Romans – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

et tu, Brute?

“Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
They that have done this deed are honourable:
What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,
That made them do it: they are wise and honourable.”

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony’s speech in Act 3 Scene 2.

This week, although it is difficult to know why, I’ve been thinking about imperial assassinations. Goodness knows what has sparked these musings on rebellion, mutiny and the forcible removal of a leader, but something tells me that we have been here before and we will be here again.

Julius Caesar was famously assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC because many Roman senators feared that he threatened the Roman Republic. After winning a civil war and famously crossing the Rubicon, Caesar looked rather too comfortable at the top and a group of senators, including some of his closest allies, formed a conspiracy to murder him. They believed that killing Caesar would protect Rome from tyranny and restore the power of the Senate. In reality, instead of saving the Republic, the assassination led to further and prolonged civil wars and ultimately helped to bring about Rome’s future under imperial rule.

Given that the Roman empire was one of the most powerful political systems in history, it is easy to forget just how tenuous an emperor’s grip on power truly was. Roman emperors supposedly held absolute authority, but their position depended upon the support of the senate, the army and the praetorian guard. If any one of those groups withdrew their loyalty, even the strongest ruler could be swiftly removed from office. These days, a man in such a position is forced to resign; in those days, you simply got murdered.

During the height of the empire, particularly from the first to third centuries AD, emperors were commonly assassinated. It’s one of the things that I find students are most puzzled by, perhaps because they have fallen for Roman (particularly Augustan) propaganda and see Rome as exemplary of stable governance. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. One of the most dramatic examples of an emperor being forcibly removed from office was the assassination of the emperor Caligula in AD 41.

Caligula began his reign with enormous public support. The Roman people celebrated his ascension because he followed Tiberius, who was viscerally disliked, and he was also the son of the wildly popular general, Germanicus, who died very young. At first, Caligula appeared to be generous and charismatic, but his true colours soon became more than apparent and his behaviour towards members of the governing classes became cruel, erratic and humiliating. While ancient accounts may possibly exaggerate his faults (and the stories really are wild), nevertheless his relationship with powerful political groups certainly deteriorated rapidly and beyond repair. His popularity with the Roman people may have maintained his position for a while, but it was the praetorian guard who decided his fate when they assassinated him in his own palace.

The praetorian guard were an elite military unit stationed in Rome, whose purpose was to protect the emperor. By the same token, precisely because they had direct access to the ruler and were always armed, they also had the ability to dispatch them most efficiently. Following the murder of Caligula, many members of the senate wanted to restore the Republic again and abolish the office of emperor altogether, but their power by this time was weakened by the fact that they had already proved themselves impotent in the face of imperial power: most crucially, they lacked control over the army, but they also lacked popular support: the senators’ power had originally been brought down by populist leaders, who had exposed the undeniably self-serving systems set up by the ruling elite to perpetuate their own wealth and power. The decisive factor that ensured the senators were finished in all but name was the praetorian guard, who required an emperor to sign their pay cheques and indeed to justify their position. After Caligula was killed, the praetorians found Caligula’s disabled uncle, Claudius, hiding in the palace and proclaimed him as emperor. Once the military had backed Claudius, following the lead of the praetorian guard, the senate had no leverage to object. The removal of Caligula therefore demonstrates that, although the senate could support or justify the overthrow of an emperor, the men who carried the swords were the ones who decided things.

Another good example of an emperor being decisively removed from office is the fall of Nero. By AD 68, Nero had ruled for fourteen years. Initially he had been guided by capable advisers such as the philosopher Seneca. Early in his reign, he was relatively popular with the people because he sponsored games, artistic performances and public entertainments. His relationship with the senate, however, steadily worsened. Nero executed or forced the suicide of several senators whom he suspected of conspiracy, creating an atmosphere of fear among the traditional ruling aristocracy. His extravagant spending and controversial behaviour also damaged his reputation. But the decisive factor in Nero’s removal was his loss of military support. In AD 68, the governor of Gaul turned against him and shortly afterwards the Spanish governor, Galba, declared himself emperor. The praetorian guard abandoned Nero after being promised rewards by his Spanish rival: as a result, Nero had no protection in Rome, so the senate took the opportunity to declare him a public enemy and authorised his execution. Facing arrest, Nero was forced to take his own life, which was the traditional way for a condemned Roman aristocrat to make a hasty exit: these days, it’s called resigning for the good of the party.

Nero’s downfall once again highlights the importance of the army and the praetorian guard. The senate formally condemned him, but this action was only possible because he had lost the loyalty of the army in the provinces, who were demonstrating their growing political importance by supporting rival claimants such as Galba to the imperial throne. At the same time, the praetorian guard acted once again as chess-masters by switching allegiance when it suited their interests. Nero’s popularity amongst ordinary Romans may have delayed his downfall to some extent: ancient sources suggest that sections of the plebeians remained loyal to him because of his public entertainments and indeed because of his visible clashes with senatorial elite. But public support could not save an emperor once the military and political elite turned against him.

The emperor Commodus provides our final example of how imperial power could collapse. Commodus ruled from AD 180 to 192 and was the son of the respected emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Quite unlike his stoic father, Commodus became associated with corruption, extravagance and self-indulgence. He preferred gladiatorial games and personal luxury to responsible government and he increasingly alienated the senate by treating their traditional authority and governing experience with contempt. Commodus was quite the character and even participated personally in gladiatorial contests, something that aristocratic Romans found grotesque and degrading for a man of standing.

