Although a man named “Homer” was accepted in antiquity as the author of the poems, there is no evidence supporting the existence of such an author. By the late 1700s, careful dissection of the Iliad and Odyssey raised doubts about their composition by a single poet. Explore more about the “Homeric question” and the influence of these epics in the infographic below.
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One might think of classicists as the most tradition-bound of humanist scholars, but in fact they were the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of computing and digital technology in the humanities. Today even classicists who do not work on digital projects use digital projects as tools every day. One reason for this is the large, but defined corpus of classical texts at the field’s core.
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Reports over recent months from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency have suggested that two prominent North Korean politicians have been executed this year on the orders of Kim Jong-un. These reports evoke some interesting parallels from the darker side of the history of ancient Rome, or at least from the more colourful stories told about it by Roman historians.
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Today, we're looking at the less fashionable side of this partnership and focussing our attention on the creatures that mortals feared and heroes vanquished. Does your gaze turn others to stone? Do you prefer ignorance or vengeance? Have any wings? Take this short quiz to find out which mythological creature or being you would have been in the ancient world.
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A permanent problem of political and economic management – and one on which many people hold very strong opinions – is how to ensure commercial enterprises comply with society’s sense of fairness and justice without strangling them in red tape. There are many examples of economies whose productive potential appears to have been limited by over-regulation (most of Eastern Europe for much of the twentieth century, for example). On the other hand it was clearly a combination of inadequate regulation and enforcement that allowed the recent financial crisis to happen. What is more, our sense of fairness is outraged by the fact that many of those who had advocated self-regulation played a major part in creating the crisis, walked away with large bonuses and, almost without exception, have escaped criminal charges.
The response in most jurisdictions has been to develop new and stronger regulations, though it is likely to prove politically difficult to fund improved enforcement. Another approach might dispense with regulation altogether and still ensure that commercial malpractice is dealt with according to community values. Classical Athens managed that brilliantly.
There was no regulation, just a very strong belief that contracts should be enforced if they were reasonable, and that people who behave dishonestly should be punished. This was put into practice by a very powerful and democratic legal system, under which anyone could bring a case and have it heard by a jury of 500 of his peers, selected by lot. In making decisions, the jurymen would listen to the lawyers from both sides and any witnesses they produced but would not be guided by any detailed definition of what was right and wrong in particular circumstances. The lawyers might choose to cite precedents, but there was no need for that to affect the way jurors decided to vote. Jurors had to decide who was telling the truth and whether the punishment demanded (generally some form of restitution, sometimes with damages) was fair.
Athens had no need for any official machinery for checking on activities before they went wrong; there were no regulatory bodies, inspectors or auditors. But if you were going to cheat in your business dealings, you were highly likely to be charged by the other party and face the judgement of your fellow citizens. Nor would you bring a case with no merit. Being seen to be honest was important; if a handful of other citizens took a strong dislike to you, they could vote to “ostracise” you and you had to leave town.
This belief in the power of the law, democratically defined and enforced, also meant Athens only needed a small police force (a posse of Scythian archers used to keep public order). Whenever an incident occurred in the streets, we are told “a crowd came running”. Without a police force, the crowd came partly to sort out the problem, but also so they could bear witness in any trial that arose.
Similarly democratic principles applied to the use of wealth. Athens had no income tax system. It collected taxes on harbour movements, sold leases to work the local silver mines, and received a large tribute from allies for defence purposes. Much of this was spent on military campaigns, paying citizens to attend the assembly or serve on a jury, and on magnificent public buildings. There was no regular revenue to cover common needs Athenians considered important, ranging from maintaining ships to staging plays. It was also seen as reasonable that these things should be paid for by the rich. Instead of taxing them, the Athenians established a system of sponsorships or “liturgies” and the wealthy were expected to pick up the costs on a regular basis. If you were identified as being due for a liturgy (which could be very expensive – think a million dollars and more), you still had some legal options. You could demonstrate that you had funded a liturgy recently or more than your share over a short while. This was easy to determine. Or you could identify someone else who was not up for a liturgy and claim they were richer than you. This was not so easy; you had to offer to exchange all your assets for theirs! Athens’ public projects always found funding.
Could a society today operate without regulation and without taxation, depending instead on the power of judgement by peers? Athens had the benefit of its small scale. In its classical heyday, the male citizen population (only males voted in the assembly or served on juries) was never more than about 35,000. (The total population was about 250,000, mostly slaves.) Many citizens knew each other or knew someone who would know any other person they were interested in. Athens also had the benefit of limited technology. Living in the days before machinery provided overwhelming advantages to large companies and full-time operations, many Athenians could attend the assembly or serve on a jury or in the army or navy and still be able to supplement their income by making simple wooden, ceramic or textile objects when they had time at home. On the other hand it has never been so easy as today to tell stories to a large audience and to measure responses. Setting up and managing an effective litigation system that enables anyone to bring a case and has a random group decide on fairness and justice would not be easy, but it worked wonderfully for Athens. Do we take the opportunity seriously enough to try?
