tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/classical-literature-38457/articlesClassical literature – The Conversation2021-01-22T12:41:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1532212021-01-22T12:41:55Z2021-01-22T12:41:55ZThe spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379982/original/file-20210121-21-q98tpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8243%2C5499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cheese and witches: a potent combination.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">apolonia via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I was scrolling through Twitter recently, a viral tweet caught my attention. It was an image from a book of spells claiming that: “You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.” The spell comes from Kathryn Paulsen’s 1971 book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2155384.The_Complete_Book_of_Magic_And_Witchcraft">The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft</a> – and, while proffering a lump of cheddar may seem like an unusual way of attracting a possible mate, Paulsen’s book draws on a long history of magic. It’s a history that has quite a lot of cheese in it.</p>
<p>It’s not entirely clear why cheese is seen to have magical properties. It might be to do with the fact it’s made from milk, a powerful substance in itself, with the ability to give life and strength to the young. It might also be because the process by which cheese is made is a little bit magical. The 12th-century mystic, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hildegard">Hildegard von Bingen</a>, compared cheese making to the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/7943846.pdf">miracle of life</a> in the way that it forms curds (or solid matter) from something insubstantial. </p>
<p>In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4266213M/The_cheese_and_the_worms">in terms of cheesemaking</a>: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.” The connection with life and the mysterious way that cheese is made, therefore, puts it in a good position to claim magical properties.</p>
<p>Cheese magic stretches back long before Hildegard and the medieval period. The 2nd-century diviner, Artemidorus, mentions “<a href="https://occult-world.com/tyromancy/">tyromancy</a>” – cheese divination – as a method of discovering the future in his treatise <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/artemidorus-interpretation-of-dreams-review/">Oneirocritica</a>. Ironically, given our later association of cheese with vivid dreams, Artemidorus claims that cheese fortune-telling is among the most unreliable. </p>
<p>This didn’t stop later generations from interpreting cheese dreams, though. The Interpretation of Dreams, a 17th-century English manual, advised that: “[to dream of] cakes without cheese is good; those which have both signifie deceit and treason by a Welshman.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A finger points at a line from a book of spells." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379979/original/file-20210121-15-1i5km3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&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">Unusual advice for the lovelorn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathryn Paulsen: The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft</span></span>
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<p>One of the most common uses for magic cheese in the medieval and early modern periods was to identify thieves and murderers. The method could be quite simple. First bless cheese with a prayer. <a href="https://bd.b-ok.com/book/3502484/f3326a?dsource=recommend">For example, you might say</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>May his mouth be cursed and full of bitterness, under his tongue pain and labour. If he is guilty, he will eat in the name of the devil. If he is not guilty, he will eat in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then feed a small piece to each of your suspects. The culprit will be unable to swallow their piece of cheese, thus admitting their guilt. </p>
<h2>Mischievous magic</h2>
<p>Even if you’re not a thief, you should be wary around cheese when there’s a witch in the room. In The Odyssey, the sorceress Circe turns Odysseus’ companions into animals by feeding them a magic potion mixed into a drink made of cheese, barley meal, honey and wine. The fourth century Christian theologian, St Augustine of Hippo, <a href="https://archive.org/details/witchcraftinoldn00kitt_0/page/184/">agreed</a> that such things might be possible, though unlikely. </p>
<p>William of Malmesbury seemed convinced that enchanted cheese was a genuine risk, though, and in his 12th-century writings William explained that female Italian innkeepers were especially prone to using enchanted cheese to turn their customers into beasts of burden.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Medieval depiction of Circe, the witch from Homer's Odyssey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379988/original/file-20210121-21-qe85ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Making Circe angry meant it was ‘hard cheese’ for the companions of Odysseus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creator:Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York</span></span>
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<p>Malevolent witches were also thought to meddle with milk and cheese: in fact, spoiling milk was one of the most common curses associated with witches in early modern Europe. Around 1650, the dairymaid Isabel Maine was convinced her milk was cursed, as it wouldn’t turn into cheese. Only after a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-medieval-england-magic-was-a-service-industry-used-by-rich-and-poor-alike-124009">service magician</a> named <a href="http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/person.html">Margaret Stothard</a> performed a counter-curse would the milk curdle properly. Margaret advised Isabel to carry a stick of rowan wood when she milked the cows in future, to protect the milk from “evil eyes”.</p>
<p>On a more playful side, though still a serious annoyance for their neighbours, witches were also thought to magically steal milk directly from cows’ udders. A 14th century morality manual tells a story about a woman with an <a href="https://archive.org/details/witchcraftinoldn00kitt_0/page/164/">enchanted leather bag</a>. On her command, the bag would leap up and run to her neighbours’ cattle herd, where it would secretly steal milk and bring it back to her.</p>
<h2>Charming cheese</h2>
<p>The idea that cheese is seductive also has a long history. Writing in the 13th century, the moralist and theologian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2850446">Odo of Cheriton</a> used the alluring smell of grilled cheese to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035100">explain adultery</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cheese is toasted and placed in a trap; when the rat smells it, it enters the trap, seizes the cheese, and is caught by the trap. So it is with all sin. Cheese is toasted when a woman is dressed up and adorned so that she entices and catches the foolish rats: take a woman in adultery and the Devil will catch you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The link between cheese and love magic doesn’t stop at seduction, though. In 14th-century Germany, biting a piece of bread and cheese and throwing it over your shoulder was meant to ensure fertility in a relationship. Cheese could also cure <a href="https://societasmagica.org/userfiles/files/Newsletters/docs/SMN_Fall_2004_Issue_13.pdf">male impotence</a>: if a pesky witch had cursed a man’s genitals, a medieval Italian cure was for the man’s wife to bore a hole in cheese, and feed him the resulting pieces.</p>
<p>Given Europeans’ longstanding attraction to cheese, perhaps it’s no wonder that Kathryn Paulsen’s spell is so short and why it needed no further elaboration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tabitha Stanmore received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for her PhD research.</span></em></p>For hundreds of years, magicians believed cheese could help them foretell the future or identify a criminal.Tabitha Stanmore, Honorary Research Fellow, Early Modern Studies, Department of History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998352019-01-14T19:09:20Z2019-01-14T19:09:20ZGuide to the classics: The Water Margin, China’s outlaw novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Li Kui (李逵), one of the characters in The Water Margin, battles tigers after they killed his mother. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, between between 1845 and 1850. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Utagawa_Kuniyoshi_-_%E6%B0%B4%E6%BB%B8%E5%82%B3_-_%E6%9D%8E%E9%80%B5_3.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Margin">The Water Margin</a>, also known in English as Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers, is one of the most powerful narratives to emerge from China. The book, conventionally attributed to an otherwise obscure Yuan dynasty figure called Shi Nai’an, takes the form of a skein of connected tales surrounding various heroic figures who — persecuted, exploited, wronged, or trapped by venal officials — eventually band together in the fortress of Liangshan (Mount Liang), in the present-day province of Shandong. </p>
<p>Its influence has gone far beyond the usual genres of fiction, film, art, and theatre. The stories provide, even today, a point of reference for codes of honour, social and economic networks, secret societies and political movements. </p>
<p>Generations of China’s governments have sought to represent themselves as guardians of an often explicitly neo-Confucian order characterised by a fixed and morally-grounded political and social order constructed of hierarchical relationships. But The Water Margin represents another, equally real and representative, Chinese worldview. In this world, local injustice is the rule, and defence against cruel local authority is a matter of vengeance, stratagem, and violence. </p>
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<p>From this universe, itself a highly mediated depiction of the rapidly decaying Northern Song dynasty in the 12th century, derive fictional worlds of errantry, struggle and righteousness that have gone through endless narrative and cinematic iterations. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253589/original/file-20190114-43529-1l7k9jz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&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">Illustration from The Water Margin. Circa 15th Century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shuihu9.PNG">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Of these descendants, the most familiar today are the fictional worlds of Hong Kong writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Yong">Jin Yong</a>, which remain the closest thing to a reading list for adolescents in the Chinese world, and the kung fu genre that has been the global calling card of Sinophone film since at least Bruce Lee. </p>
<h2>Rebels with a cause</h2>
<p>With printed versions dating back to the 14th century, The Water Margin largely follows the adventures of strongmen, innkeepers, footpads, peasants, vagabonds, fishermen, hunters, petty officials and local gentry. Surrounding these protagonists are the thousands of nameless followers and victims who are knocked off or maimed (just as they might be casually dispatched in Homer) in the novel’s thousand-odd pages. </p>
<p>Women, when they (not so very often) appear, are hard-nosed mistresses, pugnacious sisters, hapless wives, strategising helpmeets, or murderous innkeepers (one of whom has hit on Mrs. Lovett’s idea of baking humans into pies a full 800 hundred years before her). This also sets it apart from the mainstream of imperial fiction, which is substantially preoccupied with the passions and travails of high-born, talented women and their ambitious scholar swains, not to mention emperors and generals.</p>
<p>It is only a novel after a fashion: The Water Margin’s text is substantially the record of stories that had already been circulating at the time it was committed to the page. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Nai%27an">Shi Nai’an’s</a> authorship is little more than a conventional attribution, and the text is far from stable, existing in various versions beginning from the 14th century, two hundred years after the events it depicts. It reached its usual present form in the 17th century. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253574/original/file-20190114-43535-1qwoq1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Li Kui (李逵), from The Water Margin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Utagawa_Kuniyoshi_-_%E6%B0%B4%E6%BB%B8%E5%82%B3_-_%E6%9D%8E%E9%80%B5_3.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>In the Ming (14th-17th century) and Qing (17th-20th century) dynasties, the bandits of The Water Margin continued to influence all manner of groups operating far from the seat of power, despite periodic attempts to ban the book. </p>
