tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/roman-mythology-18794/articles
Roman mythology – The Conversation
2024-01-31T19:07:47Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216353
2024-01-31T19:07:47Z
2024-01-31T19:07:47Z
Who was Narcissus?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563496/original/file-20231204-29-e8pnp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C116%2C4065%2C2109&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, 1903.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Narcissus is among the best-known figures from Greek mythology. </p>
<p>His beauty has lasted millennia: his name denotes the genus of plants of the <em>amaryllis</em> family, such as the daffodil and jonquil; his personality lends itself to the term “narcissism”, which describes a self-absorbed individual; and his story has inspired great works of art and literature.</p>
<p>The familial origins of Narcissus vary. In the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Metamorphoses-poem-by-Ovid">Metamorphoses</a>, Latin poet and mythographer Ovid names him as the son of the river god, Cephissus and the nymph, Liriope. </p>
<p>Another account, from the Greek author of the late Roman Imperial era, Nonnos, lists his mother as the goddess of the moon, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selene">Selene</a> and his father her mortal consort, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Endymion-Greek-mythology">Endymion</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-ovids-metamorphoses-and-reading-rape-65316">Guide to the classics: Ovid's Metamorphoses and reading rape</a>
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<p>The Roman versions of Narcissus’ narrative are clearly based on a much earlier Greek myth. Scant evidence remains of its origins, other than the Greek etymology of his name and his place of birth in Boeotia, in Central Greece.</p>
<h2>Divine retribution</h2>
<p>Ovid’s vivid and dramatic version of the myth is the best known and most cited. He describes the fate of the beautiful youth, Narcissus, as announced by the seer, Tiresias; namely, he will live a long, fruitful life, provided he never recognises himself.</p>
<p>This prediction inevitably comes to fruition after Narcissus is subject to divine punishment for his rejection of the nymph, Echo. (In an alternative tradition, to which Ovid also alludes, Narcissus rejects the advances of a young man, Ameinias.) </p>
<p>Ovid tells of Narcissus’ repulsion at Echo’s advances and the devastating effect this had on her. Distraught at the beautiful youth’s aggressive rejection, Echo literally wastes away until nothing is left of her except her voice. She is able to repeat only the last few words of sentences uttered by others. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Narcissus kneels before a pool." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563497/original/file-20231204-29-1dnyv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Caravaggio, Narcissus, circa 1600.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Ovid reveals Echo is merely one in a list of thwarted admirers, including a young man who prays for divine retribution against Narcissus’ arrogance. Sadly for Narcissus, the goddess of retribution – Rhamnusia – is more than happy to fulfil this prayer, thus manifesting Tiresias’ prediction. </p>
<p>While hunting one day and beset by thirst, Narcissus bends down by a pond to drink. Suddenly he gazes upon his own reflection. Narcissus is besotted by the beautiful young man who gazes back at him from the water’s surface. But he is rejected by the object of his desire, who continually disappears each time he reaches for him.</p>
<p>He falls in love with someone who will never return that love – himself. And, like Echo, he begins to fade away. </p>
<h2>A powerful story</h2>
<p>The story of Narcissus is a powerful one. It taught the Greeks and Romans about the cruel and absolute power of divine forces in their lives and the harsh justice they mete out to mortals. It also encapsulates a well-known ancient belief concerning suspicions around beautiful people.</p>
<p>The ancients were intensely cautious about the possible dangers of beauty. They believed it could incite both divine and human envy and conceal hidden evils behind enchanting veneers.</p>
<p>The idea of beauty’s potential to harm and hurt is at the heart of Narcissus’ story, expressing the ancient fear that a stunning face may not be matched by a kind heart.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572309/original/file-20240130-27-kd466p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Paphos Archaeological Park. House of Dionysos: Mosaic of Narcissus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paphos_Haus_des_Dionysos_-_Narkissos_2.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>As with the hundreds of tales told in the Metamorphoses, the myth of Narcissus is one of transformation. As the nymphs of the waters and the trees prepare Narcissus’ funeral pyre, no body is found. Instead, a flower with white petals encircling a yellow centre lays in its place, namely, the daffodil. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A picture of a narcissus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572313/original/file-20240130-23-kmdljc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A daffodil or ‘Narcissus tazetta’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Narcissus#/media/File:Narcissus_tazetta_var_chinensis1.jpg">KENPEI/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>Like many of Ovid’s versions of the myths so powerfully and evocatively recorded, the tale of Narcissus has inspired artists and poets as well as, of course, early psychoanalysts. </p>
<p>Austrian psychoanalyst <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Rank">Otto Rank</a> published an early account of narcissism in 1911, A Contribution to Narcissism. Sigmund Freud followed in 1914 with an article entitled, <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Freud_SE_On_Narcissism_complete.pdf">On Narcissism: An Introduction</a>. </p>
<p>Rank emphasised vanity and grandiosity as aspects of narcissism. Freud linked narcissism with libidinal theories around instinctual sexual urges. Narcissism, he suggested, was not necessarily an abnormal human condition but one tempered by whether the libido was directed inward (towards oneself) or outward (towards others).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-culture-of-narcissism-christopher-lasch-excoriated-his-self-absorbed-society-but-the-books-legacy-is-questionable-216354">In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch excoriated his self-absorbed society – but the book's legacy is questionable</a>
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<p>These forays into narcissism or the increasingly popular term, “”<a href="https://www.sane.org/information-and-resources/facts-and-guides/narcissistic-personality-disorder">narcissistic personality disorder</a>“, are currently understood as being characterised by a fixation on oneself, extending to an exaggerated sense of one’s importance and limited empathy for other people. </p>
<p>For artists and poets, Narcissus’ story perhaps remains less complex. They have preferred to capture the pivotal moment of his self-fixated gaze, leaving interpretations to the viewer.</p>
<p>From antiquity to modernity, artists, from Pompeiian fresco painters of the first century CE to Caravaggio (1571-1610) and John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), have captured the tragic outcome inherent in his obsession with his own reflection.</p>
<p>Today, we may take this myth as a salient warning against our contemporary obsession with taking "selfies” and the self-promoting phenomenon of social networking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The myth of Narcissus – the beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection – has inspired poets, artists and psychoanalysts.
Marguerite Johnson, Honorary Professor, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205071
2023-05-09T11:43:27Z
2023-05-09T11:43:27Z
Roman temple thought to be dedicated to Mars could actually have been used to worship many gods – expert explains
<p>In April, archaeologists excavating at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz, in Britanny, France, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/roman-temple-found-in-france-may-have-been-dedicated-to-war-god-mars">announced that they had discovered</a> a large Roman temple, dating between the late first century BC and fourth century AD. They speculated that it had probably been used by Roman soldiers for hundreds of years to pay homage to Mars, the god of war.</p>
<p>It was the discovery of a fine bronze statuette of Mars <a href="https://www.inrap.fr/recherche?search_api_views_fulltext=La+Chapelle+des+Fougeretz">that suggested</a> the temple may have been a shrine to the god. But the site also had clay figurines of Venus and the mother goddesses, leading to uncertainty about which deity was worshipped there.</p>
<p>Two buildings were at the core of the site – a square within a square, one slightly smaller than the other. This design is typical of Romano-Celtic temples (found in modern France, parts of Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the north-west provinces of the Roman Empire). </p>
<p>Scholars of ancient religion in the Celtic north west regions of the Roman Empire (of which ancient France was a major part) used to regard a double temple arrangement as a dedication to a divine pair, one male and the other female, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/emile-thevenot-divinites-et-sanctuaires-de-la-gaule-paris-fayard-1968-245-pp-numerous-intext-illustrations-54s/2CE6B7ECCA5581C069587ECCA3CD92BB">such as</a> Apollo and Sirona or Mercury and Rosmerta.</p>
<p>The female names were usually derived from Celtic languages, while the male gods were from the classical Graeco-Roman pantheon, implying some sort of “marriage” between them and by extension, the synthesis of local culture with that of Imperial Rome.</p>
<p>But this theorising was a reflection of 19th and 20th century colonial thinking. Present day experts <a href="https://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/religious-individualisation.html">have found that</a> ancient people chose their forms of worship, rather than having religions imposed upon them.</p>
<p>Ancient communities could preserve Iron Age traditions or adopt aspects of Roman classical religion. This is reflected in the archaeology of their temple sites. </p>
<p>Some had wooden buildings and few, if any, featured classical images of gods. Others, particularly in the towns, opted for a more full on Roman style of worship, even if the old native traditions still underpinned the rituals.</p>
<h2>How the gods were worshipped at these temples</h2>
<p>Looking at excavations of temples in Gaul (modern France, with parts of Belgium, Germany and Switzerland) and Britain, it is striking that the architectural form is often quite standardised. </p>
<p>The temples are usually in the <a href="https://www.roman-britain.co.uk/roman-sites-in-great-britain/temples-and-shrines-of-roman-britain/">Romano-Celtic design</a>, with a small square central tower surrounded by a portico (a row of evenly spaced columns with a lean-to roof up against the central tower).</p>
<p>The sculpture, inscriptions, artefacts and sacrificial remains are, however, widely variable. They reveal the development of a highly localised suite of ritual activities that varied significantly from one temple to another.</p>
<p>Equally striking is their long-term stability. It seems that once established (either in the early Roman period or sometimes in the pre-conquest late Iron Age), rituals quickly settled down into patterns that continued, at some sites, for centuries. </p>
<p>The end usually came in the late Roman period, as <a href="https://www.cnrseditions.fr/catalogue/revues/gallia-71-1-2014/">pagan shrines were abandoned</a> in the face of the expansion of imperially promoted Christianity.</p>