As Commodus became more paranoid and unstable, leading officials even feared for their lives and eventually members of his inner circle organised a conspiracy against him. An attempt to poison him failed, but ultimately the wrestler Narcissus was hired to strangle him in his bath. The senate immediately triggered the process known as damnatio memoriae, in which official images and references to a ruler were destroyed. This decisive removal of Commodus from public office again illustrates the weakness of emperors who had lost the support of the ruling elite. Although Commodus had attempted to maintain popularity with the masses through games and spectacles, this could not compensate for the hostility he faced among the senators and imperial officials. His death also demonstrates that conspiracies often emerged from within the imperial household itself. Following Commodus’s death, the empire descended into civil war, indicating that no ruler could govern successfully without military backing.

Throughout the height of the Roman Empire, the senate retained political importance but its power was limited compared to that of the army. Senators could legitimise or condemn emperors, as seen with Nero and Commodus, yet they rarely controlled events independently. The Roman army was ultimately the most significant force in removing emperors and the provincial legions frequently proclaimed their own generals emperor, especially during periods of instability. Military loyalty depended heavily on personal leadership and the promise of material rewards as a result of successful campaigns. Soldiers expected their leaders to provide financial bonuses as well as military victories: the two went hand in hand. If an emperor appeared weak, unpopular or incapable of expanding the empire, ambitious generals could and would challenge him. This military influence became even more obvious during the third century, when emperors rose and fell rapidly and the eventual collapse of the empire as we would recognise it became inevitable.

Within this monumental military might, the praetorian guard occupied a unique position due to their physical proximity to the emperor. Unlike distant legions, the guard was stationed in Rome and could intervene directly in palace politics. As seen in the case of Caligula, the guard was more than capable of assassinating the man with whose protection they were supposedly charged. Any passing similarities to UK cabinet members are, of course, entirely coincidental.

New Year celebrations: a Roman legacy

While people around the world have been engaging in the tradition of celebrating the New Year, have you ever wondered where this custom originated from? To uncover the roots of New Year celebrations, we must (of course!) journey back to ancient Rome, where the calendar and many of the traditions we take for granted today began to take shape.

The Roman calendar initially had little resemblance to the one we use today. In its earliest form, the Roman calendar was a 10-month system that began in March, a month named after Mars, the god of war. The year ended in December, with a winter period left unaccounted for in the calendar — a gap that made the year phenomenally difficult to track. I have written before on the phenomenal mess that the Romans got themselves into with their calendar, so I shan’t re-hash it all here, but suffice to say they really did make a right old business of getting it wrong.

Back in 713 BCE, Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, introduced two additional months, Ianuarius (January) and Februarius (February), to bring the number of calendar months up to twelve. The month of January was placed at the beginning of the year and dedicated to the god Janus, making it an appropriate time for reflection and planning for the future. Janus was the god of beginnings, transitions and duality. Often depicted with two faces — one looking to the past and the other to the future — Janus symbolised the liminal space between old and new, making him the perfect patron of New Year’s celebrations. His domain included doorways (ianuae in Latin), thresholds and gateways, such as the beginning of a journey or a new phase in life.

In Roman religion, Janus was invoked at the start of any significant endeavour, whether it was the launching of a military campaign, the construction of a building or the start of the agricultural season. His presence at the beginning of the calendar year cemented the idea of looking both backward in gratitude and forward with hope. Naming the first month after Janus thus underpins the idea of the New Year as a moment for reflection and resolutions.

The start of January was a time for Romans to engage in rituals and festivities. Celebrations included exchanging gifts, such as coins or small tokens, which were thought to bring good fortune for the year ahead, and decorated laurel branches were also exchanged, symbols of prosperity and victory. The Romans adorned their homes with greenery and light candles, symbolising the hope for illumination and guidance in the coming year. Sacrifices to Janus were made, and prayers were offered for peace and prosperity. The tradition of making new year’s resolutions can trace its lineage back to this time, when Romans would pledge to improve themselves in the coming year, offering vows to Janus as part of their commitment. The Roman empire’s vast reach ensured that its calendar and traditions left a lasting imprint on the regions it governed. Even after the fall of Rome, the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE, remained in use across much of Europe.

Caesar’s calendar reforms, which I discuss in my blog post on Roman calendars, was significant not only for standardising the length of the year but also for firmly establishing January as the beginning of it. This decision was partly practical and partly symbolic. By aligning the calendar with the solar year and by dedicating its beginning to Janus, Caesar reinforced the notion of January as a time for renewal. Over time, Christian Europe adopted the Julian calendar, and while some regions initially celebrated the New Year on different dates, January 1st eventually became the standard.

While many modern New Year customs have their roots in Roman practices, they have evolved over centuries and absorbed influences from various cultures and religions. For instance, the Christian Church initially resisted the celebration of January 1st as New Year’s Day, associating it with pagan rituals. However, by the Middle Ages, the Church had incorporated the date into its liturgical calendar, marking the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus.

New Year’s Day stands as a testament to humanity’s enduring desire to mark the passage of time and embrace renewal. The Romans’ choice of January, their veneration of Janus and their customs of gift-giving and reflection have profoundly shaped the way we celebrate the New Year. Though centuries have passed and cultures have changed, the essence of New Year’s traditions—hope, renewal, and connection—remains timeless.

