On October 1st, a troupe of St. Olaf players brought us the Roman comedian Plautus’ Aulularia (’Little Pot o’ Gold’) – performed in English, with a bit of Latin thrown in for good measure.  Students from all walks of Gustavus life enjoyed an hour of uproarious situation comedy, musical numbers, slapstick, and crazy coincidences.  Read the following review submitted by Nick Neutkens, beginning Greek student:

Although I understood absolutely none of the Latin, I thoroughly enjoyed the Aulularia play. I was very impressed with how little they had to work with and what they produced with it on stage. It was in fact, a great comedy that produced a lot of laughs as well as some puns including Greek superiority. Latin is a great thing to learn and all, but everyone knows that Greek is far more superior than any other language. The only aspect of the play that did bother me was the character consistency. The characters that seemed to be the most entertaining to me had very few lines and I was hoping to see more of them. Other than that miniscule personal preference, the actors performed very well and their singing was better than expected. Another interesting thought about the play was that four of the actors were actually Physics majors at St. Olaf. That is an interesting way to show that you don’t have to be a Classics major to celebrate or learn the classics. Overall, the play met my expectations and maybe did a little more than that. There is a good chance that I will be present at next year’s performance. To those who were involved with the play, I say “eu ge!”

Also scheduled for production is Agora, a film about Hypatia, starring Rachel Weisz and directed by Alejandro Amenábar.

The film focuses on one of the most impressive female figures in history – Hypatia, a leading thinker in the Rome-governed Alexandria, considered to be the first notable woman of mathematics. She studied philosophy and astronomy, and both pagan and Christian students from far and wide came together to study under her. “For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.”

“We’re capable, but not practiced, in the art of thinking,” says Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good, a business consulting company, and the founder of a web-based reading and lecture organization called Reading Odyssey. “We’re all endowed with curiosity, but a lot of us, for very good reasons, stop using it after a certain point. After a certain age, we tend to substitute opinions for thinking.”

…According to Terry (and Berkshire-Hathaway vice-chariman Charlie Munger, among others), the answer lies in the classics. Why the classics? First, to gather a broad base of knowledge about the “big ideas” across all the major academic disciplines. And second, to develop the ways of thinking and the “habit of wisdom” Aristotle believed were critical to good decision-making.

…Wisdom, according to Aristotle, isn’t an object anyone acquires. It’s a habit; something that emerges from a particular way of processing information and engaging with others and the world. And a habit that’s essential for us to develop to make better decisions in business and life. That theme is prevalent …in Terry’s Reading Odyssey teleconference-based lecture and discussion groups–which he set up to help curious adults explore and debate classics and “big ideas” from thinkers ranging from Homer, Aristotle and Herodotus to Darwin.

…perhaps, after years of hubris born of steadily rising stock markets, we’re suddenly, post-crash, a bit more open to the idea that we might not know all there is to know–and that we might even need to develop new ways of learning what there is to know. The Greeks knew something about that, too. After all, they’re the ones who coined the term “hubris.” And anyone who paid attention in history and literature class knows that it was almost always followed by a fall.

The upcoming Starz drama series Spartacus: Blood and Sand will include both gay and lesbian characters, executive producer Rob Tapert told TheTorchOnline.com today.

The drama stars Andy Whitfield and Lucy Lawless in a retelling of the story of the legendary rebel Roman gladiator-slave who lived in Rome from 109 BC to 71 BC and led a slave rebellion that eventually included 140,000 escaped slaves. The first season leads up to Spartacus’s escape from the slave prison.

Tapert is co-executive producing the series along with Sam Raimi, with whom he executive-produced Xena: The Warrior Princess.

Spartacus’s showrunner is Steven DeKnight, who told IGN recently, “I come from the Joss Whedon camp, so I love strong women, and I love big sweeping romantic arcs that will probably end badly, just like Joss always does.”

Each of the 13 episodes in the first season — which debuts on the premium network in January — reportedly cost over $2 million, and will include more graphic sex and violence than 300, says Tapert. “[The network] has given us quite a bit of rope with which to hang ourselves,” he says. Filming for the series is currently taking place in New Zealand.

Lawless (who is married to Tapert) plays Lucretia, the owner of the gladiator school where Spartacus (Whitfield) is imprisoned. John Hannah will play her husband, and Erin Cummings (Bitch Slap!, Dante’s Cove) has been cast as Spartacus’s wife.

Cleopatra died more than 2,000 years ago, at the age of 39. Before she was a slot machine, a video game, a cigarette, a condom, a caricature, a cliché or a synonym for Elizabeth Taylor, before she was reincarnated by Shakespeare, Dryden or Shaw, she was a nonfictional Egyptian queen. She ruled for 21 years, mostly alone, which is to say that she was essentially a female king, an incongruity that elicits the kind of double take once reserved for men in drag.

From her point of view there was nothing irregular about the arrangement. Cleopatra arguably had more powerful female role models than any other woman in history. They were not so much paragons of virtue as shrewd political operators….Cleopatra’s great-grandmother waged one civil war against her parents, another against her children. These women were raised to rule.

Cleopatra has gone down in history as a wanton seductress. She is the original bad girl, the Monica Lewinsky of the ancient world. And all because she turns up at one of the most dangerous intersections in history, that of women and power.

…

Granting that the double standard has outlived Cleopatra by at least 2,000 years, what are we doing today on that Egyptian hill, under the ruins of the temple of Taposiris Magna? “This could be the most important discovery of the 21st century,” says Egypt’s antiquities director, Zahi Hawass, of the dig. Certainly it would be a relief to cross Cleopatra off our list of objects we have lost, or believe we have lost: Atlantis, Jamestown, an entire tribe of Israel, good manners, Jimmy Hoffa.

If we find Cleopatra’s tomb — and certainly we will find something relevant, as Dr. Hawass seems determined to make a discovery to rival the 1922 one of King Tut — we may well be able to solve the mystery of Cleopatra’s death.