to kill for his life …

Brian Bishop has sent me this, which seems worth a visit:

Colleagues visiting Chester, England (Deva Anglorum) who may wish to
accompany a second-century gladiator as he prepares to kill for his life in
the arena, should be at the Grosvenor Museum on Mondays 10, 17, Tuesdays 11,
18, Wednesdays 12, 19 April.

http://www.chesteramphitheatre.co.uk
http://www.chester.gov.uk

Horace Odes Book 1 audio

For Horace readings please see the relevant audio page on the ArLT website.

Not just for the Horace reading …

Thanks, David Meadows, for mentioning the reading of a Horace Ode on the radio, because it pointed me to a lovely show that I had never heard of, with Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame.

I haven't listened to the whole 2-hour show yet, but what I have heard is excellent, with good music, funny sketches, the Latin reading taking its place without fuss or micky-taking. And I've always enjoyed Garrison Keeler – I have two BBC tapes of his Lake Wobengon monologues, and there's another one towards the end of this show, I see.

So, if your tastes are anything like mine, here's the link. You'll need RealAudio player, which is a free download for those who don't already have it installed. Instructions on the page.

You may find this funny. Or not.

The Times yesterday carried a piece by Giles Coren, meditating on how recently-discovered coins came to be in a dried-up stream in Bromley. These paragraphs give the flavour – and an obvious mis-spelling:

Or, more likely, the Romans arrived in Britain fairly bright, but after three or four hundred years of living in close proximity to the British, they gradually became dim.

They arrived on these shores saying things like Veni, vidi, vici and In hoc signo vinces and Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes but after a century or two in Bromley could manage nothing better than: “Werl, you ask me, it’s VI of one and half a XII of the other.”

They no doubt imported the principals of the Circus Maximus from Rome but as time wore on gradually gave in to British demands for “reality circus”, which involved putting a dozen members of the public in the ring for a month and watching them call each other slags. And when this got boring they presumably started doing it with “celebrities”, including former gladiators, oracles, actors and orators — giving rise to a kerfuffle over what that Visigoth-loving senator Georgus Gallowus was doing in there.

Read the rest here.

The plague that killed Pericles was typhoid

This is from Ekathimerini:

Recent findings from a mass grave in the Ancient Cemetery of Kerameikos in central Athens show typhoid fever may have caused the plague of Athens, ending centuries of speculation about what kind of disease killed a third of the city’s population and contributed to the end of its Golden Age.

Examined by a group of Greek scientists coordinated by Dr Manolis Papagrigorakis of Athens University’s School of Dentistry, the findings provide clear evidence that Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi was present in the dental pulp of teeth recovered in remains from the mass grave.

Thanks to Explorator for this link.

And the Sunday Telegraph has its say on Spurs

As befits the Torygraph, the reporting of Tottenham's lapsus linguae (is that the right phrase for what they have done?) has a certain irony and a bilingual pun or two:

Tottenham Hotspur's decision to remove the SAS-style motto “audere est facere” from the badge causes justifiable distress. “It sums up the contempt football clubs have for their fans,” insists one Peter Jones, speaking for all Spurs supporters.

This is not the late Radio 2 commentator who popularised the theory that irony is a synonym for coincidence (“and what an irony that he should score against Liverpool a year to the day after leaving Anfield!”). This Peter Jones is a media academic never unknowingly undersold on the belief that what concerns the public, in the era of Celeb BB, is the conjugation not of Preston and Chantelle but irregular verbs.

In this case, he's absolutely right. As befits followers of a club who last won the league the year Hadrian began his wall, we are all dedicated Latinists at White Hart Lane, where the third person singular of facere's perfect tense (fecit) is the catchphrase of the West Stand. Unless chairman Daniel Levy reverses this decision forthwith, he may find himself being addressed, however unsyntactically, as the third person plural. (Any non-Tottenham fans bemused by this crude and witless pun should apply to Peter Jones, care of Friends of Classics, for the explanation.)

Tottenham Hotspur again – a fan supports the Latin motto

This is from the Tottenham Supporters site:

So we are presented with a new brand logo and the famous words ‘Audere est Facere’ are consigned to the bin. What does it matter? Who cares anyway? We’ve still got the crowing cockerel so let’s get on with the football. The old brown nose brigade on the web and elsewhere are happy to promote the new brand – why not – all around the world they will be buying the new t-shirts and filling someone’s coffers. Why ask questions? Why ruffle feathers?

But hang on a minute why were those words there in the first place. What did they mean? Why were players like Blanchflower, Greaves and Linneker happy to play with that motto on their chests? Why did Bill Nicholson build a team that turned those words into a reality?

‘To dare is to do’

It means we will try something different. It means we will push it just that little bit further. It means we won’t settle for second best. It means watch out because we can come up with something out of the ordinary. It means we are prepared to risk to be better than the next bloke

So what?

Well if you come from Tottenham or around that area of North London you’ll know it isn’t richest place on earth and there are a lot of people who have a tough time of it. Our club represents a level of glamour and achievement that rubs off on them and the kids they are trying to bring up. Alright we’ve got an Egyptian striker, a Dutch coach and a Korean full back but make no mistake we are from the Lane. These are feelings and beliefs you can’t lose. They are with you all their life. And at the age of thirteen when I asked my dad what ‘Audere est Facere’ meant he told me that it meant putting more into your sport and taking a run into the opposition area even if you were going to get the sh*t kicked out of you – risking it if you like. That’s the way we learn.