<p>Mars, Venus and the mother goddesses (and possibly others not yet discovered) were probably the deities included in the rituals observed in the two shrines and the equally important open air courtyard in which the shrines stood.</p>
<p>It is in the courtyard that much of the public ritual, such as sacrifices, would have taken place. From this perspective, archaeologists cannot be sure that, for instance, the bigger temple was for Mars and the smaller one for the female deities.</p>
<p>We do not know the exact purpose of the temple buildings themselves. The central <em>cella</em> area is usually <a href="https://www.actes-sud.fr/node/25255">thought to be</a> a “house for the god”. Plinths are sometimes found within them, suitable for a statue or other cult idol.</p>
<p>The surrounding porticoes are secondary features, as some temples start life as a simple square structure and the portico is added later. At the site of Pesch, near Aachen in Germany, the portico of one of the two temples had altars to the Matronae goddesses (a variant on the mother goddesses). The <em>cella</em>, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.barpublishing.com/temples-churches-and-religion-recent-research-in-roman-britain-parts-i-and-ii.html">contained a statue of Jupiter</a>.</p>
<p>It looks as though the porticoes developed as a shelter for votive offerings, up against the central shrine building.</p>
<h2>Many gods in the sacred landscape</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.barpublishing.com/temples-churches-and-religion-recent-research-in-roman-britain-parts-i-and-ii.html">At many temples</a>, a wide variety of images and god names have been found. </p>
<p>At Gerolstein, near Trier in Germany, there was Minerva, Venus, Mercury, Bacchus and Hercules. At Le Hérapel in the Moselle region of France, there was Sol, Luna, Mercury, Bacchus, Hercules and Epona. At the Bregenz temple site in Austria, there is an inscription to “the gods and goddesses”, showing that many deities were worshipped collectively.</p>
<p>In Britain, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/526548">the temple at Lamyatt Beacon</a>, Somerset, had a cache of statuettes of Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Minerva, Hercules and a Genius. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X14000270">Similar hoards</a> of figurines have been found elsewhere in the province.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mars and Venus in a wall painting from Pompeii. Venus is seated with Mars embracing her from behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524416/original/file-20230504-23-3auusx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mars and Venus in a wall painting from Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_painting_-_Ares_and_Aphrodite_-_Pompeii_(VII_2_23)_-_Napoli_MAN_9249_-_03.jpg">ArchaiOptix</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Clearly, the “poly” in polytheism meant just that – many deities, worshipped together. There may have been a main or original god or goddess at many temple sites, but there was a clear tendency to worship a range of deities, possibly accumulating new idols over time.</p>
<p>The broader sacred landscape <a href="https://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/sacred-landscapes.html">adds clarity</a> to the finds at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz. The site is complemented by another temple at Mordelles, to the west. Both were within easy reach of the Roman city of Rennes and it is quite possible that they were linked to the town by processional or pilgrimage routes.</p>
<p>In the heart of Rennes itself, evidence for worship of Mars is strong. All three places may have formed the sacred landscape of the citizens, in the form of processions and seasonal festivities.</p>
<p>It is tempting to think of ancient religion in monotheistic terms – one temple, with one god. But the evidence from the Romano-Celtic regions of the empire suggests otherwise. It is much more genuinely polytheistic. Several deities were worshiped at most temple sites, with strong regional networks linking many gods and goddesses together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There may have been a main god or goddess at many temple sites, but there was a clear tendency to worship a range of deities.
Tony King, Professor of Roman Archaeology, University of Winchester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130078
2020-01-21T17:30:36Z
2020-01-21T17:30:36Z
When did the vulva become obscene?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310449/original/file-20200116-181653-1pzeab2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C1497%2C1028&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Statuette of a female vulve called Baubo, terracotta, from Priene, Asia Minor, 4th century BC.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/7fifnk/statue_of_baubo_goddess_of_lewd_jokes_ca_400_bce/">Reddit</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September 2019, a French ad for feminine hygiene products featuring taboo-breaking representations of vulvas and menstruation <a href="https://www.telerama.fr/television/sur-youtube,-la-vulve-sous-le-feu-des-commentaires,n6437136.php">sparked controversy</a>. Yet in a cultural context in France, phallic symbols rarely cause a fuss. What explains this difference in treatment?</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1668&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296231/original/file-20191009-3867-xogc12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1668&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The goddess Ishtar, vase from Larsa, c. 1900 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Musée du Louvre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Images of male genitalia in art and advertising rarely cause a stir – we’re used to them. Male statues have been flaunting their (fairly realistic) penises in public parks for centuries, and <a href="http://www.culturepub.fr/videos/perrier-bouteille-phallique/">Perrier often centers its ads on phallic-shaped bottles</a>.</p>
<p>In contrast, vulval symbols are conspicuous by their absence. No wonder, then, that the Nana brand’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch&v=0k-_4WloY6Y">“Viva la Vulva”</a> campaign is causing a stir. The phallus is seen as a powerful image, whereas the vulva is upsetting to many. But this has not always been the case.</p>
<h2>The divine vulva of Ishtar: a fertility symbol</h2>
<p>In the third millennium BC, the Sumerians, inhabitants of present-day Iraq, worshipped the goddess Ishtar. Poetic texts refer to the goddess’ wet vulva, fertilized by the sperm of her mortal husband, Dumuzi, the shepherd king.</p>
<p>The goddess addresses her lover <a href="https://www.babelio.com/livres/Kramer-Lerotisme-sacre/444260">as follows</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who will plow my high field?<br>
Who will plow my wet ground?<br>
As for me, the young woman,<br>
who will plow my vulva?<br>
Who will station the ox there?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The oxen pulling the plow refer to the king’s phallus; the vulva represents the ground to be sown. Ishtar’s royal lover answers, “I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva.” At fever pitch of excitement, the goddess cries, “Then plow my vulva, man of my heart!”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1237&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1237&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296237/original/file-20191009-3910-ocs3qa.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1237&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hathor, bronze statuette, 8th century BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/685672">Brooklyn Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They make love, and when Dumuzi ejaculates, plants are seeded all around and begin to grow. The vulva plays a positive role in this story; it is complementary to the phallus, equally necessary to the fertilization of the land.</p>
<p>In ancient Egypt, the vulva was seen as a source of happiness and regeneration. The sun god Ra was the source of light on Earth, but he sometimes showed signs of weakness, endangering all of humankind. Fortunately, the beautiful goddess Hathor had the bright idea of undressing in front of him and showing her vulva. Ra laughed joyfully at the sight and <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1529326/_Rire_f%C3%A9condit%C3%A9_et_d%C3%A9voilement_rituel_du_sexe_f%C3%A9minin_d_Hathor_%C3%A0_Baub%C3%B4_un_parcours_revisit%C3%A9_dans_Et_in_Aegypto_et_ad_Aegyptum_Recueil_d_%C3%A9tudes_d%C3%A9di%C3%A9es_%C3%A0_Jean%E2%80%91Claude_Grenier_Annie_Gasse_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Servajean_et_Christophe_Thiers_%C3%A9ds._CENiM_5_vol._4_Montpellier_2012_p._755-772">recovered all his dazzle</a>. A valuable vulva indeed…</p>
<h2>In Greece and Rome: the vulva vanishes</h2>
<p>The vulva fell out of favour in the ancient Greek and Roman world. Artists often depicted the phallus, but the vulva is almost nowhere to be seen. Gods and heroes flaunt their penises, but goddesses tend to be robed; even when nude, like Aphrodite, they have perfectly smooth pubic triangles, with no clitoris or labia. The vulva was lost to censorship.</p>
<p>By contrast, the phallus – <em>phallos</em> in Greek or <em>fascinus</em> in Latin – was revered. Believed to have magical powers, it was exhibited and worshipped as an idol capable of protecting the city and its inhabitants from harm, and putting thieves and intruders to flight.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296240/original/file-20191009-3910-1jzdj02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Hic habitat Felicitas</em>, ‘Here dwells happiness,’ terracotta relief, 1st century AD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pomp%C3%A9%C3%AF_HIC_HABITAT_FELICITAS.jpg">Archeological Museum, Naples</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is why the Athenians held the annual Dionysia festival, where a <a href="https://www.babelio.com/livres/Sissa-La-vie-quotidienne-des-dieux-grecs/114518">solemn procession of citizens called <em>phallophoroi</em></a> carried giant carved wooden phalluses. Erect penises made of wood or clay were also installed on street corners and at the entrances to stores and houses.</p>
<p>A sign found over the entrance of a bakery in Pompeii shows a <em>fascinus</em>, framed by an inscription proclaiming “Here dwells happiness” (<em>Hic habitat felicitas</em>). Phallic scarecrows were thought to be <a href="https://www.historia.fr/le-sexe-%C3%A0%C2%A0-rome">apotropaic</a> (able to ward off evil), and Greeks and Romans wore bronze penis-shaped pendants. In all these different forms, the phallus was always synonymous with strength, happiness and prosperity.</p>
<h2>The vulva, for women only</h2>
<p>In Greek art, depictions of the vulva – believed to <a href="http://pur-editions.fr/detail.php?idOuv=3869">boost female fertility</a> – are only found on objects intended for women.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1309&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1309&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1645&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296241/original/file-20191009-3846-13735cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1645&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figurine of a vulva-woman known as Baubo, terracotta, Priene, Asia Minor, 4th century AD.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Statuettes of pregnant women touching their vulvas have been found in Egypt. Other figurines of vulva-women, found in Asia Minor, were probably worn by pregnant women as protective amulets. The ethnologist and psychoanalyst Georges Devereux associated these headless figurines, whose faces are engraved on their bellies, with the myth of the priestess Baubo, who <a href="https://www.babelio.com/livres/Devereux-Baubo-la-vulve-mythique/346685">showed her vulva to Demeter</a> to distract the goddess from her grief at the loss of her daughter.</p>
