Classical matters

Lord Lucan in disguise?

I saw a plug for a forthcoming book on Twitter this morning by an American academic called John Kyrin Schafer. 

He's about to publish a book about the Roman poet Catullus. 

That led me, on a whim, to his university website and this description of one of the courses he runs - '"Lucan Bellum Civile" - Readings in Latin Literature'.

That doesn't sound particularly scintillating, but then came the details of the module.

Strap yourself in Boris and let the Hans Zimmer soundtrack begin:

Once dismissed as second-rate bombast, Lucan's epic poem of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey has enjoyed a remarkable comeback: these days, "Lucan" is probably your average Latin hipster's expected answer to the question, "who's the best Roman poet?" From the time-delayed murderousness of his rhetoric and the shocking grossness of his violence to the eternal emptiness and infinite perversity of his world gone mad, Lucan's is an aesthetic of unremitting bleakness, and you'll love it. Extensive readings of his soul-scouring Latin.

Now that's how to sell a course!

Naturally I tried some Lucan and dived to the last book and Caesar and Cleopatra (and Ptolemy):

Now from the stream Pelusian of the Nile,
     Was come the boyish king, taming the rage
     Of his effeminate people: pledge of peace;
     And Caesar safely trod Pellaean halls;
     When Cleopatra bribed her guard to break
     The harbour chains, and borne in little boat
     Within the Macedonian palace gates,
     Caesar unknowing, entered: Egypt's shame;
     Fury of Latium; to the bane of Rome
70   Unchaste.  For as the Spartan queen of yore
     By fatal beauty Argos urged to strife
     And Ilium's homes, so Cleopatra roused
     Italia's frenzy.  By her drum she called
     Down on the Capitol terror (if to speak
     Such word be lawful); mixed with Roman arms
     Coward Canopus, hoping she might lead
     A Pharian triumph, Caesar in her train;
     And 'twas in doubt upon Leucadian waves
     Whether a woman, not of Roman blood,
80   Should hold the world in awe.  Such lofty thoughts
     Seized on her soul upon that night in which
     The wanton daughter of Pellaean kings
     First shared our leaders' couches.  Who shall blame
     Antonius for the madness of his love,
     When Caesar's haughty breast drew in the flame?

That last bit, in Latin (which I've never learned), is "quis tibi uaesani ueniam non donet amoris, Antoni, durum cum Caesaris hauserit ignis pectus?". I might try to learn that.

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Such Latin thoughts were also on the mind of this morning's Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4...though they came at the end.

More on that story later....

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#MeToo

The programme began with a surprisingly gentle interview with Sam Gyimah by my old favourite Paddy O'Connell.

Sam, as you may be aware, is the until-very-recently tax-slashing, ultra-Thatcherite, globalist, Brexit-disliking Tory leadership contender and potential Conservative PM who's now suddenly transformed himself, within the two-month wink of a butterfly's eye, into a Lib Dem MP (and who everyone, it seems, likes and thinks is a nice guy). He's now claiming that liberal Tory Boris (a socially liberal, pro-immigration, pro-public spending Tory) is far too right-wing for him.

I'd have liked Paddy to tease some of those contradictions out with Mr. Gyimah but such teasing-out never came.

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The BIG story though for BH was the David-Cameron-book-launch-related news.

This, after a tiny clip of Tim Waterstone spreading ordure over it, resulted in a weird discussion between former Labour spinmeister Ali Campbell (of 45 minutes/dodgy dossier/Dr David Kelly fame) and self-confessed Lib Dem voter Iain Dale, who were in almost total agreement about how great and important David Cameron's new book is - so much so that they kept on pointing out how much they agreed with each other.

Please allow me then to quote an alternative point of view, tweeted last night by Helena Morrissey DBE (any relation to THE Morrissey, who really ought to be knighted, then made PM?):

One of the many issues people have with the media & the BBC is the “news” is so often just about the predictable media/political bubble. BBC is paid for by taxpayers - how many taxpayers think the D Cameron book is the most important news for them? It is the lead story tonight.

I'm betting that D Cameron is going to be top news for the BBC all week. 

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Back to Latin matters and, after a later onslaught from Quango Queen Dame Louise Casey (who mounted a massive stallion over Boris's Hulk comments, as if humour shouldn't be permitted while homelessness exists on the streets of Britain), the programme climaxed in a mini-lecture from one of the BBC's highest profile experts, Prof. Mary Beard, on the uses and abuses of historical (especially Classical) references by politicians.

Despite promises that politicians across the spectrum fell under her scrutiny, only one politician was held up to the full glare of Prof. Mary's magnifying glass.

Can you guess who? (Clue: He has blond, tousled hair).

Mary Beard, courtesy of Radio 4, 'debunked' Boris three times over his "half truth" and "extremely conservative version of the ancient world".

The first, I think, she showed he didn't get quite right. The other two I think she didn't prove at all, beyond ringing a bell to signify her disagreement with PM Boris.

She also said she'd "been fighting for most of (her) life" against the impression that Latin and Greek is "something that Tories do". (Very Radio 4!).

