lauren. Used with permission.

show, but it avoided the hard edges –divine caprice, injustice, violence – ofOvid’s poem. The gods were benevo-lent, and the endings untragic. (See fur-ther Zimmerman’s script, published byNorthwestern University Press, andJoseph Farrell’s review in American Jour-nal of Philology 123 [2002]: 623-627.)

For years the Lookingglass companyperformed in different locations aroundChicago, but in 2003, they moved to apermanent home in the Water TowerWater Works. This historic landmark onthe Magnificent Mile in downtownChicago was constructed in 1869 of lime-stone blocks quarried in Illinois. Duringthe great Chicago fire two years later, theWater Tower was one of the few build-ings left standing. The renovated facilitynow houses two theaters and associatedpublic and performer support spaces; themain stage allows Lookingglass to recon-figure the performing space and audi-ence seating as dictated by the needs ofeach production.

In Fall 2006, Lookingglass premiereda new production by Zimmerman. Argo-nautika stages the story of the voyage ofJason and the Argonauts to claim theGolden Fleece, including the leader’sinvolvement with Medea. It is based ontwo ancient versions of the story, one byApollonius of Rhodes in Peter Green’stranslation and the other by GaiusValerius Flaccus in David R. Slavitt’stranslation. Each of the fourteen mem-bers of the ensemble played variousroles. The stage was a long raised wood-en platform spanning the space withdoors at each end and the audience onboth sides. During the performance, thespace became various landscapes,palaces, and most memorably, with theactors stringing ropes and pulling oars,the Argo. A platform above also allowedmuch work in the air by actors and

wonderful puppets, and the lightingthroughout was superb (see Fig. 3).

Like Metamorphoses, Argonautikamade thrilling use of theatrical devices,constantly changing not only charactersand locations but mode (narration,

drama, song), scale (intimate scenes,large groups), tone (sad, comic), andstyle (naturalism, stylization). Theopening Invocation associated theaterwith innocence – “What was it likewhen the world was so young?” – sug-gesting that a medium which allows theaudience to “see the stars . . . feel theswell of the waves . . . hear the snap ofthe sail” is the right one for myth. Butcontemporary ideas were at work too.Zimmerman is deeply influenced byJoseph Campbell’s Jungian ideas; in aninterview with Bill Moyers, Zimmermansaid, “the Greek gods I believe are 12different names for feelings inside our-selves” (http://www.pbs.org/now/tran-script/transcript_zimmerman.html).Accordingly, she had Athena act asJason’s “reason,” literally cueing him indangerous situations. Jason was not atall Apollonius’ amechanos (“clueless”)and self-centered protagonist but athoughtful, caring leader. As in Meta-morphoses, hard edges were consistentlyavoided: the gods were generally kind

and helpful to the mortals rather thanmanipulative; Hylas was the “compan-ion,” not lover, of Hercules (Greek andRoman names are used indiscriminate-ly); the Lemnian women were deceivedby Rumor into killing their husbands;and so forth. The most striking theatri-cal effect in the show was the arrowwith which Eros pierced Medea: shewore it, the barb protruding from herback and the shaft from her breast,throughout the rest of the play, as herwhite dress grew redder and redder withblood from one scene to the next (seeFig. 4). The weakest parts were Jason’sbetrayal of Medea, her murder of theirchildren, and his death, all of whichwere passed over very quickly, withAthena offering an allegorical interpre-tation of the children’s murder: “thinkof them as her own broken heart, andthe murder as the willful destruction ofher own ability to love.” In the samevein, the Chicago show ended “withgrace” and a final coup de théâtre: thecharacters were immortalized as zodiacalsigns, constellations hovering in the airabove the audience’s heads, flickeringwith lights, eternally beautiful and con-soling: “every night you see them,wherever you are, in New York orBangkok, in Cairo or Chicago. Sailing,sailing, even as we sleep.”

Argonautika promises to be anotherhit across the U. S. Zimmerman recentlywon the prestigious Joseph JeffersonAward for Argonautika as best new adap-tation in Chicago 2006-07 (October2007). Argonautika opened at the Berke-ley Repertory Theatre on November 2,2007. It will be performed at the Shake-speare Theatre in Washington, D. C. inJanuary 2008, and at the McCarter The-atre in Princeton, New Jersey in March2008. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Looking-glass will present a revival of its Hephaes-tus: A Greek Mythology Circus Tale in Janu-ary-February 2008 (for a short promo-tional video of this circus-infused the-ater event, see http://www.looking-glasstheatre.org/productions/0708_hephaestus.php). The tradition ofancient Mediterranean theater in Chica-go continues!

Mary-Kay Gamel is Professor of Classics,Comparative Literature, and Theater Artsat the University of California, Santa Cruz.She has staged many productions of ancientMediterranean drama, often in her owntranslations or versions. Helen of Egypt,based on Euripides’ Helen, will be per-formed at UCSC in March 2008.

5

Fig. 4. Ryan Artzberger as Jason and Atley Loughridge as Medea.Argonautika, October 18-December 23, 2006, Chicago’s Looking-glass Theatre Company. Photo Credit: Liz Lauren. Used withpermission.

Performances drawing on ancient

Mediterranean materialhave a long

history in Chicago.

For three decades, my artistic workas a designer of stamps, an illustra-tor for various published works,

and a creator of documentary paintingsfor the U. S. Air Force and NASA hascalled for a thorough exploration of avast array of human endeavor. In prepa-ration for my illustrations, I havelearned much while researching abouttopics in the natural sciences and aboutnotable figures in the arts and lettersand the context of their eras. I havealways thought of my work as visual nar-rative, and I have found myself not onlystriving for esthetic beauty but alsobeing guided by the notion that visualnarrative must always be in service tothe story being told.

In my work as a designer in the Artis-tic Infusion Program (AIP) of the UnitedStates Mint, I have had the honor ofadding my voice as an artist to a colloquyof ideas, images, political ideals, andmyths. I have begun to increase myknowledge of Greco-Roman culturesand the archetypes and laws that laterWestern cultures, including our own,often used as models when they estab-lished their own governments. In muchthe same way that Pericles of Athensgave form and substance to the emer-gent concept of democracy and thatAugustus managed the majesty hesought for Rome, so too our Americanfounders acted as the architects and artdirectors of a new nation by personallyselecting the artists and the content ofwhat would best embody its most cher-ished ideals. The site and architecturalplans of our nation’s Capitol, for exam-ple, were selected by George Washing-ton, who personally placed the corner-stone of the building in a Masonic cere-mony on September 18, 1793. ThomasJefferson, John Adams, and James Madi-son personally commissioned numerousstatues, murals, frescoes, and reliefs thatwould come to define our national iden-tity. But it is the most potently public ofcivic art, our coins, which have come toserve as miniature ambassadors of theideals of the body politic. Our coinagenarrates the arc of our national historyfrom its classical roots in Greco-Romansettings to its modern incarnations. Thecoin is public art in its most durable andfar-reaching form.

The concept of the Artistic InfusionProgram at the United States Mint isnothing short of visionary. It is quintes-sentially democratic. From a pool ofmore than 300 applicants who respond-ed to the first “Call for Artists” by theUnited States Mint in 2003, eighteenwere selected and designated as MasterDesigners by the United States Mintwith the assistance of the NationalEndowment for the Arts. In 2005,another “call” was issued, to which I

responded. I was selected as one of twoartists added to the program as MasterDesigners. After having reduced thenumber of Master Designers to seven(including me) in 2006, the UnitedStates Mint issued another “call” in2007 and added seven associate design-ers and four student designers. Theseeighteen artists (based on their own spe-cific skills) will be invited to submitdesigns for U. S. coin and medal pro-grams that have been enacted throughCongressional legislation and signedinto law by the President of the UnitedStates. Inviting artist-citizens in an opencompetition to enrich the coinage of theUnited States has given participatingartists the opportunity to contribute to ahistorically significant enterprise.Designs that have made their waythrough an elaborate national reviewand are minted will symbolize our cul-

ture for centuries to come, just as coinsfrom ancient civilizations serve as evi-dence for cultures of the past.

All designs for coins are initiallyreviewed by an internal United StatesMint panel for appropriateness, histori-cal accuracy, esthetic integrity, and coin-ability. Selected designs are then for-warded to the Citizens Coinage Adviso-ry Committee and the Commission ofFine Arts for their review and recom-mendations. The statute requires thatthe final coin designs must be selectedby the Secretary of the Treasury of theUnited States. The process begins as abill, generated and refined and finallyapproved by both bodies of Congressand signed into law by the President.The United States Mint is then chargedwith executing the law and creating thenew coins or medals. This double pro-cedure keeps intact the democratic con-cepts provided by the framers of theConstitution. I have worked on many aninspirational project, but nothing comesclose to the magnitude of an assignmentthat is literally the law of the land.

My first assignment for the ArtisticInfusion Program catapulted me back intime to the classical images of ancientGreece and Rome and, to a lesser extent,to the European civilizations and theirstately variations and invocations of theancients, as epitomized in the Napoleonicera among others. Along with other Mas-ter and Associate designers, I was giventhe task of designing the “Foundations ofDemocracy” series, which would depictand symbolize the three branches of ourgovernment in the order that they appearin our Constitution. First, I tackled theLegislative Branch, and between reread-ing the Constitution and searching forinspiration, I came upon Clio, the museof history as interpreted by Carlo Fran-zoni in his 1819 marble figure that gracesStatuary Hall in the Capitol. Rekindlingher image as the scribe of history, Fran-zoni depicted Clio recording events whilestanding in a chariot of time; he entitledhis work “The Car of History.” I reincar-nated her as the muse or scribe for ourLegislative Branch. I borrowed her pos-ture and invented a tableau in which sheis seated between two Corinthian pillarsthat symbolize each body of Congress(see Fig. 5). Atop these columns are

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THE ANCIENT WORLD AND AMERICANCOINS: THE ARTISTIC INFUSION PROGRAMAT THE UNITED STATES MINT by Joel Iskowitz

Fig. 5. “Legislative Muse.” Drawing forthe reverse of the American Eagle Plat-inum Legislative Branch Coin (2006).Designer: Joel Iskowitz (AIP). Sculptor:Don Everhart II. Used with permission ofthe United States Mint.

continued on page 22

Peter Needham, trans. Harrius Potter etCamera Secretorum, by J. K. Rowling.Bloomsbury Publishing (http://www.bloomsburyusa.com), 2007. Pp. 277. Cloth $23.95. ISBN 1-59990-067-X.

Iconfess that, prior to being asked toreview this second Latin volume of the

Harry Potter series, I had never read theEnglish original, Harry Potter and theChamber of Secrets (1998). My strategy,therefore, was to read the Latin versionfrom cover to cover, without using either adictionary or the English version along theway. I wanted to discover the story from theLatin before making comparisons to Rowl-ing’s original. I was immediately impressedwith the readability of Needham’s transla-tion, which creates a vivid narrative whilepreserving classical syntax and vocabularyand using sentence structures that generallydo not befuddle the reader’s ability to fol-low the story. A reader versed in ancient lit-erature will enjoy, in addition to the highquality of Needham’s Latin prose, allusionsto classical authors.

Needham begins Harrius Potter et Cam-era Secretorum with a nod to Greek andLatin epic in his use of the simple word rixa(fight, brawl) as the first word of the firstchapter, Dies Natalis Pessimus (“The WorstBirthday”), which not only indicates theimmediate strife within the Dursley householdbut also foreshadows the struggles that areso frequent in Harry’s life. Needham’s open-ing invites comparison to Vergil’s Aeneid aswell as to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Allthree ancient epics begin with one simple,yet significant, idea: The Aeneid opens witharma (weapons), The Iliad with, µηνιν

(wrath), and The Odyssey with ανδρα (man).These words bring to the reader’s attentionprominent themes in those stories. By begin-ning with rixa (fight), Needham adds anepic touch to his Latin translation, which theopening of the English original lacks. Thisidea of struggle sets the tone for the first twochapters that concern Harry’s experience inthe world of the Muggles (where he is out ofplace, misunderstood, and friendless); it alsoforeshadows the coming year in Harry’s lifeduring which he must fight to prove himself

in the world of magic.Allusions to classical Latin literature

enhance the book. Throughout the story,Harry suffers the clinging attentions of ColinCreevey, whose persistent adoration andstalking are reminiscent of the social boor inHorace’s Satire 1.9. Anyone familiar withHorace’s poem will recognize the similarity:celebrity attracts unsolicited and annoyingattention. Another allusion involves Need-ham’s characterization of the gamekeeperHagrid, whose particular style of speechdoes not translate precisely into Latin. In theLatin translation, Hagrid, for example, aspi-rates the word occisiones, which becomeshoccisiones (214), and is mocked for hisspeech by the evil Lucius Malfoy on the nextpage. Where Rowling has used “killin’s,”dropping the g from the end of the word“killing,” Needham uses an incorrect aspira-tion, which communicates the same manner-ism. The rusticity of Hagrid’s speech recallsthat of Arrius in Catullus’ poem 84, in whichArrius is said to aspirate his words incorrect-ly; this is a very nice touch for those familiarwith Catullus, and yet a reader unfamiliarwith Catullus’ poem can still appreciate thesubtle characterization of Hagrid throughhis speech. Needham’s use of the incorrectaspiration in Hagrid’s speech is not, as inCatullus’ poem, meant to display any pre-tensions on the part of the speaker. Rather,the mispronunciation enhances Hagrid’sdown-to-earth nature and lack of refinement.