<p>Like Ra in the Egyptian story of Hathor, Demeter reacted by laughing–but Baubo showed her vulva as a gesture of female solidarity, with no erotic intention.</p>
<p>The denigration of the vulva outside the female sphere is illustrated by the birth of the goddess Athena, who was growing in Zeus’ skull. One day, Zeus had such a headache that he begged the god Hephaestus to split open his skull with a hammer and chisel. Hephaestus complied, <a href="https://www.babelio.com/livres/Bonnard-Le-complexe-de-Zeus--Representations-de-la-patern/404952">carving out a sort of improvised vulva</a>.</p>
<p>The goddess Athena, in full armour, sprang out from this crack – so the lord of the gods was able to give birth to his daughter, proving the vulva’s worthlessness. This myth is a fantasy of male birth-giving – procreation in which the vulva plays no part.</p>
<h2>The “taut sex” of the nymphomaniac</h2>
<p>But the most hostile ancient representations of the vulva are found in Latin texts. Roman authors imagined nymphomaniac characters, women gripped by uncontrollable sexual frenzy. One such example is Messalina, wife of the emperor Claudius (reigned AD 41-54). After her death, she became the heroine of a sinister legend portraying her as <a href="https://www.babelio.com/livres/Castorio-Messaline-la-putain-imperiale/784076">sexually insatiable</a>.</p>
<p>The poet Juvenal described her orgiastic behaviour in his <em>Satires</em>, recounting how the young empress left the splendour of the palace under cover of night, venturing out in secret to <a href="http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/satire/juvenal/satire6b.htm">gratify her lust in a sordid Roman brothel</a> (Juvénal, <em>Satires</em> VI, 116-130).</p>
<p>All night long, Messalina took lover after lover, only stopping when the brothel closed its doors. She returned to the palace with her “taut sex still burning” (<em>adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae</em>), exhausted but “not satisfied” (<em>sed non satiata</em>, the famous expression that inspired <a href="https://fleursdumal.org/poem/123">Baudelaire’s poem of the same name</a>).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311198/original/file-20200121-117927-18oilpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Death Of Valeria Messalina</em> by Victor Biennoury (1823–1893).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Death_Of_Valeria_Messalina_by_V.Biennoury.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her lust never satisfied, Messalina involved her entourage in her excesses. According to Pliny the Elder, she challenged a prostitute to a 24-hour sex competition, which she won with a score of 25 partners (<em>Natural History</em> 10, 83, 172).</p>
<p>In addition to her endless string of lovers, Messalina was reputed to always initiate her sexual encounters, revolutionising the codes of phallocratic Roman society. She was portrayed as a tireless sexual predator and a dominant woman who behaved like a man – outrageous in Roman eyes.</p>
<p>Claudius was told of his wife’s shocking behaviour and ordered her execution – the only way of quenching her sexual thirst.</p>
<h2>So what is obscenity?</h2>
<p>Obscenity is a social construction that varies according to time and place. In Hindu mythology, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/yoni"><em>yoni</em> is the symbol of the fertility goddess Shakti</a>, who was was revered as far back as 4000 BC. It was seen as equal to its male counterpart, the <em>lingam</em>, and together they were the source of all existence. A similar mythology is present in Japan with the concepts of <em>yin</em> and <em>yang</em>, representing female and male energies. At the same time, the country still considers images of vulvas to be obscene from a legal point of view, as demonstrated by the <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/09/national/crime-legal/vagina-artist-convicted-of-obscenity-court-acknowledges-pop-art-motive/#.XicqzX-2mCg">2014 conviction of the artist Megumi Igarashi</a>.</p>
<p>But thanks to the influence the influence of female artists – and even advertisers – the vulva is back in the 21st century.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LyMHNvEkvwU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Sally Laruelle of <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a> and Leighton Kille of The Conversation France.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian-Georges Schwentzel ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>
An ad alluding to the vulva is sparking controversy, but there are few objections to phallic symbols. What explains this difference in treatment?
Christian-Georges Schwentzel, Professeur d'histoire ancienne, Université de Lorraine
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104441
2018-10-30T17:28:46Z
2018-10-30T17:28:46Z
From Ancient Rome to Hollywood: witches as figures of fun
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242501/original/file-20181026-7056-ryelj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Roman mosaic from the Villa del Cicerone in Pompeii.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>For centuries, when people thought of witches, they were evil or possessed by evil demons: think of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-of-the-witches-woman-are-accused-while-men-claim-victim-status-105870">Salem witch trials</a> or the 16th and 17th-century woodcuts depicting sinister women conjuring demons or flying on broomsticks. These were the sort of women who morphed in fairy tales into the wicked stepmother in Snow White or the evil crone in Hansel and Gretel. </p>
<p>But recent generations of children are more likely to have come across witches as figures of fun: consider Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Hocus Pocus, in which Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy abduct children, resurrect dead lovers and brew potions with comic flair. With the reboot of Hocus Pocus (marking the film’s 25th anniversary) and a new scarier version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/sabrina-the-teenage-witch-is-back-with-a-darker-look-for-our-times-103915">Sabrina the Teenage Witch</a> now on the air, the witch as a figure of fun is once again coming to the fore.</p>
<p>This caricature of the witch predates the sinister medieval version and can be traced all the way back to Roman times. Many of the jokes levelled at witches in popular culture had already been made in <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0286.xml">Horace’s Satires</a>, published in about 35 BC, and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674990494">Apuleius’s Metamorphoses</a> from the 2nd century AD.</p>
<h2>From temptress to Hag</h2>
<p>Horace’s Satires introduces us to Canidia and Sagana as comic hags (<em>strigae</em>) “hideous to behold” – a far cry from the temptress witches of Greek literature such as the bewitchingly beautiful <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Circe-Greek-mythology">Circe</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Calypso-Greek-mythology">Calypso</a>. In his eighth satire, Horace assumes the poetic voice of a wooden statue of Priapus, a fertility god (with a huge phallus). Priapus witnesses Canidia and her crony Sagana burning wax images of their enemies in a ritual of sympathetic magic. But their nefarious spells are interrupted when <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14020/14020-h/14020-h.htm#THE_FIRST_BOOK_OF_THE_SATIRES_OF_HORACE">Priapus’s statue farts</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Away they ran into town. Then amid great laughter and mirth you might see Canidia’s teeth and Sagana’s high wig come tumbling down, and from their arms the herbs and enchanted love-knots.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like the witchy Sanderson sisters in Hocus Pocus who are forced to fly on vacuum cleaners and are baffled by buses, Horace’s hideous witches are at odds with their environment. Fleeing, Horace’s witches leave behind their wigs and teeth and drop their erotic spells – they are generally depicted as laughable characters.</p>
<h2>Suspending disbelief</h2>
<p>In Metamorphoses – which is the <a href="https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/83943">only complete Latin novel to survive</a> – Apuleius gives us the adventures of Lucius, a Greek traveller, who hears other stories from travellers about their encounters with witches before he himself is turned into an ass by the witch Meroe. The novel comically plays on hearsay and scepticism. So when Lucius’s companion Socrates warns him about the dangers of Meroe, he provides a list of impossibilities (known as <em>adynata</em>), claiming that “she can lower the sky and suspend the Earth …”.</p>
<p>This description of impossible happenings is a stock feature of witchcraft in non-comic literature. For example, in Ovid’s own Metamorphoses, the witch Medea claims to draw the moon from the sky and uproot trees when concocting a poison to kill the new wife of her lover Jason. But Lucius, aware of people’s habit of exaggeration when talking of witches, berates his friend:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Please,’ I said, ‘do remove the tragic curtain and fold up the stage drapery, and give it to me in ordinary language.’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eye of newt: detail from Pompeii showing the witch in close up.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Boyfriend trouble</h2>
<p>The most persistent plot device in both Apuleius and Hocus Pocus is the witch as the woman scorned. Just as Winnie Sanderson kills her unfaithful lover Billy Butcherson in Hocus Pocus, so witches in ancient literature also had to contend with bad boyfriends. In Metamorphoses, Apuleius tells us that the witch Meroe <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.38326/page/n45">transforms her unfaithful lover</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because one of her lovers had misbehaved himself with another woman, she changed him with one word into a beaver, because when that animal is afraid of being captured it escapes from its pursuers by cutting off its own genitals, and she wanted the same thing to happen to him since he had intercourse with another woman.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ever creative, Meroe’s punishment fits the crime and the episode emphasises the sexually predatory presentation of witches throughout the novel. In Apuleius, as in our current popular culture, the fearsome reputations of witches clash with comical representations of them – they are not powerful enough to change the landscape, but are easily able to conjure up a way of spiting an unfaithful lover. </p>
<p>Like the Sandersons, these Roman witches use their powers to seduce lovers, spite enemies and stay young. As in Hollywood productions, both Horace and Apuleius caricature the grotesqueness and pettiness of witches – in stark contrast to the power and influence of witches that was to develop in medieval times.</p>
<p>In Horace and Apuleius’s works, witches were figures of fun. Interestingly life imitated art for Apuleius when he himself was tried for witchcraft. Apuleius’ <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Apuleius/apol.1.1.html">Apologia</a> details his defence against charges that he bewitched his older, wealthier wife Pudentilla. This suggests that Roman audiences could laugh at witches as comic characters even as trials for witchcraft were still happening. </p>
<p>Ultimately, fictitious witches have always reflected transgressive women, whether they are threatening femme fatales such as Ovid’s Medea, or hilarious hags like Horaces’ Canidia. Both of these interpretations persist in popular culture to this day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Haley received PhD funding from The University of Leeds Centenary Scholarship. </span></em></p>
How Romans overcame their fear of witches by finding them funny.
