The Pope’s official title is pontifex maximus, “the greatest bridge builder.” Not all who have held that office have taken that etymology seriously. Now, beginning this Friday, as Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury travel together in misery-filled South Sudan, they will find plenty of bridges to start building together.
“Scorpion” as a Name for a Police Squad:
Naming a special police unit ‘Scorpion” did not cause Tyre Nichols’ death, but it should have been a warning to those setting up that unit. Scorpions are not choosey about who gets hit. These poisonous critters will bite the hand that feeds them, make no mistake about it, and a clever acronym, “Street Crime Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods” should not have obscured the perils that lay ahead. Scorpions are asunpredictable as they are poisonous. Watch out. Even in a well-intentioned plan the rectification of language matters -- How Many Does It Take to Make a Mob? In a mob each participant eggs the other on to do things they would not do individually. At some point mob psychology kicks in. So, how many does it take to make a mob? I’d usually guess in the dozens, if not in the hundreds, but maybe five is quite enough. Here's the January 2023 edition of my Newsletter. I hope you like it. If so, send me an email and I'll put you on the subscription list.
- Breaking News: There’s some movement for the return of the Parthenon marbles from Britain to Greece. Here’s some background: Vatican Sends Its Parthenon Marbles Back to Greece The Vatican is restoring a few pieces of sculpture from the Parthenon. including a rather fine male head. You can see it and get the story here. , - This surely increases the pressure on Britain to do the same -- big time. . If the Vatican can do the right thing, why can’t the British Museum? -- The Color of the Classics: In the late 1930s, British Museum masons “skinned” some of the Elgin marbles, that is, in an ill-judged cleaning operation much of the patina on these Parthenon sculptures was literally scraped away with wire brushes, copper chisels and coarse carborundum. The idea was to scrub off the rich, honey-hued surface to make it conform to then dominant views of classical beauty. Now efforts are being made to manufacture highly accurate replicas of the marbles to which “some degree of color” will be added to “immunize [them] somewhat from academic criticism,” as reported in a New York Times article, “The Robot Guerilla Campaign to Restore the Elgin Marbles.” Aesthetic ideas change over time, sometimes for the better. Now both the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston have changed the installations of their classical collections to make it easier to recognize the bright, to our eyes maybe garish, palette of ancient Greek art. But there’s a story museum curators may be less eager to tell – the deliberate removal, , of traces of color on many works of art including Byzantine ivories. That story is told in Carolyn Connor’s article “Ivories and Steatites“ in the recent Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture. Hippocrates to museum curators: First, Do No Harm!” -- Please think with me about color as a metaphor for other sensory aspects of ancient civilizations that run counter to our social, political or ethical predilections. What are we consciously or unconsciously scrubbing away? -- Stolen Scythian Gold, and much, much more. Russian forces have systematically looted Ukrainian museums and other collections despite the fact that both Russia and Ukraine are signatories to a 1954 Hague “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property i the Event of Armed Conflict.” It clearly applies to art objects looted in war. When a settlement to the Ukraine war is finally negotiated, we must all insist on the return of these objects. Quotable: “ … any damage to cultural property, irrespective of the people it belongs to, is damage to the cultural heritage of all humanity, because every people contributes to the world’s culture.” Preamble to the Hague Convention just mentioned -- “Liberty” in a Gun Magazine and on Campus: - plus Glib Bilge are recent blogposts at https://www.wrobertconnor.com/blog . -- A New Philology? These blog posts and other work I’ve been doing have led me to start thinking about the need for a New Philology. one that cherishes the richness of language but blows the whistle on those who misuse it for political or other gain. Credo: language shapes thought and thought shapes action. -- Milman Parry: The story of the revolution in our understanding of the Homeric poems remains one of the great tales of 20th century classical scholarship. Robert Kanigel adroitly retells the story in a brief article in a recent Harvard Magazine. (Thanks to Jean Houston for calling it to my attention.) -- In Case You Missed It: “The Key to Success in College is So Simple, It’s Almost Never Mentioned “ by Jonathan Malesic can be found at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/college-learning-students-success.html Pass it on! -- Oral exams in undergraduate courses? They work, says Molly Worthen in “If It Was Good Enough for Socrates, It’s Good Enough for Sophomores.” Examination viva voce may be the best antidote we have to the burgeoning capacity of Artificial Intelligence to produce essays, research papers - and even haikus. -- AI is not coming; It’s Here: I made a probe and it fizzled- see “What will Artificial Intelligence Do For (or To) Us?