The careful thought that Needham usedin choosing both his Latin vocabulary andstyle is apparent throughout the book, notonly in his adaptation of Rowling’s charac-ters but also in preserving nuances of theoriginal English. For example, Needhamtranslates Moaning Myrtle’s “Miserable,moaning, moping, Myrtle” as “Myrta maes-ta, maerens, miserabilis” (109), which pre-serves the alliteration of the English.

While Latin makes the translation of thesound and meaning of that passage easier,a few words ought to be said about thecontinuing challenges that Needham hasfaced in translating English names into Latinin the Harrius Potter series. In renderinginto Latin those English names with no Latinroots, Needham exercises several options.

As he did in the first book of the series,Needham transliterates some names into aphonetically appropriate Latin form, such asVislius for Weasley. Other names areLatinized by the addition of Latin inflec-tions. Needham treats the name Malfoy, forexample, as a third declension noun: Mal-foy, Malfonis. Some names, such as McGo-nagall and Pomfrey, are left uninflectedand unchanged from their English form.Context helps to decipher the syntax of theuninflected names, usually with the aid ofan inflected Latin title such as Professor orMagistra. In Rowling’s second book thereader meets several new characters, suchas the house-elf Dobby, Dobbius (see Fig.6), and Moaning Myrtle, Myrta Maerens,whose names are Latinized in a predictableway. Gilderoy Lockhart, however, is ren-dered as Gilderoy Lockhart in the nomina-tive, but we see Lockhartis in the genitiveand Lockharte in the ablative whileGilderoy does not change (79).

Exclamations, too, pose a challenge:Needham uses Latin idioms to render thesense of the English exclamation, ratherthan a strict translation or transliteration ofthe English. He uses, for example, edepol,“by Pollux,” (27) for the British idiom“blimey.” Furthermore, he writes pro pudor(263), which means “for shame” (OxfordLatin Dictionary), for “urgh” in the Englishtext muttered by Ron in response to Myrtle’sinsinuation that she is fond of Harry.

In general, Needham has written anappealing and readable Latin version ofRowling’s English story. I found only twosmall mistakes: in one case Harrus (220) isprinted, where Harrius must surely be meant;and in another instance, the Latin text readsFaucis (266) where we would expect Fawkis

Book Review: Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorumby Bryan C. Daleas

continued on page 23

’ `

Fig. 6. Dobby the house-elf (voiced by TobyJones). Harry Potter and the Chamber ofSecrets, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2002.

7

˘

Antiquity has long been a fruitfulsource of inspiration for Holly-wood filmmakers. Decades after

the release of mega-productions such asSpartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963),there has been a recent revival of theancient world at the box office. Bothclassicists and the general public arelikely aware of the latest crop of cine-matic representations, from the epicsGladiator (2000), Troy (2004), andAlexander (2004) to the most recentcable-television production Rome (2005-2007) and the graphic-novel-turned-film300 (2007). It is in great part due to thewidespread effects of such Hollywoodproductions that the ancients reach themasses beyond the walls of academia.The now familiar and stereotypicalwell-muscled Greeks and toga-cladRomans attract the public’s eyesthrough multiple venues: on the bigscreen at their local movie theaters, onthe small screens in their homes, and inpromotional leaflets that arrive in themail encouraging them to subscribe toHBO to watch Rome, to name but a few(see Fig. 7). In turn, the reception of theclassical world in film has become agrowing area of scholarship among pro-fessional classicists. Groundbreakingworks such as The Ancient World in theCinema (1978, revised edition 2001) byJon Solomon; Projecting the Past (1997)by Maria Wyke; Classical Myth and Cul-ture in the Cinema (2001), Gladiator: Filmand History (2004), Spartacus: Film andHistory (2006), Troy: From Homer’s Iliadto Hollywood Epic (2006), all four editedby Martin Winkler; Imperial Projections(2005) edited by Sandra R. Joshel,Martha Malamud, and Donald T.McGuire Jr.; and Big Screen Rome (2005)by Monica Cyrino have paved the wayfor future studies of the ancient world inpopular culture.

Typically, Hollywood films set in theancient world have found themselves atthe intersection of two conflicting cur-rents, caught between the Scylla of spe-cialized academic accuracy and theCharybdis of Hollywood mass entertain-ment. For instance, critic AlessandraStanley argued that the HBO-BBCseries Rome failed because of a desire foraccuracy: “historic accuracy in made-for-television dramas is a bit like frugalityin the restaurant business: admirable,

but not the kind of virtue that attractsfour stars. ‘Rome’ would have been bet-ter off exploring psychological strainsthat link us to a remote past that is everpresent, from our legislative system tothe nomenclature of plants and the cos-tume of choice at a college fraternityparty” (The New York Times, August 21,2005). Against Stanley’s opinion, manycritics seem to be ready to sacrifice any-thing on the altar of historical accuracy.This is perhaps especially true for view-ers who have some knowledge of anti-quity, such as students of classics.Around the time of the release of theblockbuster Troy, Catherine Price pub-lished a piece in The New York Times,entitled “In a Classical World, NerdsWalk With Gods,” on the growing pop-ulation of students in the U. S. studyingclassics, in which numerous students ofthe classical world indeed decried theadaptation of antiquity. She noted that“all of them are sticklers for historicalaccuracy” and further quoted studentsreacting to Troy with quasi-moral over-tones: “We have to stay true to ‘TheIliad’ and traditional mythology” (TheNew York Times, October 9, 2005).

But whether they decry or endorse it,for most knowledgeable viewers accura-cy is the crucial thread in the discussionof recreating the classics. This raises twoquestions, one more philosophical andthe other properly methodological.First, what is accuracy? More precisely,what makes something an accurate rep-resentation of something else? Some ofthe complexity of this question isrevealed by Jorge Luis Borges’ wittyessay, “Pierre Menard, Author of theQuixote” (Collected Fictions, trans.

Andrew Hurley, 1998, 88-95). In thisessay, Borges refers to Menard whowrote a new version of parts of Cer-vantes’ Don Quixote, but his new versionturns out to be a word-for-word tran-scription of Cervantes’ novel. The sameexact words written in the twentiethcentury, however, have acquired a com-pletely different meaning. Borges alsotells us that the “archaic” and “some-what affected” style of Menard is strik-ingly different from Cervantes’ stylesince Cervantes “employs the Spanishof his time with complete naturalness.”In short, accuracy appears to be heavilydependent upon context. When itcomes to movies, any claim to accuracyis challenged not only by specific histor-ical details but, more profoundly, by thefact that movies are watched by modernaudiences who have expectations thatare often foreign to the ancient world.

The second, methodological questionis whether we can approach films aboutantiquity from a perspective other thanthe issue of their accuracy. On April 27-28, 2007, under the auspices of the Clas-sics Department at Union College inSchenectady, New York, a two-day con-ference was held not only to explore theissue of accuracy but also to debate othertopics relevant to film adaptation. Inorder to achieve this goal, the confer-ence attempted a new approach: bring-ing together the two seemingly separateworlds of academia and Hollywood byinviting both filmmakers and classicistsinterested in modern adaptations ofantiquity. One of the participants, Mar-tin Winkler, remarked that “panels andworkshops on the cinematic reception ofGreece and Rome have become regular

RECREATING THE ANCIENT WORLD ON FILM: A CONFERENCEby Stacie Raucci

8

Fig. 7. Cleopatra(Lyndsey Marshal)before her death.Rome episode 2.22“De patre vostro[sic],” HBO, 2007.

features at, e.g., CAMWS [ClassicalAssociation of the Middle West andSouth], the APA [American PhilologicalAssociation], and individual colleges anduniversities, but the meeting held atUnion College stood out from all. Itinvolved, for the first time, and withgreat success, a number of film and TVprofessionals in formal and, equally use-ful, informal exchanges with academicsand students. This conference has raisedthe bar for future meetings on classicsand cinema.”

Participating scholars included Moni-ca Cyrino (University of New Mexico),Judith Hallett (University of Maryland),Christopher McDonough (University ofthe South), Hans-Friedrich Mueller(Union College), Kristina Milnor(Barnard College), Stacie Raucci (UnionCollege), Jon Solomon (University of Illi-nois), and Martin Winkler (GeorgeMason University). Among the Holly-wood participants were Nate Goodman(cinematographer, NBC’s Heroes), KevinKennedy (writer/producer, The Assassina-tion of Richard Nixon), Niels Mueller(director/writer, The Assassination ofRichard Nixon and Tadpole), Brad Silber-ling (director, Lemony Snickett’s A Series ofUnfortunate Events and Moonlight Mile),Jonathan Stamp (historical consultant toRome), and Jonathan Zimbert (executiveproducer, American Outlaws and The InCrowd). While not all the filmmakers haddirect connections to productions basedon antiquity, they provided insights intothe intimate workings of a film set. Theconference was attended by faculty andstudents from across all disciplines of thecollege as well as by administrators, staff,and visitors from the local community.Scholars presented papers on variousdepictions of the ancient world in film,while Hollywood filmmakers answeredquestions in roundtable panel discus-sions and engaged classicists in conversa-tions about the making of films. Papersand discussions were organized aroundbroad themes such as politics and reli-gion, sex and morality, and the intersec-tion of the liberal arts and entertainment.

Engagement with filmmakersbrought to the fore issues of artisticlicense, ideology, and practical mattersof time and finance in recreating theclassical world. Why might a filmmakermake changes to history or literature?What is actually at stake? Filmmakersreminded scholars that changes arerarely made because of ignorance ofsources but rather as a result of strategicdecisions. The use of the word “accura-cy” itself was debated, for a commontheme of the papers and discussions was

to see inaccuracies not as lack of knowl-edge but as the result of a series of con-straints and desires on the part of film-makers, actors, and investors.

To center the discussion on the issueof strategy rather than accuracy rein-forced a theme already present in muchof the current scholarship, namely thatmodern cultural and societal contextsare often revealed behind the thin veilof an ancient setting. But the activepresence of filmmakers forced classiciststo take into account a multiplicity of fac-tors involved in the making of filmswith which they might not be familiar,including the involvement of agents,actors’ contracts, financial support, artis-tic vision, creation of the public personaof an actor (such as actors refusing to bedepicted in certain ways), and theprocess of writing for film. In the collec-tion Gladiator: Film and History, Kath-leen Coleman discussed her first-handexperience with the Hollywood epicGladiator in an essay entitled, “ThePedant Goes to Hollywood: The Role ofthe Academic Consultant.” Colemanpoints to some of the competing agen-das mentioned above and notes thatthese agendas may be at odds with thework of the academic consultant. Sincemost academics never have the chanceto be consultants, the conference gave

the participants a brief glimpse intowhat happens on a film set.

By its very nature, a film about theancient world calls for interdisciplinarycollaboration. Monica Cyrino describedthe conference as “simply a paradigm-shifting event” precisely because “forthe first time we were able to interactwith real filmmakers and hear first-handthe real processes that take place whenthey are adapting history, literature, andmyth onto the screen. The symposiumopened up an opportunity for fruitfuldiscussion with filmmakers and perhapseven the possibility of future collabora-tion.” While this conference is certainlynot the first to discuss the ancient worldin film, it brought together members oftwo worlds, film and classics, in a rareopportunity for an exchange of ideas,with neither group working within themindsets of their own fields but open tothe influences of the other.

Stacie Raucci (rauccis@union.edu) isAssistant Professor of Classics at Union Col-lege. She is currently working on a mono-graph on vision in Roman love elegy.

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Capital Campaign News

There is more exciting news about the APA’s Gatekeeper to Gateway Campaignto establish an Endowment for Classics Research and Teaching and obtain thegifts necessary to receive funds offered in an NEH Challenge Grant. Recentprogress in the campaign includes:

• The APA has received nearly $600,000 in pledges and over $250,000 in partial and insome cases complete fulfillment of these pledges. Funds received to date are beinginvested.

• On October 1, the second installment of challenge grant matching funds ($200,000)became available from the NEH. In November, the APA will claim and start invest-ing those funds.

• Campaign Co-Chair Peter G. Fitzgerald has made a pledge of $100,000 to the cam-paign. This is the second six-figure gift to the campaign, and we are very grateful toSenator Fitzgerald for his leadership.

