Glorious Sprinters Ancient and Modern

I am right now in the sea 30 minutes from here

On the eve of the Olympics I find myself at last on holiday for a week, swimming below Delphi. In antiquity the sanctuary here had its own athletics competitions, the Pythian games. My favourite ancient Victory Ode is Pindar's Pythian 10 in honour of a boy called Hippocleas who won the Delphic junior sprint in 498 BCE.

Perseus, Patron of Sprinters

Pindar foresees that, with the garland of victory, Hippocleas will win huge admiration ‘from boys his age and from his elders, and will make the girls notice him.’ Pindar slyly alludes to the next Olympics, hoping that Hippocleas will triumph there, too: he compares the young athlete to Perseus, who could fly through the air on his winged sandals.

August 3 is the eightieth anniversary of the most important sprint of all time, Jesse Owens' 100-metre dash in 10.3 seconds at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Over the succeeding days he added gold medals in the long jump, the 200 metres, and the 4x100 relay.

Owens' bravura performances cast the Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy into disarray. He was filmed by Leni von Riefensthal for her documentary, Olympia, but there were rumours that Hitler refused to acknowledge Owens’ victories: Owens himself at different times both confirmed and denied this. Aryanists produced the absurd defensive argument that people of African descent were 'inevitably' physically stronger since they were less far removed from a ‘jungle’ existence than the ‘higher’ races.

When criticising Nazi racism, we must remember what faced Owens back home: ‘When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either’.

Owens was a conflicted character, who endured misery as well as glory: a supreme athlete, he chain-smoked and died of lung cancer; a member of the Republican Party, he suffered from the sharpest end of free-market capitalism and was bankrupted; acutely aware of racism, he initially objected to the black power salute after the sprint at the 1968 Olympics.

But surely he would have approved of Pindar’s image of Perseus as sprinters’ hero: when asked what mindset had allowed him to win such extraordinary races, Owens simply said, ‘I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.’  Owens could do poetry in prose as well as motion.

Aristotle's email to Erdoğan

Dear Recep

cc  MustafaKemal@atürk 

Assos with view over to Lesbos

I recently came back from the Great Lyceum in the Sky for a nostalgic visit to my old stomping grounds. I spent two years of my life in the west of Turkey, at Assos (now known as Behramkale), with its beautiful Doric temple of Athena. I was invited there, after Plato died, by its ruler, Hermias, and enjoyed teaching him philosophy.

Where has my statue gone? Assos garbage can

Three Years Ago

I am distressed to discover that the lifesize statue of me which enhanced the village square has recently been removed, as a British Professor of Classics has alerted me. The plinth is now used a public rubbish bin. It was bad enough in the old days that the Behramkalites got my name wrong and called me ‘Aristo’ (an ugly abbreviation which I resented). But deliberately to have erased any sign that rational Greek philosophy and science flourished at Assos under my tutelage is to take your ideological war on openness of intellectual enquiry a bit far.

There is now no mention of me anywhere on the site. There is no Aristotle fridge magnet on any tourist gizmo stall. I found only this garden gnome-like mini-me outside an empty café, with no name inscribed. What is going on? Are you so scared of intellectual debate and pre-Islamic history that you just delete them?

I wrote quite a bit of my Politics at Assos, because Hermias wanted to reform his one-man rule (which we used straightforwardly to call a tyranny instead of pretending it was a democracy).  Although I have now repudiated my former prejudicial view of women, and see that slavery was indefensible, I stand by most of what I wrote and think you need reminding of my observations.

1.    Tyrants abuse religion to consolidate their power in the state.

2.    Nobody can expect to make money out of the community and to receive its respect as well.

3.  States malfunction when there are no friendly partnerships in operation between the individuals who constitute the state, only suspicion and envy.

4. Tyrants discourage any activities amongst citizens which foster self-esteem and self-confidence. These activities include academic work, the formation of study-circles and other arenas for debate.

5. The goal in a real democracy is liberty; your democracy sounds like my definition of tyranny, where the goal is the autocrat’s personal self-protection.

6. As I will explain in my work on Rhetoric, torture doesn’t work. Those subjected to torture are as likely to give false evidence as true, while others are equally ready to make false charges against others, in the hope of being sooner released from torture.

Atatürk Birth Museum

I trust that after digesting this you will free everybody you have recently arrested, reinstall my statue in Assos, and celebrate the contribution made by my human-centred and effectively secular Virtue Ethics to world civilisation. I invite you to visit my other old homes in Macedonia and Stagira to discuss this further. 

You can come by ferry to Thessaloniki, where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born. While you’re there you can visit the Atatürk Museum to be reminded of another, very different vision of a modern Turkey.  

Yours sincerely

Aristotle son of Nicomachus of Stagira.

NO BLOG TO MARK FAMILY BEREAVEMENT AND SHOCK AT THE STATE OF THE WORLD

I expect to be back next week

Goodbye to My Mother the Indexer

A forlorn week in which my mother died. She was ninety and had been ill for some months. But it has knocked me sideways.