Maria Haley, Postgraduate Researcher and Education Outreach Fellow, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100982
2018-08-07T13:06:42Z
2018-08-07T13:06:42Z
How ancient cultures explained comets and meteors
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230771/original/file-20180806-34489-1u9mavr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/scientific-background-bright-comet-dark-blue-238563268?src=yNSHHz2wUzFpegKdoINhlQ-1-15">IgorZh/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Comets and meteors have fascinated the human race since they were first spotted in the night sky. But without science and space exploration to aid understanding of what these <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/100075/infographic-whats-the-difference-between-a-comet-asteroid-and-meteor/">chunks of rock and ice are</a>, ancient cultures often turned to myth and legend to explain them.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002182860703800203">Greeks and Romans believed</a> that the appearance of comets, meteors and meteor showers were portentous. They were signs that something good or bad had happened or was about to happen. The arrival of a comet could herald the birth of a great figure, and some people have even argued that the star in the sky which the Persian Magi followed to Bethlehem to see the newborn Jesus <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-science-tell-us-about-the-star-of-bethlehem-51773">was actually a comet</a>. </p>
<p>In the spring of 44BC, a comet that appeared was interpreted as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/20786572">a sign of the deification</a> of Julius Caesar, <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/article/803/the-murder-of-julius-caesar/">following his murder</a>. Caesar’s adopted son Octavian (soon to be the Emperor Augustus) made much of the comet, which burned in the sky during the funerary games held for Caesar. This portentous event was frequently celebrated in the ancient sources. In his epic poem, the Aeneid, Virgil <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/228/228-h/228-h.htm#link2HCH0006">describes how</a> “a star appeared in the daytime, and Augustus persuaded people to believe it was Caesar”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230782/original/file-20180806-191019-vbe9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Caesar’s comet, depicted on a denarius coin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S0484.4.jpg">Wikimedia/Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Augustus celebrated the comet and the deification of his father on coins (it did help to be the son of a god when trying to rule the Roman Empire), and many examples survive today. </p>
<h2>Meteor showers</h2>
<p>The Roman historian Cassius Dio referred to “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cm6PBAAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PR110&lpg=RA1-PR110&dq=cassius+dio+%22comet+stars%22&source=bl&ots=CFyYIEOB-6&sig=jto_KSWb_F8uuypw98O-Awfu_QM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj08sD5lNjcAhUUVsAKHRv6BgMQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=cassius%20dio%20%22comet%20stars%22&f=false">comet stars</a>” occurring in August 30BC. These are mentioned as among the portents witnessed <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1978JRASC..72...81B">after the death of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra</a>. Experts are not entirely sure what it means when Dio uses the plural term “comet stars”, but some have connected this recorded event to the annual Perseid meteor shower.</p>
<p>Though it retains an ancient Greek name, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-the-august-night-sky-lights-up-with-the-perseid-meteor-shower-63794">we now know</a> that the arrival of the Perseid meteor shower every August is actually the Earth’s orbit passing through debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230781/original/file-20180806-191044-vjvsho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Perseus flees after cutting off Medusa’s head in this water jar depiction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=980386001&objectid=461872">British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The meteor shower is named for the Perseidai (Περσείδαι), who were the sons of the ancient Greek hero Perseus. Perseus was a legendary figure with a fine family pedigree – he was the mythical son of Zeus and Argive princess Danaë (she of the golden rain). Perseus <a href="http://earthsky.org/constellations/cassiopeia-and-perseus-in-northeast-on-october-evenings">earned himself a constellation</a> after a number of epic adventures across the Mediterranean and Near East that included the frequently illustrated <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Medusa/">murder of the Gorgon sister, Medusa</a>.</p>
<p>Another of Perseus’s celebrated acts was <a href="https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph4.php#anchor_Toc64106270">the rescue of the princess Andromeda</a>. Abandoned by her parents to placate a sea monster, the princess was found by Perseus on a rock by the ocean. He married her and they went on to have seven sons and two daughters. Sky watchers believed that the constellation Perseus, located just beside Andromeda in the night sky, was the origin of the shooting stars they could see every summer, and so the name Perseid stuck. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230789/original/file-20180806-191022-c0ioa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wall painting from Pompeii, representing Perseus rescuing Andromeda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Nazionale_Napoli_Perseus_And_Andromeda.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tears and other traditions</h2>
<p>In Christian tradition the Perseid meteor shower has long been <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/in-august-watch-this-meteor-shower-named-for-a-saint-62501">connected to the martyrdom of St Lawrence</a>. Laurentius was a deacon in the early church at Rome, martyred in the year 258AD, during the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1SOQBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">persecutions of the Emperor Valerian</a>. The martyrdom supposedly took place on August 10, when the meteor shower was at its height, and so the shooting stars are equated to the saint’s tears. </p>
<p>Detailed records of astronomical events and sky watching can be found in historical texts from the Far East too. Ancient and medieval records from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0146636477900019">China</a>, <a href="http://cds.cern.ch/record/815141/files/0501216.pdf">Korea</a> and Japan have all been found to contain detailed accounts of meteor showers. Sometimes these different sources <a href="http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1958SCoA....2..131I&classic=YES">can be correlated</a>, which has allowed astronomers to track, for example, the impact of Halley’s comet on ancient societies both east and west. These sources have also been used to find the <a href="http://adsbit.harvard.edu//full/1958SCoA....2..131I/0000139.000.html">first recorded observation</a> of the Perseid meteor shower as a specific event, in Han Chinese records of 36AD.</p>
<p>Though the myths and legends may make one think that ancient civilisations had little scientific understanding of what meteors, comets and asteroids could be, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The early astronomers of the Near East, those who created the <a href="https://www.staff.science.uu.nl/%7Egent0113/babylon/babycal.htm">Babylonian</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/985113">Egyptian calendars</a>, and astronomical data were – by far – the most advanced in antiquity. And a <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160128-math-geometry-babylon-jupiter-astronomy-space/">recent study of ancient cuneiform texts</a> has proven that the Babylonian ability to track comets, planetary movements and sky events as far back as the first millennium BC involved a much more complex geometry than had been previously believed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eve MacDonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Without the scientific knowledge we have today, ancient cultures turned to myths and legends to understand celestial objects.