So, as we ring in the New Year, we honour not only our aspirations for the future but also the rich tapestry of history that has brought us to this moment. In every resolution made and every toast raised, the spirit of Janus lives on, guiding us through the thresholds of time.

Felix Nativitas

Christmas did not begin its story in a vacuum. It arose within the vast and vibrant Roman Empire, a place where countless gods, rituals and traditions were already woven into the rhythm of everyday life. When early Christians eventually shaped their own celebrations, they did so whilst living among people who already marked their calendar with festivals, feasts and customs. Christmas was a celebration which developed in conversation with the pagan world around it, and echoes of ancient Roman festivities can still be heard to this day.

Before Christmas ever graced a church calendar, the month of December belonged to Saturnalia, the most beloved festival in the Roman year. Dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture, Saturnalia was a season of feasting, public merriment, exchanged gifts and an inversion of ordinary social rules. Slaves were permitted to dine alongside their masters, ordinary citizens dressed in colourful clothing and laughter filled the streets. For the Romans, Saturnalia was a cherished invitation to joy and generosity, when daylight was at its shortest.

As Christianity spread across the empire, its followers could hardly avoid the fact that they were living beside these exuberant customs. They worked, traded and travelled among people who had long found comfort in Saturnalia’s festivities. Even while Christians rejected the worship of pagan gods, the rhythms of the culture around them could not simply be dismissed. The earliest believers did not yet celebrate Jesus’s birth. Easter, with its promise of resurrection, held far greater importance at that time, and still does in many parts of the world. But the season of Saturnalia left a deep imprint on the Roman imagination, an imprint that would shape the Christmas period in centuries to come.

Another celebration, emerging later but carrying immense symbolic power, prepared the ground for what would eventually become Christmas Day itself. On the 25th December, the Romans honoured Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. This was the moment in the year when the sun, having reached its lowest point in the winter sky, began its slow ascent once more. Light returned, day by day, and darkness lost its hold. As a sufferer of mild Seasonal Affective Disorder, I am still somewhat obsessed with this, and track the progress of the sun’s re-emergence quite obsessively on an app on my phone. The emperor Aurelian was perhaps a fellow sufferer, for he elevated the sun god to renewed prominence in the third century, building a temple in his honour and giving the festival the stamp of imperial authority. The symbolism was unmistakable: the rebirth of the sun signalled renewed strength, hope and the promise of triumph.

The imagery of light returning to the world resonated with early Christians. Long before Christmas existed, the early Christian writers were already describing Jesus as a radiant presence — a light that shines in the darkness, a sun of righteousness. When the time came to choose a date to mark the birth of Christ, an alignment with the festival of the Unconquered Sun carried a poetic logic. Winter solstice celebrations already existed across many cultures and Christians, surrounded by a world that already rejoiced at the return of daylight, found in them a natural metaphor for their own faith.

Yet the decision to celebrate Christmas on December 25th did not happen quickly. For centuries, Christians debated whether Jesus’s birthday should be celebrated at all. Some early theologians went so far as to criticise such birthday celebrations as pagan excess. In the end, theological reasoning blended with cultural reality, and a compromise was reached. The celebration of Christ’s nativity was drawn into the orbit of Rome’s winter festivals.

Once Christianity gained legal recognition under Constantine in the 4th century, church leaders faced the challenge of guiding a vast and diverse population into a new religious identity. The empire still had the legacy of the customs of Saturnalia, the reverence for Sol Invictus and countless other local traditions. Abolishing such celebrations outright would have caused confusion and led to civil unrest. Instead, Christian leaders chose the path of least resistance: they recast familiar festivities with new meaning. They did not graft pagan worship onto Christianity, but they repurposed cultural habits — gift-giving, feasting and decorating homes — to fit the story that they wanted to tell. In doing so, they allowed people to continue the customs they loved whilst shifting the spiritual focus.

Christmas grew within this climate of adaptation and reinterpretation. Many of the customs that now feel inseparable from the holiday were once part of Roman winter traditions. The exchanging of gifts, once associated with Saturn’s festival, found a new home in the tale of wise men bearing offerings for a newborn child, and in the Christian emphasis on charity and care for the poor. Feasting and joyful gatherings continued, now wrapped in the language of celebration for Christ’s birth rather than Saturn’s agricultural blessings. Lights and candles, once meant to honour the returning sun, became symbols of the divine light that entered the world in Bethlehem according to Christian belief. Even the greenery that adorned Roman homes during winter — a symbol of life persisting in the cold — persisted in later centuries as wreaths, boughs and eventually the Christmas tree.

Such continuities do not make Christmas a pagan holiday in disguise. Rather, they reveal how cultural transformation naturally unfolds. Christianity, growing from a small sect into the dominant religion of a sprawling empire, had to find ways to speak to the hearts and habits of its people. In Rome, this meant placing the celebration of Jesus’s birth in a season already rich with meaning, then slowly reshaping that meaning through worship, stories and symbolism. As centuries passed, Christmas continued to evolve. Medieval Europeans added their own layers of traditions of plays, feasts and symbolic foods. Later still, modern customs from Victorian England and American culture reshaped the holiday yet again, giving us carols, cards, Santa Claus imagery and the commercial bustle that now defines the season, for better or for worse. But beneath all these layers, the ancient Roman foundations still flicker like candlelight. The joy of gathering with others in the dark of winter in anticipation of the increasing daylight to come; the encouragement to be generous and think of others in need; the glow of lights that promise warmth and renewal. All these traditions echo the old festivals that once marked December long before Christ was born.