• Daniel and Joanna S. Rose of New York City have pledged $50,000 to the campaign.These funds will be used to support the Association’s teaching awards. We thankthe Roses for their support of the Association’s efforts to encourage outstandingteaching and produce the next generation of classicists.

• An anonymous donor has made a very generous contribution of $25,000. This con-tributor explained that she wanted to support the campaign because “I’ve had a var-ied career – from business and finance to art (printmaking) and credit the flexibilityto my rich educational foundation which emphasized from the start classics and his-tory. Learning Italian, a current endeavor, has been my latest reminder of the worthof my many years of Latin!”

You can obtain information about the Campaign, follow its progress, and make adonation on the APA web site: http://www.apaclassics.org/campaign/campaign.html.

Patrice Rankine. Ulysses in Black: RalphEllison, Classicism, and African AmericanLiterature. University of Wisconsin Press,2006. $45.00. Cloth. ISBN-0299220001/987-0299220006.

Three years ago, Patrice Rankine sharedwith readers of Amphora (issue 2.2) his

work on the role the Odyssey plays inRalph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Rankine ven-tures much farther in this new study. Ulyssesin Black is not simply a searching analysiscovering a broader range of Ellison’s writ-ing. It also keeps a remarkably steadyfocus on why any of this matters – for thediscipline of classics, for African Americancultural expression, and indeed for anAmerica whose identity has been shapedby its own history as a slave nation as wellas by the Greco-Roman past.

Rankine divides his work into two sepa-rate parts – “journeys,” he calls them, inkeeping with the Odyssean metaphor. Thefirst consists of three chapters that trace thehistory of the relationship between classicsand African American literature. On thisjourney, Rankine establishes that, althoughthe masterpieces of the Greek and Romanworlds can accommodate a diversity of per-spectives, postclassical Eurocentrism tendedto establish the classical heritage as a divid-ing line between the races. In America, forinstance, Thomas Jefferson was one of manywho doubted that the former slave and eigh-teenth-century writer Phillis Wheatley, despiteher classically influenced verse, was truly apoet. The belief was that African slavesmight gain a mechanical sort of facility withthe ancient Western tradition, but they weredeemed incapable of internalizing it.

This opinion was belied as more educa-tional opportunities opened for AfricanAmericans after Emancipation. But Rankinecautions us not to be content with seeingblack classicism as proof against the overtracism that had sought to deny blacks ashare in the West’s foundational culture.Such a stance turns black classicism intoassimilation’s measuring-stick. Rankineinstead urges a deeper exploration thatexamines how blacks have creatively refor-mulated classical themes, and in so doing,

how they are contributing to a broaderunderstanding of them.

Rankine surveys the formidable obsta-cles to this exploration. The bitter fringes ofthe Black Athena debate demonstrate howfar awry a race-informed perspective onclassics can go. Beginning in 1987, MartinBernal’s series of books propounded Asiaand, especially, Africa as the origins ofclassical civilization. Supporters and criticsalike of Bernal sometimes went beyond himand held that a corollary to his thesis wasthat the achievements of Greece and Romecould be bypassed in favor of their puta-tively authentic sources. This corollarycheered those for whom Africa was alreadythe cynosure and made the protests ofmany classicists smack of protectiveness.Either way, the result was the same: therewas nothing to convince African Americansthat the discipline was something relevantto them. Indeed, nationwide, classics hadlong since fallen from the privileged posi-tion in education it held before World WarI; among blacks, the fall was still more pre-cipitate. Whereas Booker T. Washington’scall for African Americans to favor voca-tional training over the liberal arts had metsignificant resistance at the end of the nine-teenth century, support for classics withinthe black community eroded with twentieth-century movements in black thought andesthetics. In an era of segregation and thestruggle to overturn it, interest centered onthe distinctive components of racial identity.Classics was regarded as too implicated inthe majority culture.

One consequence of an active hostilityto classics was to turn black artists else-where for inspiration. Rankine, however,sees a more pernicious result: misunder-standing even those instances in whichblack artists consciously engage the classi-cal tradition. He diagnoses two tendenciesamong critics: one tendency is to dismissblack classicism as “selling out”; the otheris to insist that the classicism is there only tobe subverted (84). Rankine takes as para-digmatic the reception of Countee Cullen’sMedea (1935). Failing to win a majorproduction, the play was largely ignored in its own day and elicits divergent

Book Review: Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison,Classicism, and African American Literatureby John T. Quinn

Epigramsby Michael Curtis

When composing the verses, I occa-sionally had a historical person in

mind, though I seldom reveal the per-son’s identity. Instead, the speakerplayed the protagonist, the god playedthe antagonist, and I was third actor. Iintended graceful poetics, lovely poesy,and simple stories.

I NAXOS

I Naxos of Pylus Smile while I labor,

As fame in my marble Will last forever.

REMEMBER DIONYSIUS

Remember DionysiusWhen his play was crowned?

He drank his fill in Syracuse,Then in his joy he drowned.

DINOCRATES SHOULD HAVE

Dinocrates would have carvedFrom the rock of Athos

A figure of the conquerorStanding in the sea

Which would barely reach my kneesThen rise six-thousand feet!

In one hand I would have held Some ships in a harbor,

And a hundred buildings would have filled

The space of the other.Well, of course I was flattered, butI’d not have put him out.

Michael Curtis is a classical painter,sculptor, and architect in Virginia whomakes statues of generals, justices, and presi-dents. He has been asked to make a half-scale statue of Julius Caesar and is workingon a spear-bearing Alexander, like that ofLysippus, but in a canon of his own inven-tion. He is also a widely-published poet.These three epigrams are from “WeavingPurple Flowers,” a collection of verse onclassical themes and events.

10

interpretations from modern scholars. VictorKramer views Cullen’s turn to Euripides asa sign of Cullen’s “rejection of race” (TheHarlem Renaissance Re-examined [1987],220). On the other hand, Lillian Corti("Countee Cullen’s Medea” in AfricanAmerican Review 32 [1998], 621) finds itall about race. Building on the fact thatCullen had hoped a black actress wouldplay the title role, Corti reads Medea as theOther in an unwelcoming America, and theGreek tragedy as a vehicle for socialprotest against the very society thatenshrines it in its literary canon.

Although he acknowledges that Cullenhighlights the foreignness of Medea andthat, as such, she is correlative to theAfrican American experience, Rankinedenies that she is a symbol of it. Quite thecontrary, both in the play and in “Bywordfor Evil,” a prologue and epilogue he laterfashioned for the tragedy, Cullen followsEuripides in giving his audience, black aswell as white, a Medea with whom theycannot finally sympathize. Rankine’s ownanalysis is grounded on the assumption thatthe writer’s craft was central to Cullen’senterprise. As a literary artist committed tohis profession, Cullen used his personalself, social reality, and inherited literary tra-ditions to create a work informed by themall. Out of the interplay of these variousparticulars – the framework of Euripides’tragedy, race in America, the quick col-lapse of his marriage owing to his sexualambiguity – Cullen shaped a drama inwhich what ultimately disturbs us aboutMedea is not the otherness of her place insociety but the alien and alienating natureof her intense passion.

Rankine’s attention to the notion of artis-tic craft is borrowed from the theorizing ofRalph Ellison. Appropriately enough, there-fore, the second, shorter “journey” of

Ulysses in Black explores Ellison’s fiction forexamples of how the melding of racial con-cerns and classicism is effected by a “crafts-man,” that is, an artist devoted to making awork which, although rooted in personaland social realities, and attentive to artistictradition, is a thing-in-itself, with all theinner coherence that implies. Rankinemakes the case that the Cyclops episode ofthe Odyssey was especially important toEllison because it contained themes reso-nant with America’s grappling with race:issues of identity and hospitality, the yearn-ings for escape and for ultimate homecom-ing. Rankine has previously shown howfractured versions of the episode recur inInvisible Man, with characters variouslyassuming traits now of Odysseus, now ofPolyphemus. Among new directions here,he considers the unmasking of Brother Jackas, quite literally, a one-eyed ogre. In thenarrator’s showdown with Jack, it is Jackwho falls apart, losing emotional control aswell as his glass eye. The climactic scenetherefore juxtaposes the disintegration ofJack with the start of Invisible Man’s abilityto see himself and the world around himmore clearly. In the process, Invisible Manbecomes ever more the Ulysses figure. Healso simultaneously becomes a Brer Rabbit,and Rankine examines how the conver-gence of these heroes, one African Ameri-can and one classical, is developed in June-teenth, the posthumously published frag-ment of Ellison’s last novel.

The most provocative convergence is theone that Rankine articulates in the penulti-mate chapter. He takes as his starting-pointtwo essays in Orlando Patterson’s Rituals ofBlood: Consequences of Slavery in TwoAmerican Centuries (1998). In “Feast ofBlood,” Patterson suggests that lynching inthe post-bellum South was a quasi-Christianrite that affirmed the dominance of themajority culture by literally sacrificing anddismembering, sometimes even symbolicallycannibalizing, a black male body. In“American Dionysus” Patterson likens theimage of the African American man in con-temporary society to Dionysus, evoking fearas well as fascination. Patterson fashionseach essay around a different deity, a strat-egy that reflects his own belief that the phe-nomena examined in each essay are funda-mentally different. Rankine intimates thatthey are related and uses the myth of Diony-

sus Zagreus to replace Christ with Dionysusas the divine exemplar, sacrificed and con-sumed. The usual Greek myth has Dionysusinspire his followers to kill and devour a vic-tim marked as a transgressor. In the Orphictelling of the tale, the god himself is the vic-tim who, however, will be reborn as Diony-sus Zagreus. Rankine applies this version ofDionysus to the African American body: abody broken by the alienating gaze(whether of attraction or repulsion), and liv-ing in the shadow of the sad history oflynching and dismemberment. Acknowledg-ing that Ellison never explicitly mentionsBacchic rites, Rankine nevertheless finds thetheme of lynching as Dionysiac sacrifice per-vasive in Ellison’s writings, from his portraitof jazz great Charlie “Bird” Parker to Bliss,the central character of Juneteenth whoseimpending birth occasioned the lynching ofthe African American alleged to be hisfather and who, although raised by thatman’s brother, became a black-baitingpolitician – to end up shot on the floor of theSenate and seeking some sort of antemortem rapprochement with his past.

The rebirth experienced by DionysusZagreus bears many, perhaps too many,meanings in Rankine’s application of themyth: violation against blacks repeatedfrom generation to generation, the legendinto which Parker was transformed, the per-sonal transformation that never quite hap-pens for the dying Bliss but which Rankineposits in witnesses who honestly confrontracial violence, the eventual political revolu-tion that might result from such personaltransformations. Rankine reserves for hislast chapter another addition to this list. Atenet of Ellison’s theory of craft was thatcraftsmanship completes the person. Bymaking an artist into an artist, the artworkalso makes that person whole. It is all themore pointed, therefore, that Ellison aims toeffect this wholeness by writing about thefragmentation of the lynching victim. Forclassicists, it is also fascinating and inspir-ing to consider how the fragments of classi-cal culture are themselves transformed bythe new usages to which Ellison puts them.

John T. Quinn (quinn@hope.edu) is Asso-ciate Professor of Classics at Hope College.He regularly teaches an advanced lan-guage course on Neo-Latin literature writtenby ex-slaves from Africa.

Rankine urges a deeper exploration that

examines how blacks havecreatively reformulated

classical themes.

11

The eruption, in the Late Minoanperiod, of the volcano on theAegean island of Santorini, just

sixty miles north of Crete, was one ofthe most powerful in human history. Itcould have generated tsunamis, some ofwhich may have struck Crete. Yet with-out direct proof, it is difficult to deter-mine whether a tsunami caused by thevolcano’s eruption in turn caused thewidespread destruction in eastern Cretethat presaged the fall of an independentMinoan society and the takeover ofCrete by the Mycenaean Greeks.Although this theory, proposed in 1939by the late Greek archaeologist Spyri-don Marinatos, is dramatic, direct evi-dence for it is sparse because (as dis-cussed in “The Minoan Tsumani, PartI” in Amphora 6.1, available online atwww.apaclassics.org) the Cretan coastlacks old marshes that would likely haveretained sediments deposited by anancient tsunami. The likelihood that atsunami devastated the Minoan civiliza-tion would be increased if the eruptionof the Santorini volcano and thedestruction on Crete coincided.Whether the latter two events coincidedcan be determined by comparing pot-tery found in the remains of the ruinedand abandoned Minoan settlements ineastern Crete with pottery from theSantorini town of Akrotiri that wasburied under volcanic ash.

When Marinatos first proposed histheory, he believed that the potteryfound up to that point in the ruins onCrete and on Santorini came from thesame Late Minoan era and thus tendedto show that destruction occurred con-temporaneously in both places. He wasaware of two pottery styles associatedwith the Late Minoan era – one stylehas floral designs and the other, rarerstyle, depicts marine life – but he tookno particular note of this distinctionbecause he thought the styles were like-ly contemporaneous (see Fig. 8).