<p>The fact that the villains of the novel are local officials, while the bandits remain at least notionally loyal to the imperial court, has proven an enduring inspiration. Many are the brands of rebellion that have found it practical to be on the other side of the law while retaining a claim to the values of brotherhood, honour, loyalty and patriotism. </p>
<h2>Enduring legacy</h2>
<p>The plot’s political relevance has never gone away. Having been adopted in the 1930s by reformers as a healthily anti-feudal narrative, it was later deployed in a major 1975 government campaign, in which the leader of the Liangshan bandits in the book, Song Jiang, was criticised for accepting the emperor’s offer of amnesty. Had he not given the game away? And was he therefore not guilty of coexistence with forces inimical to the masses, just as party members, late in the Maoist era, would be guilty of capitulationism if their fervour flagged? </p>
<p>This move, widely interpreted as an effort to head off the fall of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four">Gang of Four</a> shows how centrally the characters have been retained even in modern and contemporary Chinese consciousness. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253556/original/file-20190113-43520-r40rkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=773&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 board for a Sichuan board game, based on The Water Margin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E6%B0%B4%E6%BB%B8%E9%81%B8%E4%BB%99%E5%9C%96.png">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>It’s commonplace to lament human transience and contrast it with the immutability of nature. But those going in search of the dense marshlands of Shandong —- where in the novel crafty fishermen might cause unwary inconvenient minor officials to disappear —- will be disappointed. The entire geography of the novel has been altered beyond recognition by river engineering and irrigation. </p>
<p>This of course does not prevent local governments continuing to put up buildings tagged to certain events in the novel, hoping at the same time that the message of righteous rebellion against local authority is never taken too literally. The formidable, impregnable, fortified mountain, Liangshan, rises just short of 200 metres in reality. </p>
<p>The place of The Water Margin has moved almost entirely into the imaginary, and it is the situations, the events, the stratagems and above all the characters – furious and righteous, looking to set the world right – that have left their mark on posterity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josh Stenberg 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>In The Water Margin, first put to paper in the 14th century, local injustice is the rule, and defence against cruel local authority is a matter of vengeance, stratagem, and violenceJosh Stenberg, Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1061562019-01-07T19:14:37Z2019-01-07T19:14:37ZGuide to the Classics: Juvenal, the true satirist of Rome<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247385/original/file-20181126-140537-1j9fc4w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Couture, The Romans and their Decadence, 1847. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Couture_-_Les_Romains_de_la_d%C3%A9cadence-2.jpg">Wikimedia </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An angry man stands at the crossroads and rails against the moral cesspit around him, teeming with sexual deviants and jumped-up immigrants. This is the image which the Roman poet Juvenal paints of the satirist castigating the vices of contemporary Rome.</p>
<p>Juvenal’s Satires provide a fascinating window onto the social melting-pot that was early second century CE Rome. But they also hold up a mirror to those whose feelings of alienation and disempowerment produce a bitter distortion of that society. </p>
<p>Juvenal wrote 16 satires, divided into five books. Most are between 150 and 300 lines in length, except for the monstrous sixth satire attacking women and marriage, which rants on for over 650 lines and takes up a whole book on its own. Each satire has its own theme or target, ranging from decadent aristocrats and hypocritical moralists to giant turbots (a fish) and Egyptian cannibals, but this theme only loosely constrains a free-flowing structure which follows the satirist’s fulminating stream of consciousness. </p>
<p>Contradiction is the essence of these poems. The satirist indignantly condemns Rome’s vices as he pruriently lingers on their salacious details. The sheer force of his outrage and the vigour of his rhetoric sweep the reader along at the same time as she recoils from his bigotry. In Juvenal’s own words, it’s difficult not to write satire, and once you are sucked into its twisted world, it is difficult not to read it. But working out what to make of it is really difficult.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246793/original/file-20181122-182065-1s600wn.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frontispiece from the 1711 publication of Juvenal’s Satires.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Juvenal#/media/File:Juvenalcrowned.gif">Wiki Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The beginning of Roman satire</h2>
<p>Roman satire bears only a distant family resemblance to the modern idea of satire. Instead of John Clarke parodically impersonating an incompetent politician, Juvenal and his predecessors take direct aim at the follies and vices of their day, lambasting any who deviate from social norms with moralizing fervour, scathing mockery, and stomach-turning obscenity. </p>
<p>The Romans admitted that they inherited all other genres of poetry — epic, tragedy, comedy, pastoral, and the rest — from the Greeks, but they proudly declared that satire was “totally ours”. It was written in hexameters, the lofty metre of epic poetry, but it always sets itself up as epic’s “evil twin”. Instead of heroes, noble deeds, and city-foundations recounted in elevated language, satire presents a hodgepodge of scumbags, orgies, and the breakdown of urban society, spat out in words as filthy as the vices they describe.</p>
<p>The first great Roman satirist was Lucilius, writing in the latter half of the second century BCE at the height of the free Republic. Only tantalising fragments of his work remain, but his reputation among later generations was unambiguous: a fearless exponent of extreme free speech who would lay into the powerful, stripping away the skin of respectability to reveal the foulness beneath. </p>
<p>Every later satirist lamented his inability to live up to Lucilius’ freedom and aggression. During the rise of the first emperor Augustus, as the free Republic gives way to the monarchical Empire, the poet Horace wrote satire whose buzzword was moderation, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. Self-consciously playing it safe, his satirist chooses not to see — he even blames conjunctivitis — and not to talk about the death of political freedom. </p>
<p>Ninety years later, under Nero, the reclusive poet Persius turned satire inwards, boiling it down to dense, almost unreadable Latin which he doesn’t care if anyone reads. His image of the satirist is the barber whispering into a hole in the ground, “Midas has ass’s ears!” You can tell the truth, as long as you don’t need let anyone hear it.</p>
<h2>Chariots of ire</h2>
<p>With Juvenal, another half-century later, satire seemed to get its balls back. He dismisses epic and tragedy as tedious and irrelevant. Satire is the only possible response to the swamp that is Rome. Indignation is his Muse and the vices of Rome flow unmediated from the crossroads into his notebook. This is barely poetry at all. It is the unvarnished truth about Rome there on the page in front of you.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What folks have done ever since — their hopes and fears and anger,
their pleasures, joys, and toing and froing — is my volume’s hotch-potch.
Was there, at any time, a richer harvest of evil?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Except, of course, it isn’t. Juvenal goes through the same crisis as Horace and Persius. This isn’t the Republic and he isn’t Lucilius. It isn’t safe to tell it like it is when the rich and powerful can silence you. Juvenal’s solution is that he will only criticise the dead. The fearless satirist is compromised before he has even begun.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246794/original/file-20181122-182062-aoz769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A depiction of Juvenal in the Nuremberg Chronicle, late 1400s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juvenal_Nuremberg_Chronicle.jpg">Wiki Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet it isn’t just his caginess about causing offence which problematises the satirist’s voice. His strident attacks on women, on homosexuals, on Greek and Egyptian immigrants are often put in the mouths of characters who sound remarkably like the satirist himself. </p>
<p>Satire 3’s panoramic view of a decadent Rome is presented through the skewed vision of Umbricius, “Mr Shady”, about to abandon the city because Greek immigrants take all the jobs. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I now proceed to speak of the nation specially favoured
by our wealthy compatriots, one that I shun above all others.
I shan’t mince words. My fellow Romans, I cannot put up with
a city of Greeks; yet how much of the dregs is truly Achaean?
The Syrian Orontes has long been discharging into the Tiber,
carrying with it its language and morals and slanting strings,
complete with piper, not to speak of its native timbrels.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But his main complaint is that they get away with the same things he tries.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We, of course, can pay identical compliments; yes, but
they <em>are</em> believed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This isn’t moralising, or even simple bigotry, but sour grapes.</p>
<p>Readers take the first-person voice of the satires as reflecting Juvenal’s personal opinion in a sort of autobiographical confession. Indeed, we know nothing about him except what we can try to deduce from his poems. More recently, the satirist’s voice has been seen as a persona, a mask, a character just like Umbricius. </p>
<p>Is Juvenal satirising immigrants or the bigots who rail against them? The latter is certainly the more comfortable reading, but we need to be careful not to make the Romans too like us. Satire is meant to be uncomfortable.</p>
<h2>Beyond Anger</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1254&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246795/original/file-20181122-182065-1v3acgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1254&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/humanidadesfondoantiguo/38103226485/">biblioteca de humanidades/flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Juvenal’s satirist doesn’t only “punch down” against easy targets. He also “punches up” and fights the corner of the little guy oppressed by the rich and powerful. Satire 5 condemns a rich patron for the humiliation he heaps on his poor client, though he acutely criticises the client for his complicity. Throughout, Juvenal’s main targets are hypocrites from all levels of society. The satirist stands outside and inveighs against what is wrong with Rome, but he has few suggestions on how to improve it.</p>
<p>In his later satires, Juvenal moves away from indignation altogether and adopts a new model. He will not be the philosopher Heraclitus, weeping at the state of the world, but another philosopher, Democritus, ironically laughing at it with a sense of detachment. </p>
<p>This is the spirit of satire 10, on the dangers of getting what we wish for. The satirist is not angry, but mockingly – and sometimes pityingly – amused by Sejanus, who got the power he wanted but was dragged through the streets on a meat-hook.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now the flames are hissing; bellows and furnace are bringing
a glow to the head revered by the people. The mighty Sejanus
is crackling. Then, from the face regarded as number two
in the whole of the world, come pitchers, basins, saucepans, and piss-pots.
Frame your door with laurels; drag a magnificent bull,
whitened with chalk, to the Capitol. They’re dragging Sejanus along
by a hook for all to see.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or the man whose prayer for long life is answered with impotent, incontinent senility. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The poor old fellow must mumble his bread with toothless gums.
He is so repellent to all (wife, children, and himself),
that he even turns the stomach of Cossus the legacy-hunter.