My Grandmother & mother in 1926

Brenda Mary Henderson Hall was born into a cheerless haute-bourgeois Scottish family. An isolated only child, she struggled with her unfeeling father and depressive mother Edith, who eventually committed suicide in the 1960s. But my mother’s gutsy response to this early domestic misery was to avoid replicating it at all costs. 

This is not to say that one part of her did not remain, for me at least, closed off and mystifying. There were things about her background she flatly refused to discuss. What was admirable was the way she hurled herself into wifehood and motherhood, having four children and nine grandchildren on whom she lavished smiles and delicious meals, always with the fullest-fat ingredients.  

She was an old-fashioned Scottish Liberal to the core. She was furious when she appeared in a novel called The Cellar at the Top of the Stairs written by an alleged friend of mine. He had modelled its classically educated detective Ethel on his psychedelic impressions of me.  He portrayed Ethel’s mother as a keen flower arranger (which she was) but also as a supporter of the Conservative Party (which was unthinkable).

May 2016 in Hospital

Her death has come as I struggle to make the index for an OUP feminist history book I'm co-editing with Rosie Wyles, Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly. My mother would have revelled in the subject-matter.

I have no idea how to make an index beyond word-searching proper names, and find myself sobbing all over the pdf. She was a world-class professional indexer and is no longer sitting by her computer at the end of the phone. From my first book in 1989 to Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris just two years ago, my mother created brilliant, detailed, thematic, conceptual, intellectually sophisticated and unbelievably useful indexes to almost every book I have published, especially most of the string of collaborative volumes which have come out of the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama at Oxford.

Prizewinning Index!

She was the Best Indexer of Humanities books ever. She won a National Prize Commendation for the sophisticated research tool which is her index to the enormous Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660-1914 which I co-authored with Fiona Macintosh in 2005. Mum transformed a monster volume crammed with wildly unfamiliar data into a usable document enhanced by an index of intellectual and aesthetic beauty.

In honour of her I always comment on the quality of indexes in books I review. I hate the mediocrity of the one I'm failing now to compile. She was correct that nobody should index their own books. Like the insightful indexer Claire Minton in Kurt Vonnegut’s Hiroshima novel Cat’s Cradle (1963), she could psychoanalyse any author who indexed their own book just by looking at the concepts they chose to feature.

Commendation for Wheatley Medal

She was many things to many people, but in adulthood I forged a new collegial bond with her in discussing the minutiae of dating conventions and sub-headings. I doubt if her indexing will feature much in other funeral tributes. So this is my way of saying thanks, mum, and good-bye.

On The Importance of Morale

Graham Todd, Fabulous Shopkeeper

Sad and uncertain times domestically mean that heroes of high MORALE have meant more than usual this week. I am an advocate of morale-raising as a principle. It can win wars against impossible odds and transform seemingly unendurable situations into moments of grace.

On Friday I did my own version of Retail Therapy. This consists of wandering with a tenner around the charity shops of either Cheltenham or St Andrews, depending on whether I am nearest my self-generated or original, natal family.

This week's window at Emmaus Cheltenham

I laughed for half an hour in the incomparable Emmaus shop in Henrietta Street, Cheltenham, served by the morale-boosting Graham Todd. There is always a comical tableau at this shop's entrance: this week a vast teddy bear sat on an ancient plastic mannequin holding a scimitar in her hand, threatening to execute him.

I bought two pairs of jeans, a kitchen utensil jar, a book, a colander and some lovely big plates for pasta. Emmaus is an admirable charity for the homeless;  its Royal Patron is the only member of Windsor.com who appears to give a toss about poverty--Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

What I love about this branch of Emmaus is that it is crammed high with stock and untouched by daft concepts of tasteful High Street colour-themed presentation. The staff always have time for a blether. Rock on Graham: I will be back.

King's Great Hall on 2 July

Then on Saturday I welcomed for a day of festivity at King’s College, London, forty+ teenagers studying classical civilisation at state schools/6th-form colleges in Kent, Worcester, Milton Keynes, and Lewisham. They get to be thrilled by the ancient Greeks and Romans because their dedicated teachers work their socks off. They are true Morale Heroes of our time—Paul Found, Simon Beasley, Stephen Dobson, and Eddie Barnett.

Nat Haynes, Superstar of Morale

Natalie Haynes (comedienne, novelist, journalist, broadcaster and Renaissance Woman, in fact pure Morale in a Bottle) kicked off proceedings. Others who participated in a day of joy, including poets Caroline Bird and Caleb Femi, know how grateful I am.

Kent Classical Civilisation Contingent

My retail life doesn’t get better than Friday and my working life better than Saturday. Morale is one of my obsessions: on interview panels I ALWAYS ask how aspiring lecturers would contribute to departmental good cheer. A good response would be e.g. that you can play the bagpipes. But if you look like you don’t even understand the question it might be better to go off and be bleak somewhere else. 