Today more than ever we need to state what we are about. We need to believe in something. Alright so it is in Latin but that’s just history. Spurs fans demand a certain kind of football, played in a certain way and we won’t give up on that. Those few words mean an awful lot to some people and they make us different from the run of the mill. Sorry boys but you need to put back the heart and soul into what makes Tottenham Hotspur special, call it what you like. The soul comes before the brand.

I’d be glad to hear your views

Constantine exhibition in York

Exactly 1700 years agoConstantine was proclaimed emperor, while in York on a military campaign.

On 31st March, the Yorkshire Museum, in association with the British Museum, opens Constantine the Great, York's Roman Emperor, depicting the story of one of the most influential figures in church history.

Objects and works of art have been drawn from 36 different museums and private collections.

http://www.constantinethegreat.co.uk

Source: The Church Times

"Sejanus – his fall" gets good review

Bloody malevolence drips down through the centuries

(Filed: 20/01/2006)

Charles Spencer reviews Sejanus: His Fall at the Trafalgar Studios

This may sound like the excuse of a schoolboy who hasn't done his homework, but I decided not to read this almost forgotten play by Ben Jonson before seeing it in the theatre.

It is not every day one has the chance to witness a drama by a great writer that hasn't received a major production for four centuries, and I wanted to experience it with fresh eyes and ears. Would it justify this rare revival, or prove no more than a grindingly dull exercise in theatrical archaeology?

I can only report that Gregory Doran's thrilling production, first seen at the Swan in Stratford last summer, knocked me for six. Written at the troubled end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and performed – to derision – shortly after James I ascended the throne, it's a gripping political thriller that uses ancient Rome to comment on the political climate of Jonson's own age.

Sejanus conjures up a vicious vision of the spies, plotting, political absolutism, cruelty and censorship that were all such a feature of Good Queen Bess's allegedly golden age, and not surprisingly the play landed its author in hot water.

Jonson was hauled before the Privy Council and accused of “popery and treason” – though somehow he emerged unscathed.

Doran has edited the text, first published in 1605, down to a manageable running time of less than three hours, and bravely opts for a togas-and-sandals production rather than modern dress.

We are thus allowed to spot the play's resonance with our own political landscape without directorial nudging. When Sejanus speaks of “presenting the shapes of dangers greater than they are”, for instance, we don't need a dig in the ribs to be reminded of Tony Blair's claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Sejanus, right-hand man and chief butcher to the Emperor Tiberius, is presented as a stomach-churningly malign anti-hero intent on slaughtering his way to the top. He inflames the emperor with paranoia and suspicion about potential rivals, thus receiving carte blanche to do away with those who stand in his own way to the imperial throne.

But Tiberius proves more than a match for him in subtle treachery, and the relationship seems to anticipate the pairing of villains that provides the dark heart of Jonson's later comedy, Volpone.

Doran directs with such bravura that it hardly seems to matter that the stage is populated with great crowds of virtually indistinguishable Roman nobles.

There is, for instance, the extraordinary scene in which Sejanus regales the audience with his wicked plans even as he buggers a serviceable go-between, and throughout William Houston plays this charismatic psycho-killer with superb panache.

There is something frighteningly feral about his high-definition performance. You can almost smell the lust for power. Houston's eyes glitter with mad malevolence, and the huge smile that splits his cruel face in two offers all the reassurance of a fox making its way into the hen house.

Houston superbly captures the sheer euphoria of evil – there's an electrifying moment when the actor leaps several feet into the air like a latterday Nureyev with a great cry of exultation – and he delivers his monomaniacal soliloquies with lip-smacking relish.

Among the supporting cast, Barry Stanton makes an unforgettably obese and decadent Tiberius, tiptoeing fastidiously round the blood he has allowed Sejanus to spill, and Peter de Jersey's powerful performance as another subtle plotter, Macro, indicates that the state terror will continue long after Sejanus's fall.

Four centuries after its première, this undeservedly neglected play retains a tremendous power to thrill and chill.

# Until Jan 28. Tickets: 0870 060 6632

Spurs: for and against

The Guardian reported the Spurs' badge change:

Tottenham have been criticised for their decision to drop the Latin signature from the club badge. The logo “Audere est Facere”, which translates as “to dare is to do”, has been left off the new badge in favour of a retro design.

Dr Peter Jones, joint founder of the charity Friends of Classics, said: “I wonder whether David Beckham would appreciate it as he's covered in Latin tattoos. It strikes me as a shame to lose it. It seems pointless to me and sums up the contempt football clubs have for their fans. The point is that in the 19th century a Latin signature gave status and quality to a club. I suspect that football clubs now regard it as an anomaly, not as something that gives a status to it. A logo in another language is something of great importance.”

Read the whole article here.
But not everyone agrees. An unofficial club site says:

The Guardian are running a story today saying that Tottenham have been criticised for dropping the Latin logo from their badge. I must admit, I've not seen many fans criticising the decision?

The Latin saying 'Audere est Facere', which means 'to dare is to do' should have remained according to Dr Peter Jones, joint founder of the charity Friends of Classics.

He told the Guardian 'I wonder whether David Beckham would appreciate it as he's covered in Latin tattoos. It strikes me as a shame to lose it. It seems pointless to me and sums up the contempt football clubs have for their fans. The point is that in the 19th century a Latin signature gave status and quality to a club. I suspect that football clubs now regard it as an anomaly, not as something that gives a status to it. A logo in another language is something of great importance.'

I'm not convinced, tradition is important but if we were going to have a motto, I'd rather it be one that we can all understand?!

This, by the way, is ARLT Blog's 1,000th item. Hear the corks popping!