Understanding this intertwined history should not diminish Christmas for anyone, Christians included. The holiday stands as a testament to humanity’s enduring desire to find meaning in the dark months, to celebrate hope’s return, and to bring warmth into the coldest part of the year. Through Christianity’s encounter with Rome’s festivals, the season became a bridge between worlds — between old gods and the new faith, between ancient customs and evolving traditions, between winter’s chill and the promise of returning light. In that sense, Christmas is not merely a date on the calendar, but a centuries-long story of cultural evolution, a process that is still unfolding each time December rolls around.

What GCSE students don’t know about the Aeneid

Since last week, when I wrote again about the power of one-to-one tutoring, I have had even further cause to reflect on its essential benefits.

It would come as shock, I suspect, to most classroom teachers, the extent to which students forget, misinterpret or loftily ignore what they have no doubt been taught in school. I say “no doubt” because I refuse to believe that students have never been taught the basic background to the texts that they are studying, despite their protestations.

What does happen, I believe, is that teachers over-estimate students’ ability to absorb and remember complex material. It certainly came as a shock to me when I started to read more about how memory works (a criminally overlooked field of study in my training) and came to realise just how much repetition is required for students to grasp the basics. In this blog post, I plan to outline the opening few lines of one of the current OCR set texts and explore the things that have puzzled, baffled and troubled the students I have worked with this year. I hope that this will enlighten readers as to the extent that some students struggle with complex material.

One of this year’s texts is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid Book 1. It starts at line 13, so as close to the beginning of the text as one could wish for. This potentially makes for a much easier life than the times when a set text has been taken from Book 10 or Book 12. One would have thought that it would be an easy task to get students to comprehend the basic facts of what the text is about and its core purpose. Well, one would have thought wrongly. With only one exception, the students requesting my help with the Virgil text this year have not been able to define what an epic is, nor were they able to say what Virgil’s purpose was in writing the Aeneid. Most of them swore blind that they’d never been taught the definition of an epic. Beyond this, they have all been baffled to the point of total and utter confusion as to who the Trojans were and what on earth they had to do with the Romans and their self-definition. So, let’s look at some extracts from the opening lines of the text and see in more detail what’s been troubling my charges.

urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni,
There was an ancient city, [which] Tyrian settlers inhabited,

Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe
Carthage, opposite Italy and the far-distant mouth of the Tiber,

ostia, dives opum studiisque asperrima belli;
rich in resources and most formidable in the practices of war;

Out of those who have requested help with the Virgil, most of them were unable to tell me where Carthage was and why it’s described as a formidable stronghold. None of them – genuinely no exceptions – understood the historical fact that the Romans had destroyed Carthage over 100 years before Virgil was writing. While I would not for one moment expect any of them to have detailed knowledge of the three Punic Wars, I was a little surprised that none of them seemed to be conscious of the fact that Virgil was writing in a world in which this rival superpower had been razed to the ground decades earlier, and that this was a crucially important part of how the Romans defined themselves. Does it seem likely that this was never mentioned by any of their teachers? I think probably not. Is it likely, however, that this was perhaps mentioned once in the first lesson and then rarely – if ever – reiterated? That, I’m afraid, seems plausible. I think teachers need to think very hard about what’s happening in the first couple of lessons of set text work. When you present the students with the text, their minds are completely preoccupied with the length of it and how on earth they are going to cope with learning it; they are thus even less likely to absorb any background information you’re giving them.

Very few students were able to tell me what the Tiber is (a river in Rome, as iconic to the Romans as the Thames is to Londoners) and none of them seemed to understand how Carthage is “opposite” Italy. Carthage lay on the other side of the Mediterranean sea, located on the coast of north Africa, in what we now call Tunisia – indeed, it kind of bulges out into the sea and looks to be the bit of land mass in Africa that is closest to Italy. Perhaps it is because my own sense of direction and general geography is so embarrassingly poor that I always look all of these places and features up on a map and contextualise them for myself in detail. Do teachers assume that their students’ knowledge of geography is as sound as their own? Maybe so, and if so, I guess my advantage is that my own geography is so awful that I assume absolutely nothing! Anyway, the text and the description of Carthage continues:

quam Iuno fertur terris magis omnibus unam
[one] which Juno is said to have cherished more [than] all [other] lands,

posthabita coluisse Samo; hic illius arma,
valuing [even] Samos the less;

Now we’re getting on to the meat of the text and what Virgil is building up to in this opening section. He sets out to explain why Juno, the queen of the gods (most students didn’t know that, by the way), has a massive beef with the Trojans. Here, he highlights the fact that Juno values Carthage even more than Samos. What’s he on about? My students didn’t know. Samos, an island off the coast of modern-day Turkey, was the birthplace of Juno and a centre of her worship. The fact that she values it less than Carthage highlights the importance of Carthage to her and hence her overwhelming desire to protect it. This is why Virgil mentions Samos.

progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci
But indeed she had heard [that] a breed [would] arise from Trojan blood,

audierat, Tyrias olim quae verteret arces;
which would one day overturn the Tyrian stronghold;

hinc populum late regem belloque superbum
from this would come a nation, wide-ruling and superior in war,

venturum excidio Libyae: sic volvere Parcas.
for the destruction of Libya: thus were the Fates unrolling.

