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!”

In a few opening remarks, Simon repeatedly cited Greek tragedy’s influence on “The Wire,” explaining that in the place of the meddlesome Greek gods who randomly ruined people’s lives he subbed in modern institutions. In what seemed a preemptive nod toward any outraged [...] fans in the audience, Simon also leaned on the same source to explain the fate for some of his show’s most popular characters. “Those who want to know why [...] had to die, why [...] had to die,” he said, “Strap on a helmet, get in the game and read Antigone. Read Medea. It had to happen.”

A lot of work has been done recently on the Western as America’s version of Homeric myth, there’s a scene toward the end of season 3 depicting a tense stand-off between two charismatic urban gunslingers, if you will, who meet in the shadows of a dark alley rather than at high noon in the town square.  The Iliad’s codes of male conduct and the rituals of combat always seem to hover in the background of any form of warfare, whether it takes place in another country, in the Wild West, or in the streets.

Structural resonances aside, there are a couple of sly allusions to the show’s Greek tragic inspiration–a reference to Ares and a mysterious Greek drug smuggler who sends text messages in, not surprisingly, modern Greek.

Also, I wonder if the show’s title, “The Wire” has some significance. As a tool for trying to access the truth, the wiretap kind of functions like the poet, who expresses the engimatic words of the Muses.  It’s not a perfect analogy, but the parties on both ends of the wire (the drug dealers and the cops) are to some degree defined by their ignorance because the drug dealers don’t know they’re being tapped, and the cops have to decode and interpret their verbal transmissions.  But even when the whole situation comes to light and goes to trial, neither side really knows what will happen and what significance the wire and the communications it records will have for their respective cases.

In any case, stuff to think about.  (Click here to see what Obama thinks.)

Archaeologists find tomb of the real hero who inspired epic film.

Italian archaeologists have discovered the tomb of the Ancient Roman hero who inspired Russell Crowe’s character in the film Gladiator.

Daniela Rossi, a Rome archaeologist, said that the discovery of the marble tomb of Marcus Nonius Macrinus, which has an inscription bearing his name, was “the most important Ancient Roman monument to come to light for 20 or 30 years”.
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Marcus Nonius Macrinus, born in Brescia, northern Italy, was a general and consul who led military campaigns for Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor in 161-180AD. He became part of the emperor’s inner circle and one of his favourites, serving as proconsul in Asia. His patrician villa at Toscolano Maderno on Lake Garda has been identified and partially excavated.

The character of Maximus also drew on accounts by Roman historians of a wrestler named Narcissus, who murdered the Emperor Commodus by strangling him, and the life of Spartacus, the leader of a revolt by slaves and gladiators in the 1st century BC.

When it continues on to note that, “the decline and fall of the American Empire echoes the experience of the Romans,” you know that your appreciation of classics and its relevance to the modern world is about to be validated.

And when the author of the column quotes Seneca and rejoices at the current boom in Latin enrollments across the country, you know that you’re part of this exciting resurgence.

But wait. There’s more…

In high school, I translated swatches of Julius Caesar’s “The Battle for Gaul” from Latin to English while nibbling cheese crackers. To boost the felicitous new trend toward Latin, I enlisted Gary D. Farney, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, to translate (loosely and creatively) from English to Latin “The Battle of Gall,” my take below on why the hyperventilating Republicans are not veni, vidi, vici-ing.

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Bellum Gallium

Manes Julii Caesaris paucis diebus aderant — “O, most bloody sight!” — cum Ioannes McCainus, mavericus et veteranus captivusque Belli Francoindosinini, et Sara Palina, barracuda borealis, qui sneerare amant Baracum Obamam causa oratorii, pillorant ut demagogi veri, Africanum-Americanum senatorem Terrae Lincolni, ad Republicanas rallias.

Rabidi subcanes candidati, pretendant “no orator as Brutis is,” ut “stir men’s blood” et disturbant mentes populi ad “a sudden flood of mutiny,” ut Wilhelmus Shakespearus scripsit.

Cum Quirites Americani ad rallias Republicanas audiunt nomen Baraci Husseini Obamae, clamant “Mortem!” “Amator terroris!” “Socialiste!” “Bomba Obamam!” “Obama est Arabus!” “Caput excidi!” tempus sit rabble-rouseribus desistere “Smear Talk Express,” ut Stephanus Colbertus dixit. Obama demonatus est tamquam Musulmanus-Manchurianus candidatus — civis “collo-cerviciliaris” ad ralliam Floridianam Palinae exhabet mascum Obamae ut Luciferis.
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Read the whole thing here.

On the Fourth of July, a little group of Americans held a patriotic celebration in Rome’s Piazza Farnese. We chose a spot near one of the two monumental fountains, huge basins that were originally in the Baths of Caracalla, built around A.D. 212. In typical Roman fashion, some bigwig swiped them 500 years ago to use as ornamental gardenware in his front yard. It wasn’t our idea to use a 2,000-year-old bathtub as the backdrop for a celebration of America’s dubious performance in the War of 1812, it was our friends’, two teachers living in Rome. But our group of 10 (we were traveling with another family of four) happily went along with it.

You go to Rome to get high on history. But history speaks only in fragments. Once you realize you can’t get your arms around the Renaissance, let alone the classical and Christian eras, you give up trying to catch two thousand years of time and settle for moments.

Rome specializes in these surreal time tunnels, moments when the past suddenly undercuts the present. If you’re lucky enough to fall down one of those tunnels, you close your eyes and keep dropping as long as you can.

And in Rome, every street can open beneath your feet.

Sometimes, walking through a city, I imagine that it is a living organism, and that its streets are neural passageways, the frozen residue of thoughts. That dead-end alley in Chinatown is not a walkway to nowhere but a complex line in a poem, one written in an exquisite unknown grammar that you suddenly are able to comprehend. At such moments the city becomes a mirror that reflects your memories and desires. Space overpowers time: As you walk through its streets, you are walking through your own life. Every unknown building and bend in the road are chapters in a story that has already been finished yet is still beginning.

Novelists have always been drawn to the idea that great cities are themselves characters, personages so powerful they take center stage. In Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels, Paris is as important a character as the weary, burly detective. At the end of Balzac’s “Lost Illusions,” the hero looks down upon the “hive” of Paris and vows to conquer it. The fog of Dickens’ London is a living force. The apotheosis of this uncanny reversal of humanity and city is found in Paul Auster’s “City of Glass,” when a character’s erratic movements through the streets of New York are revealed to be a hieroglyph that must be deciphered. In Rome, the streets sometimes feel like animal trails in the great forest of human history — paths that are at once unutterably weighty and completely random.

Our last night in Rome, we wandered at dusk through the Ghetto. A coolness had fallen on the city and the shadows lingered on the piazzas. Passing the Portal of Octavian, we came to the end of a dead-end street. Below, in the shadow of the Theater of Marcellus, a pianist was playing Chopin. A few listeners were sitting on a railing; a woman was painting. Ahead of us rose up the three illuminated columns of the Temple of Apollo, built in 20 B.C., when the Roman republic, the glory of the world, had just fallen. The past touched us, a brief blast of trumpets and light, then receded into the gathering darkness, leaving only a faint echo, like the sound of the sea. It was one of a thousand corners in this unknowable city. We looked around to remember this fleeting and eternal moment. And then we walked on.