Tag: Edwards, Catharine

In Our Time: The Augustan Age

The Augustan Age is the period between 27BCE and 14CE when the Emperor Augustus ruled the Roman Empire. It was discussed on In Our Time (in 2009) by Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck College, University of London), Duncan Kennedy (University of Bristol) and Mary Beard (Cambridge University). They were primarily considering the politics and arts of the Emperor Augustus’s reign and how these were linked. Politically speaking it’s the beginning of the Roman Empire and a period of peace after the instability of the civil war that marked the end of the Roman Republic. And in terms of the arts this period includes some of the names that one thinks of when one thinks of Roman literature: Virgil, Ovid, Horace.

The Emperor Augustus was called Octavian before he became Emperor and was the adopted son of Julius Caesar (so is sometimes referred to as Caesar). He was named heir in Julius Caesar’s will, but when Julius Caesar was murdered Mark Anthony tried to grab power and civil war broke out. When the dust settled Octavian didn’t restore the Republic, instead he became the Emperor Augustus and inaugurated the Roman Empire. He managed to leave the Senate a sense of dignity and respect (thus heading off the likelihood of an end like Julius Caesar’s) whilst actually retaining sole control himself. For instance he chose a role from the standard Roman Republic’s kit to hold in perpetuity (Tribune) that was actually one of the more junior roles but it was also the one that spoke first in the Senate allowing him to direct the proceedings. He also made a point of knowing all of the Senators, and Beard said that he’s supposed to’ve greeted them all by name at the beginning of each session – which, as she pointed out, must’ve come across as rather fake & tedious to the Senators who weren’t whole-heartedly buying into the cult of Augustus.

His propaganda characterised his reign as a return to the good old fashioned Roman virtues – a bit like the Tory Party narrative of “family values” in modern politics, looking back to an idealised 1950s that never was. Augustus cast the civil war and turmoil as being the result of Rome and the Roman citizens’ fall from virtue over the preceding decades. The bedrock of Roman virtue is the mythos of the farmer-general who leaves his plough to lead the armies of Rome to glory. It’s rooted in rural and agricultural life, and military values; and this is juxtaposed with the sins of decadent urban life where citizens live in luxury. Which I found quite amusing as the way we remember the Roman Empire includes quite a lot of salacious scandal about “my goodness what those Emperors and their families got up to!”. And it seems that Augustus would be horrified by this image of his Empire. He envisaged his family’s role as playing the part of “Good Old Fashioned Roman Family” as an example for everyone else to live up to. For instance his wife spun the cloth that made his clothes, just as a good Roman housewife should. He was not entirely successful in achieving the family image he intended (see below), but he did succeed in successfully re-inventing himself. Which was quite an achievement, as during the civil war Octavian had been somewhat of a young thug. There are multiple stories of his ruthlessness and cruelty, including one tale of him ripping out someone’s eyes with his bare hands! Not quite the good and virtuous first-amongst-equals farmer-general of his later propaganda.

One of the things Augustus does to return virtue to Rome is to pass new laws enforcing proper moral behaviour. Notably these included laws against adultery. This was the area in which his family fell short of the image he was hoping they’d convey. Augustus’s daughter Julia had been married off “advantageously” but clearly not to her tastes – she committed adultery in a particularly noticeable and notorious fashion. Augustus was forced to take action using his own laws, and she was exiled and some of her lovers executed. Then a decade later Julia’s daughter (also called Julia) went on to do much the same thing as her mother – with much the same consequences. So much for the Good & Virtuous first family!

Augustus poured money into the city of Rome – he is said to’ve come to Rome as a city of brick and left it a city of marble. His building projects were wide-ranging and numerous, and many of the buildings we think of as Ancient Rome come from his infrastructure overhaul. This is notably not a return to the “Good Old Days” – we listened to an In Our Time episode about the Roman Republic about three weeks after we listened to this one, and it made the point that the ephemerality of power was a key concept in the Republic. So building infrastructure out of ostentatious and permanent marble was a change of paradigm, reflecting the difference between Republic and Empire as governmental systems.

The flowering of literature and poetry during the Augustan Age is tied into Augustus’s propaganda machinery. It’s a part of the return to the old virtues and of the idea of making Rome great again. Augustus was definitely a patron of the arts – it’s not known how much he paid the writers, but there’s evidence that he did pay them, and pay them well. He also writes some of his own poetry, but there’s no evidence one way or the other about whether or not he also “collaborated” on the others’ poetry. Some of the well known works that survive to the present also have Augustan propaganda as part of their subject matter. For instance Virgil’s Aeneid has a section early on where Jupiter prophesies the future of the city Aeneas has founded (which is Rome). This details the future of Rome through to Augustus as the necessary, pivotal and inevitable Emperor, after whom Rome will rule the world forever. It situates everything Augustus did to gain power and how he is now ruling as the things that are necessary for the future glory of Rome (rather than self-serving). Augustus also traces his ancestry to Aeneas (just like medieval English kings will later link themselves to Brutus and/or King Arthur).