Eve MacDonald, Lecturer in Ancient History, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87246
2018-01-10T19:33:45Z
2018-01-10T19:33:45Z
Explainer: where do the names of our months come from?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201250/original/file-20180108-83563-1gpd415.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from the Roman-era Sousse Mosaic Calendar, El Jem, Tunisia. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our lives run on Roman time. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and public holidays are regulated by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gregorian-calendar">Pope Gregory XIII’s Gregorian Calendar</a>, which is itself a modification of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Julian-calendar">Julius Caesar’s calendar</a> introduced in 45 B.C. The names of our months are therefore derived from the Roman gods, leaders, festivals, and numbers. If you’ve ever wondered why our 12-month year ends with September, October, November, and December – names which mean the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months – you can blame the Romans.</p>
<h2>The calendar of Romulus</h2>
<p>The Roman year originally had ten months, a calendar which was ascribed to the legendary first king, Romulus. Tradition had it that Romulus named the first month, <em>Martius</em>, after his own father, Mars, the god of war. This month was followed by <em>Aprilis</em>, <em>Maius</em>, and <em>Iunius</em>, names derived from deities or aspects of Roman culture. Thereafter, however, the months were simply called the fifth month (<em>Quintilis</em>), sixth month (<em>Sixtilis</em>) and so on, all the way through to the tenth month, December. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201252/original/file-20180108-83553-1u16ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mars and Rhea Silvia by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1617/20.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The institution of two additional months, <em>Ianuarius</em> and <em>Februarius</em>, at the beginning of the year was attributed to Numa, the second king of Rome. Despite the fact that there were now 12 months in the Roman year, the numerical names of the later months were left unchanged. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-gods-behind-the-days-of-the-week-87170">Explainer: the gods behind the days of the week</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Gods and rituals</h2>
<p>While January takes its name from <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-was-janus-the-roman-god-of-beginnings-and-endings-86853">Janus</a>, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, February comes from the word <em>februum</em> (purification) and <em>februa</em>, the rites or instruments used for purification. These formed part of preparations for the coming of Spring in the northern hemisphere.</p>
<p>The <em>februa</em> included spelt and salt for cleaning houses, leaves worn by priests, and strips of goat skin. These strips were put to good use in the festival of the Lupercalia, held each year on February 15. Young men, naked except for a goat-skin cape, dashed around Rome’s sacred boundary playfully whipping women with the strips. This ancient nudie run was designed to purify the city and promote fertility. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201254/original/file-20180108-83559-1087lp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail from Lupercalia by Andrea Camassei, c. 1635.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The origins of some months were debated even by the Romans themselves. One tradition had it that Romulus named April after the goddess Aphrodite, who was born from the sea’s foam (<em>aphros</em> in Ancient Greek). Aphrodite, known as Venus to the Romans, was the mother of Aeneas, who fled from Troy to Italy and founded the Roman race. The other version was that the month derived from Latin verb <em>aperio</em>, “I open”. As the poet Ovid <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674992795">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For they say that April was named from the open season, because spring then opens all things, and the sharp frost-bound cold departs, and earth unlocks her teeming soil …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There were similar debates about the origins of May and June. There was a story that Romulus named them after the two divisions of the Roman male citizen body, the <em>maiores</em> (elders) and <em>iuniores</em> (juniors). However, it was also believed that their names came from deities. The nymph Maia, who was assimilated with the earth, gave her name to May, while Juno, the goddess of war and women, was honoured by the month of June. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-seasonal-calendars-of-indigenous-australia-88471">Explainer: the seasonal calendars of Indigenous Australia</a></em> </p>
<hr>
<h2>Imperial pretensions</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201255/original/file-20180108-83567-1lonzi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cameo of the emperor Augustus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The numerical names of the months in the second half of the year remained unchanged until the end of the Roman Republic. In 44 B.C., <em>Quintilis</em> was rebranded as <em>Iulius</em>, to celebrate the month in which the dictator Julius Caesar was born. </p>
<p>This change survived Caesar’s assassination (and the outrage of the orator M. Tullius Cicero, who complained about it in his letters). In 8 B.C., Caesar’s adoptive son and heir, the emperor Augustus, had <em>Sextilis</em> renamed in his honour. This was not his birth month (which was September), but the month when he first became consul and subjugated Egypt.</p>
<p>This change left four months – September, October, November and December – for later emperors to appropriate, though none of their new names survive today. Domitian renamed September, the month he became emperor, to <em>Germanicus</em>, in honour of his victory over Germany, while <em>October</em>, his birthday month, he modestly retitled <em>Domitianus</em>, after himself. </p>
<p>However, Domitian’s arrogance paled in comparison with the megalomaniacal Commodus, who <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/73*.html#ref12">rebranded all the months</a> with his own imperial titles, including <em>Amazonius</em> (January) and <em>Herculeus</em> (October).</p>
<p>If these titles had survived Commodus’s death, we would not have the problem of our year ending with months carrying the wrong numerical names. But we would be celebrating Christmas on the 25th of <em>Exsuperatorius</em> (“All-Surpassing Conqueror”).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caillan Davenport receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
If you’ve ever wondered why our 12-month year ends with names that mean the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months, you can blame the Romans.
Caillan Davenport, Senior Lecturer in Roman History, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86853
2017-12-31T14:17:52Z
2017-12-31T14:17:52Z
Who was Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199858/original/file-20171219-27554-bfct0u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from The Temple of Janus by Peter Paul Rubens. Wikimedia Commons.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>January 1 can be a day of regret and reflection – did I really need that fifth glass of bubbly last night? – mixed with hope and optimism for the future, as we make plans to renew gym memberships or finally sort out our tax files. This January ritual of looking forward and backward is fitting for the first day of a month named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings.</p>
<h2>Doorkeeper of the heavens</h2>
<p>In Roman mythology, Janus was a king of Latium (a region of central Italy), who had his palace on the Janiculum hill, on the western bank of the River Tiber. According to the Roman intellectual <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ambrosius-Theodosius-Macrobius">Macrobius</a>, Janus was given divine honours on account of his own religious devotion, as he set a pious example for all his people.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199859/original/file-20171219-27562-wg1lsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roman coin showing the two-headed Janus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Janus was proudly venerated as a uniquely Roman god, rather than one adopted from the Greek pantheon. All forms of transition came within his purview – beginnings and endings, entrances, exits, and passageways. The name Janus (<em>Ianus</em> in Latin, as the alphabet had no j) is etymologically related to <em>ianua</em>, the Latin word for door. Janus himself was the <em>ianitor</em>, or doorkeeper, of the heavens. </p>
<p>The cult statue of Janus depicted the god bearded with two heads. This meant that he could see forwards and backwards and inside and outside simultaneously without turning around. Janus held a staff in his right hand, in order to guide travellers along the correct route, and a key in his left to open gates. </p>
<h2>War and Peace</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199860/original/file-20171219-27554-g2patg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shrine of Janus, as depicted on a coin of the emperor Nero.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Janus is famously associated with the transition between peace and war. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Numa-Pompilius">Numa</a>, the legendary second king of Rome, who was famed for his religious piety, is said to have founded a shrine to Janus Geminus (“two-fold”) in the <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/Forum_Romanum.html">Roman Forum</a>, close to the Senate House. It was located in the place where Janus had bubbled up a spring of hot boiling water in order to thwart an attack on Rome by the Sabines. </p>
<p>The shrine was an enclosure formed by two arched gates at each end, joined together by walls to form a passageway. A bronze statue of Janus stood in the middle, with one head facing towards each gate. According to the <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0151%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D19">historian Livy</a>, Numa intended the shrine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>as an index of peace and war, that when open it might signify that the nation was in arms, when closed that all the peoples round about were pacified.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The gates of Janus are said to have stayed closed for 43 years under Numa, but rarely remained so thereafter, although the first emperor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Augustus-Roman-emperor">Augustus</a> boasted that he closed the shrine three times. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nero-Roman-emperor">Nero</a> later celebrated his conclusion of peace with Parthia by minting coins showing the gates of Janus firmly shut.</p>
<h2>Happy New Year</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199861/original/file-20171219-27585-hcs7qg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The God Janus by Sebastian Münster, 1550.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Romans believed that the month of January was added to the calendar by Numa. The association between Janus and the calendar was cemented by the construction of 12 altars, one for each month of the year, in Janus’s temple in the <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/Forum_Holitorium.html">Forum Holitorium</a> (the vegetable market). The poet <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martial-Roman-poet">Martial</a> thus described Janus as “the progenitor and father of the years”.</p>
<p>From 153 BC onwards, the consuls (the chief magistrates of the Republic) took office on the first day of January (which the Romans called the Kalends). The new consuls offered prayers to Janus, and priests dedicated spelt mixed with salt and a traditional barley cake, known as the <em>ianual</em>, to the god. Romans distributed New Year’s gifts of dates, figs, and honey to their friends, in the hope that the year ahead would turn out to be sweet, as well as coins – a sign of hoped-for prosperity.</p>
<p>Janus assumed a key role in all Roman public sacrifices, receiving incense and wine first before other deities. This was because, as the doorkeeper of the heavens, Janus was the route through which one reached the other gods, even Jupiter himself. The text <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/cato/de_agricultura/home.html">On Agriculture</a>, written by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Porcius-Cato-Roman-statesman-234-149-BC">Cato the Elder</a>, describes how offerings would be made to Janus, Jupiter, and Juno as part of the pre-harvest sacrifice to ensure a good crop. </p>
<p>So if you’re feeling caught between two worlds this January 1, why not head outside and celebrate Roman-style? Pack up some sweets to share, grab your keys, and shut the door on 2017.</p>
<p><em>Tomorrow: Explainer: the gods behind the days of the week.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caillan Davenport receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
On January 1, we consider the origins of Janus, after whom this month is named.