He loses his former zest for food and wine as his palate
grows numb. He has long forgotten what sex was like; if one tries
to remind him, his shrunken tool, with its vein enlarged, just lies there,
and, though caressed all night, it will continue to lie there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The angry satirist hurls unconstructive abuse, but this new version has a suggestion for self-improvement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Juvenal unbound</h2>
<p>Juvenal is the greatest Roman satirist. He, far more than Horace or Persius, defined what satire meant for most of the early modern period and it is translations and imitations of him by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope">Pope</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dryden">Dryden</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson">Jonson</a>, and others – not to mention <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hogarth">Hogarth’s paintings</a> – which dominate the great era of English <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustan_literature">Augustan satire</a>. </p>
<p>His satires give us a ground-level view of a Rome we could barely guess at from the heroism of the Aeneid, the drinking-parties of Horace’s Odes, or even the histories of Tacitus. We cannot trust satire, but we can allow ourselves to enjoy it.</p>
<p><em>Recommended translation: Juvenal, The Satires, Oxford World’s Classics translation by Niall Rudd with introduction and notes by William Barr (1992).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Cowan 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>Juvenal wrote 16 satires, divided into five books, each with their own target from decadent aristocrats to Egyptian cannibals.Robert Cowan, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1047752018-10-28T18:54:48Z2018-10-28T18:54:48ZThe ancient origins of werewolves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242396/original/file-20181026-71029-bprt57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Ancient Greek texts, the king Lycaon is punished for misdeeds by being turned into a wolf. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycaon_(Arcadia)#/media/File:Lycaon_Transformed_into_a_Wolf_LACMA_M.71.76.9.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The werewolf is a staple of supernatural fiction, whether it be film, television, or literature. You might think this snarling creature is a creation of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, a result of the superstitions surrounding magic and witchcraft. </p>
<p>In reality, the werewolf is far older than that. The earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/gilgamesh/">The Epic of Gilgamesh</a> from around 2,100 BC. However, the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome, in ethnographic, poetic and philosophical texts.</p>
<p>These stories of the transformed beast are usually mythological, although some have a basis in local histories, religions and cults. In 425 BC, Greek historian <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/herodotus/">Herodotus</a> described the Neuri, a nomadic tribe of magical men who changed into wolf shapes for several days of the year. The Neuri were from Scythia, land that is now part of Russia. Using wolf skins for warmth is not outside the realm of possibility for inhabitants of such a harsh climate: this is likely the reason Herodotus described their practice as “transformation”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242422/original/file-20181026-107670-ihuih0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&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 werewolf in a German woodcut, circa 1512.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Werwolf.png">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The werewolf myth became integrated with the local history of Arcadia, a region of Greece. Here, Zeus was worshipped as Lycaean Zeus (“Wolf Zeus”). In 380 BC, Greek philosopher <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/plato/">Plato</a> told a story in the Republic about the “protector-turned-tyrant” of the shrine of Lycaean Zeus. In this short passage, the character Socrates remarks: “The story goes that he who tastes of the one bit of human entrails minced up with those of other victims is inevitably transformed into a wolf.”</p>
<p>Literary evidence suggests cult members mixed human flesh into their ritual sacrifice to Zeus. Both <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pliny-the-Elder">Pliny the Elder</a> and <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Pausanias_%28Geographer%29/">Pausanias</a> discuss the participation of a young athlete, Damarchus, in the Arcadian sacrifice of an adolescent boy: when Damarchus was compelled to taste the entrails of the young boy, he was transformed into a wolf for nine years. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that human sacrifice may have been practised at this <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/10/skeletal-remains-confirm-ancient-greeks-engaged-in-human-sacrifice">site</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-female-werewolf-and-her-shaggy-suffragette-sisters-72082">Friday essay: the female werewolf and her shaggy suffragette sisters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Monsters and men</h2>
<p>The most interesting aspect of Plato’s passage concerns the “protector-turned-tyrant”, also known as the mythical king, Lycaon. Expanded further in Latin texts, most notably <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gaius-Julius-Hyginus">Hyginus</a>’s Fabulae and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ovid-Roman-poet">Ovid</a>’s Metamorphoses, Lycaon’s story contains all the elements of a modern werewolf tale: immoral behaviour, murder and cannibalism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242420/original/file-20181026-107682-a0vbwq.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">An Athenian vase depicting a man in a wolf skin, circa 460 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lekythos_Dolon_Louvre_CA1802.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Fabulae, the sons of Lycaon sacrificed their youngest brother to prove Zeus’s weakness. They served the corpse as a pseudo-feast and attempting to trick the god into eating it. A furious Zeus slayed the sons with a lightning bolt and transformed their father into a wolf. In Ovid’s version, Lycaon murdered and mutilated a protected hostage of Zeus, but suffered the same consequences.</p>
<p>Ovid’s passage is one of the only ancient sources that goes into detail on the act of transformation. His description of the metamorphosis uses haunting language that creates a correlation between Lycaon’s behaviour and the physical manipulation of his body:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…He tried to speak, but his voice broke into
<br>
an echoing howl. His ravening soul infected his jaws;
<br>
his murderous longings were turned on the cattle; he still was possessed
<br>
by bloodlust. His garments were changed to a shaggy coat and his arms
<br>
into legs. He was now transformed into a wolf.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ovid’s Lycaon is the origin of the modern werewolf, as the physical manipulation of his body hinges on his prior immoral behaviour. It is this that has contributed to the establishment of the “monstrous werewolf” trope of modern fiction.</p>
<p>Lycaon’s character defects are physically grafted onto his body, manipulating his human form until he becomes that which his behaviour suggests. And, perhaps most importantly, Lycaon begins the idea that to transform into a werewolf you must first be a monster.</p>
<p>The idea that there was a link between biology (i.e. appearance) and “immoral” behaviour developed fully in the late 20th century. However, minority groups were more often the target than mythical kings. Law enforcement, scientists and the medical community joined forces to find “cures” for socially deviant behaviour such as criminality, violence and even homosexuality. Science and medicine were used as a vehicle through which bigotry and fear could be maintained, as shown by the treatment of HIV-affected men throughout the 1980s. </p>
<p>However, werewolf stories show the idea has ancient origins. For as long as authors have been changing bad men into wolves, we have been looking for the biological link between man and action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanika Koosmen 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 earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh, from around 2,100 BC. But the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome.Tanika Koosmen, PhD Candidate, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/846032017-10-01T18:39:21Z2017-10-01T18:39:21ZGuide to the Classics: Dante’s Divine Comedy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187675/original/file-20170926-10403-s09hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Giotto's Last Judgment in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, inspired by Dante Alighieri's vision of heaven and hell. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So warns the inscription on the gates of the inferno, the first realm of Dante Alighieri’s celebrated work, now known as the Divine Comedy. “La Commedia”, as Dante originally named it, is an imaginary journey through the three realms of the afterlife: inferno (hell), purgatorio (purgatory) and paradiso (heaven). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187517/original/file-20170926-25765-eybvaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dante and Beatrice see the Empyrean at the end of their journey to heaven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gustave Doré & Kalki</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It might not sound all that funny, but Dante called his epic poem a comedy because, unlike tragedies that begin on a high note and end tragically, comedies begin badly but end well. The poem indeed ends well, with the protagonist, also named Dante, reaching his desired destination – heaven – a place of beauty and calm, light and ultimate good. Conversely, the inferno is dark, morose and inhabited by irredeemable sinners.</p>
<p>Dante wrote the comedy during his exile from Florence between 1302 and his death in 1321. It is the first significant text written in the Italian vernacular and is written in <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terza_rima">terza rima</a></em>, an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme invented by the author.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading</strong>: <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-odyssey-82911">Guide to the Classics: Homer’s Odyssey</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Dante set the beginning of the story on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maundy_Thursday">Holy Thursday</a>, 1300, when he was 35-years-old. He alludes to being “middle aged” in the opening lines of the poem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Halfway through our life’s journey</p>
<p>I woke to find myself within a dark wood</p>
<p>because I had strayed from the correct path.</p>
<p>Oh how hard it is to describe</p>
<p>how harsh and tough that savage wood was</p>
<p>The very thought of it renews the fear!</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>To hell, and back again</h2>
<p>At the beginning of Inferno, Dante alludes to the apocalyptic vision of the biblical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation">Book of Revelation</a>. In a dark wood, three menacing beasts, a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf - respectively symbolising lust, pride and greed - prevent Dante from climbing a mountain.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187513/original/file-20170926-32444-1i3gum9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Blake, Dante running from the three beasts, 1824-1827.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Dante despairs, the Roman poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil">Virgil</a>, author of the Aeneid, appears, announcing that he has been sent to guide him. They must first descend into hell, a cone-shaped crater that was caused by the fall of Lucifer.</p>
<p>Before beginning the journey, and in keeping with the classical epic tradition, Dante invokes the goddesses known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muses">muses</a> to inspire him, something he will do at the beginning of the next two books, Purgatorio and Paradiso.</p>
<p>Dante and Virgil must pass through nine circles of hell, in which the punishments increase in severity to match the gravity of the vices being punished. In the first circle are mythological and historical characters who died before Christianity was founded and were therefore not initiated through baptism. Lingering here are noble and virtuous characters – like Plato, Aristotle, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen">Galen</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna">Avicenna</a>, Cicero, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid">Ovid</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187516/original/file-20170926-17379-29h0su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Francesca and Paolo, adulterers, Gustave Dore, circa 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the second circle, Dante is distraught by the cruelty of the punishment he observes. There, he encounters the souls of the lustful, including the legendary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_und_Isolde">Tristan and Isolde</a> and the historical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_da_Rimini">Francesca da Rimini</a> and her lover <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Malatesta">Paolo</a>. Murdered by Francesca’s husband and Paolo’s brother, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Malatesta">Giovanni Malatesta</a>, these two souls drift aimlessly, their bodies fused together as punishment for adultery. They are joined for eternity, inverting the biblical prescription in Matthew that “what God has joined together, let man not separate.”</p>