I have asked all of my students to tell me who “the breed that would arise from Trojan blood” are, which could absolutely come up as a one-mark question in the exam. Until I explained, very few of them understood that it was the Romans. They seemed genuinely unsure about the point of the Aeneid‘s opening, which is to highlight how difficult the goddess Juno made it for the Trojans to make it to Italy, which was their destiny. Why were they headed to Italy? Again, when asked, students had not grasped the fact that Aeneas and the rest of the Trojans were refugees, survivors of the Trojan War and in search of a new city now that theirs had been destroyed. It seems remarkable given current events in both Europe and beyond that students seem to find this resonant fact so easy to forget. Has the analogy with modern refugees setting sail across dangerous waters ever been drawn for them? I do hope that is has, but again, maybe that’s happened only once. Students had failed to grasp that the Trojans are trying to get to Italy and that Juno is trying to prevent this because she is trying to prevent the Roman empire from existing and thus to prevent the destruction of Carthage by the Romans. Now, here’s what’s really interesting: I have explained this multiple times and in multiple ways to several different students individually, and most of them have really struggled to grasp it. I suspect it’s partly because they are having to think about multiple timelines and this is difficult for younger people; I also think it might have something to do with the fact that some of what they are being told is historical fact and some of it is legend – they genuinely find it difficult to get a handle on what it all means and how it fits together. I am still thinking about how it could be better explained in the future, since it’s clearly a lot more difficult to understand than those of us who are subject experts realise.

necdum etiam causae irarum saevique dolores
not even now had the causes of [her] resentment and bitter griefs

exciderant animo: manet alta mente repostum
left [her] heart: deep in her mind remained the far-off

iudicium Paridis spretaeque iniuria formae,
judgement of Paris and the insult of her beauty scorned,

et genus invisum, et rapti Ganymedis honores.
and her enmity towards the tribe and the honours paid to the stolen Ganymede.

Here, Virgil lists the reasons that Juno has for hating the Trojans. It seems that students find this really difficult, too. This is perhaps because they must grasp two separate things: firstly, they must understand that Juno’s over-arching reason for hating the Trojans is that they are destined to give rise to the Romans, who will eventually destroy her beloved Carthage. They find this really difficult to grasp, as I explained above. In addition, they must also understand that Juno has some other more petty reasons for hating the Trojans, mentioned here by Virgil. She has a general enmity towards the tribe because it is descended from someone called Dardanus, who was the son of her husband Jupiter as a result of one of his numerous extra-marital affairs. Thus, the existence of the entire Trojan race was an insult to Juno. In addition (and this is the only story that most of the students seemed familiar with) there was the beauty contest between three goddesses that Paris, a Trojan prince, was given the dubious task of judging. His choice was ultimately the cause of the Trojan War, since the bribe he was offered by the winner (Venus) was the most beautiful woman in the world, which was Helen, who happened to be married to a Greek. Hence, when Paris claimed his prize, the Greek tribes waged war upon the Trojans. More importantly for our purposes, the fact that Juno was not selected as the winner of the contest was yet another slight against her by a Trojan. The third petty reason mentioned, the “honours paid to the stolen Ganymede” is all about Jupiter’s promiscuity again. Ganymede was a handsome Trojan that Jupiter took a fancy to and abducted, yet another insult to his wife. (Note: Ganymede was not, as one of my students was absolutely convinced of, a horse. Not that taking a fancy to a horse was beyond Jupiter, miind you, but that isn’t what happened in the story).

his accensa super, iactatos aequore toto
Inflamed further by these [things], she kept the Trojans [who were] left by the Danaans

Troas, reliquias Danaum atque immitis Achilli,
and by ruthless Achilles far-distant from Latium, storm-tossed in every corner of the sea;

arcebat longe Latio, multosque per annos
and for many years

errabant, acti fatis, maria omnia circum.
they wandered around all the oceans by an act of fate.

tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem!
Such a great undertaking it was to found the Roman race!

Here, Virgil sums up his overall point: that it is Juno’s hatred of the Trojans and her fear of their impending destiny, which causes her to work against their journey and to thus postpone their fulfilment of fate. One of the final things that I have noticed students really struggle to grasp is that fact that Juno knows full well that she won’t succeed: as a goddess, she can see the past, the present and the future, and she knows that the destruction of Carthage by the Romans is fated and inevitable. Still, she’s going to do everything in her power to prevent, or at least delay, the inevitable. I find it interesting that young people should struggle to understand this very human kind of motivation – that we might still strive for something that we already know is doomed to failure in the longterm. I guess they haven’t had experience of it yet.

Before teachers feel too dismal, I should point out that I do tend to specialise in working with students who really struggle with the subject. That said, what has been interesting this year is that almost all of my students have struggled with this text, even the high-fliers. I hope that this post has given some food for thought. It is so easy to assume that students have understood what we have told them, so easy to imagine they are following what we say. Until we delve a little deeper – one of the immense joys of working one-to-one as I do now – we can delude ourselves that they have understood the point of a text and are following its meaning.

The Roman origins of May Day

May Day, celebrated on the 1st of May each year, is a historical festival that marks the arrival of spring and honours the season of fertility, growth, and rebirth. While it is often associated with various modern customs and labour movements, the roots of May Day trace back to ancient Roman traditions that celebrated the cycle of life, agriculture and the divine.