In current practice, archaeologistsfurther divide this era into Late Minoan1A and Late Minoan 1B and regard thepottery of these two periods as largelydistinct. The floral style is found in bothperiods, but the latter era, although“difficult to characterize” according toarchaeologist Philip Betancourt, saw amultiplicity of styles that included notonly marine-style pottery, but also pot-tery with abstract and geometric designs

and pottery (called, appropriatelyenough, the alternating style) on whichelements such as double axes or seaanemones alternated around a vase.

When Marinatos began excavatingAkrotiri in the 1960’s, he revealed aMinoan-style town with multi-storiedhouses – and pots that pose a problemfor his tsunami theory under the currentconsensus that there are identifiable dif-ferences between Late Minoan 1A and1B pottery. None of the pottery foundon Akrotiri can be dated from any timeperiod later than Late Minoan 1A, butpots found in the destruction layers ineastern Crete are from Late Minoan 1B.

If the Santorini volcano erupted dur-ing the height of the floral style, LateMinoan 1A, one would be hard pressed

to attribute the destruction on Crete tothis much earlier event. For Marinatos’theory to be viable, some way wouldhave to be found to explain how thepottery on Santorini and eastern Cretecame from two different eras and yetthe volcano caused destruction in bothplaces.

The Akrotiri excavation offered anumber of possibilities for explainingthe timing discrepancy. One of thestriking features of Akrotiri is what ismissing: skeletons and valuables.Unlike the citizens of Pompeii, the resi-dents of Akrotiri had sufficient warningto escape before their world was buried.Akrotiri was apparently rocked by anearthquake that damaged the town suf-ficiently to cause its temporary aban-donment (see Fig. 9). Workers returnedto try to repair the damage. Theycleaned the streets of debris, swept rub-ble into piles, and even used stonewrecking balls to take down walls toodamaged to be fixed. Then the volcanoerupted and dropped an inch of ash onthe town. Those remaining left in ahurry – fresh buckets of mortar wereabandoned in the midst of wall repairs.The volcanic eruption then continuedwith fury in four separate phases thatburied the town completely.

This sequence offers numerousopportunities for significant time gapsthat could show the residents of Akrotirileaving long before the final volcaniceruption, thus explaining why their pot-tery came from an earlier time. The firstash fall shows signs of oxidation, whichmeans that rain fell on it before the majoreruption began. But the ash fall does notshow decades of rain, for the layer is noteroded and none of it turned into soil. Soat most, this gap buys only a rainy seasonor two between an initial milder eruption

and the ultimate cataclysm thatburied the town.

German geologist Hans Reck,who examined Santorini in the1930’s, thought the major phasesof the eruption were separatedby long time periods, and forthirty years, Marinatos thoughtthis explained how Akrotiricould have been abandonedearly in the eruption sequence,while the tsunamis damagedCrete during a later phase of theeruption. But volcanologiststoday think the entire eruption

THE MINOAN TSUNAMI, PART II by James P. Rooney

Fig. 8. Replica of the Minoan OctopusStirrup Jar from the Heraklion Museum,Crete, ca. 1500 B.C. From the collectionof The Museum of Antiquities (http://www.usask.ca/antiquities/index.html).Photo © Museum of Antiquities, Universityof Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.Used with permission.

Fig. 9. Akrotiri, Santorini (Thera). Roomwith a grain mill. Photo Credit: PhilipBetancourt. Used with permission.

12

sequence was brief, lasting from hours todays, and the absence of any oxidizedash located at the boundaries of the vari-ous phases supports their view. So Mari-natos had to look elsewhere to accountfor the pottery discrepancy.

Here the attempt to explain this dis-crepancy takes an unusual turn andinvolves a vacation of James Money, aBritish government official and anti-quarian with “an intimate knowledge ofthe soils of Kent and Sussex,” accordingto an introduction to an article he wrotefor the English periodical Antiquity in1973 (42: 50-53). In May 1972, Moneyvisited Santorini armed with an articleby classical scholar Sir Denys Page,which described the problem of the pot-tery discrepancy. Christos Doumas, whowas by then in charge of the excavationat Akrotiri, allowed Money to take sam-ples of a soil layer at the site betweenthe rubble and the ash overlying it.Money had the samples examined by aUniversity of London archaeologist whodetermined that some of the samplescontained humus that may have takendecades to form before the ash fell.Marinatos accepted this as proof thatAkrotiri was abandoned long before thevolcano erupted.

Doumas did not. He responded thatthe soil was found only on the top ofrubble piles, which came from walls thatwere themselves made from earth.Moreover, the town did not look like ithad been long abandoned. Buildingwalls showed no signs of weathering orerosion that would have been expectedif the town had been left to the ele-ments for decades before it becameencased in ash.

continued on page 14

Ask A Classicist

QDoes the image of Blind Justice goback to classical antiquity?

AThe image of Justice (or Iustitia, asshe is sometimes known) as a blind-

folded woman holding the scales of justiceand a sword is a familiar and commonimage today, especially in America (seeFig. 10). Most people seeing such an imagewould not hesitate to identify it as a personi-fication of Justice. This image, although notthe only image of Justice we have today,can be seen, for example, in statues in pub-lic places such as courthouses, in figurineson lawyers’ desks, and as part of the letter-head and logos of countless law firms andgovernment departments. This image ofBlind Justice is second only, perhaps, to theimage of a judge’s gavel or to the scales ofjustice by themselves as a symbol of Justice.

Some aspects of this modern image ofJustice can be traced directly back to antiq-uity. The idea of Justice as a woman canbe traced to Hesiod’s account of Themis, afemale Titan, who personified the estab-lished, eternal laws that give order to theuniverse (Hesiod, Theogony 902) and herdaughter Astraea (later known as Dike), apersonification of justice (Hesiod, Worksand Days 256-262). The image of Justice,depicted as a beautiful, vigorous femalewearing a classical-style gown and, like aproper goddess, barefoot, may also betraced back to the statues of classical god-desses, such as Athena, goddess of wis-dom, who in Aeschylus’ Eumenides advo-cates that justice is the wise exercise of judi-cial discretion in contrast to the unthinkingapplication of primitive rules.

There are, however, no ancient imagesof the scales being used as a symbol of jus-tice either alone or in connection withfemale figures representing Justice. Theassociation of the image of scales with jus-tice is puzzling. While scales are used bymoneylenders and businessmen, they alsohave a mythological connection with Fate –Zeus holds up his “mighty scales” inHomer’s Iliad (12.433 and 16.658) tojudge the fate of mortal warriors. Do thescales represent the idea that justice is forsale, or predetermined, or predictable?

Aristotle, in his account of justice, wouldcertainly disagree, and in the celebratedBook 5 of his Nicomachean Ethics, hespeaks of “justice in exchange” (usingtransactions in the marketplace as an exam-ple) and expounds on the doctrine of theGolden Mean and the idea that justice inhuman law is in fact the middle of twoopposites.

In addition, the sword usually carried bytoday’s Justice is not a classical symbol for jus-tice. The sword, often mistakenly regarded asa symbol of the law’s association with statesovereignty, became a symbol of high rank inthe Middle Ages as a result of its associationwith medieval knighthood. Because of itsresemblance to the Christian cross, it alsobecame a symbol of the knight’s nobility ofcharacter and moral code. Today’s Justicecarries the sword, not as a symbol of herpower or the law’s monopoly over violence,but because the sword represents the aspira-tion of human law, namely, justice.

Although many public statues of Justicetoday do not show her wearing a blindfoldat all (for example, the statue atop London’sOld Bailey, where she lifts up her sword ina triumphant gesture, and the statue in frontof Canada’s Supreme Court, which bearsmore resemblance to a mourning Athena),the blindfold remains the most recognizableattribute of Justice today. The earliest stat-ues depicting Justice wearing a blindfoldfirst appeared in Germany in the sixteenthcentury as an apparent protest againstunjust verdicts. Today, however, most peo-ple feel that the blindfold is a positiveimage of the law and that it represents Jus-tice as an unbiased and fair adjudicator,unaware and uncaring of the identity of theindividual who is appearing before her.

But could the blindfold also represent thewisdom associated with justice? This ideacould be traced back to Themis, who isassociated with prophecy, or to blindprophets such Teiresias, whose blindnessmight be associated with deeper insightinto the human condition. In Sophocles’Antigone, the blind Teiresias warns Creonthat his law is unjust, and towards the endof the play, the leader of the chorus tauntsCreon with the words, “now you see, toolate, what justice is” (1270).

13

Fig. 10. “Justice.” From

Albert ElleryBerg, The

Universal Self-Instructor

(1883). Clipartcourtesy FCIT

(http://etc.usf.edu/clipart).

Findings on Crete also militatedagainst any explanation based on a longgap between the abandonment ofAkrotiri and the eruption. Santorini ashwas found on Crete at Late Minoan 1Alevels, the same era in which Akrotiri wasabandoned. And pumice found in theruins of a shore-side building in the har-bor town of Amnisos, which Marinatosthought had been deposited there by astorm after a tsunami destroyed the town,was reexamined by Dorothy B. Vitaliano,author of Legends of the Earth: Their Geolog-ic Origins (1973). Vitaliano thought thatthe pumice found at Amnisos was notrandomly spread about the ruins by astorm but was deliberately stored in awalled receptacle. Pumice has beenfound at other sites on Crete, and Vital-iano thought it was kept for rituals meantto appease the gods who caused the erup-tion. Whatever the use of the pumice, ifthe Minoans put it in the building inAmnisos, they could not have done sountil after the eruption, and thereforeAmnisos could not have been destroyeduntil the eruption was over.

Doumas saw a way out of this conun-drum that would preserve the essenceof Marinatos’ theory – and still have atsunami level Amnisos. What if the vol-cano collapsed long after it had ceasederupting and created a tsunami onlythen? He had heard of an instance inIceland where such a delayed collapseof a volcano roof had occurred and spec-ulated that either an earthquake set offthe ultimate collapse or the collapsecaused an earthquake, thereby puttingin play the forces Marinatos thoughtcaused the damage on Crete.

Doumas’ solution cleverly accountsfor the pertinent facts. It explains howthe eruption caused the abandonmentof Akrotiri and the ash fall on Crete inone era and the destruction of structureson Crete in another era. Despite itscleverness, this theory seems basedmore on a hope that the millions of tonsof rock forming the roof of the magmachamber had stayed put while ash-cov-ered Minoans developed Late Minoan1B pottery styles rather than on anygeological reason. Doumas soon aban-doned this theory because the consid-ered opinion of volcanologists who havelooked at the timing of the collapse ofthe roof of the volcano is that it occurredsometime during the final two phases ofthe eruption and not thereafter.

Yet in all these efforts to reconcile the

pottery and the eruption, one thing ismissing: the date of the eruption. Mari-natos had no independent proof on thesubject. He simply placed the eruptionwhere he thought it fit in the potterysequence. The dates of Minoan potteryeras have traditionally been derivedlargely by determining what Minoan pot-tery was extant during particular Egypt-ian dynastic periods. By the 1960’s, thismethod dated Late Minoan 1A to 1550-1500 B.C. and Late Minoan 1B to 1500-1450 B.C. If the eruption occurred at theend of Late Minoan 1A, the burial ofAkrotiri would be placed at 1500 B.C.

Far more precise dating methods areavailable, but the potentially most reli-able one used by archaeologists, radio-carbon dating, long proved frustrating.Testing of the structural beams in thehouses at Akrotiri might have yielded areasonably accurate date, but the buriedbeams have long since disintegrated.Into this void stepped two Americandendrochronologists, V. C. LaMarche,Jr. and Katherine Hirschboeck, whoexamined wood from California, notSantorini. Bristlecone pines from Cali-fornia’s White Mountains live up to5,000 years, and their growth rings canshow changes in weather. A massivevolcanic eruption may cool the earth ifits ash spreads throughout the upperatmosphere, blocking the sun’s rays, orif the ash has a high sulfur content andcontributes to acid rain, which itself hasa cooling effect. Such cooling can causefrost damage to bristlecone pines that isobservable in their tree rings. WhenLaMarche and Hirschboeck examinedbristlecone pines for frost damage, theyfound nothing around 1500 B.C. but atelltale frost ring at 1627 B.C., potential-ly connected to the Santorini eruption.

This new dating caused a stir amongAegean archeologists. The problemLaMarche and Hirschboeck created isnot only that they dated the Santorinieruption more than one century earlierthan previously thought but that this newdate called into question the accuracy ofthe entire dating of the Late Minoan eraand, by implication, the accuracy of long-accepted Egyptian dates.

LaMarche and Hirschboeck drew animmediate response from Peter Warren,a professor of history and archaeology atthe University of Bristol in England.Warren questioned the predictive valueof frost rings because, based on informa-tion LaMarche and Hirschboeck includ-

ed in their paper, volcanic eruptions donot always cause frost rings, which canalso be caused by other climate-chang-ing events. To this criticism, thedefenders of the 1627 B.C. dateresponded that there is no plausiblealternative explanation for the frost ringsthat year.

