January Meme: Selena and the Classics

[selenak]

mildred_of_midgard wanted to know my state of knowledge re: the Ancient World/Classics: where I’m well versed, what I want to learn more about.

Languages: Well, Latin was the first foreign language I learned, and I do have das grosse Latinum, whiich is what they call it if you did seven to nine years of it in grammar school, but that was a life time ago, and I certainly couldn't read Latin now, at least not with a dictionary at my side and without any fun. Greek I don't know at all, to the great distress of my Latin teacher who thought I should have picked Greek, not French, as language No.3 (No.2 was English, which wasn't optional). No Hebrew, either, alas.

Myths: I'm pretty good with Greek and Roman myths, which I first was introduced to via a traditional gift geeky kids used to get for their first communion in my home state of Bavaria, Gustav Schwab's "Greek and Roman Myths". (Think late Victorian retellings of same in English, and you have the equivalent.) I later read Greek and some Roman plays in translation, plus Ovid's versions both in Latin and in translation, and the Iliad and Odyssey in German. I don't think I ever managed the complete Aeneid, as opposed to the retellings from my childhood, but that' partly because the translation situation for the Aeneid is less than stellar in German.

Poetry: Sappho, Alkeios, some Horace, Catullus, Martial, Ovid again.

History: I'm pretty good with the late Roman Republic and the Claudio-Jiulians thath followed, both in terms of primary sources and current day biographies of the most important players. When we get to the Flavians, I've read the Jewish War by Flavius Josephus/Josef ben Matthias, but not his other works. Once the Flavians are over, my knowledge is really sporadic - I don't think I ever read a non-fictional take on Hadrian or Marcus Aurelius, for example -, and the only era of the Byzantine Emperors I'm somewhat better informed in again is the Justinian and Theodora one. I did read the occasional novel about, say, Julian (the Apostate) or Helena the mother of Constantine, as well as Cavafy's withering poetry, but no non-fiction book. Oh, and due to a combination of movies, audio plays and opera, I know a bit about the Attila the Hun era, fiction not fact wise.

What I'd like to learn more about: Mildred has made me curious about the Tetrarchy (Diokletian, Maximinian, and their various junior Emperors), and Mike Walker's audio series Caesar! has gotten me intrigued about both the breakaway Gallic Empire and the melodrama in Constantine's family (his second wife Fausta, daughter of Maximian, got boiled alive after what sounds like a replay of the Phaedra myth involvng her stepson Crispus).

What I already know about but would have fun debating, retelling etc. about to cahn or other unsuspecting victims: We could always do a gossipy sensationalist take on the late Roman Republic, complete with Cicero's letters, Suetonius' biographies and Catullus' poetry. The later in the translation of Roz Kaveney, which I've been meaning to reccomend for a good while now.

Speaking of translations: I would also like to to read Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, which I've been curious about.

Alternate book club ideas: for current day Aeneid-inspired novels, Jo Graham's "Black Ships" and Ursula Le Guin's "Lavinia": compare and contrast! For example.

Oh, and I suddenly realise, I didn't say anything about Greek history. Okay, here, too, I'm better with novels than with primary sources and biographies. I've yet to read more than excerpts from Plato, for example, and my knowledge of Athens' golden age - Pericles etc. - is school history plus fiction. Dito for the Spartans. I did read some Herodotus.

I would like to know more about: the Persians. I've been meaning to have a go at Tom Holland's book. If anyone has read it, I'd be grateful for impressions.

Lastly: Ancient Egypt. I'm reasonably good with the 18th Dynasty (courtesy of Hatshepsut on the one hand and Akhenaten ont he other), and extremely spotty in the centuries before and after until we get to the Ptolemies.