In ancient Rome, the month of May was dedicated to Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, spring, and fertility, who represented the renewal of life and the blossoming of nature. As a minor but beloved deity, she held a special place in Roman mythology for her association with the vitality and beauty of the natural world. Flora was believed to have the power to make plants bloom and crops grow, thus she played a crucial role in agriculture and the changing of the seasons. The Romans honoured her each year with the festival of Floralia, celebrating her gifts with flowers, games, and theatrical performances. Flora’s imagery — she was often depicted as a youthful woman surrounded by flowers — embodied the joys of spring and the promise of new life.

The Floralia took place between April 28th and May 3rd. It was a time of joyful celebration, characterised by processions, theatrical performances and the adornment of homes and temples with flowers. The Romans believed that Flora’s blessings ensured the prosperity of crops and the fertility of both land and people. During the Floralia, people engaged in dancing and feasting and the festival was not only a tribute to Flora but also a communal expression of gratitude for the renewal of life and the blessings of nature after the harsh winter months. The festival was known for its licentious and joyful atmosphere, with participants adorned in colourful clothing and floral wreaths. Offerings of milk, honey and other agricultural products were made to Flora, to ensure a prosperous growing season. Victorian depictions of these events imbue them with an elegant, somewhat idealised air, but in the ancient world they were notorious for lewd and chaotic behaviour. There was wild food-throwing as well as hares and deer released into the crowds as symbols of fecundity. It sounds like an absolute blast.

The transition from the Roman Floralia to the modern May Day can be traced through the influence of Germanic and Celtic traditions. In Germanic folklore, the night before May 1st, known as Walpurgis Night, was associated with witches, bonfires and rituals to ward off evil spirits. Over time, these celebrations merged with Roman customs, blending the ancient fertility rites with Celtic seasonal festivities. In the late 19th century, May Day took on additional significance, as a day to commemorate the struggles and achievements of the labour movement. In 1891, the first day of May was designated International Workers’ Day and was set aside for organised industrial agitation, so the energies of the spring festival turned to political ends. The May Day Bank Holiday was instituted by Michael Foot, Labour Employment Secretary, in 1978. I was five at the time, and just about remember it! The social justice aspect of May Day is still observed in many countries around the world, often with demonstrations, parades and speeches advocating for workers’ rights.

Across different cultures, May Day is celebrated with a variety of customs and traditions. In England, Morris dancing, the May pole and village fairs are common. In some Scandinavian countries, May Day festivities include singing traditional songs and crowning a May Queen. May Day has evolved into a multifaceted celebration of spring, labour, and community. From ancient rituals honouring deities of nature to modern demonstrations advocating for social justice, the essence of May Day reminds us of our deep-seated connections to the cycles of life and the enduring spirit of renewal. May Day perhaps stands as a testament to the enduring human quest for renewal, growth and solidarity in all its forms.

The role of the translator?

The festive season would not be complete without an EduTwitter bust up, and this year there was more than one. Pleasingly, the one that’s rumbled on the longest is a controversy surrounding Homer’s Odyssey, striking a rare burst of attention for Classics in the broader world of education. The debate started with some people arguing about whether school-teachers have or should have read or taught this text in schools. Quite why anybody cares remains a puzzle. After a few days, however, the row spread amongst a much wider audience and mutated into reactions to a recent translation from the original Greek by Emily Wilson, who in 2018 became the first woman to publish a full English translation of the Odyssey, to much fanfare.

Predictably, people’s reactions to Wilson’s translation fall into clear political camps. The Guardian hailed it as “groundbreaking” and a feminist interpretation which will “change our understanding of it forever” while critics more right of centre breathed anxiously in and out of a paper bag and muttered dire warnings about the decline of the West. It’s all very silly, but in amongst all the hysteria has been some unintentionally thoughtful commentary: sometimes, people don’t even realise that they’ve said something interesting while they are trying to score a political point. “The job of a translator is not to attribute postmodern ideas of sex oppression to a writer who has been dead for 3000 years” raged Charlie Bentley-Astor. Broadly, I don’t disagree with her, but I found myself pondering: what is the role of the translator, exactly?

Those who have not studied languages, particularly ancient languages, might find this question bizarre. The role of the translator, surely, is to reproduce the text as faithfully as possible in a different language? Well, yes. But you see, it depends what your priorities are and it depends what aspects of the text you believe are most important to remain faithful to. The spirit and mores of the times? The lyrical qualities of the original? Its readability? And what is the purpose of your translation? To support the study of the text in the original language? Or to open up the text to a wider audience, who will never have the chance to study it in the original Greek? These are just a handful of the questions that a translator must ask themselves. The translations that I produce for students who are studying a text in the original Latin are clunky and unsuitable for publication. This is because their sole purpose is to facilitate the students’ understanding of the Latin text in front of them, on which they will be questioned in an examination: I do not produce my work for the pleasure of a general audience, so I am not aiming at fluidity, readability or beauty, all of which are potentially important when publishing a translation for a wider readership, for people who want to enjoy reading a text for pleasure.

The power of the translator is immense, and those who are exercised by Wilson’s approach are upset by the fact that she has been credited with approaching the text from a more feminist standpoint, potentially imbuing it with a set of values that could not have been imagined by Homer himself. Yet I simply do not understand the hysterical reaction by some conservatives, who seem completely oblivious to the fact that this interpretative dance has gone on since the dawn of time. Every translator inculcates a text with his or her own priorities, and every translator knows that. If you are picking up a translation of an ancient text and you honestly believe that it will be giving you a faithful, full and accurate rendering of the original author’s meaning and intention then you are deeply naïve, for this is impossible. It is for this reason that I have never understood those who claim to understand the “word of God” when they have not studied their own religious texts in the original language in which it was written. So, Christians, off you go to learn Hebrew and New Testament Greek!