Headline image: Bazar of Athens, Edward Dodwell: Views in Greece, London 1821, public domain via Wikimedia
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By Mark Davie
Torquato Tasso, who died in Rome on 25 April 1595, desperately wanted to write a classic. The son of a successful court poet who had been brought up on the Latin classics, he had a lifelong ambition to write the epic poem which would do for counter-reformation Italy what Virgil’s Aeneid had done for imperial Rome. From his teenage years on, he worked on drafts of a poem on the first crusade which had ‘liberated’ Jerusalem from its Muslim rulers in 1099, a subject which he deemed appropriate for a Christian epic. His ambition reflected the climate in which he grew up: his formative years (he was born in 1544) saw a newly assertive orthodoxy both in literary theory (dominated by Aristotle’s Poetics, published in a Latin translation in 1536) and in religion (the Council of Trent, convened to meet the challenge of Luther’s revolt, was in session intermittently between 1545 and 1563). Those who saw Aristotle’s text as normative insisted that an epic must deal with a single historical theme in a uniformly elevated style, while the decrees emanating from Trent re-asserted the authority of the church and took an increasingly hard line against heresy. As he worked on his poem, Tasso was nervously anxious not to offend either of these constituencies.
The trouble was that his most immediate model – one whose influence he could not have ignored even if he had wanted to – was very far from conforming to the new orthodoxies. Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, a multilayered narrative loosely (very loosely) located in the historical setting of Charlemagne’s wars against the Moors in Spain, was published in 1532, and was written in more easy-going times. Ariosto could criticize the Italian rulers of his day, including the papacy, and introduce episodes into his poem which provocatively questioned conventional values, whether rational, social, or sexual, without worrying about the consequences. He could be equally casual about literary proprieties: his freewheeling poem indulged in constant romantic deviations from its main plot, such as it was, and its tone was teasingly elusive, always maintaining an ironic distance between the narrator and his subject-matter.
The Orlando furioso was hardly a model for the poem Tasso set out to write; and yet it was hugely popular, and Tasso clearly read and admired it as much as anyone. So Tasso’s poem, as he reluctantly agreed to publish it in 1581 after 20 years of writing and rewriting, embodies the tension between his declared aim and the poem his instincts impelled him to write. It would be hard to argue that the Gerusalemme liberata (The Liberation of Jerusalem) is an unqualified success as a celebration of counter-reformation Christianity; instead it is something much more interesting, an expression of the inner contradictions of late sixteenth-century culture as they were felt by a sensitive – sometimes hyper-sensitive – and gifted poet.
Some of Tasso’s drafts had leaked out during the poem’s long gestation and had been published without his consent, so the poem was eagerly awaited, and it immediately had its devotees. Not everyone, however, was impressed. Among those who were not was Galileo, who wrote a series of acerbic notes on the poem some time before 1609. His criticisms are mostly on details of language and style, but in one revealing comment he compares Tasso’s poetic conceits to ostentatiously difficult dance steps, which are pleasing only if they are ‘carried through with supreme accomplishment, so that their gracefulness overrides their affectation’. Grazia versus affettazione: the terms are taken from Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, that indispensable guide to Renaissance manners which decreed that the courtier’s accomplishments should be displayed with an appearance of effortless nonchalance. Tasso’s offence against courtly manners was that he tried too hard.
The Gerusalemme liberata is indeed full of unresolved tensions – between historical chronicle and romantic fantasy, sensuality and solemnity, the broad sweep of history and the playing out of individual passions. They are what bring the poem to life today, long after the crusades have lost their appeal as a topic for celebration. Galileo rebukes one of Tasso’s heroes for being too easily deflected from his duty by love: ‘Tancredi, you coward, a fine hero you are! You were the first to be chosen to answer Argante’s challenge, and then when you come face to face with him, instead of confronting him you stop to gaze on your lady love’. Tancredi does admittedly cut a rather ludicrous figure when he is transfixed by catching sight of Clorinda just as he is about to accept the Saracen champion’s challenge, but what Galileo didn’t realise was that the very vehemence of his indignation was a testimony to the effectiveness of Tasso’s writing. Plenty of poets wrote about how love mocks the pretentions of would-be heroes, but few dramatised it so effectively – and only Tasso could have written the scene, memorably set to music by Monteverdi, where Tancredi meets Clorinda in single combat, her identity (and her gender) concealed under a suit of armour, and recognises her only when he has mortally wounded her and he baptises her before she dies in his arms.
Galileo was wrong about Tasso’s poem. The very qualities which he deplored make it a classic which inspired poets from Spenser and Milton to Goethe and Byron, composers from Monteverdi to Rossini, and painters from Poussin to Delacroix, and which is still a compelling read today.
Mark Davie taught Italian at the Universities of Liverpool and Exeter. His interests focus particularly on the relation between learned and popular culture, and between Latin and the vernacular, in Italy in the Renaissance. In Oxford World’s Classics he has written the introduction and notes to Max Wickert’s translation of The Liberation of Jerusalem, and has translated (with William R. Shea) the Selected Writings of Galileo.
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Image credit: Statue of Torquato Tasso by Luigi Chiesa. CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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