And so a new debate began and con-tinues with vigor. Two other possibleaids to dating the Santorini eruptionhave been found in Greenland ice coresand Anatolian tree rings. Volcanic ashrecovered from the ice cores has beendated to 1645 B.C., and Cornell profes-sor Peter Kuniholm, who heads theAegean Dendrochronology Project, dis-covered a growth anomaly in Anatoliantree rings that is from around that samedate. But whether the ash recovered inGreenland came from the Santorinieruption is disputed, and the Anatoliantree ring anomaly, like the bristleconepine frost rings, has not been tied defin-itively to the Santorini eruption.

The latest efforts at radiocarbon dat-ing, bolstered by the recovery on San-torini in 2002 of the branch of an olivetree that was buried alive during theeruption, tend to support a date of 1628B.C. But the accuracy of radiocarbondating of plant specimens that grewnear an active volcano is made difficultbecause of the possibility that theplants, while living, took up carbondioxide emitted by the volcano. Carbonfrom volcanic sources tends to be low inC14 and can skew the results of radiocar-bon dating by making a sample appearolder than it really is. Thus, radiocarbondating results based on Santorinisources are unlikely to settle definitive-ly the timing of the eruption of the San-torini volcano.

The viability of Marinatos’ theorywould be further strained if the support-ers of a seventeenth century B.C. erup-tion date ultimately prove correct. Thatcan be seen from an attempt by SturtManning, a classics professor now atCornell University, to try to figure outnew dates for the Minoan eras based onan eruption before 1600 B.C. Manningconcludes that the Late Minoan era wasmuch longer than previously thought,with Late Minoan 1A extending from1700 to 1600 B.C. and Late Minoan 1Bfrom 1600 to 1490 B.C. Marinatos’ claimthat the Mycenaean ascendance in Cretewas related to the Santorini eruptionlooks more plausible if the Mycenaeanstook over in a matter of years or decadesafter the eruption, not if more than onehundred years passed between the erup-tion and Mycenaean dominance.

THE MINOAN TSUNAMI, PART II continued from page 13

14

For all the criticisms Marinatos’ theo-ry has received, some variations of itstill have believers, partly because noother explanation for the demise of theMinoan civilization has gained universalacceptance. But many, including Vital-iano, have fallen back on an earlier the-ory that the final blow to Crete camefrom an earthquake. After his final effortto defend Marinatos’ theory failed,Doumas came to believe, twenty-fiveyears ago, that the destruction wascaused by pirates who were known toraid the Cyclades Islands during thistime. Still, the supporters of a volcanoconnection have shown the ability tocome up with new ways to make itwork. University of Hawaii geologistFloyd McCoy thinks that the eruptioncaused damage not only because of atsunami but long thereafter because ofthe ash from the volcano, which spreadout in the upper atmosphere, changingthe climate and leaving a legacy ofruined harvests. Other archaeologiststhink the eruption undermined theauthority of the ruling priestly class,possibly to the point of civil war.

Until someone convincingly putstogether all the somewhat contradictoryinformation that has been generated bythe efforts to prove or disprove Mari-natos’ theory, we can expect one formor another of the theory to have adher-ents. The image of a peaceful islandcivilization washed away by a tsunami istoo powerful to give up.

Further Reading:Philip P. Betancourt. The History of

Minoan Pottery (1985).Christos Doumas. Thera: Pompeii of the

Aegean: Excavations at Akrotiri, 1967-79 (1983).

Walter Friedrich. Fire in the Sea. TheSantorini Volcano: Natural History andthe Legend of Atlantis (2000).

Sturt W. Manning. A Test of Time: TheVolcano of Thera and the chronology andhistory of the Aegean and east Mediter-ranean in the mid second millennium BC(1999).

Spyridon Marinatos. Crete and Mycenae(1960).

Dorothy B. Vitaliano. Legends of theEarth: Their Geologic Origins (1973).

James P. Rooney (jprooney@rcn.com) isan attorney in Boston who judges environ-mental cases for the state of Massachusetts.He is also a member of the adjunct faculty atNew England School of Law. An under-graduate course he took while attending Cor-nell University spurred his interest in thedemise of the Minoan civilization.

the company of friends, and to get their pri-orities straight, with wisdom outrankingconsumer goods and with good looksfalling behind magnanimity. This boy, andthe man he becomes, will be familiar toWise Guy’s young readers once theyencounter him again in Plato’s dialogues.Noticing a more ascetic and moralistic fig-ure in Plato and Xenophon, however, thesame readers may suspect that the booty-shaking dancer in a couple of Bramhall’sillustrations owes more to Anthony Quinn’sAlexis Zorba in the film Zorba the Greek(1964) than to the dour sage of Plato’sPhaedo. But it should be noted that not allof the ancient sources show Socratesdespising his body and “training for death”to the degree that Phaedo does.

Readers likely to have fun with WiseGuy and to learn from it are those who,while not quite up to Plato yet, read withsome confidence, and they will range inage from about eight to about twelve.Usher and Bramhall have cleverly accom-modated this audience by telling Socrates’story in two different ways concurrently.Each two-page spread gives Bramhallample space to show Socrates in the Athen-ian marketplace, a cobbler’s shop, the din-ing room, courtroom, or his jail cell. Atmost turns of a page, one finds, on the left,a simple narrative corresponding to theillustration and, on the right, longer expla-nations of the philosophical views of Plato’sSocrates, Greek cultural norms and values,and stories from the ancient biographicaltradition. Novice readers will be satisfiedwith the illustrations and shorter passages,

while more experienced ones will tend tokeep their eye on the right-hand page, andthe intermediates will be engaged by both.The longer commentaries, taken together,provide a fine succinct introduction toSocratic and Platonic thought. Usher doesnot draw attention to the elusive distinctionbetween the historical figure and Platonicprotagonist, but for readers old enough tobe troubled by this, the suggestions for fur-ther reading offer a quick entry into thecontroversy.

As we are reminded in an illustrationadapted from Raphael’s sixteenth-centurypainting School of Athens at the end of thebook, those who take Socrates seriously arein good company. Here illustrator Bramhallintroduces into the gathering of those inSocrates’ tradition men and women whomwe are encouraged at a young age toadmire, such as Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi,and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as thosewe only get to know later, such as SørenKierkegaard and Hannah Arendt. WiseGuy encourages young readers to imaginethat a posture of restless, rigorous inquisi-tiveness toward nature, society, and valuesmay lead to a rich, important, and evenjoyful life. This notion deserves as muchencouragement as we can give it.

Andrew Reece is a faculty member inClassical Studies at The Evergreen StateCollege in Olympia, Washington. His sonPhilip, a fifth-grade student at L. P. BrownElementary in Olympia, contributed to thisreview.

Book Review: Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socratescontinued from page 3

Amphora for Everyone! Roundtable at theAnnual Meeting in ChicagoSaturday, January 5, 2008, 12:00 noon-1:30 p.m., Grand Ballroom B

A s Amphora enters its seventh volume, a new editor (T. Davina McClain)and a new assistant editor (Diane Johnson) will try to build on the wonder-

fully successful work of Anne-Marie Lewis, the outgoing editor. We, therefore,want to offer the APA membership an opportunity to talk directly with usabout what you like about Amphora, what you would like to see in futureissues, how we can encourage more submissions, and how we can continue tomake Amphora more accessible to our target audience – those who are interest-ed in the ancient world but are not necessarily specialists. Please drop by ourtable!

15

Elizabeth Friedmann. A Mannered Grace:The Life of Laura (Riding) Jackson. PerseaBooks (http://www.perseabooks.com/ManneredGrace.html), 2005. Pp.571.Hardcover $37.50. ISBN 0-89255-300-6.

Elizabeth Friedmann undertakes a daunt-ing endeavor in A Mannered Grace,

her magisterial, authorized biography ofthe iconoclastic American poet and thinkerLaura (Riding) Jackson (1901-1991). Merelypresenting the life of this maligned and mis-understood literary figure, referred to hereas Laura Riding (see Fig. 11), sympatheti-cally and even-handedly, posed challengesenough. But Friedmann also succeedsadmirably in making Riding’s writing –which is far from easy reading – accessibleto a non-specialist audience.

Riding’s life story and writings hold spe-cial interest for classicists. She lived andcollaborated for many years with the Britishauthor Robert Graves (1895-1985), adevotee of Greco-Roman antiquity whosebooks and translations have long figured inthe classics curriculum. Furthermore, Ridingstudied Latin seriously, read Greek litera-ture in translation voraciously, and repeat-edly evoked the classical world in her writ-ings. Her alma mater, Cornell University,now houses her papers in part because ofthe favorable impressions she formed of itsclassicists, among them the eminent authorityon classical rhetoric, Harry Caplan (1896-1980).

Quoting from Riding’s correspondence,Friedmann relates that when Riding arrivedat Cornell from her native Manhattan in1918, “after her strenuous application toCharles Edwin Bennett’s Latin Grammarduring high school, Laura was delighted tofind the distinguished Professor Bennett ‘ahappy Latinist’ with considerable passionfor his subject.” A reminiscence Ridingwrote for the Cornell alumni magazine in1983, Friedmann notes, fondly recalls bothBennett and Professor Lane Cooper, whosemany scholarly specialties included Platoand Aristotle (20).

Friedmann identifies Caplan, a friend ofRiding’s during those undergraduate years,

as a “young instructor who was to becomea distinguished professor of classical studiesat Cornell.” In a 1985 letter, Riding remi-nisced that Caplan “delighted in findingfamous names in history who [like himselfand Riding] were Jewish . . . and alsotelling Jewish jokes” (24). His pride in hisJewish identity, at times in the face of anti-Semitic prejudice, contrasts with Riding’sown attitude toward her Jewish back-ground. Believing, in the name of truth anduniversality, that freedom of thought musttranscend the constraints of ethnicity, nation-ality, and even gender, she did not publiclyidentify as a Jew, religiously or culturally,and abandoned her birth name of Reichen-thal in favor of Riding in the early 1920’s.

A Mannered Grace establishes that Rid-ing was involved as soon as Robert Graveswas, and as much as Graves was, inemploying the lens of the classical past inher writing, particularly when reflecting onwomen and their relationship to language.Classical references abound in Riding’s ear-liest poems, written soon after her first mar-riage to the historian Louis Gottschalk in1920, long before she met Graves. Indeed,Friedmann states that Laura chose the nameRiding to “embrace the symbolism and poet-ic tradition of Pegasus while declaring her-self the master of the Muses’ beast [and]aspirant to the poet’s immortality” (30).

Soon after changing her name, Fried-mann observes, Riding sought out andbecame the lover of Allen Tate. A magnacum laude classics graduate of VanderbiltUniversity, and occasional Latin teacher, hewas at that time the associate editor of TheFugitive, the journal that published Riding’s

first poem, awarded her its Nashville Prize in1924, and promptly added her name to itsmasthead. It was through John Crowe Ran-som, one of the other young Southern poetswhose verses filled the journal’s pages, thatshe attracted Robert Graves’ notice in 1925.By that time, she had divorced Gottschalkand was living in Greenwich Village nearTate and his new wife.

Immediately after relocating to Englandin January 1926, at the invitation ofGraves and his then-wife, Riding traveled toEgypt with the Graves family while hetaught in Cairo. There he helped edit herfirst book of poetry, The Close Chaplet,published in both the U. K. and U. S. andenthusiastically reviewed by, among others,her former lover Allen Tate. Upon resettlingin England, she and Graves left his wifeand four children in their home nearOxford and relocated to London to write ASurvey of Modernist Poetry, published in1927. In this book, Friedmann argues,Graves and Riding’s close reading of e.e.cummings’ poem “Sunset” helped to lay thefoundations of what would be called “theNew Criticism,” although later scholarshave not accorded them sufficient credit inthis regard.

Biographical and critical studies ofGraves readily acknowledge that Ridinginfluenced Graves’ writings, in particularhis two novels about ancient Rome, I,Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God(1935), and his non-fictional books aboutwomen in Greek mythic thought and poeticcreativity, chief among them The WhiteGoddess (1948). Friedmann, moreover,illuminates the interconnections between theworks of Riding and Graves and docu-ments how Riding’s influence has been dis-counted and misconstrued.

In demonstrating Riding’s originality asa thinker, especially on both classical anti-quity and women’s place in the universe,Friedmann pays close heed to Riding’s cor-respondence, poetry, fiction, and essaysfrom her years with Graves, focusing onthose from 1929-1939, when the couplelived in Majorca. Most notable among Rid-ing’s non-fiction works at this time is TheWord “Woman,” which was left unfinishedwhen Riding departed from Spain and onlyrediscovered by Graves’ second wife intheir attic, several decades later. Finallypublished in 1993, it questions mythic defi-

Book Review: A Mannered Grace: The Life of Laura (Riding) Jacksonby Judith P. Hallett

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Riding’s life story and writings hold

special interest for classicists.

nitions of women that silence their voicesand constrain their identities. As Friedmanndocuments and Riding herself claimed, TheWhite Goddess owes much to its ideas.