Let’s just take one very simple example of the problem. Imagine that I were producing a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. How would I render the phrase “imperium sine fine”, which is what Jupiter states that he will grant to the Romans? The word imperium has multiple meanings and can be translated as “power”, “command” or “empire”. It had some quite specific and technical meanings in relation to the command that a general had over a region but was also tied up with the Roman belief that the expansion of their dominion was a fundamentally good and noble thing: this included the exercising of power over other nations and the geographical expansion of their borders. The phrase sine fine could be rendered “without end” or “without borders” – it refers both to the physical extent of the Roman empire and to their belief that their domination was not only unlimited in terms of their relationship with the world, but that it would be unlimited in time. The phrase is therefore deeply resonant in the Roman mindset – that their empire, their military might, their control over the world was divinely-granted: it had no borders and it would last forever.

I would argue further that it is not only the layered meanings that such a phrase had for the Romans that have to be considered when translating this phrase now. As readers from a modern perspective, in the full knowledge of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the phrase imperium sine fine has a poignancy for us that Virgil could not have imagined. This does not mean that its meaning to a modern audience does not have value – quite the opposite. There would be little point in the survival of ancient texts if they were not to strike resonances within us as a result of the changes that have taken place since they were written.

The importance of capturing the spirit of a text over and above remaining faithful to its construction is a challenge faced by those who convert a classic novel into a film or a drama. The 1992 film version of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, directed and produced by Gary Sinise and starring John Malkovich is – in my opinion – an absolute masterpiece of this spiritual capture. The opening scenes are entirely invented by the film-makers: a terrified woman in a torn red dress runs across farmland, then we see men on horseback who appear to be in pursuit of the woman’s assailant. Those of you who know the novel will understand exactly the background to George and Lennie’s situation that this represents and in my view it was a brilliant leap of imagination to transfer the information to film in this way.

Conservatives who fear “incorrect” interpretations of a text fail to understand that the enduring appeal of a text lies in its interpretation. Believe you me, Aristophanes did not have a feminist slant in mind when he wrote Lysistrata, a comic play poking fun at the incompetence of the Athenian political intelligentsia, who were doing such a God-awful job that even the women could probably do it better! That was the joke, for the Athenian audience. Yet Lysistrata is – inevitably – read and performed as a feminist play in the modern setting, and I have enjoyed productions that have rendered it thus. Thus, I do find myself chuckling at the rising hysteria expressed by many who seem so terrified by the fact that Homer has now been translated by a woman. I do wish they could understand that Homer will survive: he’s big enough and man enough to take it.

eligo, eligere, elegi, electus

Given the undeniable unfairness baked into Roman society, it might be a surprise to some that the Romans embraced a democracy of sorts. Only a small fraction of people living under Roman control could actually vote, but male citizens during the period when Rome was a Republic did have the opportunity to cast their vote for various administrative positions in government. The Latin verb “to choose”, which forms the title of this blog post, is what produced the participle electus and gives us the modern word election.

In the 6th century BCE, with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the city-state of Rome was re-founded as a Republic and by the 3^rd Century BCE it had risen to become the dominant civilisation in the Mediterranean world. The ruling body known as the Senate was made up of the wealthiest and most powerful patricians, men of aristocratic descent. These men oversaw both the military campaigns that brought expansion and wealth to Rome and the political structures that managed its society. At the beginning of the Republic, only the Consuls were elected, but in later years Roman free-born male citizens could vote for officials in around 40 public offices which formed a complex hierarchical structure of power. Yet this public performance of voting did not really offer the citizens any kind of real choice. If you’re feeling depressed about the choices offered to you in your polling booth today, take heart: things were considerably worse two thousand years ago (even if you were a man).

Candidates for office under the Roman Republic were originally selected by the Senate and were voted for by various different Assemblies of male citizens. These Assemblies were stratified by social class and the weighting was heavily skewed in favour of the aristocracy. In the early years of the Republic, candidates were banned from speaking or even appearing in public. The Senate argued that candidates should be voted for on the merit of their policies, rather than through rhetoric and personality; in truth it meant the general public had no real opportunity to hear candidates’ arguments or indeed to hold them to account. In the later Republic the ban on public oracy was lifted and the empty promises so familiar to us today abounded, alongside some good old-fashioned bribery which – while theoretically illegal – was widespread. As the practice of electoral campaigning developed things did begin to change, with the pool of candidates no longer tightly limited to a select group of aristocrats under Senatorial control. In the long-term, however, this led to even greater misery for the citizens. They lost what little democracy they had during the Roman revolution, when what should have been a righteous and deserved uprising against the ruling oligarchy ended up turning into something arguably worse. Rome’s first ruling emperor, Augustus Caesar, claimed that voting was corrupt and had been rigged by the Senate for years in order to perpetuate the power of a handful of aristocratic families. His neat solution was to abolish voting altogether. Be careful what you wish for?

Once the early ban on public oracy was lifted, a key component of public campaigning during the Republic was canvassing for votes in the Forum. A candidate would walk to this location surrounded by an entourage of supporters, many of whom were paid, in order to meet another pre-prepared gathering of allies in the central marketplace. Being seen surrounded by a gaggle of admirers was hugely important for a candidate’s public image and was worth paying for. Once in the Forum, the candidate would shake hands with eligible voters aided by his nomenclator, a slave whose job it was to memorise the names of all the voters, so that his candidate could greet them all in person. The man running for office stood out in the crowd by wearing a toga that was chalk-whitened called the toga candida: it is from this that we get the modern word candidate.

