How Not to be a TV Academic

The laudable surge in new TV documentaries on ancient history has prompted one person too many to ask why I haven’t presented any myself, so here is the answer once and for all. Apologies in advance for it being narcissistically All About Me this week.

Weinberger, Warrior, Warmonger, Helicopter Fan

The first time I failed to get on TV was in the 1980s. I went on a date with a TV journalist who said he could get me to read the news on local TV if I got my teeth fixed. Our date consisted of watching then U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger exiting a helicopter. Since my escort, though charming, was allowed on TV with uneven teeth and a paunch, I didn't think this was fair.

In my thirties, several TV companies played with the idea of having me present their ancient history shows. One complained that I did not ‘look like a plausible Greek scholar,’ I think because I was at the time covered in baby sick. Another (American) outfit wanted me to recycle hawkish Origins of Western Superiority rubbish about antiquity and it was mutually clear that we could not do business.

But I only ever turned down one opportunity unilaterally. It was a history of prostitution and I was to have zero editorial control. Since I still regarded myself in those days as a respectable scholar, the camera close-up on my secondary sexual characteristics during the screen-test alarmed me enough to say no.

Detail of snap of me taken by Mary Beard

My rabbity teeth scuppered another documentary series, appropriately on the history of bone collecting. I actually asked my children's orthodontist what could be done. She said I could Become Perfect provided I had perfectly good teeth extracted ON BOTH top sides first. I'm sorry but I just won't do it. Real Teeth mean more than Fame at my age.

So there it is. I am spared being insulted, like brainy, funny Mary Beard, by morons and misogynists. I admire the regular teeth of gorgeous, spirited Bettany Hughes and dishy AND brainy Michael Scott. I enjoy my right to bad hair days even while delivering occasional rants on radio.

 

I admit I would have killed for a chance to appear in Father Ted or Taggart, and would still consider Have I Got News for You or Big Bang Theory. But I now accept that presenting serious TV documentaries is for those far braver and/or better dentally endowed. 

What the Greeks knew about Virginity Testing

Is our understanding of physiology going backwards? The head of the Education Agency in Prabumlih, South Sumatra, announced in mid-August that female senior high school students would in 2014 be subjected to compulsory virginity tests. 

Virginity tests are a physical impossibility. Some women, whales, elephants and chimps have a perceptible elastic membrane at the opening of the tube which connects their wombs to the outside world. Some do not. Whether any object has ever been inserted into this tube CANNOT be discerned by physical examination.

Although the daft proposal has been criticized by other Indonesians, and withdrawn, it is not an isolated phenomenon. Virginity tests have recently been documented by Human Rights Watch in many other places including Egypt, Afghanistan and India. 

How can this be? The ancient Greeks, however deplorably sexist, long ago knew that the only proof a woman had experienced penetrative sex with a man was when she produced a baby. One medical writer, Soranus (yes, that really is his name) mentions the hymen, but only to deny its existence. 

Being a virgin, parthenos, was a social status meaning that a woman was believed not to be having sex or to have been pregnant and was marriageable. This status could be faked, in which case you were a pseudoparthenos. 

Indonesians might just as well adopt the sort of virginity test we do hear about in Greek literature, in a novel by Achilles Tatius.[i] The heroine, Leucippe, is enclosed inside a cave of Pan. If the crowd hears the music of the syrinx (panpipes made of reeds) then she is a virgin. If they hear a scream and she vanishes, then she is not a virgin. Leucippe, a resourceful young woman, passes with flying colours.

The beauty of this test is the ease with which the right result can be furnished. It would not be hard to secrete a small set of panpipes in your flowing robes. I also appreciate the sexiness of the setting. Everyone in ancient myth knows that the place to go for an erotic encounter is a cave. Since Pan is the horniest of deities, if you were a virgin before you entered his cavern, you were unlikely to be one when you left it. And the reeds constituting Pan's pipes had once been the beautiful virgin Syrinx, who was transformed into this plant when pursued by the randy goat-god.

 

I propose that societies where virginity is an issue implement the Pan-cave test instead. It would be easier to administer and much more enjoyable. Both men and women could undergo it. They could play a tune on their own in a cave, or even flirt there with Pan. The examiners would be relieved of their task and get to listen to some music. The result would be just as reliable. What's not to like?

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[i] Brilliantly introduced and translated by Helen Morales and Tim Whitmarsh in the Oxford World’s Classics series.