While living on Majorca, Riding alsopublished two novels of her own aboutclassical antiquity: A Trojan Ending (1937)and Lives of Wives (1939). The former,about the last days of Troy, centers on thecharacter of Cressida, beloved of the Tro-jan prince Troilus. Riding jettisons Cressi-da’s image in Chaucer’s poem (“Troilusand Criseyde”) and Shakespeare’s play(Troilus and Cressida) as a faithless, shal-low object of men’s lust, ascribing to herastute analytical powers and principled,self-assertive conduct. The latter novel caststhe ancient past and such personages asAristotle, Alexander, and Herod the Greatin an unconventional light because, in Rid-ing’s words, “the principal male charactersare here written of as husbands rather thanas heroes” (314).

In examining the criticisms leveled atLaura Riding and her work, Friedmanncalls attention to two 1970 essays assess-ing Riding’s poetry in the British periodicalThe Review: one by Roy Fuller, then theOxford Professor of Poetry; the other byMartin Seymour-Smith, who would publisha biography of Graves in 1982. Eachassociates Riding with divinity, albeit differ-ently. Fuller’s essay praises Riding’s intel-lectual gifts stating, “someone has said thatthe White Goddess [Graves’ image of thefemale deity who inspires poetry] is a thindisguise for Laura Riding” to honor heralleged role as Graves’ divine muse. Sey-mour-Smith, however, assails her personal-ly, describing her work as “its author’s pos-tulation of . . . herself as God.” He also dis-misses Riding’s renunciation of poetry afterher marriage to Schuyler Jackson andreturn to the U. S. in the 1940’s, as sheeregomania.

Friedmann quotes from Riding’s corre-spondence with literary editors – in whichRiding characterizes the poem as “a relicof past ages . . . now socially incongru-ous”– to illuminate Riding’s complex ration-ale for abandoning poetry writing, andeven refusing to allow the reprinting of herearlier poems (392). In addition to chal-lenging Seymour-Smith’s characterizationof Riding’s decision, Friedmann’s researchcontextualizes Seymour-Smith’s essay itself

as foreshadowing “the frenzy of Laura Rid-ing bashing for which character assassina-tion is much too mild a term,” launched byhis later biography of Graves (408). Whenapproached by Seymour-Smith in 1965,Riding had been unwilling to “concur with[his] harsh criticism of Robert Graves” orendorse his uncritical analysis “of her ideasand terms” about poetry (407). Hence shebroke off correspondence with him.

Friedmann also quotes a 1965 letter toRiding by Seymour-Smith, archived amongletters from Riding herself, that Seymour-Smith eventually sold. Here he threatensthat his biography of Graves will have totake into account the claims of “many peo-ple” that she wrote A Trojan Ending,“which was a flop, because she was jeal-ous of Graves’ success with I, Claudius.”He then accuses her of “being in love withpower” and “suffering from delusions” that,in Friedmann’s words, “people were tryingto appropriate her work” (407-408).

Sadly, Riding did little to combat the crit-icisms of her detractors. An impassionedconcern with women’s distinctive languageand perspectives looms large in her writ-ings. Yet she objected to having her poem“The Forgiven Past” in The Penguin Book ofWomen Poets, regarding “the separatistconcentration on women’s performances inliterature and the arts” as an offenseagainst the human dignity of women (444).By abandoning the manuscript of The

Word “Woman” and renouncing poetryitself, she removed herself and her thinkingfrom the public eye in the years whenGraves enjoyed immense literary renown.

Determining the extent of Riding’s influ-ence and collaboration with Gravesremains difficult. Their actual publishedworks cannot begin to record all that Rid-ing and Graves thought from 1926 through1939, as they read and edited eachother’s work, constantly exchanging ideas.By Friedmann’s estimate, for example, atleast 157 of the 331 pages in The Com-mon Asphodel (1949), a collection ofGraves’ essays on poetry, contain workwritten by Riding; 48 more contain essaysshe edited for Epilogue, a joint project theyinaugurated in 1933.

As the book’s prologue recounts, Fried-mann knew and assisted Riding in thedecade before her death in 1991. Whileshe sheds a clarifying light on the much-misunderstood Riding, she testifies, candid-ly, to her subject’s personal shortcomingsas well: Riding emerges from A ManneredGrace as demanding and difficult, spiritual-ly generous but self-absorbed, and intellec-tually uncompromising. Seven wordsencapsulate Riding’s credo: “Who lived fortruth and so lives.” They grace the head-stones of the graves that Riding andSchuyler Jackson now occupy, near whatwas once their commercial citrus farm inWabasso, Florida. The truth for which Rid-ing lived may be well beyond our grasp,but Friedmann has attempted to bring uscloser to it through her study of Riding’s lifeand influence.

Judith P. Hallett (jeph@umd.edu) is the2008-2012 APA Vice-President for Out-reach. Professor of Classics at the Universi-ty of Maryland, College Park, she teachesan honors seminar on Robert Graves’ I,Claudius novels and their adaptation forthe small screen by BBC-TV in 1976. Alonger version of this review is among therequired readings, and available from theauthor by request.

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Fig. 11. Laura Riding, photograph byWard Hutchinson.

Throughout my teaching career I have tried to developassignments that will encourage or oblige students toapproach course materials in ways that are personal and

original. An assignment in the myth course I taught at CarletonCollege required students to create, in any medium, their ownversion of one or more of the myths studied in the course. A2005 Willa Cather seminar at Williams College gave studentsthe option of writing an original piece in response to what theyhad found and admired in Cather’s fiction. My Williams courseon Greek and Roman drama requires both a ten-page termpaper and an original creation inspired by one or more playsread during the term.

As suggested by this last model, I have always assumed thatthese creative assignments should complement, not replace,more traditional critical and analytic approaches. And I havealways recognized that the original projects students producewill vary widely in intrinsic artistic merit. What I have foundover some forty years of experimenting with such assignments,however, is that almost invariably students take them seriouslyand become deeply involved in them. Instead of viewing thecourse materials from the outside, attempting to come up with“the right answers,” with what the professor “is looking for,”students inhabit these materials, make them their own, findthemselves in them, transform them. Even those students whoresist initially, maintaining that “they are not creative” andbegging to be let off from these assignments, often admit sub-sequently that in working on them they have discovered tal-ents they did not know they had and have come to see not only

the materials of the course but even themselves in new andrevealing ways.

Among the most remarkable projects of this ilk I have everreceived is the short story that constitutes the heart of this arti-cle. Written in 2006 for our course on ancient drama, it repre-sents a student’s highly original response to Antigone, whomhe had encountered in plays we read by Sophocles, Anouilh,and Fugard. As in all the best such recreations, the author hasabsorbed his ancient myth or model so completely that whatemerges feels natural, inevitable, and self-contained, so muchso that without the story’s title one might not even suspect itsfirm roots in the tragic tale of Antigone. Given that title, how-ever, the reader finds powerful and moving resonances whichcolor the story and, in turn, make one see this familiar myth inways that recall Cesare Pavese’s comments on his ownencounter with ancient myth: “What is more acutely disturbingthan to see familiar stories troubled into new life?. . . Thesurest, and the quickest, way for us to arouse the sense of won-der is to stare, unafraid, at a single object. Suddenly – miracu-lously – it will look like something we have never seen before”(Foreword to Dialogues with Leucò, 1965).

The author, Godfrey M. Bakuli, is an African American whograduated from Williams in 2007 with majors in both historyand economics. During the term in which he wrote“Antigone,” he was elected president of the Williams studentbody, a position he occupied with great distinction into thespring term of his senior year.

INTRODUCTION: A NEW ANTIGONEby David H. Porter

ANTIGONEby Godfrey M. Bakuli

She remembered exactly how herfather had taught her. Her body

wrapped tightly around a tree branchthat jutted out high above the ground,the memory of her first tree-climbinglesson was one of only two thoughtssteadying the girl. The lesson happenedmany years ago. He had taught her thatshe had to first plot her path before sheeven stepped toward the tree. She hadto keep focused on her destination, lethands and feet do the climbing, and notworry about limbs breaking beneathher.

“There is nothing below you worthseeing that you cannot feel with yourfeet,” he had once said. He pointed athis own, still swollen beneath his shoesfrom a barefoot youth spent scaling therough bark of elms and dogwoods. “Youcan never waver – never lose sight ofthe branch you want to bring yourselfto. Life is lived at its fullest by thedogged and the able, and you had dog-

gone better believe any child of mine isable.”

She remembered his words as thoughright before the ascent he had stood tallat her rear and whispered them warmlyinto her ear. As if she again were a childand had drawn her hair back into a tightponytail, she hugged the smooth, paletrunk with her soft arms and knees, andshimmied up the old tree for the firsttime.

She remembered that first climbvividly. How quickly and assuredly shehad hoisted herself to a branch withininches of the one she had set her sightson, and how it had been slightly out ofreach. Standing on tiptoes to extendherself, she instead skinned a largepiece of bark off the branch. She wob-bled, yet regained balance by spreadingher arms apart and bowing her kneeslike a gymnast.

Had the girl’s father not been stand-ing on the ground below, looking upand saying not to look down, she mayhave done so, and may have seen thepiece of bark fall and break into halves.But the sound of it thumping against

the tree’s exposed roots was the onlyproof she needed that she had neverbeen that high before. Tonight – yearslater – the girl was even higher. It wasjust like old times, as though historywere repeating itself, except on thisnight there was no audience to witnessthe ascent.

She was perched high above theearth in dark woods miles away from thenearest plantation. The reddened fin-gers of her right hand held a huntingknife that slowly but unshakablygnawed at a thick rope knotted aroundthe branch. She had reached her desti-nation, but now focused on seeing therope’s threads split and its ends fall tothe earth.

Aside from childhood memories ofher father, one other thought steadiedher. A thought that had led to a silentsupplication before she scaled the tree.That thought concerned the body of theman at the other end of the rope.

The brown body of a young manwhose crooked neck cocked to his right,mouth gaped open, and unblinking eyesbulged out of their sockets. The white

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shirt he wore was crusted crimson withhis own blood. His lifeless body –bound and helpless before mosquitoes –dangled silently in the darkness asthough it were submerged in a thick,black oil suspending everything.

The hanged man had always beengentle with the girl and kind to her fam-ily, especially after her father died. Bornto an unseen white father, he and histwin sister had lived close by the girl onher family’s large plantation, where hismother worked as a maid. As the teethof the knife bit into the rope, pleasantmemories of time spent with the mulat-to calmed the girl.

She remembered the foot races theyall had as children, the streams theysplashed through, and the nights whenthey would lie on their backs and stareup at the stars. How her brother and themulatto used to playfully claw at eachother’s throats in the front yard, actingout the vengeance of the gods in theGreek tragedies her father read to thechildren, as if they were all his own. Shealso remembered how, with time, segre-gating social etiquette had strangled thechildhood friendship between herbrother and the mulatto. The girl hadremained close to the mulatto siblings,though. She wailed when she learned ofyesterday’s events – how the mulattohad killed her brother in a vicious fightafter finding her brother forcing himselfonto the mulatto’s sister.

She wanted to hate her brother’skiller, but her brother’s actions repulsedher even more. He had never broughthimself to believe the family secret,even though it was common to mostSouthern plantations.

For the murder of a white man towhom he was indebted, Klansmenhanged the mulatto’s body from thebeech tree. They then decreed thenight before that the body of the bas-tard mulatto was never to be cut down.He would dangle in these desertedwoods alone until the sun had rotted hisskin away and the tree – having fed onhis flesh – dropped his bones to theground. But the girl could not let thishappen.

The mulatto sister had cautioned thegirl from approaching the body and agi-tating the Klan. She wanted the bodyburied but she would not help, fearingfor her own safety and the reputation ofthe girl.

“Wouldn’t my brother have done thesame thing to my aggressor if the situa-tion had been different?” the girl ques-tioned the sister, encouraging her tohelp. “If there are any consequences,

I’ll face them alone. I won’t let the Klanbuild a kingdom in my conscience.”

The knife finally cut through therope. The limp body dropped from itssuspension in midair and thumpedagainst the tree’s roots.

Two thoughts were still on the girl’smind: how her father had taught her toclimb trees, and safely burying the bodyof the man whom she had always helddear. She was perched high above theearth in a dark forest miles away fromthe nearest person. She had reached herdestination, but she would not stopuntil she had buried the man.