<p>In the remaining seven circles of hell, Dante and Virgil observe punishments that are so grisly that sinners are reduced to grotesque conditions. These inspired the frescoes depicting the final judgement day that the painter <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto">Giotto</a> painted around the walls and ceiling of the <a href="http://www.travelingintuscany.com/art/giotto/scrovegnilastjudgment.htm">Scrovegni Chapel in Padua</a>.</p>
<p>The writer Dante’s friend and compatriot, Giotto was commissioned to paint the inside of the chapel by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_degli_Scrovegni">the son</a> of an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginaldo_degli_Scrovegni">infamous usurer</a> that Dante identifies in the seventh circle of hell. There, men with moneybags hanging round their necks flick off flames, just as dogs shoo away insects in summer.</p>
<p>In the next, the circle of the fraudulent, Dante and Virgil encounter popes guilty of simony (or the selling of church services). Having inverted the moral order, they face an eternity buried upside down with their heads in the trenches. Only their legs can be seen from above, waving around frantically.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187518/original/file-20170926-19571-nskt58.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">Ugolino and his sons. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1865-67.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the ninth circle, the pilgrims see the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolino_della_Gherardesca">Count Ugolino</a> chomping on the skull of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruggieri_degli_Ubaldini">Archbishop Ruggieri</a>, the punishment for treachery. In reality Ugolino conspired against his party, the Ghibellines, to bring the opposing Guelfs to power. The Archbishop later betrayed and imprisoned Ugolino with his offspring, gradually starving them to death. </p>
<p>Finally the pilgrims arrive at the centre of the earth, where they must scale the hairy sides of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer">Lucifer</a> to be able to ascend to the surface of the earth to get to purgatory, where they must be cleaned of the stain of hell. At the entrance of purgatory, an angel inscribes the letter “P” on Dante’s forehead seven times with the tip of his sword, saying “Make sure you cleanse these wounds when you are inside”. Each “P” stands for piaghe (wounds) that form from peccati (sins). Dante must work off and cleanse away each of them in the seven terraces of purgatory. As he leaves each terrace repented, the angel brushes his forehead, removing one of the letters. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-spite-of-their-differences-jews-christians-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god-83102">In spite of their differences, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Renewed and purified, Dante is now disposed to rise to “the stars”. Drawing on the writings of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_(Augustine)">Saint Augustine</a>, a woman called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Portinari">Beatrice</a>, who has taken over from Virgil and guides Dante through heaven, explains that God’s creations, exiled to earth, long to return to their place of origin. Dante and Beatrice ascend through several heavens, the moon, and the planets, to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyrean">Empyrean</a>, the heaven of divine peace. Like Inferno and Purgatorio, Paradiso ends with a reference to the stars:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here high fantasy lost its impulse but my will and desire were already propelled, as a wheel is equally moved by the love that moves the sun and other stars.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Dante through the ages</h2>
<p>Early commentators focused on interpreting the work as an allegory for the life of Jesus. In his Life of Dante, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio">Giovanni Boccaccio</a>, author of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron">Decameron</a>, classified Dante as a prophet and his poem a prophecy. Humanist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristoforo_Landino">Cristoforo Landino</a> (1424-98) viewed the poem as a metaphor for the soul’s journey back to God, and Neapolitan political philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Vico">Giambatista Vico</a> (1668-1744) saw the Divine Comedy as a product of its barbarous time and Dante as the historian of his age, labelling him the Tuscan Homer. </p>
<p>More recently the Divine Comedy has inspired many <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri_and_the_Divine_Comedy_in_popular_culture">creative works</a> including art, architecture, literature, music, radio, film, television, comics, animations, digital arts, computer games and even a papal encyclical, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_caritas_est">Deus caritas est</a> (2006), which, according to Pope Benedict XVI was inspired by the final verse of Paradiso.</p>
<p>It is most often Dante’s Inferno, its graphic imagery and twisted characters, that has inspired litterateurs like Chaucer, Milton, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac">Honoré de Balzac</a>, Marx, Elliot, Forster, Beckett, Primo Levy and Borges. </p>
<p>Few films have incorporated the entire epic tale. The earliest silent films, in 1911 (L’Inferno) and 1924 (Dante’s Inferno), and the first motion picture in 1935 (also Dante’s Inferno) all focused on the creatures and events of the inferno.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iS4We4MDheg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Peter Greenaway and Tom Phillips’s multi-award winning 1990 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_TV_Dante">A TV Dante</a> juxtaposes narration by John Gielgud, electronic images and sounds, with asides by experts, such as explanations of the three “beasts” by David Attenborough. A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Inferno_Animated">2010 animation</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdNOvHVvnlc">2012 documentary</a> focus on the horror of the inferno, while another terrifying 2010 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Inferno:_An_Animated_Epic">animation</a> is based on a video game and departs considerably from the original. </p>
<p>Nor must the inferno be the focus to instil fear or terror. The film <a href="http://novelfirstsentences.tumblr.com/post/5161980896/abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here-is-scrawled-in">American Psycho</a> is among 33 films with no connection to the Divine Comedy that contain, collectively, <a href="http://www.subzin.com/search.php?q=Abandon%20all%20hope%20ye%20who%20enter%20here&search_sort=Popularity&type=All&pag=2">64 occurrences of the iconic phrase</a> at the gates of the inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” a phrase that still inspires dread and terror in the audience almost 700 years later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84603/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frances Di Lauro 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 gates to hell in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy tell us to “abandon all hope, yet who enter here”. Despite its unfunny premise, ‘La Commedia’ ends well, with its protagonist Dante reaching heaven.Frances Di Lauro, Senior Lecturer, Chair, The Department of Writing Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/784682017-06-22T20:03:04Z2017-06-22T20:03:04ZFriday essay: the legend of Ishtar, first goddess of love and war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175079/original/file-20170621-30161-19y1ok4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ishtar (on right) comes to Sargon, who would later become one of the great kings of Mesopotamia. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14783163205/">Edwin J. Prittie, The story of the greatest nations, 1913</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As singer Pat Benatar once noted, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjY_uSSncQw">love is a battlefield</a>. Such use of military words to express intimate, affectionate emotions is likely related to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/04/26/heartbreak-placebo-effect_n_16261856.html">love’s capacity to bruise and confuse</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175088/original/file-20170622-25561-115v9mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ishtar holding a symbol of leadership. Terracotta relief, early 2nd millennium BC. From Eshnunna. Held in the Louvre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marie-Lan Nguyen</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So it was with the world’s first goddess of love and war, Ishtar, and her lover Tammuz. In ancient Mesopotamia - roughly corresponding to modern Iraq, parts of Iran, Syria, Kuwait and Turkey - love was a powerful force, capable of upending earthly order and producing sharp changes in status. </p>
<p>From Aphrodite to <a href="https://theconversation.com/wonder-women-have-been-smashing-the-patriarchy-since-classical-times-77695">Wonder Woman</a>, we continue to be fascinated by powerful female protagonists, an interest that can be traced back to our earliest written records. Ishtar (the word comes from the Akkadian language; she was known as Inanna in Sumerian) was the first deity for which we have written evidence. She was closely related to romantic love, but also familial love, the loving bonds between communities, and sexual love. </p>
<p>She was also a warrior deity with a potent capacity for vengeance, as her lover would find out. These seemingly opposing personalities have raised scholarly eyebrows both ancient and modern. Ishtar is a love deity who is terrifying on the battlefield. Her beauty is the subject of love poetry, and her rage likened to a destructive storm. But in her capacity to shape destinies and fortunes, they are two sides of the same coin.</p>
<h2>Playing with fate</h2>
<p>The earliest poems to Ishtar were written by Enheduanna — the <a href="http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4072.htm">world’s first individually identified author</a>. Enheduanna (circa 2300 BCE) is generally considered to have been an historical figure living in Ur, one of the <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160311-ur-iraq-trade-royal-cemetery-woolley-archaeology/">world’s oldest urban centres</a>. She was a priestess to the moon god and the daughter of Sargon of Akkad (“Sargon the Great”), the first ruler to unite northern and southern Mesopotamia and found the powerful Akkadian empire. </p>
<p>The sources for Enheduanna’s life and career are historical, literary and archaeological: she commissioned an alabaster relief, the <a href="https://www.penn.museum/blog/museum/ur-digitization-project-item-of-the-month-june-2012/">Disk of Enheduanna</a>, which is inscribed with her dedication.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175082/original/file-20170621-19084-1h0x7a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&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 Disk of Enheduanna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Object B16665. Courtesy of the Penn Museum.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In her poetry, Enheduanna reveals the diversity of Ishtar, including her superlative capacity for armed conflict and her ability to bring about abrupt changes in status and fortune. This ability was well suited to a goddess of love and war — both areas where swift reversals can take place, utterly changing the state of play. </p>
<p>On the battlefield, the goddess’s ability to fix fates ensured victory. In love magic, Ishtar’s power could alter romantic fortunes. In ancient love charms, her influence was invoked to win, or indeed, capture, the heart (and other body parts) of a desired lover.</p>
<h2>Dressed for success</h2>
<p>Ishtar is described (by herself in love poems, and by others) as a beautiful, young woman. Her lover, Tammuz, compliments her on the beauty of her eyes, a seemingly timeless form of <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flattery-will-get-you-far/">flattery</a>, with a literary history stretching back to around 2100 BCE. Ishtar and Tammuz are the protagonists of one of the world’s first love stories. In love poetry telling of their courtship, the two have a very affectionate relationship. But like many great love stories, their union ends tragically. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174880/original/file-20170621-8977-jqhc90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ishtar’s Midnight Courtship, from Ishtar and Izdubar, the epic of Babylon, 1884.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11170021403">The British Library/flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most famous account of this myth is Ishtar’s Descent to the Underworld, author unknown. This ancient narrative, surviving in <a href="http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr141.htm">Sumerian and Akkadian versions</a> (both <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39870485">written in cuneiform</a>),
was only deciphered in the 19th Century. It begins with Ishtar’s decision to visit the realm of her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. </p>
<p>Ostensibly, she is visiting her sister to mourn the death of her brother-in-law, possibly the Bull of Heaven who appears in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-73444?sr=1">Epic of Gilgamesh</a>. But the other gods in the story view the move as an attempt at a hostile takeover. Ishtar was known for being extremely ambitious; in another myth she storms the heavens and stages a divine coup.</p>