The ancient Greek for high morale is euthumia. It is definitely my Word of the Week.

Conspiring for Pleasure and Edification in Classics!

A Classicist Hero of European Ireland

Prof Bob Mitchell Henry

In my entire research life, the biggest ever thrill took place in Queen’s University Belfast a month ago. Preparing for an excellent Dublin conference this week marking the centenary of the Easter Uprising in 1916, I dived into the archived papers of my inspirational new hero, Professor Robert (“Bob”) Mitchell Henry (1873-1950). He has never received due recognition as a role model for academics, so here is my belated appreciation.

With Prof Isabelle Torrance (convenor) & Dr Hazel Dodge

A fine classical scholar, Bob was the pillar of Queen’s for nearly three decades and led its extra-mural activities. He co-founded the local branch of the Workers’ Educational Association and the Classical Association of Ireland. He lectured to the Ulster working class on ancient women and slaves. He was the first President of the Society for Irish Historical Studies. He learned and taught Gaelic. He wrote in socialist newspapers. He energetically supported Trade Unions, the poor, and the Belfast Newsboys Club.

Queen's University Belfast

But Bob was also a republican and a tireless supporter of Irish Catholics and of Irish unity. This is all the more surprising since he was a devout Protestant of Scottish descent. Alongside books on Latin literature, he wrote the canonical Evolution of Sinn Fein (1920), a meticulously researched and sympathetic account of the background to the 1916 rebellion and the principles which motivated the rebels.

'Shooting range'--entry in Henry's diary March 1916

Several passages in this exquisitely written tragic history made me suspect that he had himself joined the Irish Volunteers. They were riflemen prepared to fight the pro-British Ulster Volunteers and if necessary die in defence of Irish independence and unity. So I consulted his pocket diaries. Rifle practice is indeed a regular feature, but only of the months January to March 1916.

Many of the Irish Volunteers were rounded up, imprisoned and deported after the uprising. Thirteen of the rebel leaders were summarily executed after hasty court-martials. Bob was undoubtedly in personal danger at the time.

The Executed 1916 Leaders

After the executions he prudently decided to promote pan-Irish independence through writing rather than revolution. I wonder what he would have made of today’s referendum result, in which the people of the north of Ireland emphatically voted in favour of remaining in Europe alongside the other Irish people sharing their lovely island.

If Sinn Fein get their way, a century on from the Easter uprising the people of Northern Ireland may finally decide that being dragged out of the EU is too high a price to pay for being subjects of the English crown. Ireland has had intimate cultural links with Europe since early medieval times. I wish I could have this conversation with Bob. It would provide some solace today.

WHEN XENOPHOBIA ISN'T A STRONG ENOUGH WORD

Horace

The Latin poet Horace said that the Britons were hostile towards strangers (Britannos hospitibus feros, Ode 3.4). Yesterday, reeling like everyone else from the appalling murder of Labour MP, and true friend of all immigrants, Jo Cox, I had to intervene on a bus between Oxford and London because the yobbish white driver was being so hostile to a foreign lady.

She only had one of the new £20 notes, for a £14 fare. Neither she nor anyone else could see whether his problem was with the unfamiliarity of the note or her lack of the right change. He accused her, loudly, of wasting his time and being too stupid to understand English. At this point a male passenger shouted at him, legitimately enough, ‘What sort of impression of our country do you think you are making on this lady?’ A brawl was imminent. I got up and paid for the lady with my multi-use ten-journey card. She thanked me politely. We set off.

Like ‘homophobia’ as a euphemism for lethal hatred of gay people, the word xenophobia is not enough to describe that bus driver. It means fear of strangers.  We need a word meaning hatred of strangers, which would be misoxeny, a word my twitter friend Graham Guest points out to me was in use in the 17th century. John Josselyn said that ‘the old Brittains’ were notable for their ‘misoxenie or hatred to strangers.’ Cartographer John Speed wrote, presciently, that misoxenie was unalterably inherent in the ‘common humour’ of our ‘Nation’.

Inter-Marriage as Foundation Myth of Marseilles

Watching my compatriots slugging it out in Marseille with the equally misoxenic Russian football ‘fans’ last week was excruciatingly embarrassing.  I yelled at the TV that they were betraying the spirit of Marseille, founded as Massalia by Greek vintners in about 600 BCE. A French princess named Gyptis fell in love with a Protis, a handsome Greek. The Gauls had welcomed him to a feast. She chose the migrant as her husband rather than any of her Gallic suitors. 

The incident with the bus driver made me feel even worse than the Marseille football shambles. How I’m going to feel next Friday morning if misoxeny prevails, and we Britons hospitibus feri decide to turn our backs on the rest of Europe, does not bear thinking about. If I don’t blog next weekend it will be because I have fled the country altogether, perhaps to Marseilles, portrayed here as an idyllic hybrid ancient community by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.