Caillan Davenport, Lecturer in Roman History and ARC DECRA Research Fellow, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84441
2017-09-24T06:44:41Z
2017-09-24T06:44:41Z
South Africa’s ruling ANC faces dreadful choices as voters grow more sceptical
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187060/original/file-20170921-17987-pnce5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's governing party, the ANC, faces a crucial, decisive but potentially divisive leadership choice.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s governing African National Congress is caught between the mythological monsters <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-moral-or-point-of-the-story-of-Scylla-and-Charybdis-in-Homers-Odyssey">Scylla and Charybdis</a> as it heads towards its crucial 54th national elective conference in <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/54th-national-conference">December</a>. In choosing its new leader the party’s factions could push its leadership succession battle to a finale that produces a credible winner and leads to the party’s purported <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/07/02/ancs-journey-of-self-correction-and-healing-has-begun-cyril_a_23012604/">self-correction</a>. But the process could just as easily split the party further and damage its already dented 2019 electoral prospects. </p>
<p>Either way, the ANC of 2017 faces dreadful choices.</p>
<p>Amid this comes the rallying call for <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/2017-09-18-how-the-ancs-premier-league-is-shifting-to-back-a-unity-ticket/">unity</a> at the conference.</p>
<p>But “unity” has become an over exploited catchall for ANC provincial power brokers and candidates. For unity to work beyond the conference, mountains of looting and corruption will have to be swept under a carpet of compromise and inclusion. </p>
<p>The most likely outcome is that South Africa’s cynical and savvy new electorate will be left underwhelmed which is why the outcome of the December conference will affect the ANC’s subsequent election prospects more directly than any of its six preceding meetings since 1991. These were <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/53rd-national-conference-mangaung">Mangaung (2012</a>, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/52nd-national-conference-polokwane">Polokwane (2007)</a>, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/51st-national-conference-stellenbosch">Stellenbosch (2002)</a>, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/50th-national-conference-mafikeng">Mafikeng (1997)</a>, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/49th-national-conference-bloemfontein">Bloemfontein (1994)</a> and <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/48th-national-conference-durban">Durban (1991)</a>. The last two – Mangaung and Polokwane – laid the foundation for the party’s current woes.</p>
<h2>Road to self-destruction</h2>
<p>Previous leadership contests – structured equally by actual voting by delegates and deal making – have shaped the character of the organisation. </p>
<p>Jacob Zuma’s Pyrrhic 2007 victory in Polokwane to become ANC president brought in the fleeting belief that the ANC was reconnecting with the people and that it was set to drive <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-african-national-congress-and-the-regeneration-of-political-power/">“radical” change</a>. </p>
<p>Its dramatic impact was matched only by the 1991 conference in Durban – held after the unbanning of the ANC but before it assumed power in the 1994 elections. </p>
<p>The contest in Durban was precarious. Different groupings – former exiles and political prisoners on the one hand, and those who had remained to lead the liberation struggle internally on the other – had to be accommodated. Compromises were reached. Among others, Cyril Ramaphosa became secretary-general and Jacob Zuma deputy secretary-general. This united front was accepted widely.</p>
<p>In 1994, Ramaphosa retained his position, while Thabo Mbeki slipped into the deputy presidency and Zuma became the national chairperson. Mbeki, Zuma and Ramaphosa now constituted a triangle of power that set the tone for turmoil in the decades to come. Mbeki leapfrogged Ramaphosa to become president of the ANC in 1997. The effect of this was to side-line Ramaphosa from the main succession line, and to open the door to Zuma’s ascendance. This in turn established the tracks for future power trysts and discreditation.</p>
<p>As the country’s president from 1999 Mbeki became maligned by the left for championing <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2816">neo-liberal policies</a>. Yet he won a second term. The resolutions at the 2002 conference showed a state that was confident of its abilities to eradicate the social scourges of the day. But Mbeki <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=qNA4wTl5pjkC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Zunami">baulked at entrusting this project</a> to his deputy Zuma who was already implicated in arms deal corruption. The only way to stop Zuma would have been to bring charges – a decision that was unpalatable in the prevailing climate because the charges would have come across as being politicised.</p>
<p>The transition from Mbeki to Zuma catalysed the process of self-destruction in the ANC. Zuma’s formal rise to power followed his involvement in the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-05-03-zuma-corruption-and-the-arms-deal-the-gift-that-just-keeps-on-giving/">arms deal saga</a>. Multiple scandals followed, including a <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/khwezi-the-remarkable-story-of-fezekile-ntsukela-kuzwayo-detail?Itemid=6">rape case</a> in which he was acquitted, and detailed allegations that he facilitated <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/329757088/State-of-Capture-Public-Protector-Report#from_embed">state capture</a> by his networks of family and associates.</p>
<p>In his second term, Zuma’s loyalists bent on mobilising for their <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/dominance-and-decline/">“turn at the trough”</a>, entrenched their hold on power, fusing the ANC’s succession contests with guarding access to political power and state resources.</p>
<p>The ANC has gone into all previous conferences reasonably secure about its electoral support. Leadership elections in the previous rounds have not been accompanied by concerns over whether or not the choice of leadership would pose any electoral risk.</p>
<p>That’s changed. Corruption in government has become a major issue for the electorate and public trust in state institutions is <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-22-bumpy-political-ride-ahead-what-the-effs-coalition-refusal-means-for-south-africa">evaporating</a>. This loss of support was evident in the <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/195876/new-poll-shows-anc-is-losing-support-below-50/">2014 and 2016 elections</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, depending on the leaders it chooses, the ANC runs the risk of either ceding its outright electoral majority nationally, and even potentially in provinces beyond the Western Cape – the only province it does not run – to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-14-coalition-politics-a-common-enemy-a-divided-future/#.WcLd-2dfB2A">opposition coalitions</a>. Or becoming dependent on questionable small parties to forge governing coalitions.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/new-survey-data-shows-zuma-cost-the-anc-dearly-in-the-2016-election-75811">Opinion surveys</a> over the last year all show a singular direction: the need to cleanse state of Zumaist influences, and minimal tolerance of corruption. Yet the ANC succession campaigns have been vacillating, often ignoring the dangling sword.</p>
<p>This means that for the first time since its unbanning the ANC requires foundational renewal and correction. Its supporters and general electorate are no longer content with conference resolutions that simply promise to root out corruption, as was the case in Mangaung 2012.</p>
<h2>Quest for unity</h2>
<p>These realities leave the ANC with unpalatable choices: does it maintain unity in its leadership contest and avoid angry fall-outs – and even another split? ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/anc-scrambles-for-unity-20170625-3">assumes that</a> unity can be infused by electing</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a leadership that will send a signal that we are serious about stopping looting from our people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet efforts to drive unity have put little emphasis on exorcising corruption and correcting the ANC.</p>
<p>Several unity initiatives have been aired since the run-up to the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/5th-national-policy-conference-2017">ANC’s mid-year policy conference</a> in June. For example, in a poorly sponsored initiative Zuma, as president, proposed that the loser of the presidential race automatically become the <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/06/30/president-zuma-uses-opening-of-anc-policy-conference-to-call-for-unity">deputy president</a>.</p>
<p>Subsequent bilateral meetings between ANC provincial executives have attempted forging united fronts in multiple guises. Proposed amendments to the <a href="http://www.power987.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ANC-Document.pdf">ANC constitution</a> (to be deliberated at the conference, just prior to the final nominations in December) include several options to accommodate a greater number of top ANC officials.</p>
<p>Even the ANC parliamentary caucuses’ stance in August 2017’s <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/08/07/secret-ballot-the-motion-against-zuma-will-still-be-defeated_a_23068726/">opposition driven vote of no confidence</a> was a manifestation of the “unity above all” mantra. It pointed to the type of ANC that might follow if unity prevails over the substance of governance.</p>
<p>Weaknesses that followed that vote included further declines in <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/20/eskom-meets-minister-s-deadline-to-respond-to-trillian-questions">state-owned entities</a> (South African Airways, and the power utility Eskom, for example), evidence of the capture of the National Treasury and attempted capture of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/tag/public-investment-corporation">Public Investment Corporation</a>, while private sector associates to the Gupta-Zuma network <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/.../2017-09-12-bell-pottingers-british-business-collapse">went into tailspins</a>.</p>
<h2>High stakes</h2>
<p>None of the preceding conferences could prepare the ANC for the decisions, including leadership choices, that the December conference is required to deliver. The stakes are high and the delegates’ task unenviable.</p>
<p>They will be presiding over an ANC that squirms in Scylla’s clutches, amid differences over the theme of unity. Simultaneously, they will be fighting to avoid the crosscurrents of Charybdis’ whirlpool. This, as the electorate demands that the ANC show integrity and accountability. Unity above all might entail unpalatable compromises. A <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/20/motlanthe-not-having-zuma-as-president-would-create-new-environment">post-Zuma order</a> that still bears the Zuma imprint may not be good enough, even if keeps the ANC united.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Booysen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For the first time since its unbanning the ANC needs to find a new direction. Its supporters and South African voters are no longer content with resolutions that promise to end to corruption.