<p>Any questions over Ishtar’s motives are settled by the description of her preparation for her journey. She carefully applies make-up and jewellery, and wraps herself in beautiful clothing. Ishtar is frequently described applying cosmetics and enhancing her appearance before undertaking battle, or before meeting a lover. Much as a male warrior may put on a breast plate before a fight, Ishtar lines her eyes with mascara. She’s the original power-dresser: her enrichment of <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dress-for-success-how-clothes-influence-our-performance/">her beauty and her choice of clothes</a> accentuate her potency.</p>
<p>Next, in a humorous scene brimming with irony, the goddess instructs her faithful handmaiden, Ninshubur, on how to behave if Ishtar becomes trapped in the netherworld. First, Ninshubur must clothe herself in correct mourning attire, such as sackcloth, and create a dishevelled appearance. Then, she must go to the temples of the great gods and ask for help to rescue her mistress. Ishtar’s instructions that her handmaiden dress in appropriately sombre mourning-wear are a stark contrast to her own flashy attire.</p>
<h2>‘No one comes back from the underworld unmarked’</h2>
<p>But when Ereshkigal learns that Ishtar is dressed so well, she realises she has come to conquer the underworld. So she devises a plan to literally strip Ishtar of her power.</p>
<p>Once arriving at Ereshkigal’s home, Ishtar descends through the seven gates of the underworld. At each gate she is instructed to remove an item of clothing. When she arrives before her sister, Ishtar is naked, and Ereshkigal kills her at once. </p>
<p>Her death has terrible consequences, involving the cessation of all earthly sexual intimacy and fertility. So on the advice of Ishtar’s handmaiden, Ea - the god of wisdom - facilitates a plot to revive Ishtar and return her to the upper world. His plot suceeds, but there is an ancient Mesopotamian saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No one comes back from the underworld unmarked.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Once a space had been created in the underworld, it was thought that it couldn’t be left empty. Ishtar is instructed to ascend with a band of demons to the upper world, and find her own replacement. </p>
<p>In the world above, Ishtar sees Tammuz dressed regally and relaxing on a throne, apparently unaffected by her death. Enraged, she instructs the demons to take him away with them. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=158%2C134%2C3784%2C2512&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=158%2C134%2C3784%2C2512&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174876/original/file-20170621-4662-ap6nig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&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 Ishtar Gate to the city of Babylon, was dedicated to the Mesopotamian goddess. Reconstruction in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danielmennerich/14269318954/in/photolist-nJVZoA-iKzbN-pJEhzP-SxCEvG-7S7oBC-hsBd1V-DpJ4N-DpJHX-nDNppx-9cyc7j-4MHms9-3VNhLD-jwYBs-847gkt-4MHkqb-jFrAzg-z7md5-nKW7LE-nuWJgj-nxLsSc-UVvx8a-obntFg-oa1L4C-nU1xnx-nNDLVn-UgKq-e8zY23-oaGd32-3VNi1g-2jS23n-o8DT7o-zTasT2-76dVv6-zzCmz3-Co1av-hx2mEz-arZpTK-8Kj5jv-oejCVr-9LBYRa-eng9X-5ZT2Vk-aoUXBr-nQUsVs-giYos-opXNJc-oayhuU-7kYmuN-ggQtu7-eng9Z">Daniel Mennerich/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A goddess scorned</h2>
<p>Ishtar’s role in her husband’s demise has earned her a reputation as being somewhat fickle. But this assessment does not capture the complexity of the goddess’s role. Ishtar is portrayed in the myth of her Descent and elsewhere as capable of intense faithfulness: rather than being fickle, her role in her husband’s death shows her vengeful nature.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/books/review/house-of-names-colm-toibin-bright-air-black-david-vann.html">Women and vengeance</a> proved a popular combination in the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, where powerful women such as Electra, Clytemnestra and Medea brought terrible consequences on those who they perceived as having wronged them. This theme has continued to fascinate audiences to the present day. </p>
<p>The concept is encapsulated by the line, often misattributed to Shakespeare, from <a href="http://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/language_corner_092914.php">William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before she sees her husband relaxing after her death, Ishtar first encounters her handmaiden Ninshubur, and her two sons. One son is described as the goddess’s manicurist and hairdresser, and the other is a warrior. All three are spared by the goddess due to their faithful service and their overt expressions of grief over Ishtar’s death — they are each described lying in the dust, dressed in rags. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175089/original/file-20170622-30227-125o8ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, depicting the Roman goddess of love.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The diligent behaviour of Ishtar’s attendants is juxtaposed against the actions of Tammuz, a damning contrast that demonstrates his lack of appropriate mourning behaviour. Loyalty is the main criteria Ishtar uses to choose who will replace her in the underworld. This hardly makes her faithless. </p>
<p>Ishtar’s pursuit of revenge in ancient myths is an extension of her close connection to the dispensation of justice, and the maintenance of universal order. Love and war are both forces with the potential to create chaos and confusion, and the deity associated with them needed to be able to restore order as well as to disrupt it.</p>
<p>Still, love in Mesopotamia could survive death. Even for Tammuz, love was salvation and protection: the faithful love of his sister, Geshtinanna, allowed for his eventual return from the underworld. Love, as they say, never dies — but in the rare cases where it might momentarily expire, it’s best to mourn appropriately.</p>
<h2>Ishtar’s legacy</h2>
<p>Ishtar was one of the most popular deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, yet in the modern day she has slipped into almost total anonymity. Ishtar’s legacy is most clearly seen through her influence on later cultural archetypes, with her image contributing to the development of the most famous love goddess of them all, <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Summary/Aphrodite.html">Aphrodite</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174883/original/file-20170621-30161-1d0jpuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are intriguing similarities between Ishtar and Wonder Woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451279/mediaviewer/rm1936796160">Atlas Entertainment</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ishtar turns up in science fiction, notably as a beautiful yet self-destructive stripper in Neil Gaiman’s comic <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25105.Brief_Lives">The Sandman: Brief Lives</a>. Gaiman’s exceptional command of Mesopotamian myth suggests the “stripping” of Ishtar may involve a wink to the ancient narrative tradition of her Descent. </p>
<p>She is not directly referenced in the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093278/">1987 film</a> that carries her name (<a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ishtar-1987">received poorly</a> but now something of a <a href="http://flavorwire.com/605847/bad-movie-night-the-unsung-charms-of-ishtar">cult classic</a>), although the lead female character Shirra, shows some similarities to the goddess. </p>
<p>In the graphic novel tradition, Aphrodite is credited with shaping the image of Wonder Woman, and Aphrodite’s own image was influenced by Ishtar. This connection may partially explain the intriguing similarities between Ishtar and the modern superhero: both figures are represented as warriors who grace the battlefield wearing bracelets and a tiara, brandishing a rope weapon, and demonstrating love, loyalty and a fierce commitment to justice.</p>
<p>Ishtar, like other love goddesses, has been linked to in <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/sacred-prostitution-overview-120992">ancient sexual and fertility rituals</a>, although the evidence for this is up for debate, and frequently overshadows the deity’s many other fascinating qualities. </p>
<p>Exploring the image of the world’s first goddess provides an insight into Mesopotamian culture, and the enduring power of love through the ages. In the modern day, <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-six-styles-of-love-which-one-best-describes-you-72664">love is said to conquer all</a>, and in the ancient world, Ishtar did just that.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The author’s book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Ishtar/Pryke/p/book/9781138860735">Ishtar</a>, will be published this month by Routledge.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Pryke 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>Love, it is said, is a battlefield, and it was no more so than for the first goddess of love and war, Ishtar. Her legend has influenced cultural archetypes from Aphrodite to Wonder Woman.Louise Pryke, Lecturer, Languages and Literature of Ancient Israel, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/715502017-06-12T19:56:51Z2017-06-12T19:56:51ZGuide to the classics: Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167826/original/file-20170504-21649-1cr9z3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The fall of the Athenian army in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War in 413 BC as depicted in an 1893 illustration by J.G.Vogt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thucydides’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/261243.History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War">History of the Peloponnesian War</a> breaks off before the story is over. After detailing the armed conflict between the Athenians and the Spartans (and their respective allies) between 431 and 404 BCE, the eight-book text ends abruptly in the middle of a chapter as if, one day, the writer simply dropped his pen and left his desk, never to return. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167819/original/file-20170504-4929-1sppz28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bust of Thucydides.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thucydides_pushkin02.jpg">shakko, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What required such urgent and final attention? And why did Thucydides never return to complete the manuscript? Whatever the answers, the book’s incompleteness adds a human touch to a work that is otherwise an accomplished and polished piece of writing.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/Peloponnesian_War/">Peloponnesian War</a> Thucydides recounts culminated in Sparta’s surprisingly late victory over the Athenians and ended a power dynamic that had shaped the ancient Aegean world for decades. </p>
<p>Everything changed in its aftermath. Both major powers came out of the war considerably weakened, opening the door for the later annexation of Greece by Philip of Macedon, his son Alexander the Great, and, finally, the Romans.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1224&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1224&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167820/original/file-20170504-21608-14orvix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1224&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 fragment of the fourth book of the History of the Peloponnesian War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Thucydides, the war found an author of meticulous standard and dedication who created a work that still resonates in the disciplines of history, international relations, and political science. His thoroughness, sharpness, and matter-of-fact analysis have led some people to believe that he, and not fellow historian Herodotus, deserves the title “father of history”. </p>
<p>Thucydides would have agreed. His history includes several direct and indirect attacks on his immediate predecessors, most notably on Homer and Herodotus. While never once referring to him by name, Thucydides accused Herodotus of fabulation, storytelling, and a writing style that pandered to his immediate audience. </p>
<p>Needless to say, Thucydides was convinced that he himself offered a far superior product. He set the bar and set it high: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And the results, by avoiding patriotic storytelling, will perhaps seem the less enjoyable for listening. Yet if they are judged useful by any who wish to look at the plain truth about both past events and those that at some future time, in accordance to human nature, will recur in similar or comparable ways, that will suffice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a high-ranking Athenian military commander (or “strategos”), Thucydides brought to the project firsthand experience of the war, as well as an acute understanding of the complex power politics behind events on the battlefield. His analysis of the immediate and underlying causes of the war and his insight into the considerations and motivations of those fighting it remain one of the most brilliant pieces of political history to date. </p>
<p>His sharp analysis of the kind of forces that stir popular sentiments and drive collective decision making still resonates in the modern world. It fulfils its author’s own – somewhat preposterous – proclamation about the nature of his work:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a possession for all time (“ktema eis aei”), not a competition piece to be heard for the moment, that has been composed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No self-esteem issues here. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, his programmatic prediction proved right. More than 2500 years later, Thucydides’ History still stands among the foundational texts in the classical canon due to its enduring analytical sharpness and the acuteness of his observations.</p>