The other days

Comments

[cahn]

:DD I have a reasonably good foundation in Greek myths due to the book that geeky (younger -- it's a book with lots of pictures) kids get over here -- my awesome uncle gave me D'Aulaire's Greek Myths when I must have been, hm, eight or so? and at a family reunion and unhappily bored. I think I almost memorized that book. I later went on to read the traditional high-school-level Greek-and-Roman book over here, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, which as I remember brings in stories from Ovid, etc., but I don't know those backwards and forwards the way I do everything in D'Aulaire. (Fun fact: selenak, your Arachne fic was, I think, either the first or second time I came across you, many many years ago, before we "met" via DW -- and before I knew about things like, uh, commenting, so, just fixed that :P )

And I've read the Iliad and the Odyssey, but back in middle/high school, so I don't remember a lot about it, and as a uncivilized barbarian didn't really like them all that much :P I read the Sarah Ruden translation (recced to me by ricardienne) of the Aeneid much later and liked it much more.

I know basically noooothing about Latin or Greek poetry OR history except, you know, the kinds of things you get from basically what amounts to fandom osmosis :P I did once read a one-volume abridgement of John Julius Norwichs Byzantine Empire and enjoyed it a lot, but have forgotten it all.

(Oh, I only now realized after your post that Cavafy wrote Waiting for the Barbarians, which I read in a college class. I only knew him from "che fece... il gran rifiuto," which I came across far later at exactly the right time, and which is an extremely meaningful poem for me.)

What I already know about but would have fun debating, retelling etc. about to [personal profile] cahn or other unsuspecting victims: We could always do a gossipy sensationalist take on the late Roman Republic, complete with Cicero's letters, Suetonius' biographies and Catullus' poetry.

Yes please, as I said above, history and poetry I know nothing about! (I have read one or two fics about Cicero, that's it.) :D

Alternate book club ideas: for current day Aeneid-inspired novels, Jo Graham's "Black Ships" and Ursula Le Guin's "Lavinia": compare and contrast! For example.

...actually part of why I read the Aeneid was so I could read Lavinia, but then I never actually got around to it *facepalm* Yes, I want very much to do this! Mildred wouldn't be interested in that, of course, but she could tell us history or something?

The sum total of what I know about Egypt is reading Judith Tarr's historical novels about Alexander the Great, Hatepshut (these two books I remember very little about), Cleopatra, and Akhenaten -- I own the last two, so have reread those and remember a lot more about them. (Tarr's degree is in Classics/Medieval Studies, and I get the sense that she did her research, but she did write these decades ago, and the Akhenaten book in particular was based on an academic theory that Akhenaten was Moses, to which she said something in the afterword along the lines of, "it's crack, but such a fun idea for a novel" :D )

Tangentially, it's interesting to me that you have serviceable French but not Latin -- is it that you learned French later (what I as an American would call high school) and so it stuck better? (This makes me feel better about my kids' elementary school which has terrible/no language program...)

[selenak]

Tangentially, it's interesting to me that you have serviceable French but not Latin -- is it that you learned French later (what I as an American would call high school) and so it stuck better?

No, not at all. I was always just avarage in French, whereas I had top grades in Latin and liked it far more. But look, I'm 52, school was literally decades ago, and while I did have opportunity to listen to and read French post school - not as constantly as with English, but now and then - I never had need to practice Latin beyond my A-Levels, and thus inevitably I forgot a lot.

I also read those Judith Tarr novels you name except for the one about Cleopatra, but my Akhenaten exposure came first through Mika Waltari's novel The Egyptian, which was actually the very first historical novel I ever read. And Hatshepsut, I first came across via Pauline Gedge's novel Child of the Morning, which I still love to bits.

I'll talk some more about translations when I get to your prompt for the January meme. :)

[mildred_of_midgard]

I am highly suspicious that the method of teaching Latin, which I may have ranted about at you before :P, affected Selena as it did me. I did 6-ish years of Latin *after* my 2 years of French, with way more dedication, and yet my French has always been way more serviceable and remains so to this day. Because in French class they're trying to teach you a language, and in Latin class they're trying to teach you a method of looking things up in dictionaries and grammars.

I very much attempted to keep my Latin (and Greek) up and failed: it was just too painful. A top student like me and selenak, after that many years of study, should find Latin effortless to keep up. The fact that we don't is a failure of the system.