“ (blog post of December 17 2022), but there’s no doubt it will change things throughout society – for the better, if we are smart enough t use it right. -- Congratulations to Greg Hays whose translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations was number one just before Christmas on Amazon’s list of books on Greek and Roman Philosophy. Santa was choosing well. -- And Congratulations to American historian Bill Leuchtenburg on his 100th birthday. -- Four and Twenty Bronze Statues Mired in a Spring: In case you missed this extraordinary find, check it out here: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/03/1138904735/italy-ancient-bronze-statues-discovery-tuscany Thanks to Kate Faherty for alerting me to this story. -- A palindrome from Alexander Nehamas: Νίψον ανομήματα μή μόναν όψιν. “Wash your transgressions, not just your face.” Can you top that? - Solved! The Riddle in the last Then & Now Newsletter: The riddle was: “ Alive my braying voice could drive a man to tears; Dead my knobbly bones will bring pleasure to your ears. What am I?” First to report a solution to the riddle was David Konstan, who proposes “an ass,” whose bones are knuckle bones.“ Or were they made into a recorder, an aulos? One of our riddles was solved by a 13 year old granddaughter of David McCullough, reminding him of a riddle from childhood: “What goes up the chimney down, but not down the chimney up?” (Answer in next Then &No Newsletter) -- More on the Rectification of Language Series, a.k.a. Getting Words Right and Getting the Right Word: Jean Houston called my attention to this report, “The ‘Closer” who Finds the Right Words When Climate Talks Hit a Wall.” -- Potemkin’s Bones and Putin’s Surname – two attempts to get at the psychology behind Russia’s actions. Both are in my blog: scroll down at https://www.wrobertconnor.com/blog -- Useful Jargon of the Month: “Collective Efficacy.” The negative sense is powerful: as social institutions fail, distrust and violence result. But is the opposite also the case? Check out: “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.“ -- Gross National Happiness: Bhutan has adopted an index to measure happiness among its people and to develop policies to increase it. It may be working! The BBC explores the setting, while Sean O’Connell and others at UC-Berkeley take a look at the evidence here.. -- Ponderable:- “An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.” Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Also Ponderable: “Spirituality and sexuality are two sides of the same coin. If the coin is not counterfeit, it will be made of unalloyed joy.” Maurice Brendenheim ) -- Useful Jargon of the Month: entrainment The social sciences borrowed it from biology, and now no one has a monopoly on its use, for example, “The concept of entrainment points to the ways in which our experience of time can be affected by so much more than the number of hours we have in a day. “ Jenny Odell. -- “Searching Friction: It’s always fun to peek into the classroom of a talented teacher. In Henry Petroski’s “The Push and Pull of Friction,” Ameican Scientist November – December 2022, you can watch aspiring engineers still struggling with Newton’s Laws. -- What Is a Classic, anyhow? C.A Sainte-Beuve asked that question in 1857, T.S. Eliot in 1944, and J.M. Coetzee in 2002. James Tatum trac es the question back to Fronto and Aulus Gellius, and has a surprising answer of his own in “What Was a Classic?” in Classical World 114,1. And here’s a palindrome in honor of that irrepressible Latinist Jim Tatum: Tatum non mutat. -- Quiz in the Happiness Series: “There is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.” Guess who said that? Send your answers to me at wrconnor1@mail.com and tell me whether you agree or not. Answer in the February Then & Now Newsletter. -- Help Wanted: Please send me your favorite palindrome, riddles, neologisms or nominee for Word of the Month, and links to articles you think other readers might enjoy. -- Do you have any friends? If so, give them a subscription to Then & Now a now and then newsletter. Just send me their email address. Thanks! Contact: wrconnor1@gmai.com Bob Connor … Waiting my turn in the barbershop I thumbed through the magazines until I got stopped short by Guns and Ammo. There I came across a full-page ad headed “Defending Liberty since 1844.” The NRA? Nope - Hillsdale College, in Hillsdale Michigan.
Why, I wondered, would a college pay for a full-page ad in a gun magazine? Does it help attract students? Donors? Or is this evangelical college using the word to fire a shot across the bow of the competition. the Fallwells’ Liberty University in Virginia? Maybe all of the above plus a grander strategy, as is now becoming evident in Florida Michelle Goldberg points out in “DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College,“ Hillsdale is being held up as a model for restructuring liberal-leaning New College into a genuinely conservative institution. That part of the Hillsdale story can be found here. But what about the word “liberty” itself? In these contexts it sounds as if it is being exploited by being made into a slogan for one political position, rather than recognized as a goal all Americans value, not least when we argue how best to attain it. OK, philologists: Is it not our job to help reclaim such words, or at least to blow the whistle when they are abducted – in this case at gun point. Over the last generation or so scholars have become increasingly aware that language is not just the way people talk; it’s a way of shaping the mind for action. We can call that insight the New Philology, and put it to work in understanding what’s been happening in Washington..