She used sweaty palms to raise herupper body and push herself back downthe branch. Stopping in mid-movement,she wobbled. Had the girl’s father beenstanding on the ground below her, look-ing up and saying not to look down, shemay have avoided doing so, and mayhave not seen the lifeless body on theground beneath her, neck and head sev-ered from the torso. But he was notthere to say those words, and she couldnot look away. She slipped from whereshe sat and fell the long way to theground. The sharp crook of a root shat-tered her ribs.

Clutching one hand to her chest, shecrawled over to the man and coveredhim with fallen leaves. She curled upnext to his body, feeling its cold seepinto her. She stared up at the stars.

It was just like old times, as thoughhistory were repeating itself.

David H. Porter (ddodger@skidmore.edu)is Harry C. Payne Visiting Professor of Lib-eral Arts at Williams College. Prior to com-ing to Williams in 1999, he taught classicsand music at Carleton College (1962-1987)and was president of Carleton in 1986-1987 and of Skidmore College from 1987-1999. He has written books on GreekTragedy and on Horace and two mono-graphs on Virginia Woolf, and has a bookon Willa Cather forthcoming in 2008.

Godfrey M. Bakuli (godfreybakuli@gmail.com) grew up in Amherst, Massachu-setts and graduated from Williams Collegein 2007 with a degree in History and Eco-nomics. He currently lives and works inNew York City.

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(ISSN 1542-2380) ispublished twice a yearby the American

Philological Association (APA). The APA,founded in 1869 by “professors, friends,and patrons of linguistic science,” is nowthe principal learned society in NorthAmerica for the study of ancient Greekand Roman languages, literatures, and civ-ilizations. While the majority of its mem-bers are university and college classicsteachers, members also include scholars inother disciplines, primary and secondaryschool teachers, and interested lay people.The APA produces several series of schol-arly books and texts and the journal Trans-actions of the American Philological Associa-tion. It holds an annual meeting each Janu-ary in conjunction with the ArchaeologicalInstitute of America.

All of the APA’s programs are ground-ed in the rigor and high standards of tradi-tional philology, with the study of ancientGreek and Latin at their core. However,the APA also aims to present a broad viewof classical culture and the ancientMediterranean world to a wide audience.In short, the APA seeks to preserve andtransmit the wisdom and values of classicalculture and to find new meanings appro-priate to the complex and uncertain worldof the twenty-first century.

The APA’s activities serve one or moreof these overarching goals:• To ensure an adequate number of

well-trained, inspirational classicsteachers at all levels, kindergartenthrough graduate school;

• To give classics scholars and teachersthe tools they need to preserve andextend their knowledge of classical civ-ilization and to communicate thatknowledge as widely as possible;

• To develop the necessary infrastruc-ture to achieve these goals and to makethe APA a model for other societiesconfronting similar challenges.

The APA welcomes everyone who sharesthis vision to participate in and support itsprograms. All APA members receiveAmphora automatically as a benefit ofmembership. Non-members who wish tosubscribe to Amphora (for a very modestannual subscription fee of $10 U. S. in theU. S. and Canada for two issues; $15 else-where) may use the online non-membersubscription form at http://www.apaclas-sics.org/outreach/amphora/Nonmember_Subs_Form.pdf. Nonmembers who wishfurther information about the APA maywrite to The American Philological Associ-ation, 292 Logan Hall, University ofPennsylvania, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadel-phia, PA 19104-6304, apaclassics@sas.upenn.edu. The APA Web site iswww.apaclassics.org.

Members attending meetings of ormaking presentations to interested nonmem-bers are urged to request sample copies ofAmphora from the APA office for distributionto these audiences.

®

had barely escaped being crushed by afalling tree) to a meditation upon thecapacity of poetry to transcend mortality.

Subsequent publication in 2005 ofthe thirteen broken lines of a thirdpoem on the Cologne papyri, obviouslynot by Sappho but closely linked to thetwo preceding texts, has complicateddebate as experts attempt to determineits content and define relationshipswithin the whole poetic sequence. Theoriginal editors, Gronewald and Daniel,noted that the third piece is written in ahand different from that of the two Sap-phic lyrics. Its metre, although itselfuncertain, cannot be one that Sapphowould have employed, and its dialect isnot Sappho’s Aeolic Greek. Yet thereare obvious echoes of Sappho’s lan-guage, especially in its first lines, “Whis-per-weaving, deceitful, deviser of tales, /plotting boy . . . / companion, I stealaway.” The run of descriptive adjectivesin the vocative case recalls the begin-ning of Sappho’s ode to Aphrodite,“Parquet-throned immortal Aphrodite, /child of Zeus, trick-weaver . . .” (fr. 1).

After the opening line, more than halfthe poem is lost on the right-hand side,and what remains is puzzling: referencesto the light of the stars and the blazingsun; to Orpheus [whom] all beasts [fol-lowed?]; to a lyre, probably modified bythe adjectives “lovely” and “well-sounding”; and, finally, to a female hav-ing a helper. Is this an exchangebetween two singers, or a woman’s com-plaint about her lover? Why is Orpheusmentioned? At present, these are unan-swered questions. Still, the reference toOrpheus, the supreme musician, andthe final emphasis upon the lyre indi-cate that the theme of song was fore-grounded in this poem and that Sap-pho’s works were somehow linked to it.

The last few years have been banneryears for papyrologists. Several excitingnew finds have recently been published– the “New Simonides,” the “NewEmpedocles,” the “New Posidippus.”Those texts have greatly changed theway classicists think about archaic andHellenistic Greek poetry. But, as a dis-covery, the “New Sappho” is in a cate-

gory by itself. It poses fascinating prob-lems of textual transmission and inter-pretation, yes, but its Tithonus poem isalso a compelling artistic statement – asWest pronounced it, “a small master-piece.” Because it captures humanexperience perfectly, because it is sorich in feeling yet so understated, it willdoubtless soon be anthologized andtaught in all Humanities survey coursesas part of the classical canon. To thechildren of our current students, it willbe a familiar school text. For us, itsemergence is still incredible.

Marilyn B. Skinner (mskinner@u.ari-zona.edu) is Professor of Classics at the Uni-versity of Arizona in Tucson. She has pub-lished two monographs and an edited collec-tion of essays on the Roman poet Catullusand produced both a textbook and a co-edited essay collection on aspects of ancientsexuality. She has also written numerousarticles and book chapters on Latin andGreek authors, including Sappho and theHellenistic women poets Corinna, Erinna,Anyte, Nossis, and Moero. She served as oneof the two organizers of a well-attendedpanel on the “New Sappho” at the 2007APA annual meeting in San Diego and ispresently co-editing a collection of the manypapers on Sappho presented at that meeting.

Dr. Jonathan Shay, clinical psychiatristand author of Achilles in Vietnam (1995)and Odysseus in America (2002), hasbeen named a 2007 MacArthur Fellow bythe John D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation for his use of the Iliad andOdyssey in his work with combat veterans.(See Dr. Shay’s article on Homer and mili-tary leadership in Amphora 2.2, availableat www.apaclassics.org.)

You can find Greek and Latin at Walt Dis-ney World in Florida. At the MGM themepark, in the waiting area for the Muppets’show, you will find BANANVM IN AVREHABEO as the caption on a picture ofFozzie Bear who, in fact, has a bananain his ear. At Epcot, you can hear Greekand Latin spoken on the ride SpaceshipEarth. At the Magic Kingdom, in the grave-yard outside the Haunted Mansion, (some-times bad) Latin graces the tombstones.

Suzanne Vega’s 1994 CD SolitudeStanding contains Homeric references intwo songs: “Calypso” offers the perspectiveof the goddess who loved Odysseus and lethim go because it was what he wanted.“Wooden Horse” refers to a wooden horsethat “became alive,” perhaps recalling thetrick of the wooden horse filled with livesoldiers who took Troy.

Classicist and former APA President, ElaineFantham, is appearing in radio ads forJameson’s Irish Whiskey. The labelsports the motto SINE METU, and theannouncer seeks out a Latin expert, ElaineFantham, to translate the motto, whichmeans “without fear.” The announcer evensuggests that Jameson’s popularity might beattributed to having Latin on its label.

J. P. Losman, who started at quarterbackfor the National Football League BuffaloBills, earned a B.A. in classical studies fromTulane University.

The ill-fated Apollo XIII (see Fig. 12) wasthe only lunar mission to have a Latinmotto: EX LUNA, SCIENTIA, “from themoon comes knowledge.” For the missioninsignia, see http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-13/apollo-13.html.

Did You Know…

Fig. 12. “Odyssey On Deck,” aboard theU. S. S. Iwo Jima. Recovery of the Apol-lo XIII Command Module after splash-down on April 17, 1970. Photo Source:NASA Center, Johnson Space Center,Image # S70-35632, GRIN DataBaseNumber: GPN-2000-001105.

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WHAT’S NEW IN SAPPHO STUDIES: THE COLOGNE PAPYRIcontinued from page 3

Matthew L. Hunter. Jason and Medea: AWhirlwind of Ruin. iUniverse. (www.iuni-verse.com), 2005. Pp. 226. Paperback$18.95. ISBN 0-595-34321-X.

In his preface, Matthew L. Hunter observesthat people watch so much film and televi-

sion these days that they no longer havethe ability to read a book and use theirimaginations. On the other hand, headmits, we have become a much more visu-al culture because of this same reliance ontelevision and film. In order to balancethese opposing qualities, Hunter has creat-ed a striking new format for his book, Jasonand Medea: A Whirlwind of Ruin. Byselecting from plays, film, and even televi-sion, Hunter creates what he terms a visual“mind play” (ix) for the reader to explorethe myth of Jason and Medea.

Instead of a novel, the result is a uniquemixture of stage play and screenplay. Onthe first page, Hunter includes a cast list ofnearly a hundred characters. In place ofchapters, the story is told in over fiftyscenes, each introduced by expositorystage/scene directions that help the readervisualize both location and action. Insteadof using a traditional narrative prose, thecharacters interact through theatrical dia-logue and soliloquies. Although Hunter’sformat looks like a script on the page, hedoes not intend for it to be staged (at thevery least, it would be cost prohibitive tohire a hundred actors!); rather, he has cre-ated this format to make the story feel inter-active and immediate.

The book is divided into two acts. ActOne (scenes 1-45b) covers the same groundthat Apollonius of Rhodes covers in the Arg-onautica, but within his unique format,Hunter is able to use his imagination to adddepth and ornamentation to the myth. Allthe familiar adventures occur, but Huntermakes sure we see some of the lesser-knownadventures as well. The boxing matchbetween the Argonaut Polydeukes and theKing of the Bebryces is reminiscent of theslow-motion slugfest scenes in films like Rag-ing Bull (1980), where blood and teeth aresprayed everywhere whenever a punch hitshome. The early life of Medea is also intro-duced in Act One, and the courtship

between Medea and Jason is entwined withthe Argonauts’ adventures. The first act endswith the Argonauts’ arrival in Greece, andthe second act (scenes 1-9) picks up thestory ten years later in Corinth, echoing theplot of Euripides’ Medea.

Hunter creates a cast of complex andmemorable characters. It is not only Jasonand Medea who leap from the page.Hunter’s storytelling is so detailed that eventhe most minor players have a story arc.For example, each Argonaut emerges witha distinct personality. Telamon is a braverleader than Jason, and Polyphemus (theman, not the Cyclops) is the most treacher-ous man aboard the Argo. In severalscenes, these two balance each other withan almost comic effect. After Polyphemushas bludgeoned a young boy in anambush, Telamon disapprovingly remarks:“You seem to have practice striking chil-dren,” to which Polyphemus replies, “Theyare of better use when silent” (134). Asense of connection with the Argonautsgrows from such details and deepens ouremotional investment in the story.

As successfully as Hunter creates realcharacters, however, it is often hard to takethem seriously because of their stilted dia-logue and bizarre turns of phrase. His nine-teenth-century language and vocabularyare meant to help the reader imagine howthe ancient Greeks might have spoken andacted. Unfortunately, these ancient Greeksoften sound like melodramatic soap-operacharacters. Hunter is also somewhat overlypreoccupied with bodily fluids in many ofhis descriptions. He writes, for example, “A king, slimy with the mucous of sin, madeamends” (27) and “Like the mucous thatruns in winter, it will pass” (121).

That said, some of Hunter’s strongestand most descriptive writing is in hisstage/scene directions, and here he is athis cinematographic best. His descriptionsof battle scenes are especially graphic, andfor the reader with affection for thegrotesque, they will be quite thrilling. Forexample, in the scene directions describingthe Argonauts’ onslaught against the Lemni-ans, Hunter writes:

Herakles smashes into the head of a mantrying to flee. His great club through

crushing force exposes the splinters ofbone, grey matter of brain and redbloody pulp. The eyes of the man areburst or burgeoned forward, held to theman’s face by the optic chord. The jaw isbroken apart too, lips or cheeks nowuncover teeth and the mandible sits askewon the man’s damaged face. (43)

Although some scene directions can bewordy, Hunter can also be quite succinctwhen describing action. “The Argonauts setthemselves a hard pace. In unison, theystroke their oars into the sea and propel theArgo. They need little guidance. The Argocuts the seas” (64). This sentence style sug-gests a film-editing technique called the“jump cut,” where things happen in a dis-jointed, rapid-fire style. With this effectHunter creates a sense of urgency that pro-pels the story forward.