<h2>My war is bigger than yours</h2>
<p>When Thucydides set out to compose his work, the writing of warfare was already a notable tradition launched with a bang by the legendary Homer about three centuries earlier. In his epic poem <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad">Iliad</a>, Homer related the story of the Trojan War as an epic battle involving gods and humans alike. He was followed 300 years later by <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-histories-by-herodotus-53748">Herodotus</a> who gave an account of the Persian Wars, similarly rich in iconic battles and larger-than-life personalities on both sides of the conflict. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167821/original/file-20170504-27085-q52m0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A double bust of Herodotus and Thucydides.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With Thucydides, the writing of war took a new direction. In contrast to the wars of Homer and Herodotus, the armed conflict that concerned Thucydides was fought primarily among Greeks. It also involved events that occurred within the author’s lifetime, which introduced a contemporary dimension to the genre.</p>
<p>Thucydides focused on offering a strong and authoritative account of the war, its causes, and behind the scenes negotiations. To this end, he largely left out the gods and religious explanations more generally – although there is still more religion in Thucydides than one may think. </p>
<p>Instead, he offered a deep analysis of human factors and motivations. Although Thucydides was aware that all authors exaggerate the importance of their topic, he still felt inclined to make a case for his:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And this war – even though men always consider the war on hand the most important while they are fighting but once they have ended it are more impressed by ancient ones – will nevertheless stand out clearly as greater than the others for anyone who examines it from the facts themselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reasons he gave were three-fold: the Peloponnesian War was fought between two cities at the height of their power; these powers went into conflict prepared; and most of the Greek world (and beyond) was subsequently drawn into the fighting.</p>
<p>The so-called “archaeology” of his work – a succession of observations laid out in the beginning – sets out his method: eyewitness accounts; the critical evaluation of sources and informants; and, finally, his own experience and insight. </p>
<p>What stands out throughout is the sharpness with which Thucydides reports. In contrast to Herodotus, he no longer includes alternative viewpoints and traditions but offers a strong, singular explanation of events. Yet the authorial voice Thucydides created in the History should not belie the fact that he engaged in his very own forms of make–believe.</p>
<p>Through the speeches, in particular, Thucydides offers evaluations of events and situations in a voice other than his own. Interspersed throughout the History, they provide a commentary on the events from the perspective of the historical actors. </p>
<h2>A battle of words</h2>
<p>Some modern critics decry the speeches in Thucydides’ History as the failure of an otherwise truthful and authoritative narrator. Yet Thucydides himself apparently saw no problem; there was no conflict between his aim to tell what really happened and his use of speeches, although he did find the subject important enough to warrant an explanation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Insofar as these facts involve what the various participants said both before and during the actual conflict, recalling the exact words was difficult for me regarding speeches I heard myself and for my informants about speeches made elsewhere; in the way I thought each would have said what was especially required in the given situation, I have stated accordingly, with the closest possible fidelity on my part to the overall sense of what was actually said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Among the speeches, the so-called “Funeral Oration” stands out. Allegedly delivered by the famous Athenian statesman and orator Pericles’ after the first year of the Peloponnesian war, the speech was intended to celebrate those who had fallen, and offers an appraisal of Athenian culture, identity, and ideology.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167822/original/file-20170504-21635-t30uzf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pericles’ Funeral Oration by Philipp Foltz (1852).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thucydides’ Pericles makes an emphatic appeal to the very foundations of Athens’ power and supremacy. His appraisal of Athenian greatness includes references to bravery, military strength, democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, as well as to “soft” values such as the love of beauty, education and the arts. </p>
<p>However, a different picture of life in Athens follows this oration: Thucydides’ detailed account of the plague that broke out shortly afterwards. Thucydides, who was also afflicted, reports in detail on the plague’s impact on the human body, the city, and its people. Lawlessness, disregard for custom, egotism and a general lack of order in the face of death took hold of Athens.</p>
<p>The strong contrast between the high-minded “Funeral Oration” and the ravages of the plague provides a powerful insight into the principles that guide Thucydidean enquiry. This author is not afraid to point out that ideological premise and historical practice don’t always mesh. Time and again he shows that in extreme situations, it is human nature to diverge from ideals that are otherwise firmly held. </p>
<p>In these moments, the anthropologist and humanist in Thucydides comes to the fore. Recent scholarship has highlighted this dimension of his work. Even though the main focus in his History remains on warfare and the geo-political deliberations that inform it, there is more on human nature and culture in this work than one may think. And, more frequently than not, Thucydides extends his sharp analysis from politics and warfare to the human and cultural factors driving human history.</p>
<h2>The tragedy of power politics</h2>
<p>The same sharp analysis runs throughout the work. It cuts to the core of the hidden forces, motivations, and considerations at stake in various historical situations, and informs such diverse accounts as the so-called “Mytilenean Debate” and the “Melian Dialogue”.</p>
<p>The Mytilenean Debate revolves around whether the Athenians should revoke their decision to annihilate the entire western Ionian city of Mytilene in retaliation for a revolt.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167816/original/file-20170504-21608-1gs0m2i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ruins of Ancient Sparta in Greece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sparta_ruins.PNG">Thomas Ihle, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thucydides has two main speakers set out the case. Both speakers make a series of complex arguments revolving around questions of justice, fairness, good governance, and the nature of hegemonic rule. Cleon (a General during the Peloponnesian War) argues for harsh treatment: doing otherwise would set a dangerous precedent for other allies. Diodotus (his opponent), on the other hand, takes up this point and insists that a more lenient response is the superior strategy: it would not corner those rebelling but provides them with a viable alternative that secures a future source of revenue for Athens. </p>
<p>Diodotus’s argument, in particular, invokes the principles and practices of these aforementioned “soft powers” successfully. As such, the Athenians choose to overturn the decision. A <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/trireme/">trireme</a> is dispatched just in time to prevent major bloodshed. </p>
<p>However, a very different side of Athens emerges in the Melian Dialogue. This is the only section in the History that’s set out like a dramatic fast-paced sequence of direct speech – a dialogue like an Athenian tragedy. Importantly, this conceit allowed both the Athenians and the Melians to present their views directly and as a collective voice. </p>
<p>Should the Melians (a Spartan colony) be allowed to remain neutral? Or should the Athenians insist they submit and pay tribute? The Melians make a passionate plea for justice and the right to remain neutral. The Athenians counter by pointing out: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that … the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Allowing the Melians to remain neutral would set a dangerous precedent and threaten Athenian hegemony. </p>
<p>Over two millennia later, this line of reasoning still resonates. Particularly now, as populism reemerges, insights into the power of words to influence public sentiments and decision-making remain acutely (and painfully) up-to-date. </p>
<p>In a modern context, the American political theorist <a href="http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu">Robert Mearsheimer</a> calls the dynamics of such considerations which revolve around national self-interest “the tragedy of great power politics”. In his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9774355-the-tragedy-of-great-power-politics">book</a> of the same name, he describes the constant struggle of nation states to maintain and optimise power and hegemony in order to prevent other states from dominating them. </p>
<p>And a tragedy it is. Both the Athenians and the Melians remain steadfast. Melos (an Aegean island inhabited by Dorians) refuses to submit. Athens ends up murdering all men of military age and selling their wives and children into slavery. </p>
<h2>Enduring sharp political realism</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167828/original/file-20170504-4929-y1v3lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&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 statue of Thucydides at the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thukydides_.jpg">Wienwiki / Walter Maderbacher, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is such resonances which make the History stand out and endure. The voice of the characters within the story reverberate with the voice of Thucydides as its author. </p>
<p>Despite his penchant for long-winded sentences - truthfully and painstakingly rendered into English in most translations - Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War has become a classic by virtue of the sharp political realism at its core.</p>
<p>It remains a must-read for all who want to understand how power politics manifest, and learn about its effect on the psychology of humankind, both individual and collective. </p>
<p><br>
<em>All translations are from M. I. Finley and R. Warner’s translation of Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (New York, 1972)</em></p>
<p></p><hr>
<em>(for my colleague Vras who never grows tired of arguing over Herodotus and Thucydides with me)</em><p></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Kindt receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).</span></em></p>As populism reemerges, Thucydides’s insights into the power of words to influence public sentiments remain acutely up-to-date.Julia Kindt, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/777792017-05-16T20:15:00Z2017-05-16T20:15:00ZScrounging for money: how the world’s great writers made a living<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169468/original/file-20170516-11929-95xr0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">William Faulkner's typewriter in Mississippi. The writing life may sound idyllic, but it was often a furious battle to make ends meet. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/visitmississippi/14519245613">Visit Mississippi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a lean time for writers, as arts funding shrinks on all sides, journalists are laid off in droves, broadcasting budgets are slashed, and book publishing remains in a state of seemingly unceasing upheaval.</p>
<p>It often seems as if the age of living by the pen may be brought to a close by an increasingly rapacious approach to human affairs, interested only in hard numbers and bottom lines. Australian writers Frank Moorhouse and Ben Eltham have recently proposed several schemes to <a href="http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/balancing-the-books/">give writers a living wage</a> to support their work. </p>
<p>And so it’s timely to reflect on some of the strange, desperate and occasionally dangerous ways in which writers have historically lived, if not always by their pens, then at least on their wits. Here’s twelve ways in which classics of western literature were written.</p>
<h2>1) Advertising</h2>
<p>Unlike other activities, advertising continues to pay very well (though many writers fear they may be required to sell their soul).</p>