In his 1981 inaugural address Ronald Regan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. “ It was cute, cleverly phrased and memorable, but no one took it literally – until recently. It was just talk. A year ago, though, a group who took this glib bilge quite literally decided to storm the Capitol. Now inside the Capitol a small but fanatical group seems to be applying it to the selection of a Speaker of the House of Representatives. Some of them are explicit about their motives; “Tear it down,” they say. Why not, if government is really the problem? The moral of this story is clear: Better watch what you say, and if you detect someone else spewing glib bilge call it out before it turns into action. All the chatter about Artificial Intelligence making new breakthroughs culminated for me when I listened to a funny but revealing podcast from “The Daily” on December 16th 2022. I came away convinced that A.I. could transform the landscape of learning at the college level and beyond. In some areas it can already answer challenging questions and produce short stories and essays that one can well believe were written by a not unintelligent human being. The website ChatGPT.com has gone viral. Young people in particular are flocking to it.
Already one can foresee students submitting essays and term papers written by A.I. Their origin will be hard to detect. Will essay writing move into “flipped classrooms,” while lectures and discussions move on line? More important, I believe, is the Big Question, “What is the difference between an essay produced by A.I. and one by a human? What are we looking for in such essays: Mastery of facts and bibliography? Logical reasoning? Or something more - , something to do with personal values and insights? “Don’t Deplore. Explore,” I told myself so I logged on to ChatGBT.com (It’s easy and a one week trial costs only $1.00.) I decided I’d test its limits by asking it some hard questions. “I need an essay on riddles in Icelandic Sagas” I typed in. Sorry, the answer came in less than a a minute. That’s beyond our current range, the response told me.. But we may be able to help you in the future. Maybe, I thought,, the site could d better with comparative politics. So I asked it to draft a newsletter on comparisons between ancient Greek politics and contemporary American politics. (If I got a good answer I thought I might have some fun sending the result to my Then and Now Newsletter readers, asking them at the end if they noticed anything unusual about it. I would have to be prepared for the response, “Better than usual.) But again ChatGBT flunked. Whew!. That failure buys us some time. A.I. may well be able to take on such assignments in the future. And the future moves fast in A.I. settings. My guess is that colleges and universities and professional associations has a year or two, at best, to think through the implications of this technology. Some serious brainstorming is in order. Who will take the lead? In the last blog post I suggested that the further east one went in the US and Europe the more seriously people took the names they gave to their children, and the more likely people were to internalize their name and let it point to a role model. But maybe that’s wrong; maybe we all model ourselves to some extent on the name we’ve been given. If so, what should we make of the list of the ten most popular grls’ and boys’ names in the United States in 2021: GIRLS Olivia Emma Amelia Ava Sophia Charlotte Isabella Mia Luna Harper BOYS Liam Noah Oliver Elijah Lucas Levi Mason Asher James Ethan -- What can we make out of the list? There are few grand historical figures. Few saints, sacred or secular, but a surprising number from the Hebrew scriptures, consciously or unconsciously.. Beyond that, some pop idols, of course, but mostly euphonics – the names have lots of vowels and liquid consonants (ls and rs). No fricatives; sorry Frank and Phoebe. The chosen names roll lightly off the tongue. These names “sound nice.” OK, we could do worse. So internalize the message, kids, and just Be Nice. On August 19th 2022 thee electronic edition of The New York Times briefly ran a lead article entitled “Odessa is Defiant: it’s also Putin’s Ultimate Goal.” The article was quickly taken down, but it’s good to have raised the question what IS Putin’s “ultimate goal”?