Jason and Medea: A Whirlwind of Ruinis a creative teaching tool for high-school orcollege students taking an introduction tomyth course. Since the story is so actionpacked, it is an excellent complement to theprimary texts. No previous knowledge ofthe myth is required, so the reader can takethe story on its own terms. Hunter’s is ahighly visual tale and will surely bring newreaders into the world of ancient epic andtragedy.

Laura Lippman (laura.lippman@yahoo.com) holds an M.F.A. in Directingfrom Carnegie Mellon University. She is aprofessional director and educator and iscurrently teaching audition technique anddevised theater classes at Rollins College.Laura has collaborated on the developmentof new work for over a decade. Her proj-ects have headlined at The PhiladelphiaFringe Festival, The Churnuchin Theater inNew York City, and The Marsh Theater inSan Francisco. Last year, Laura served asthe Assistant Director on the APA produc-tion of Aristophanes’ Birds in San Diego. In2008, she will direct Suffer Fools Gladlyfor the Deland Theater Festival and willteam up with her husband Mike to directEuripides’ Cyclops for the 2008 APAmeeting in Chicago.

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Book Review: Jason and Medea: A Whirlwind of Ruinby Laura Lippman

volumes of law and learning on whichtwo eagles, the symbol of our nation’sstrength, are perched, guarding my recon-figured “Legislative Muse/Scribe.” She islooking away from the law she has justwritten as if to ponder its integrity anddurability over time.

I am only hinting here at the widevariety of influences, inspirations, andreconstructed themes with which Iattempted to tell the story of the Leg-islative branch in a concise and under-standable way. The tangible result ofmy efforts has been my 2006 AmericanEagle Platinum “Legislative Muse,”but the process of accessing an amalgamof many different influences, artifacts,and manifestations from ancient to pres-ent day is the essence of what is soexciting for me.

Similarly, in creating the images of thesecond president of the United States,John Adams, for the Presidential $1Coin, I conducted the usual amount ofbackground research, such as readingbiographies, contemporary accounts innewspapers and journals, and Adams’ let-ters to his intellectual equal and belovedwife Abigail in order to get a sense of theman. I also studied portraits of Adams byGilbert Stewart and John Trumbull.

I was especially drawn to Trumbull’s1793 portrait of Adams, which hangs inthe Smithsonian’s National PortraitGallery. I also looked at Trumbull’smural, The Declaration of Independence,which was placed in the Rotunda of theCapitol in 1826. I chose Trumbull’s por-trait of Adams as the prime model for myinterpretation, mostly because Adamsnot only sat for Trumbull but alsobecause he admired the artist as a patriotwho laid down his brush for the betterpart of a decade to serve as GeorgeWashington’s aide-de-camp (VivienGreen Fryd, Art and Empire: The Politicsof Ethnicity in the United States Capitol,1815-1860, 2001, 12-15). While prepar-ing my own portrait of Adams, I discov-ered that Trumbull had asked his goodfriends Thomas Jefferson and JohnAdams for a letter of recommendationwhen he was lobbying the architect ofthe Capitol, Benjamin Henry Latrobe,for a commission to paint the Rotundamurals.

At this point in the process, theFounders became, for me, living enti-ties. I saw them in real time, even

eavesdropped on their conversations asthey carved out both the governmentand the culture of the fledgling democ-racy. Adams revered art and poetry as acounterbalance to his practical, ambi-tious, and sometimes impatient, person-ality. He said to his son John Quincy,“you will never be alone with a poet inyour pocket” (David McCullough, JohnAdams, 2001, 260). He was also a scholarfully versed in the classics. He read theorations of Cicero, as well as otherRoman authors in Latin. In his retire-ment, he read (with the aid of Frenchtranslations) all of Plato in the originalGreek, which he considered thesupreme language (John Adams, 19).Adams was always a moral man to thecore. He risked his reputation in 1770 todefend in court the hated British troopswho had fired into a crowd of Americancolonists in Boston because he believedthat the soldiers deserved a defense. Ifound Adams to be thoroughly deserv-ing of Jefferson’s commendation of himas “the Colossus of Independence.” Iwas amazed to learn that Adams evenenvisioned future Independence Daycelebrations as times “of sports andparades and fireworks.” All these ele-ments that I encountered came from amyriad of sources – words, images,ideas, and period vignettes – and theyfound their way into my drawings ofAdams for the Presidential $1 Coin (seeFig. 13). As a result, they are ultimatelybased on, but quite different from,Trumbull’s likeness of the man.

In many ways now, I look upon mypast artistic work as a career-long prepa-ration for my current work as a public

artist for the United States Mint. I findmyself with a deeper appreciation of theancient worlds of classical Greece andRome. I feel, on an intensely personallevel, that I have become an active par-ticipant in images and ideas that havebeen continually tapped by visionaries,architects, and artists of the past whohave given form and substance to thehighest ideals of civilized governments.I am reminded daily of André Malraux’sLes Voix du Silence (1951) in which hespeaks of a “museum without walls”and says that the “time of art is not thetime of history.” Malraux’s concept of abrotherhood and sisterhood of artistsand their collective, collegial, and inti-mate communication, free of therestraints of time and distance, has newmeaning for me thanks to the opportu-nity I have had to create images forthese tiny pieces of monumental andvery public art and to send them ontheir journey through time.

Joel Iskowitz is a renowned Americanartist and lecturer whose work has graced thecovers of books, periodicals, journals, publicspaces, coins, and more than 3,000 philatelicdesigns issued by more than forty separatenations worldwide (see www.themountain-studio.com). In addition to the designs dis-cussed here, his design credits for coinageinclude the Presidential $1 Coin (released inNovember 2007) that features, on theobverse, James Madison, the fourth Presi-dent of the United States. Six more of hisminted designs will appear in 2008. Hethanks Susan Ford Wiltshire, ProfessorEmerita, Vanderbilt University, for her gen-erosity and encouragement, which led himoriginally to select Clio as the inspiration forwhat would evolve into his “LegislativeMuse.” He also thanks the masterful sculp-tors and engravers at the United States Mintfor their superb execution in bas-relief ofthese designs.

THE ANCIENT WORLD AND AMERICAN COINS:THE ARTISTIC INFUSION PROGRAM AT THEUNITED STATES MINT continued from page 6

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Coming in Future IssuesTeutoburg Revisited

Why Read Seneca the Younger?

Ancient Outreach

Translating Martial

Classics and Japan

A Tale of Two Brothers: Caracalla and Geta

Winners of the APA Comic Contest

Fig. 13. “John Adams.” Drawing for theobverse of the Presidential $1 Coin(2007). Designer: Joel Iskowitz (AIP).Sculptor: Charles Vickers. Used withpermission of the United States Mint.

(the genitive of Fawkes), as would be consis-tent with earlier appearances of this name. Iwould also offer one caveat to those readersof Latin whose grammatical instructioncomes from currently popular textbook seriessuch as the Cambridge Latin Course or EcceRomani. Needham uses the future passiveinfinitive throughout (for example, diruptumiri, 234), which is not taught in these text-books. Students who have learned Latin withthese texts may find this form confusing.While Needham’s syntax is readable, stu-dents may also be frustrated by unusualvocabulary, especially by words not found inauthors typically read in a high-school cur-riculum. Words such as stloppo (the Latinonomatopoetic word for “slap” or “pop”[65]), condylos (the transliterated Greek for“knuckles” [77]), and smaragdis (“emeralds”[247]) may require some dictionary work foreven the most advanced readers.

Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum issure to delight all readers of Latin from theadvanced high-school student to the profes-sional classicist. Needham’s translationoffers a valuable classroom alternative toancient Latin texts and provides the readerwith a rich classical vocabulary, clarity ofcomposition, a wealth of classical allusions,and an engaging, lively narrative.

Bryan C. Daleas (daleb001@hartford-schools.org) earned his B.A. in classics atHamilton College and his Ph.D. in classicalstudies at Indiana University. His publica-tions include contributions to World ErasVol. 3: Roman Republic and Empire 264BCE-476 CE (2001). He currently teachesLatin and Greek at the Classical MagnetSchool in Hartford, Connecticut.

Y ellow Submarine, released in the-aters in 1968 and re-released in1999, is a complex collaboration.

Episodes are built around songs by theBeatles, imaginative visuals by HeinzEdelmann, and the work of dozens ofanimators, with everything linked by ascreenplay credited to four writers,including Erich Segal.

Segal, then assistant professor of clas-sics at Yale University, is widelyacknowledged as the most importantscriptwriter for Yellow Submarine.Already known in theater circles, he wasnot yet famous for his novel Love Story(1970) and its film version, for which hewon a Golden Globe (Best Screenplay)and a nomination for an AcademyAward, both in 1971. Yellow Submarinealso appeared in the same year as RomanLaughter, a revision of his Harvard disser-tation and the first book in Englishdevoted solely to the comedy of Plautus.

Segal gave an overall epic flavor tothe screenplay by casting the Beatles asOdysseus-like figures who brave mon-sters and threatening seas in order torestore music and life to Pepperland.The Beatles see a “bi-cyclops” in theSea of Monsters, and upon arriving inPepperland, Paul says that they arenone the worse for their “adventures.”John adds, “Reminiscent in many waysof the late Mr. Ulysses [RomanOdysseus].”

In a world of white, the Beatles soonfind a little blue-faced creature typingfuriously. In this character, JeremyHillary Boob, Ph.D. (see Fig. 14), thehand of Segal the classicist is most evi-dent. Ringo decides that he is “probablyone of the nothings” who inhabit theplace, an identification that recallsOdyssey 9.366, where Odysseus, aftergetting the Cyclops Polyphemus drunk,identifies himself as Outis (Nobody).Ringo’s befriending of Jeremy is alsoreminiscent of Aeneid 3.588-683, whichdescribes the rescue of the unfortunateGreek Achaemenides, left behind byOdysseus on the island of the Cyclopes.

Jeremy speaks cryptically in rhymesprinkled with Latin: “Medic, pedic,zed oblique,/orphic, morphic, dorphic,Greek/Ad hoc, ad loc and quid proquo/So little time, so much to know.”When the Beatles ask where they are,he answers, “A true Socratic query,that.” He identifies himself as “eminentphysicist, polyglot classicist, prize-

winning botanist, hard-biting satirist,talented pianist, good dentist, too.”There is something of Socrates (especiallythe Socrates satirized in Aristophanes’Clouds) in Jeremy. He is witty, pedantic,and clever. He fixes the submarinemotor and writes the footnotes to hisnineteenth book (with his foot) whilereviewing it at the same time.

In a further play on Outis, Jeremy islinked to the song “Nowhere Man,”after which he joins the Beatles aboardthe sub. When it breaks down, he advises,“Repair, revive, revamp, renew/Ipsedixit, just turn the screw.” But like thestereotypical intellectual, he is impracti-cal: he neglects to get himself and theBeatles back inside before fixing thepropeller, and the sub sails off withoutthem.

Finally, like the heroes of the ancientepics and the historical Socrates (whofought for Athens at Potidaea,Amphipolis, and Delium), Jeremydemonstrates his warrior skills (whichhe gets from a book): “Left to the nos-tril, right uppercut,/right to the eye-brow, left to the gut.” His weapons,flowers, sprout from his wordplay –“Arise, arise, arouse, a rose./A rosynose?/. . . .Turn off what is sour,/turninto a flower and bloom, bloom.” Soeffective is his battle strategy that Ringocomments, “First time I saw thatNowhere Man, that nobody, I knew hewas somebody,” which reflectsOdysseus’ own reclaiming of his nameand property in Ithaca. At the end, it isJeremy who, atop the Blue Bird of Hap-piness, rises up to the big “YES,” ascene reflective both of Yoko Ono’sinteractive installation, “Ceiling Paint-ing” (Indica Gallery, London, 1966) andof Diotima’s ladder of love, described bySocrates in Plato’s Symposium 210a-212b.

Al Brodax, the film’s producer andone of its co-writers, has commentedthat Segal considered himself and Jere-my to be one and the same (Up PeriscopeYellow, 2004, 110). While Segal shapedJeremy as a comic parody of himself andfellow academics (R. Hieronimus, Insidethe Yellow Submarine, 236), it is easy tosee his affection for a creature who isable to move between the world of theacademic and that of the pop icon.

Anne-Marie Lewis, the Editor ofAmphora, teaches at York University inToronto, Ontario.

Book Review: HarriusPottercontinued from page 7

Parsing the Nowhere Manby Anne-Marie Lewis

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Fig. 14. Jeremy in theSea of Holes.Yellow Submarine,United Artists,1968.

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