<p>English crime writer <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8734.Dorothy_L_Sayers?from_search=true">Dorothy Sayers</a> had a top floor office at Benson’s advertising, where she invented the Mustard Club, a fictional mustard-loving entity with half a million real life subscribers in the UK, and also devised “Just think what Toucan do” for Guinness. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169463/original/file-20170516-11952-410opl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dorothy Sayers, apart from her contribution to crime fiction, gave the world Guinness’ toucan campaign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bensutherland/3455837304">Ben Sutherland/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22595.Peter_Carey?from_search=true">Peter Carey</a> devised roof-tiling company Monier’s well-known jingle, “Top Cat in Roof Tiles”. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3299.Salman_Rushdie">Salman Rushdie</a> spent many happy years at Ogilvy & Mather where he came up with “Look into the Mirror tomorrow – you’ll like what you see” for the Daily Mirror. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/233.Don_DeLillo">Don Delillo</a> was also employed at Ogilvy & Mather’s New York office, but doesn’t talk about it much.</p>
<p>Even <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3190.F_Scott_Fitzgerald?from_search=true">F. Scott Fitzgerald</a> did time at Barron Collier’s. Not only did he give us The Great Gatsby, he also produced – for the Muscatine Steam laundry in Muscatine, Iowa – “We keep you clean in Muscatine”.</p>
<h2>2) Postal clerks</h2>
<p>The postal service has provided a safe haven for many a writer. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20524.Anthony_Trollope">Anthony Trollope</a> wrote his novels for three hours every morning before going off to his day job at the post office, which he kept for 33 years. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13275.Charles_Bukowski">Charles Bukowski</a> also worked for the postal service, and kept his job for ten years. (His first novel was called <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51504.Post_Office">Post Office</a> and its protagonist was a postal clerk.)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3535.William_Faulkner?from_search=true">William Faulkner</a> was also a postmaster in Mississippi, but rather less good at holding his job. His resignation letter famously read,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Faulkner went on to work as a night manager in a power plant where he penned <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77013.As_I_Lay_Dying">As I Lay Dying</a> in six or eight weeks, writing between the hours of midnight and 4 am.</p>
<h2>3) Janitors and pest exterminators</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1326&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169472/original/file-20170516-11966-11mwre2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1326&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was inspired by CIA-backed mind control experiments.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7285.Ken_Kesey">Ken Kesey</a> was a night cleaner in a mental hospital. He also volunteered to be an experimental guinea pig in a CIA-backed mind control study conducted under the auspices of a front organisation at the Menlo Park facility. This experience gave us <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/332613.One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo_s_Nest">One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3389.Stephen_King">Stephen King</a> also did time as a janitor in a high school. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4462369.William_S_Burroughs">William S. Burroughs</a> worked as a pest exterminator in Chicago. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1742.Jack_Kerouac">Jack Kerouac</a>’s resume includes stints as a cotton picker, a dishwasher, a night guard, and gas station attendant.</p>
<h2>4) Music transcription</h2>
<p>Desperate writers, it seems, will do just about anything. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7994.Jean_Jacques_Rousseau">Rousseau</a>, with his books banned, and patrons running scared, transcribed an estimated 9,000 pages of music at six sols per page between 1770 and his death in 1778.</p>
<h2>5) Poaching</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169464/original/file-20170516-11920-ihjwn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jack London, oyster pirate, 1914.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1240.Jack_London">Jack London</a> was famously an oyster poacher, though he preferred to call himself an “oyster pirate”. There’s also an apocryphal tale that Shakespeare was forced to flee Stratford when he was nabbed for poaching deer on the nearby Lucy estate, leading to a life-long feud with the local lord.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that Shakespeare was adept at turning a guinea where he could. The Earl of Rutland paid no less than four pounds and eight shillings to Shakespeare and his lead actor Richard Burbage (who also moonlighted as a painter) to create a shield and write a motto so that Rutland could appear well dressed at a tournament.</p>
<p>Shakespeare sent his money home to his very clever wife in Stratford, who slowly bought up lots of farmland and cornered much of the local grain trade.</p>
<h2>6) Academic</h2>
<p>Many writers teach, but few do it for a career. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6570.David_Lodge">David Lodge</a> was Professor of English, back in the day when academics didn’t worry too much about things like Excellence in Research evaluation, or applying for research council grants. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/656983.J_R_R_Tolkien?from_search=true">JRR Tolkien</a> was Professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford, producing definitive editions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Beowulf as well as his novels. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7715.Robert_Frost?from_search=true">Robert Frost</a> taught at Amherst and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5152.Vladimir_Nabokov?from_search=true">Vladimir Nabokov</a> was Professor of Russian Literature at Cornell. But not everybody agreed this was a good idea. When Nabokov was up for a chair in literature at Harvard, the distinguished linguist Roman Jakobson protested, “What’s next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?”</p>
<h2>7) Butterfly curator</h2>
<p>Nabokov’s first job on arrival in the United States was as the curator of Lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard. He stayed there for six years.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169465/original/file-20170516-11929-k7rkip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Butterflies collected by Vladimir Nabakov.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>8) Propagandist</h2>
<p>It’s surprising how many writers have ended up on the murky side of politics. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3073.John_Buchan">John Buchan</a>, perhaps most famously, earned 1,000 pounds a year as the Director of the Ministry of Information, closely aligned to the War Propaganda Bureau where <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/880695.H_G_Wells">H.G. Wells</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2448.Arthur_Conan_Doyle">Arthur Conan Doyle</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/87149.J_B_Priestley">J.B. Priestly</a>, and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16469637.Ford_Maddox_Ford">Ford Maddox Ford</a> penned paid and unpaid articles, pamphlets and leaflets including Doyle’s To Arms! (1914) and Ford’s When Blood is Their Argument (1915). <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3314.Arnold_Bennett?from_search=true">Arnold Bennett</a> was head of British propaganda in France. Wells became Head of Enemy Propaganda until a strange series of events led to his spectacular resignation.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169480/original/file-20170516-11941-dddatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orwell’s 1984 was inspired by his work as a propagandist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.George_Orwell">George Orwell</a>, who spent much of his life scraping money from wherever he could, was employed in the service of the Imperial Police in Burma, an institution he despised. On returning to London, he worked as a paid propagandist at the BBC, broadcasting to India. It was the psychic pain of the arch enemy of mindless patriotism serving as a wartime propagandist that gave us 1984.</p>
<h2>9) Doctors, lawyers and clergymen</h2>
<p>Some writers have known from the start that there are better ways to make a living. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17501.Henry_Fielding">Henry Fielding</a> was a Magistrate, but by “refusing to take a shilling from a man who would undoubtedly not have had another one left” halved his portion of what he called “the dirtiest money on earth”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1831.Jonathan_Swift">Jonathan Swift</a> was the vicar of Laracor – his congregation of just 15 leaving him plenty of time to write, which he did, for the most part, in the glittering clubs of London. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5031025.Anton_Chekhov">Anton Chekov</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4176632.W_Somerset_Maugham">Somerset Maugham</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15435.William_Carlos_Williams">Williams Carlos Williams</a> were doctors. So too was Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle set up a not very successful medical practice in Portsmouth and famously penned A Study in Scarlet during the interminable wait times between patients. He later set up an ophthalmologist in Upper Wimpole St, London, but claims that he never secured so much as a single patient.</p>
<h2>10) Cinema impressario</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5144.James_Joyce">James Joyce</a> scraped a living by teaching English in Trieste, while dreaming up wild moneymaking schemes. With the help of Italian friends he opened the Cinematograph Volta in Dublin, on Mary St, but couldn’t stick to it for more than seven months. He then planned to import Irish tweed to Trieste.</p>
<p>Ulysses would never have been written without the support of feminist publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who, in February 1917, shortly after she published Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in book form, gave Joyce an income of £200 a year to support his work. Later Weaver created a trust fund, the interest from which gave Joyce an income for life.</p>
<h2>11) Airline ticketing clerk</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1825.Harper_Lee">Harper Lee</a> worked as a reservation clerk for Eastern Air Lines and BOAC for more than eight years. This only changed in in 1956, when the Broadway composer Michael Brown and his wife Joy gave Lee a Christmas gift with a card that said, “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please.” Lee produced the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird within 12 months.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169479/original/file-20170516-11948-vvrjs5.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>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harper Lee being presented with a medal of freedom by President George W Bush in 2007.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>12) Patronage</h2>
<p>It’s hard to believe, but writers made nothing from their books until the invention of copyright in the 18th century. Instead, they relied on wealthy patrons to make a living.</p>
<p>This uneasy relationship led a frustrated <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/johnson_samuel.shtml">Samuel Johnson</a> to insert in 1755 a double-edged definition in his Dictionary. After the words, “Patron: One who countenances, supports and protects,” he added, “Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery.”</p>
<p>Shakespeare is said to have received an astonishing £1,000 for his flowery dedications to the Earl of Southampton (though it was more probably a still wildly generous £100). Hence he wrote, “The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety.”</p>
<p>But choosing a patron could be dangerous. The Earl of Southampton was later imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth I for his role in the Earl of Essex’s 1601 rebellion against the queen. Southampton had organised a special performance of Richard II. While there is no evidence Shakespeare was directly punished, he had good reason to be worried, with other writers tortured and even murdered in Elizabethan England. </p>
<h2>Living by the pen</h2>
<p>Of course, the preferred method of earning an income for writers has inevitably been journalism. Once patronage was replaced by the rise of the commercial press, writers were able to turn to the business of writing about real people. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17505.Samuel_Richardson">Samuel Richardson</a> was a printer. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11525.Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a> edited The Watchman and The Friend. <a href="Charles%20Dickens">Charles Dickens</a> was a parliamentary reporter and then editor and publisher of Household Words.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169470/original/file-20170516-11966-18ejj6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Beecher Stowe’s work as a journalist allowed her to write, and support her entire family.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, writing for periodicals was what allowed many women in the 19th century to secure an independent income. Jane Austen calculated that the life-long return on her novels was a mere 84 pounds and 13 shillings (works that made millions in the centuries that followed). </p>
<p>But Harriet Beecher Stowe was able to become the sole income earner for her family, penning not just Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but periodicals, gift books, textbooks and popular annuals. Margaret Fuller became the first female editor of the New York Tribune, and their first female foreign correspondent covering the Italian revolutions.</p>
