Minucius Felix, who tells
a whole series of jokes about just how stupid is the idea of a multitude of gods in human form? And what about the pagan reaction
to all this? Even if it wasn’t as continuous a persecution as we often imagine, some Christians really did end up with the
lions.
The touchy-feely view of Greco-Roman ecumenism has, I am afraid, more to do with the generous, academic tolerance of the Archbishop
himself than with anything thought or practised by the motley crew of fundamentalist early Christians and what some Romans
saw as an ancient Jihad.
Comments
Always nice to catch a glimpse of an archbishop with his truth-pants round his ankles ... He’s claiming authority for what
he sees is desirable by asserting it was like that ‘in the beginning’. A not unusual sleight of hand. If historiography were
studied properly, as a branch of rhetoric, there’d be a word for it. Or maybe there is already?
SW FOSKA
Being in exile in America, I did not hear the Archbishop, but I must say that the sentence of Rowan Williams which you quote
seems to me to sum up rather neatly the massive Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, an author to whom he alludes rather frequently in his Arius: Heresy and Tradition (one of the few accounts of the Arian controversy that is both learned and readable). Both Eusebius and the quoted sentence
of Dr Williams are concerned with what pagans said , not with what they did . Your own work, Professor Beard, has been concerned much more with what Romans did, and that Christians (pardonably?) found
at best so irrational that they were prepared to be killed as the penalty for not taking part in it.
OLIVER NICHOLSON
The tragedy of George Bush
13 November 2006
Classicists have to take any opportunity they can get to put – or keep – their subject on the map. So when a nice man from
the Today programme rang up to say that they wondered if I would like to compare the fate of George Bush to a Greek tragedy, I could
hardly say no.
The idea was that in the very same week that Saddam had been sentenced to death he had also (albeit indirectly) delivered
a humiliating blow to Bush in the mid-term elections. It is indeed the kind of tragic reversal that Athenian dramatists discussed,
and I quickly agreed to do a 3 minute radio essay.
But which tragedy was I going to choose for the closest parallel to GW?
At times like this, my colleagues are truly wonderful. It would be quite understandable if they were to say: ‘If you want
to thrust yourself forward on to the nation’s radios, that’s fine ... but don’t expect us to help you out.’ But actually we
are all happy to lend a hand and knocking the question around produced some good leads very quickly.
I had wondered about concentrating on Sophocles’ Oedipus . The idea would be that Oedipus killed his long-lost father in an incident of ancient road rage – and it was that action
which later brought him down, when it was revealed that he had inadvertently married his mother. But father-killing seemed
to bring in Bush senior rather awkwardly and probably muddied the waters.
Sophocles’ Trachiniae (‘Women of Trachis’) looked a neater fit. The story here is that Heracles kills the centaur Nessos (who has tried to rape
his wife, Deianeira). As the centaur dies, he gives Deianaira some of his blood, which he says will keep her husband from
loving anyone else. When Heracles is later unfaithful, she uses the blood to kill him. The trouble with this is that hardly
anyone is remotely familiar with the Trachiniae and getting it across in a 3 minute piece wasn’t going to leave much time
for Bush.
So, talking it over during lunch in college, I settled on Euripides’ Bacchae . The reversal is there good and clear: King Pentheus of Thebes sentences to death the god Dionysos (in disguise as a ‘Lydian
stranger’) who has infected the women of the city with his weird Eastern religion and enticed
a whole series of jokes about just how stupid is the idea of a multitude of gods in human form? And what about the pagan reaction
to all this? Even if it wasn’t as continuous a persecution as we often imagine, some Christians really did end up with the
lions.
The touchy-feely view of Greco-Roman ecumenism has, I am afraid, more to do with the generous, academic tolerance of the Archbishop
himself than with anything thought or practised by the motley crew of fundamentalist early Christians and what some Romans
saw as an ancient Jihad.
Comments
Always nice to catch a glimpse of an archbishop with his truth-pants round his ankles ... He’s claiming authority for what
he sees is desirable by asserting it was like that ‘in the beginning’. A not unusual sleight of hand. If historiography were
studied properly, as a branch of rhetoric, there’d be a word for it. Or maybe there is already?
SW FOSKA
Being in exile in America, I did not hear the Archbishop, but I must say that the sentence of Rowan Williams which you quote
seems to me to sum up rather neatly the massive Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, an author to whom he alludes rather frequently in his Arius: Heresy and Tradition (one of the few accounts of the Arian controversy that is both learned and readable). Both Eusebius and the quoted sentence
of Dr Williams are concerned with what pagans said , not with what they did . Your own work, Professor Beard, has been concerned much more with what Romans did, and that Christians (pardonably?) found
at best so irrational that they were prepared to be killed as the penalty for not taking part in it.
OLIVER NICHOLSON
The tragedy of George Bush
13 November 2006
Classicists have to take any opportunity they can get to put – or keep – their subject on the map. So when a nice man from
the Today programme rang up to say that they wondered if I would like to compare the fate of George Bush to a Greek tragedy, I could
hardly say no.
The idea was that in the very same week that Saddam had been sentenced to death he had also (albeit indirectly) delivered
a humiliating blow to Bush in the mid-term elections. It is indeed the kind of tragic reversal that Athenian dramatists discussed,
and I quickly agreed to do a 3 minute radio essay.
But which tragedy was I going to choose for the closest parallel to GW?
At times like this, my colleagues are truly wonderful. It would be quite understandable if they were to say: ‘If you want
to thrust yourself forward on to the nation’s radios, that’s fine ... but don’t expect us to help you out.’ But actually we
are all happy to lend a hand and knocking the question around produced some good leads very quickly.
I had wondered about concentrating on Sophocles’ Oedipus . The idea would be that Oedipus killed his long-lost father in an incident of ancient road rage – and it was that action
which later brought him down, when it was revealed that he had inadvertently married his mother. But father-killing seemed
to bring in Bush senior rather awkwardly and probably muddied the waters.
Sophocles’ Trachiniae (‘Women of Trachis’) looked a neater fit. The story here is that Heracles kills the centaur Nessos (who has tried to rape
his wife, Deianeira). As the centaur dies, he gives Deianaira some of his blood, which he says will keep her husband from
loving anyone else. When Heracles is later unfaithful, she uses the blood to kill him. The trouble with this is that hardly
anyone is remotely familiar with the Trachiniae and getting it across in a 3 minute piece wasn’t going to leave much time
for Bush.
So, talking it over during lunch in college, I settled on Euripides’ Bacchae . The reversal is there good and clear: King Pentheus of Thebes sentences to death the god Dionysos (in disguise as a ‘Lydian
stranger’) who has infected the women of the city with his weird Eastern religion and enticed
Similar Books