Susan Booysen, Professor in the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77695
2017-06-02T11:32:14Z
2017-06-02T11:32:14Z
Wonder Women have been smashing the patriarchy since classical times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171799/original/file-20170601-23531-14w4dvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clay Enos/TM & © DC Comics</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wonder Woman is an unsettling superhero. More so than her male counterparts, she resists easy classification: she’s neither an alien or a billionaire – nor has she been exposed to some chemical to obtain her powers. The comic books cast her as a mystery to be unravelled and ultimately controlled.</p>
<p>When the truth of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-wonder-woman-timeline-20170531-htmlstory.html">Wonder Woman’s background</a> is finally uncovered in a <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/">1944 comic strip</a>, it is one of her own making. Even when revealing her past, she refuses to be narrated – and claims ownership of her own identity instead. By telling the story in her own way, she controls how the world perceives her – much like her sisters from classical and medieval literature did.</p>
<p>Wonder Woman’s story is presented <a href="http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/books/excerpt-from-the-secret-history-of-wonder-woman-1.9587537">on a sheet of parchment</a> in the comic, just as most medieval texts were. These texts <a href="https://theconversation.com/medieval-women-can-teach-us-how-to-smash-gender-rules-and-the-glass-ceiling-68024">traditionally conceptualised women</a> as blank canvases to be painted with desirable meaning, but Wonder Woman refuses to be pigeonholed simply because of her gender.</p>
<p>Wonder Woman’s origins, revealed in the parchment, are deeply intertwined with well-known classical mythology and its medieval afterlife. She is the daughter of Hippolyta, who, according to the ancient Greeks, was <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/AresFavour.html#Hippolyte">the queen of the Amazons</a>: a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-the-amazons-the-real-wonder-women-78248">utopian society of women warriors</a> founded on sisterhood and female empowerment. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171802/original/file-20170601-25658-1b4zvww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The goddess Diana.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though the story of Princess Diana of Themyscira – AKA Wonder Woman/Diana Prince – doesn’t derive from ancient Greek or Roman myths, her name echoes that of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Diana-Roman-religion">Roman goddess Diana</a> – identified with the <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Artemis.html">Greek goddess Artemis</a> – a ubiquitous figure in classical and medieval literary cultures. </p>
<p>Much like Wonder Woman – who is arguably one of the goddess’s contemporary incarnations – Diana is a capacious figure. As the goddess of childbirth, virginity and hunting, she is a mix of impossibly different roles. The fluidity of her identity makes her an advocate of female empowerment. She embodies the numerous identities available to women, beyond the restrictions of traditional gender roles.</p>
<h2>Myth meets graphic novel</h2>
<p>One of the most famous medieval texts in which Amazonian mythology and the power of the goddess Diana intersect is <a href="http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/teachslf/kt-par0.htm">Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale</a>, in which the <a href="http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hippolyta.html">formidable Amazonian queen Hippolyta</a> is forced into marriage by the tyrannical Duke Theseus. </p>
<p>As her emancipated femininity is violently stifled through military conquest, Hippolyta becomes a metaphor for the destruction of any form of female agency. She is paraded, silenced and overthrown in front of the Theban crowd, while a storm rages ominously. Bound to Theseus, she loses her power, much like Wonder Woman whose formidable potency can only be lost if she is shackled in chains by men – a feature which creator Charles Moulton took directly <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/">from ancient Greek mythology</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172023/original/file-20170602-20586-fuykkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emily in the rose garden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emilia_in_the_rosegarden_(Teseida).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Chaucer’s text, Amazon princess Emily – the would-be aunt of Wonder Woman – appears to share the same fate as her sister Hippolyta. Trapped in an enclosed garden, she is the bride-to-be of one of the two feuding knights, Palamon and Arcite. </p>
<p>But Emily’s story has a very different outcome. In <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Egradyf/chaucer/teseida.htm">his Teseida</a> the 14th-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio describes Emily as “pelegrina” – itinerant, alien and restless. Her past, like Wonder Woman’s own – Wonder Woman <a href="http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman_(Diana_Prince)">leaves Paradise Island</a> after the gods say that an Amazonian ambassador must be sent to man’s world – makes her the epitome of emancipated femininity. </p>
<p>In both medieval texts Emily rejects her entrapment in the garden. She flees to the temple of the goddess Diana in the wild woods. In this unstructured space, Emily imagines herself free from the gender roles that are being forced upon her. For the first (and last) time her voice is heard – and it’s not a whisper: it’s a roar.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ECedqf5onZE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Emily pleads with Diana, whose fluid identity appears to offer the promise of self-determination, in a life of perpetual sisterhood with the goddess and her fellow female hunters. Emily longs to reconnect with her warrior Amazonian past. She wishes to return to the female utopia in which marriage and maternity are not an inescapable future. Where physical and political power are not the exclusive province of men. </p>
<p>Diana’s answer to Emily’s plea is shocking and unexpected: she has to marry. Marriage is a fate scripted in the stars – and Emily cannot escape it. From this moment onwards, Emily is ostensibly silent, her roar stifled by the imperatives of marriage and procreation. </p>
<p>However, defying expectations, the next time Emily is described in the tale she is riding alongside Theseus’s party. No longer wearing her white virginal clothing, she is clad in green, a colour that signifies the freedom and virility of hunting which, in the Amazonian world, is accessible to women too. Emily has managed to find her own form of self-expression, despite the medieval restrictions imposed on her. </p>
<p>With such strong women in her family tree, the 2017 Wonder Woman has a lot to live up to. But, from trailers for the new film and her appearance <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-cares-about-batman-v-superman-wonder-woman-finally-steals-the-show-56963">in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)</a>, it looks as if this new incarnation is one of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-wonder-woman-reinvigorates-tired-superhero-conventions-78517">most powerful yet</a>.</p>
<p>Gal Gadot, the Israeli actor who now plays the superhero, portrays a suitably gladiatorial Wonder Woman whose identity is capacious and fluid. She is strong, beautiful, intelligent and invested in being a force of positive change – very similar to her classical sisters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roberta Magnani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Wonder Woman comes from a long line of strong mythical feminists.
Roberta Magnani, Lecturer English Literature, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70109
2016-12-23T08:42:10Z
2016-12-23T08:42:10Z
What child is this? Miraculous births and divine parents in the time of Jesus
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149673/original/image-20161212-26077-3l9pho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Many people are familiar with the stories in the New Testament gospels of Luke and Matthew about Jesus’ conception and birth. But what is less well known is how common such stories are when the lives of great men are told. From the initial announcement of an impending conception (to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+1%3A26-38&version=NRSV">Mary in Luke</a>, to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+1%3A18-25&version=NRSV">Joseph in Matthew</a>) to the signs and portents signalling the birth of the miraculous child, ancient Greek and Roman writings share a lot with the gospel accounts.</p>
<p>The gospels claim that Jesus’ birth was foretold in advance. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+1%3A23&version=NRSV">Matthew quotes</a> from the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+7%3A14&version=NRSV">prophet Isaiah</a> to establish Jesus’ birth as a divine promise that would usher in a time of peace and justice.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149697/original/image-20161212-26074-1njy5hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Annunciation by Fra Anglico (1430-1432).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Virgil, writing in the early first century AD, <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/eclogue.4.iv.html">wrote about a promised child</a>, the offspring of the gods, who would bring a golden age of peace and prosperity to the Roman Empire – in other words, the emperor. Augustus Caesar’s birth was foretold by portents, <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html#94">according to the Roman historian Suetonius</a>. Unusual astronomical occurrences were understood as divine omens in Roman culture, so it is no wonder that Jesus’s birth – like Augustus’s – was depicted as important <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+2%3A1-12&version=NRSV">using a miraculous star</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C212%2C672%2C438&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C212%2C672%2C438&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149658/original/image-20161212-26077-1eoyq91.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The conception of Alexander the Great (unknown Flemish artist).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alexander the Great’s birth also had meteorological omens surrounding it. <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/3.html#2">Plutarch tells us</a> that both Philip and Olympias, Alexander’s parents, were sent dreams from the gods announcing Alexander’s birth. Olympias dreamed that her womb was struck by lightning, while Philip dreamed that he put a seal on his wife’s womb in the image of a lion. Most significant, though, is the report that <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/3.html#3">Philip spied a divine serpent sleeping next to his wife</a>, which he took as a sign that he should avoid sleeping with her himself, since it was clear that she was to conceive from a divine rather than human source. </p>
<h2>Massacre of the Infants</h2>
<p>Just as Matthew records Herod’s attempts to stop the prophesied child <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+2%3A13-18&version=NRSV">by killing all newborn babies</a>, Suetonius tells a similar account of Roman leaders attempting to prevent Augustus’s rise to power by ordering that no male child be reared. In Matthew, Jesus and his family escape the “Massacre of the Infants” by fleeing to Egypt – whereas in Suetonius (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+1%3A15-2%3A10&version=NRSV">like in the Moses story</a>) <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html#94">fathers- and mothers-to-be thwart the murderous plans</a>, in the Roman case, by preventing the decree from being officially registered with the treasury.</p>
<h2>Son of a god</h2>
<p>Although both Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’s lineage through his non-biological father Joseph, Jesus is depicted as God’s own offspring.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149675/original/image-20161212-26051-106lneq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A denarius (48-47 BCE) minted by Julius Caesar depicting his ancestry: Venus Genetrix (L) and Aeneas (R )</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Augustus Caesar was also adopted by his father, Julius Caesar, and likewise considered himself the descendent of a god – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_(mythology)">Venus Genetrix</a>. Augustus traced his lineage to Venus through his ancestor Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. Romulus, and his twin brother Remus, were conceived by the virgin priestess <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/lives/romulus*.html#3">after the god Mars impregnated her</a>. This priestess, <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0052%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D272">as Virgil reports</a>, was herself descended from Venus through her ancestor Aeneas, Venus’s beloved son.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149700/original/image-20161212-26074-1xwks9i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tetradrachma coin depicting Alexander the Great with horns, an attribute of the god Zeus Ammon. 287–281 BC.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alexander the Great’s divine parentage was reinforced he grew up. Just as the adult Jesus was publicly claimed by God as his son in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A16-17&version=NRSV">all</a> <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A9-11&version=NRSV">four</a> <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+3%3A21-22&version=NRSV">gospel</a> <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1%3A29-34&version=NRSV">accounts</a>, Alexander’s father, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amun#Greece">Zeus Ammon</a>, confirmed his son’s divine identity. <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/4.html#27">Plutarch tells us</a> that when Alexander approached an Egyptian oracle to ask whether he had avenged his father’s murder, the priest made him rephrase his request, since his father was not a mortal man, and addressed Alexander in oracular speech as “O son of Zeus”. </p>
<h2>Jesus the hero</h2>
<p>One of the most common places to find stories of miraculous births is in the life of heroes, often born of a union between a god and a human being. Hercules, perhaps the most famous of the Greek heroes, is the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, for example. Zeus disguised himself as Alcmene’s husband in order to trick her into bed with him. The divine parentage that Hercules enjoyed enabled him to do many wondrous feats.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149709/original/image-20161212-26070-3vxj3w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woodcut, the birth of Asclepius by Alessandro Benedetti (circa 1450)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Likewise, Asclepius, <a href="http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph2.htm#476707513">son of Apollo, rescued from the womb of Coronis</a>, was gifted with miraculous healing abilities and was later considered divine in his own right. </p>
<p>Since Matthew and Luke don’t agree with each other about what happened when Jesus was born, it’s especially interesting that they both relate something miraculous in their narratives. The idea of Jesus’s own miraculous birth may have supported the Gospel’s claims about Jesus’ miracle working ability, including healings and other wondrous feats.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70109/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>M J C Warren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Jesus wasn’t the only son of a god in ancient times. And, as you’d expect, divine offspring tended to be high achievers.