<p>Today, the problem is that not only writers but also perhaps journalists could use an arts council grant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson 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>Writers have tried pretty much anything to make ends meet: advertising, journalism, butterfly collecting, working as a janitor or a postal clerk.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor of Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734442017-05-07T19:38:11Z2017-05-07T19:38:11ZGuide to the classics: the Epic of Gilgamesh<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161928/original/image-20170322-27966-yag6gc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gilgamesh explores what it means to be human, and questions the meaning of life and love.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Forget death and seek life!” With these encouraging words, Gilgamesh, the star of the eponymous 4000-year-old epic poem, coins the world’s first heroic catchphrase.</p>
<p>At the same time, the young king encapsulates the considerations of mortality and humanity that lie at the heart of the world’s most ancient epic. While much has changed since, the epic’s themes are still remarkably <a href="https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/editorial-contest-winner-the-resurrection-of-gilgamesh/?_r=0">relevant to modern readers</a>.</p>
<p>Depending upon your point of view, Gilgamesh may be considered a myth-making biography of a legendary king, a love story, a comedy, a tragedy, a cracking adventure, or perhaps an anthology of origin stories. </p>
<p>All these elements are present in the narrative, and the diversity of the text is only matched by its literary sophistication. Perhaps surprisingly, given the extreme antiquity of the material, the epic is a masterful blending of complex existential queries, rich imagery and dynamic characters.</p>
<p>The narrative begins with Gilgamesh ruling over the city of Uruk as a tyrant. To keep him occupied, the Mesopotamian deities create a companion for him, the hairy wild man Enkidu. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161900/original/image-20170321-5391-188gvhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gilgamesh in his lion-strangling mode.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enkidu.jpg">TangLung, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gilgamesh sets about civilising Enkidu, a feat achieved through the novel means of a week of sex with the wise priestess, Shamhat (whose very name in Akkadian suggests both beauty and voluptuousness). </p>
<p>Gilgamesh and Enkidu become inseparable, and embark on a quest for lasting <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-on-earth-would-we-sacrifice-our-lives-for-lasting-fame">fame and glory</a>. The heroes’ actions upset the gods, leading to Enkidu’s early death.</p>
<p>The death of Enkidu is a pivotal point in the narrative. The love between Gilgamesh and Enkidu transforms the royal protagonist, and Enkidu’s death leaves Gilgamesh bereft and terrified of his own mortality. </p>
<p>The hero dresses himself in the skin of a lion, and travels to find a long-lived great flood survivor, Utanapishtim (often compared with the biblical Noah). After a perilous journey over the waters of death, Gilgamesh finally meets Utanapishtim and asks for the secret to immortality.</p>
<p>In one of the earliest literary anti-climaxes, Utanapishtim tells him that he doesn’t have it. The story ends with Gilgamesh returning home to the city of Uruk.</p>
<h2>Mesopotamian mindfulness</h2>
<p>Gilgamesh and his adventures can only be described in superlative terms: during his legendary journeys, the hero battles <a href="https://theconversation.com/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-a-history-of-monsters-from-werewolves-to-hippogriffs-68526">deities and monsters</a>, finds (and loses) the secret to eternal youth, travels to the very edge of the world — and beyond. </p>
<p>Despite the fantastical elements of the narrative and its protagonist, Gilgamesh remains a very human character, one who experiences the same heartbreaks, limitations and simple pleasures that shape the universal quality of the human condition.</p>
<p>Gilgamesh explores the nature and meaning of being human, and asks the questions that continue to be debated in the modern day: what is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/07/go-for-walk-discover-meaning-life">the meaning of life and love</a>? What is life really — and am I doing it right? How do we cope with life’s brevity and uncertainty, and how do we deal with loss? </p>
<p>The text provides multiple answers, allowing the reader to wrestle with these ideas alongside the hero. Some of the clearest advice is provided by the beer deity, Siduri (yes, a goddess of beer), who suggests Gilgamesh set his mind less resolvedly on extending his life.</p>
<p>Instead, she urges him to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, such as the company of loved ones, good food and clean clothes — perhaps giving an example of a kind of Mesopotamian mindfulness.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161918/original/image-20170322-27966-1rijvb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=921&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 king-hero Gilgamesh battling the ‘Bull of Heaven’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:O.1054_color.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The epic also provides the reader with a useful case study in what not to do if one is in the exceptional circumstance of reigning over the ancient city of Uruk. In ancient Mesopotamia, the correct behaviour of the king was necessary for maintaining earthly and heavenly order.</p>
<p>Despite the gravity of this royal duty, Gilgamesh seems to do everything wrong. He kills the divinely-protected environmental guardian, Humbaba, and ransacks his precious Cedar Forest. He insults the beauteous goddess of love, Ishtar, and slays the mighty Bull of Heaven. </p>
<p>He finds <a href="https://theconversation.com/rising-life-expectancy-and-why-we-need-to-rethink-the-meaning-of-old-age-64990">the key to eternal youth</a>, but then loses it just as quickly to a passing snake (in the process explaining the snake’s “renewal” after shedding its skin). Through these misadventures, Gilgamesh strives for fame and immortality, but instead finds love with his companion, Enkidu, and a deeper understanding of the limits of humanity and the importance of community.</p>
<h2>Reception and recovery</h2>
<p>The Epic of Gilgamesh was wildly famous in antiquity, with its impact traceable to the later literary worlds of the Homeric epics and <a href="http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/june2013/articles/eliot_circular/gilgamesh.html">the Hebrew Bible</a>. Yet, in the modern day, even the most erudite readers of ancient literature might struggle to outline its plot, or name its protagonists.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1341&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161902/original/image-20170321-5408-12bnkph.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1341&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 statue of Gilgamesh at the University of Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gilgamesh_Statue_Sydney_University_Statue2.14th.JPG">Gwil5083, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To what might we owe this modern-day cultural amnesia surrounding one of the world’s greatest works of ancient literature? </p>
<p>The answer lies in the history of the narrative’s reception. While many of the great literary works of ancient Greece and Rome were studied continuously throughout the development of Western culture, the Epic of Gilgamesh comes from a forgotten age. </p>
<p>The story originates in Mesopotamia, an area of the Ancient Near East thought to roughly correspond with modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Syria, Iran and Turkey, and frequently noted as “the cradle of civilisation” for its early agriculture and cities. </p>
<p>Gilgamesh was written in cuneiform script, the world’s oldest known form of writing. The earliest strands of Gilgamesh’s narrative can be found in five Sumerian poems, and other versions include those written in Elamite, Hittite and Hurrian. The best-known version is the Standard Babylonian Version, written in Akkadian (a language written in cuneiform that functioned as the language of diplomacy in the second millennium BCE). </p>
<p>The disappearance of the cuneiform writing system around the time of the 1st century CE accelerated Gilgamesh’s sharp slide into anonymity.</p>
<p>For almost two millennia, clay tablets containing stories of Gilgamesh and his companions lay lost and buried, alongside many tens of thousands of other cuneiform texts, beneath the remnants of the great <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/ashurbanipal_library_phase_1.aspx.">Library of Ashurbanipal</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161905/original/image-20170321-5408-1ec8fta.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tablet_V_of_the_Epic_of_Gligamesh.JPG">Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The modern rediscovery of the epic was a watershed moment in the understanding of the Ancient Near East. The <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/epic-hero-153362976/">eleventh tablet of the Epic</a> was first translated by self-taught cuneiform scholar George Smith of the British Museum in 1872. Smith discovered the presence of an ancient Babylonian flood narrative in the text with striking parallels to the biblical <a href="http://time.com/44631/noah-christians-flood-aronofsky/">flood story of the Book of Genesis</a>. </p>
<p>The story is often repeated (although it may be apocryphal) that when Smith began to decipher the tablet, he became so excited that he began to remove all his clothing. From these beginnings in the mid-19th century, the process of recovering the cuneiform literary catalogue continues today.</p>
<p>In 2015, the publication of a new fragment of Tablet V by Andrew George and Farouk Al-Rawi made <a href="http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18512/1/jcunestud.66.0069_w-footer.pdf">international news</a>. The fragment’s discovery coincided with increased global sensitivity to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-cities-are-being-bulldozed-by-islamic-state-heres-what-the-world-is-losing-38548">destruction of antiquities in the Middle East</a> in the same year. The Washington Post juxtaposed the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/06/a-new-chapter-in-the-worlds-oldest-story/?utm_term=.3ca1a2d4fc62">heart-warming story</a>” of the find against the destruction and looting in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<h2>Ancient ecology</h2>
<p>The new section of Tablet V contains ecological aspects that resonate with modern day concerns over environmental destruction. Of course, there are potential anachronisms in projecting environmental concerns on an ancient text composed thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution. </p>
<p>Yet, the undeniable sensitivity in the epic’s presentation of the wilderness is illuminating, considering the long history of humanity’s interaction with our environment and its animal inhabitants.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162097/original/image-20170322-31219-1rznxvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=372&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 cedar forest in Turkey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cedar_forest.jpg">Zeynel Cebeci, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Gilgamesh, the wilderness is a place of beauty and purity, as well as home to a wild abundance. The splendour and grandeur of the Cedar Forest is described poetically in Tablet V:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) stood marvelling at the forest,</p>
<p>Observing the height of the cedars …</p>
<p>They were gazing at the Cedar Mountain, the dwelling of the gods, the throne-dais of the goddesses …</p>
<p>Sweet was its shade, full of delight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While the heroes pause to admire the forest’s beauty, their interest is not purely aesthetic. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are aware of the economic value of the cedars, and the text provides a clear picture of competing commercial and ecological interests.</p>
<h2>Where to read Gilgamesh</h2>
<p>Since Gilgamesh’s reappearance into popular awareness in the last hundred years, the Standard Babylonian Version of the epic has become accessible in numerous translations. This version was originally compiled by the <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/nme/research/gilgamesh/standard/">priest, scribe and exorcist, Sin-leqi-uninni</a>, around 1100 BCE.</p>
<p>The scholarly standard among modern translations is Andrew George’s The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (2003). </p>
<p>Despite its all-around excellence, the two-volume work is decidedly unwieldly, and the less muscle-bound reader would be well directed to The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation (1999), by the same author. Most readable among modern treatments is David Ferry’s <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57374">Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse</a> (1992), which gives a potent, poetic interpretation of the material.</p>
<p>Like the snake that steals Gilgamesh’s rejuvenation plant, the Epic of Gilgamesh has aged well. Its themes - exploring the tension between the natural and civilised worlds, the potency of true love, and the question of what makes a good life – are as relevant today as they were 4,000 years ago.</p>
<p><em>Note: Translations are sourced from Andrew R. George 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Pryke 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>From environmentalism to the meaning of life, the themes of the world’s most ancient epic are still remarkably relevant to modern readers.Louise Pryke, Lecturer, Languages and Literature of Ancient Israel, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.