s it really Odessa, and with it a strong presence in the Black Sea?. Or is it to Consolidate control over Crimea? Nibble away at the turf in eastern Ukraine? Recover the glory and grandeur of the pre-1991 Soviet Union? Or what? A lot will depend on the answer when, inevitably, peace talks begin. The answer may be right there before us, hidden in the plain sight of Putin’s name. Let me explain. First, a crude generalization, but perhaps a revealing one. about naming a child: The further east one goes among so-called Christian countries the more seriously are personal names taken In America even parents who go regularly to church are likely to give their child a name that just “sounds good,” or pays tribute to a pop culture idol, or occasionally to a grandparent or a favorite aunt or uncle. In Britain, I suspect, names are more likely to have a historic echo, George and Arthur, for example. In Italy Leonardo leads the pack, for obvious reasons. But in countries where Orthodox Christianity is prominent Saints’ names appear more frequently, and birthday celebrations are eclipsed by the saint’s day of the namesake. In Russia nearly three million people have the name Vladimir,, including the head of state. It’s the name of a warrior and conquered turned saint. And in a country were political and ecclesiastical authorities often work hand in hand, it is a name of potentially great significance., especially if the person so named internalizes it, sees it as part of his identity, lets it shape his ambitions. -- So what about “Vladimir”? It’s the name of a ferocious tenth century warrior based not in Russia but in Kyiv where the cathedral is named after him (In Ukrainian his name is spelled Volodymyr). As nearly as I can tell, he never traveled as far east as Moscow,, but that did not stop Putin who in 2016 Putin unveiled a 17.5 meter high monumentin his honor. At the ceremony Putin said, “He laid the moral foundation on which our lives are still based today. It was a strong moral bearing, solidarity and unity which helped our ancestors overcome difficulties and win victories for the glory of the fatherland, making it stronger and greater with each generation … Today it is our duty to stand together against contemporary challenges and threatsing our spiritual legacy and our invaluable traditions of unity to go forward and continue our thousand-year history.” Fine words but what is now Ukraine, not modern Russia, was the center of Vladimir’s empire and his greatest architectural monument remains, the Cathedral of Agia Sophia in Kiev. whose construction, modelled after Agia Sophia in Constantinople, may have begun as early as 1011 under Vladimir himself. Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988 and saw to it that his subjects converted as well. No wonder then that he is often called “the Great,” and is widely venerated and was canonized as a saint recognized by both Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. In the Russian Orthodox church he is one of the most widely venerated saint and regarded as “The Baptiser of Russia and Equal of the Apostles.” , His conquests include much of what is now Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic states. If Putin is modelling himself on his namesake, his “ultimate goal” is likely to involve the subjugation of these countries . If your name is “Vladimir,” Kiev is in your bones. (or more precisely in the relic bones of Saint Vladimir which were originally in Kiev but were brought in 1635 to Moscow. The Soviets, of course, treated them not as sacred objects but as historical artifacts, property of the State. In 2010, however, under president Dmitry Medevede these relics “ were solemnly given to the Russian Orthodox Church and placed inside the Patriarchal Cathedral in Moscow. Inn 2015 , the 1000th anniversary of Vladimir’s death, under the rule of president Putin, and with the support of his ally, the Patriarch of Moscow, Kyrill I., the relics were sent to cities and towns in Russia and Belarus for veneration. The bones were fervently venerated, not only in the Russian towns and cities , often in remote northern regions, but also, strategically, in Belarus. At every stage they were presented as “the embodiment of an ideal and wise ruler.” The message was clear: the sainted Vladimir was an exemplar of both religious and secular power. Perhaps his cntemporary namesake was , too. It is not easy for secular western observers to comprehend what’s in this name, but if in Russia you name your child Vladimir, you send a powerful message, especially if over time the new Vladimir internalizes it as his identity, and sees the advantages of such a name. If so, it may kindle ambitions which can not be quenched except by the waters of the Baltic Sea. The removal of Potemkin’s bones from a crypt in Kherson received brief attention in the media. and in this blog (post ofOctober 28 ). But there seems no agreement why the Russians removed them. Maybe it was just to keep the hated Ukrainians from holding on to a piece of Russian history, or, as Marc Santoras suggests, “ among Kremlin loyalists, the belief in what they view as Russia’s rightful empire still runs deep. “
The bones of the great, however, have an ancient and deep hold on the psyche, and thereby power for those who control them. One can sometimes see that in the veneration of relics in both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox settings, and in ancient Greece as well. When I note the return of Theseus’ bones to Athens, various friends reminded me of other such episodes, including the smuggling of exiled Themistocles’ bones back into Attica. Bill Race reminded me of Herodotus’ account of the removal of Orestes’ bones from Tegea in Arcadia to Sparta. The end of Herodotus’ account is especially revealing: “ Ever since then the Spartans were far superior to the Tegeans whenever they met each other in battle. By the time of Croesus … the Spartans had subdued most of the Peloponnese.” That pattern of thought, I believe, lives on in the Kremlin. Potemkin‘s bones are not a dusty reminder of past Russian glories; they are a sign of Putin’s grand ambitions, and an assurance of power, military success and territorial domination – even, or perhaps especially, when things are going badly. |