To further attract voters among the ordinary people, candidates gave away free tickets to the gladiatorial games. To pay for such a display a candidate either had to be extremely wealthy, or to secure the sponsorship of wealthy friends. Cases are documented of men ending up in ruinous debt as a result of their electoral campaigning. Several laws were passed attempting to limit candidates’ spending on banquets and games, which evidences the fact that that the Senate didn’t like electoral corruption except when they were in charge of it.

Democracy under the Roman Republic was very much controlled by the select few male members of the aristocracy who held seats in the Senate. They essentially held all of the power, having been born into wealthy patriarchal families. The majority of people who inhabited the Roman world were not allowed to vote, including women and slaves. It is striking and not to say infuriating how many modern sources on Roman voting talk about “citizens” and “people” without seeming to feel any need to clarify that they are talking about male citizens and male people only. We do have evidence that women in the wealthiest families put their money and their energy behind their preferred male candidates, most usually because they were members of the same family. Electioneering in the form of visible graffiti in Pompeii evidences women’s support of their husbands, fathers and brothers but this is all produced by women of considerable means; what the poorest women in society thought and felt about the men who controlled their lives is anybody’s guess.

On bugbears and juxtaposition

An old Head of Department from many years ago used to start his Year 7 German course in the same way every year. Every year he would ask students to name any famous Germans they could think of. Every year he hoped to hear names like Michael Schumacher or Boris Becker, or perhaps one of the countless famous German composers from over the centuries. Every year he was given Hitler. It never seemed to occur to this lovely man that perhaps there was a better way of starting off his first German lesson. Something made him do the same thing over and again and I think a bit of him somehow relished the inevitable disappointment. We all have our crosses to bear in our chosen subjects.

For anyone who teaches or touches upon Roman culture, for us it’s waiting for the inevitable moment when a child will inform us that the Romans used to eat so much at their dinner parties that they would go and make themselves sick so that they could eat more. I’ve even overheard the guides at Pompeii help to perpetuate this myth by mischievously telling tourists that any random passageway that they can’t account for is a “vomitorium”, where guests would relieve themselves to create space for more gluttony. They know that this is nonsense. The confusion seems to have come from the word vomitorium itself (which actually was used by the Romans to refer to any passageway leading crowds out of a public building) combined with satirical pieces such as Trimalchio’s Feast, sometimes called The Millionaire’s Dinner Party, which describes the imagined excesses of dinner parties held by the nouveaux riches. We also have the disapproving remarks of authors such as Seneca, who wrote of slaves cleaning up the vomit of drunks at banquets and criticised what he saw as the excesses of Rome. It’s a depressingly familiar picture for anyone who has worked in a hotel or similar establishment in modern Britain; wealthy Romans were no more or no less gluttonous than the comfortably-off in any society, especially those societies which have alcohol at the heart of their culture.

Eye-roll inducing as this was, my personal bugbear of misinformation I simply cannot wait to hear is different. I tell myself I have to go there to prevent students from getting it wrong in their exams, but in truth there’s a bit of me that cannot resist it for my own torture. When working on the literature, I always ask every GCSE candidate what they think the term juxtaposition means. Almost without exception, students will tell me that the word means “contrast”. On an exceptionally good day, they will tell me that it means “putting things next to each other in order to create a contrast”. In actual fact, it means “putting things next to each other” and this may be done in order to highlight a contrast.

While I hate to be a massive Latin bore, I’m afraid this is yet another case where a simple knowledge of the Latin roots of words can help. To juxtapose has its origins in the Latin words iuxta (which means “next to”) and iungo (“to join”, also notable in derivatives such as join, conjunction, conjugation, conjugal) alongside the Latin word positus (“place” or “position”). It quite literally means “a placing next to”: there is no mention of the notion of contrast in the original etymological meaning of the word. The frequency with which the technique is used to highlight a contrast means that it is arguably justifiable to include this in the definition, but the etymological roots of the word really must be prioritised. Fundamentally, juxtaposition is placing a word or phrase next to another word or phrase, often but not exclusively to highlight a contrast.

Unfortunately, students (and teachers) Googling the word will find an avalanche of quotations using the word to mean simply and exclusively “contrast”. Just this morning I spotted a horrendous meme quoting American guitarist Dean Ween of all people: “the juxtaposition of fishing and touring couldn’t be greater”. Sigh.

Another part of the problem with this misunderstanding is that English really isn’t very good at doing juxtaposition. Our language requires too many supplementary words to make sense, plus we cannot muck about with word order in the way that Latin can without a serious change in meaning. Word order is sense-critical in the English language: “man bites dog” means the opposite of “dog bites man”. Latin, being an inflected language (i.e. one where the endings of the words dictate their meaning and role) has the advantage in that an author can place words next to each other with ease – certainly to highlight a contrast or frankly to do whatever he wishes.

The good news is that once a student realised what juxtaposition means it becomes much easier to spot in Latin. Once a student understands that it simply means placing words next to each other, they can assume that an author as adept as Virgil has always done so for a reason – it does not have to be limited to the concept of highlighting a contrast. An author may juxtapose a string of sounds, for example, or indeed words with a similar rather than a contrasting meaning. It’s entirely up to him.