M J C Warren, Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/44468
2015-07-28T05:00:59Z
2015-07-28T05:00:59Z
Priapus is alive and well in cyberspace – the age-old art of trolling
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88307/original/image-20150714-11795-1kk2kxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=147%2C588%2C3335%2C2409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We have brutal sexual threats, made anonymously, against those who have "transgressed" a particular boundary. Sound familiar?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carole Raddato</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>WARNING: This article contains graphic language of a violent sexual nature.</em></p>
<p>Deep in the dank, dark anonymity of cyberspace dwell trolls – fearsome online guardians of digital values – ever vigilant, never sleeping. When called to arms, they mobilise with swift and deadly efficiency against anyone crossing bridges to trespass on hallowed ground. </p>
<p>Despite the archaic tag, they are often seen as an unsavoury but inescapable consequence of modern online life – a squalid byproduct of the 24-hour news cycle and the ever escalating appetite for online titillation. </p>
<p>We tend to see this sort of abuse as quintessentially modern but it may surprise you to learn that these violent, sexualised responses to perceived boundary violations are nothing new. They would be instantly familiar to ancient Romans, as their threatening tone, graphic language and malicious intent are strikingly similar to those associated with the rustic fertility god <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Priapos.html">Priapus</a>.</p>
<p>Weapons of choice in this – mostly online – “war on error” habitually include graphic threats of rape and brutal sexual violence. When cornered, these trolls often radiate astonishment that their threats were taken seriously.</p>
<p>They claim they were merely exercising their right to free speech, that they were obviously <a href="http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-man-jailed-rape-threat-tweets-MP-Stella/story-23014748-detail/story.html">only joking</a> – and anyway, their targets should just toughen up. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/online-abuse-affects-men-and-women-differently-and-this-is-key-to-tackling-trolls-33515">majority of targets</a> of such highly-sexualised harassment are female. Recent examples include the ongoing <a href="http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter">strident crusade</a> against feminist media critic <a href="https://theconversation.com/vitriolic-abuse-of-anita-sarkeesian-why-the-games-industry-needs-her-31826">Anita Sarkeesian</a>, initially over her campaign to crowdsource funding for <a href="http://feministfrequency.com/tag/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/">videos that critique</a> the ingrained sexism within the gaming industry.</p>
<p>And then there’s the vicious campaign waged against the feminist activist and journalist <a href="https://weekwoman.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/womens-aid-speech-on-cyber-harassment/">Caroline Criado-Perez</a> for her suggestion that female faces were underrepresented on British banknotes; or even the umbrage taken at <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/a-climate-change-wave-of-hate-20110612-1ftix">Richard Glover</a>’s musings on the methodology of climate change sceptics.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-threats-and-cyberhate-vote-no-to-the-new-digital-divide-43388">recent Conversation article</a> observed, euphemisms such as “unpleasant” or “sexually explicit” just don’t cut it when it comes to conveying the violence and vitriol of these outbursts.</p>
<p>If we don’t say it like it is, we run the risk of undermining our perception of the serious effect these attacks have on the victims. </p>
<p>And so, to the past.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88948/original/image-20150720-21069-jkjp5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fresco of Priapus, Casa dei Vettii, Pompeii. Depicted weighing his enormous erect penis against a bag of gold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within the Roman Empire, statues of <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Priapos.html">Priapus</a> were often placed in gardens and orchards to act as scarecrows or <a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceSatiresBkISatVIII.htm">guardians</a>, routinely accompanied by warnings of <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/priap/prp12.htm">sexual violence</a> against thieves and trespassers of either sex. </p>
<p>Priapus is thought to have begun life in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor. Our earliest record of him comes from a play by the Greek author <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DX%3Aentry+group%3D1%3Aentry%3Dxenarchus-bio-3">Xenarchus</a> in the 4th century BC and references become more common as his worship spreads throughout Greece and on to Italy. </p>
<p>By the time he was absorbed into the Roman pantheon, Priapus, like many Roman gods, had quite an extensive portfolio. Among his responsibilities were human sexuality, the fertility and abundance of livestock, gardens, orchards, grapevines and bees as well as the protection of sailors and boundaries.</p>
<p>He commonly featured in Roman erotic art and literature, especially a series of short, obscene, anonymous verses collectively known as the <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/priap/priapeia.htm">Priapea</a>. </p>
<p>Although often portrayed as a comic figure, as a guardian of boundaries, Priapus represented the distillation of masculine sexual aggression, dominance and power – the embodiment of rape. </p>
<p>So, we have brutal sexual threats against perceived trespassers, made anonymously, with the expectation that they will be seen as “humorous”. Sound familiar?</p>
<p>Ancient Rome was undoubtedly a man’s world and the masculine drive to conquer and dominate drove the voracious expansion of the Empire. Roman attitudes to sex and sexuality were similarly male-centric and, to our modern western sensibilities, quite alien. </p>
<p>For male citizens (it was a very different situation for slaves and women), when it came to sex, pretty much the only requirement was that they remain the “active” partner. In this context, threatening to rape another man who had “crossed a line” was seen as a display of male dominance rather than an expression of homosexuality.</p>
<p>Let’s start with an ancient, anonymous all-purpose threat against trespassers from the Priapea:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I give fair warning: a boy – I’ll bugger, a girl – I’ll fuck: the third penalty [(i.e. oral rape)] remains for the bearded thief.</p>
<p>(Priapea 13, translated by M. Johnson and T. Ryan)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Roman poet Catullus is probably best known for his tender <a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.htm#anchor_Toc531846733">love poems</a> but he wasn’t afraid to let fly in Priapic style when someone “went there” and questioned his masculinity:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You, who read [of] all these thousand kisses,<br>
you think I’m less of a man?<br>
I’ll rape your mouth, and I’ll bugger you.</p>
<p>(Catullus 16 adapted from <a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Catullus.htm#anchor_Toc531846744">A.Kline’s translation</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Finally, these modern gems:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://weekwoman.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/womens-aid-speech-on-cyber-harassment/">SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH</a> … OR ILL SHUT IT FOR YOU AND CHOKE IT WITH MY DICK.</p>
<p><a href="http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter">You just don’t know when to shut up</a> …. go put a dick in your mouth and shut up.</p>
<p><a href="http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter">I don’t advocate violence</a> against women but this bitch I’ll make an exception for (WITH MY DICK).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All of the writers, ancient and modern, clearly believe that some sort of line has been crossed. All radiate righteous wrath, advocating sexual violence to “correct” this transgression or (in some cases literally) to silence unwelcome criticism. </p>
<p>Some of our modern boundaries may no longer be tangible and literal but the triggers – the aggressively masculine voice, anonymity and highly violent, sexualised threats – remain uncannily consistent over time. </p>
<p>Although he may be posing as a troll, it looks like the ancient god Priapus – or at least his voice – is alive and well and thriving in cyberspace.</p>
<p><br>
<br>
<em>This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/religion-mythology">Religion + Mythology</a> series</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kymme Laetsch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Brutal sexual threats against perceived trespassers, made anonymously, with the expectation they will be seen as “humorous”. Sound familiar? Modern-day trolls belong to a long, and troubling, lineage.
Kymme Laetsch, PhD Candidate - Classics, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.