I mean, selenak, maybe you were as fluent in Latin after your 7-9 years of being a top student as you would have been after 7-9 years of being a top student in French, and it was *just* the lack of opportunities to practice in the last 30 years, but I suspect that even in Germany, 9 years of Latin study = way less mastery than 9 years of French study. It took me 6 months of studying German on my own to surpass the level of mastery I gained in my 6 years of formal Latin study.

My friend from France said that in his French school, "learning Latin" was also learning a method of looking things up rather than learning a language, and thus his Latin is also weaker than it should be vis-a-vis years invested in studying. He had a theory that classism plays a role: if you make studying Latin efficient, then it will be much easier, and more people will be able to do it, and it won't be as exclusive a skill.

And professors complain that Classics programs are being shut down for lack of funding.

[cahn]

Oh, that's a good point! I mean, I imagine selenak has visited France way more than I have and has therefore had rather more in the way of practice, but my French is quite serviceable more than twenty-five years later without really much in the way of practice at all, and although I was a good student, I don't imagine I was any better a French student than selenak was a Latin student.

Now, this was also in the days when I actually had a good memory and retained everything. (I obviously don't have a good memory at all now, but I really did back in high school! If only I had had salon in high school :P ) I was going to say that I took in theory a similar level of Italian as an adult from the local community college and retain almost none of it, which is absolutely partially due to retaining things much better in high school, but also those classes were twice a week instead of every day, and then I only took two semesters' worth, in which we did about as much material grammar-wise as we would have done in two years of high school, but obviously I only got a year's worth of practice (and I wasn't motivated enough to practice outside of classwork).

[mildred_of_midgard]

This makes me feel better about my kids' elementary school which has terrible/no language program...

Yeah, I had no language learning opportunities until high school, and then my choices were up to 2 years of French, or up to 4 years of Spanish. You couldn't do both. I picked French, so my official language learning opportunities ended after 2 years.

Being me, a big fish in a small pond at my rural high school, senior year I managed to beg and plead until someone arranged for me to do a Latin independent study by correspondence. I was given a textbook and told that the correspondence program would mail me an exam at the end of the year, which I would take and mail back, for a pass/fail grade. I had no one I could ask questions of, since I didn't know anyone who knew any Latin. This correspondence course was paid for by the aunt of my high school principal, who was a philanthropist, and my case was brought to her attention by the principal. As you can see, this means it was way, way outside the norm of what was on offer to students.

I read about selenak's foreign language #1 and #2 and #3 and non-optional English, and I can barely restrain my envy. ;)

ETA: Oh, who am I kidding. I don't restrain my envy, not even a little bit. :P selenak, I envy you!

[selenak]

:) I'm glad I went to the school I did, too. And that my parents picked this one. Now my primary school grades had qualified me for a grammar school ("Gymnasium"), but we have seven of these in my hometown, with different orientations - some more towards the sciences, one towards music, and two, among them mine, were "neusprachlich-humanistisch", i.e. "languages and the Classics" centric. If I'd gaven to some of the others, it would have been two languages - non optional English plus French or Latin - and I really wasn't good at chemistry or physics, and enjoy music only via listening, so that would have sucked for me.

Mind you: to me, you sound like a linguistic genius, and I'm in awe at all you've learned and are able to do in this regard!

[mildred_of_midgard]

If I'd gaven to some of the others, it would have been two languages - non optional English plus French or Latin - and I really wasn't good at chemistry or physics, and enjoy music only via listening, so that would have sucked for me.

Oh, neat, I didn't know those were your options. I'm glad you got to go to the one best suited to your interests! My school had a strong agricultural program and was probably pretty good if you wanted to be a farmer. Academics, not so much. (My parents, enrolling me in this school: "We're told it's the worst school in the area, but you're smart, so it doesn't matter what school you go to.")

Mind you: to me, you sound like a linguistic genius, and I'm in awe at all you've learned and are able to do in this regard!

Thank you. <3 I hear this a lot, which is why it's so outrageous that after all this time and effort, I'm still monolingual!