Two Beards

The weirdest thing, despite Mary not noticing it, is that - despite Prof. Mary conceding that he was right on some thing - the errors made by "Johnson" 'prove' him to be a liberal Tory.

Yes, Mary conceded, Boris got it broadly right about Sparta being a xenophobic, militarist regime but, aha, he was so wrong about (approvingly) claiming that Athens had a "welcoming" approach to immigrants. Athens wasn't "welcoming" to outsiders, Prof. Mary said. And I believe her.

The second example was Boris contrasting Jesus Christ and the Emperor Augustus. Boris said that Augustus was "all about glory, competition and success" and Jesus Christ "believed in turning the other cheek and kindness and compassion" and, thus, appealed to women, slaves and the non-winners of the Roman Empire. Prof. Mary called this "a classic howler", saying that - despite Christianity appealing to some women and slaves - it was mainly down to rich people and Roman emperors that Christianity became successful because "it plugged into the power structure". Now, I know she's an expert but I've read so much about the origins of Christianity and I think I know that until Constantine (some 300 years after Jesus) turned the Roman Empire into a Christian empire, Christians were (with intermittent savagery) often heavily persecuted. Yet they grew and grew. And they did include women and slaves and poor people. And Prof. Mary's objections rather sound to me like ideological hair-splitting.

And the third example, contrasting Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, saw Prof. Mary grudgingly confessing herself "pleased" with Boris that he'd called Caesar being "an absolute b****" for his mass-murdering of the Gauls, yet still damning Boris for saying that Julius Caesar was, despite that, greater than Alexander the Great, her buzzer ringing with resentment. Her reason? Well, she didn't say, and we were left none the wiser. She thinks "neither of them deserve to be in pedestals". So was Boris wrong, as Prof, Mary buzzed in, to say that Julius Caesar, progenitor of the long-lasting Roman Empire that reshaped so much of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and who inspired the Holy Roman Empire and titles such as Shah, Tsar and Kaiser, was greater than the semi-ephemeral, ultra-violent, magnificent shooting star that was Alexander the Great? I'd say 'no', and that Mary Beard was wrong to ring her buzzer. And that the BBC was wrong to grant her an uncaveated authority to bluff her way through another BBC-licensed denunciation of Boris Johnson.

Now, yes, the BBC may be right to take Mary Beard as an interesting, free-thinking historian, but it doesn't mean that her expertise in the earlier Roman Empire necessarily makes her an expert on the rise of Christianity, or an unbiased arbiter of historical truth, or a commentator capable of completely debunking a Classics-taught PM she deeply disapproves of over Brexit.

But here's where we are. Is there a Latin phrase out there to sum all of this up?

Civilisations

Mary and a fine early Greek lass

Well, I've watched the first two episodes of the BBC's new 'landmark series' Civilisations - the first by Simon Schama, the second by Mary Beard - and I thoroughly enjoyed them both, in a hazy sort of way.

They passed a couple of hours of my day very pleasantly. 

Yes, they weren't anywhere near as thought-provoking or profound or original or as startling as the wonderful Kenneth Clark in his still-magnificent, beguiling and intellectually challenging Civilisation but, Hyperion to a satyr as that old BBC programme surely is to this comparatively dumbed-down new BBC programme, Simon Schama and Mary Beard are both excellent story-tellers - and, as you'd expect, the programme is an absolute treat for the eyes...

...(except for when the BBC's camerapersonages are made to do that annoying out-of-focus gimmick they've obviously been asked to do on behalf of Professor Beard). 

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On the BBC bias front...

...Dividing the presentation between three reliably left-wing, 'progressive' historians - all of who could be relied upon to drop in the occasional hint about the value of immigration and multiculturalism, or to talk critically about "gendered" art, or to take the odd potshot at Kenneth Clark's 'Eurocentricity' - was a very 'BBC' decision.

In fact, you might even cite it as an absolute proof of BBC bias.

And, yes, although I didn't feel as if I was being continuously hit over the head by a huge BBC-shaped haddock in these first two episodes, I did notice the programme's 'progressive' hints.

And, yes, it was indeed a divisive decision to make the presentation of the programme a purely, left-wing 'progressive' affair...

...as demonstrated by the following pair of articles (the first from the Right, the second from the Left):

Ed West: Civilisations is right-on and rather underwhelming. 

Yasmin Alibhai Brown: The BBC’s Civilisations is wonderfully multicultural – and the usual suspects are fuming.

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Mary and the Chinese lads

Despite enjoying what I've seen so far, no blogger worth his or her salt could ever resist trying to best a BBC historian, so I'm going to indulge myself here by using my avid reading of ancient Chinese history in order to try and discredit Mary Beard.

See how I get on below....

One thing I know about China's famous 'First Emperor' - the Mao-like monster. who began reigning supreme over the Chinese heartland in 221 BC and who was responsible for the Terracotta Army and the founder of the Qin dynasty - is that his name wasn't 'Qin' and that he wasn't the 'Emperor Qin' despite Mary Beard repeatedly calling him that!

He was born either Ying Zheng or Zhao Zheng and became - like Bruce Forsyth before him - the King of Qin (a joke that only works if you know that 'Qin' is pronounced 'Chin' - hence 'China').

He's known to history, after brutally destroying every over Chinese warring state and becoming the first emperor of China as Qin Shi Huang - a title not a name. It simply means 'First Emperor, from the Qin dynasty'.

No one, except for Mary Beard, so far as I can see, has ever called the First Emperor 'Emperor Qin' before, for the very good reason that there never was a Chinese emperor called 'Emperor Qin'.

Still, to be fair to her, at least she didn't call him 'Emperor Ming', or 'Ming the Merciless'.

Would Kenneth Clark have made such an error? And wouldn't the BBC of the 1960s, unlike the BBC of now (which seems to know a lot less), have prevented such lapses from going out even if he had?

The First Emperor of Mongo

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Reviews for the programme have been mixed - some enthusiastic, some tepid, some brutal.

Very oddly, one of the most brutal reviews (a mere two stars our of five) came from the BBC's own arts editor Will Gompertz on the BBC News website...

...and the BBC News website has given it a good deal of prominence. 

It's astonishingly rude. 

So rude that it positively invited rudeness in return....

As noted by MB on the Open Thread, Will's criticism is curious and very 'BBC'. Why? Because despite attacking a BBC programme, it weirdly employs PC to pile in upon another form of PC. 

Personal pique (Civilisations without Will Gompertz) might be the explanation.

UPDATE: A little Twitter exchange involving the BBC's Nick Higham:

Willard Foxton Todd: Is there anything more BBC than spending millions on an incredibly high profile series and then having your own arts editor give it a 2 star review on the front page of your website?
Nick Higham, BBC: As the BBC’s erstwhile bad-news-about-the-BBC correspondent, I defend to the hilt the right/duty of BBC reporters to make independent judgements about BBC policies/actions. Whether we should be *reviewing* stuff (programmes, plays, films etc) I’m less sure...

QT from Bath

I watched Question Time with a sinking heart. The first question was about Trump, as one knew it would be. The audience and the panel were vying for the position of ‘most appalled’. 

It’s like Geert Wilders all over again. Who can distance him/herself farthest from Trump/Wilders/EDL/ Marine Le Pen.

Trump is a ludicrous figure, but I suppose it’s because he knows he is ludicrous that he dares to say what no-one else will. Only one man in the audience had the guts to say there’s something in Trump’s argument, crude though it is, that needs addressing.

I used to think Caroline Flint behaved like an automaton. She would parrot the party line to the death. Well, despite her differences with Corbyn, she’d still doing that. She’s still defending the Labour party (and her career) for all she’s worth, but the imaginative way she tailors her strategy and manages to straddle both sides of the fence at once without actually crashing is admirable and awesome.  She’s still an automaton, but an automaton with agility. You watch through your fingers expectantly. Surely she’ll come a cropper any minute now.

"Poor man, damned if he does, damned if he don't"

Mary Beard is a Corbynista. She’s supposed to be a historian, is she not? Classicist, don and professor of Roman history. Wow.  How could anyone who knows anything about history think Jeremy Corbyn is good for Britain?

The Corbynistas in the QT audience like ‘Jeremy’ because he’s not like other politicians. That’s true enough. Maybe the BBC likes Mary Beard because she’s not like other historians? Who knows; her unprepossessing manner does make one wonder why the BBC is so keen.

I suppose Jeremy Corbyn is fishing one of his roomy jackets from the wardrobe as we speak, preparing, with dignity,  for tonight’s starring role. Oh, I despair.

Mary Beard is rude about the French

For those who want something lighter, then please take a listen to Jeremy Paxman and Mary Beard on this week's A Good Read. Jeremy and Mary didn't see eye to eye - to put it mildly! 

What stood out for me though was an absolute jaw-dropper of a remark from Professor Beard. She said at one point, with absolute confidence:

For example, peasants in the 16th Century didn't know what they themselves looked like. They didn't have mirrors. You only know what you look like because somebody tells you that you look like somebody else.

Now, she was talking about peasants in France and we all know that the French are famous for not washing very often but, surely to goodness, even peasants in France in the 16th Century washed some time and, when they did, would have seen their own reflections in that magical liquid known as water. Similarly, many a peasant may have seen such congregations of this remarkable substance known as 'puddles' or 'ponds' or 'wells' or 'lakes' or 'rivers', or other such reflective aqueous things, which might also have shown them what they looked like without having to be entered in a village lookalike competition. They then might have reflected on the matter, so to speak, and put two and two together. The French are clever like that. 

Therefore, for a famous professor like Mary Beard to assert that "peasants in the 16th Century didn't know what they themselves looked like" because "they didn't have mirrors" ought to go down in the history books as a classic example of 21st Century academic stupidity. 

And to think she presents historical documentaries for the BBC, hosts editions of A Point of View and appears quite regularly on Question Time.

Mary is a professor of Classics. I recommend that she re-reads the tale of Narcissus. She might find it helpful.