Horace’s poetry is also a part of the propaganda machinery (on the family values side of it) but Ovid is less obviously a part of this. His work is lighter and more comedic than the other two poets, and much more about sex than the new morality of the Augustan Age is really comfortable with. There’s also evidence that Ovid himself didn’t sit comfortably in this new morality – he was perhaps a part of the Younger Julia’s disgrace, and was exiled from Rome. He missed Rome while in exile, considering it the only place worth living – even if his work was more light-hearted than the tone of the age, he was still very emotionally invested in the new Rome that Augustus had built.

Near the beginning of the programme they mentioned the Elizabethan Age (of Elizabeth I of England) as a way of explaining the term “Augustan Age”, and once one’s mind has been drawn to it there are some coincidences in more than the terminology we use for the era. Both are periods of calm after a period of chaos and disunity, the leadership of each country is presented as benign yet is actually pretty tyrannical, both have a flowering of literature which is state-controlled propaganda as well as art. And Elizabeth I was crowned on nearly the same day as Augustus took power (only 1585 years and 1 day later…).

This Week’s TV including Cute Fluffy Animals, Roman Women, an Anglo Saxon Queen and Jewish History

The Burrowers: Animals Underground

The second episode of The Burrowers continued with the three main species they were looking at in the artifical burrows – with a main theme of “leaving the nest for the first time”. The rabbit babies had their first trip outside, the water voles got over their dislike of each other & had some babies who then visited the outside, and the badger orphans bonded into a group and took their first trip out.

As well as this they showed us what an actual wild rabbit burrow looks like – by pouring concrete down an abandoned one and then excavating it (which presumably actually happened before they built their artificial one). And Packham also told us about moles. I hadn’t previously realised that moles keep larders of zombie worms. When they catch a worm first they squeeze the dirt out, then they bite the head off and in the process they inject it with their venomous saliva which paralyses the worm. And then they put the still living, paralysed, headless worm in a larder where it stays fresh until they want a meal. o.O

The third episode was set in summer and was mostly wrapping up & talking about what the future holds for the various creatures. The rabbits by this stage had had three litters each – as soon as the female finished giving birth each time the dominant male mated with her. Thus ensuring that all the baby rabbits came out of the nest in waves (presumably there’s some initial way they set up the synchronisation for the first litter) to overwhelm the predators. Only one in ten rabbits normally survives to the age of 1 due to predation, which frankly is just as well given 10 rabbits turned into over 50 in just a few months. They didn’t say on the programme, but that behaviour also means non-dominant males don’t get much of a window of opportunity to impregnate the females. Most of these rabbits were apparently going back to the breeders, but some were staying for future study.

The water voles managed to have another litter as well – almost despite themselves as the breeding pair still didn’t seem to get along peacefully. They’re all being released into the wild in Scotland somewhere as part of a regeneration programme. And the badgers are also being released into the wild. They actually moved out of the pre-prepared sett and started digging their own in their enclosure. The researchers had been testing their response to badger calls by playing sounds in their sett, and they’d provided extra bedding while the badgers were away. So I reckon the badgers moved out coz they thought the old sett was haunted 😉 Noises in the darkness where there were no badgers, randomly appearing plants in rooms you didn’t leave anything in … who’d want to live somewhere like that? 😉

A fun series, although to be honest not much of note beyond “aww, look at the cute fluffy animals”.

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Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome

The last episode of Catharine Edward’s series about powerful Roman women covered more ground & more women than the first two. The themes linking them together (other than “these are the rest of them”) were that these women were generally outsiders to the aristocratic Roman culture that the women of the first two episodes came from, and they mostly wielded their power more overtly. Edwards started by telling us about Caenis, who had been a slave to a member of the Imperial family (Antonia, mother of Claudius). Caenis had had an affair with Vespasian long before he was Emperor (and when she was still a slave). She was given her freedom, and after Vespasian’s wife died the two resumed their relationship – however her low social status meant that he could not marry her. Once he became Emperor she continued to live as his wife in all but name, and exerted quite a lot of influence over him including some degree of control over access to him. Next up was Berenice who provides an object lesson in how Roman Emperors weren’t as all powerful as they might hope. The Emperor Titus (son of Vespasian) had formed a relationship with the Jewish Queen, Berenice, while he father was still alive. Once he became Emperor he was forced to bow to public pressure & to set her aside – she was too old (i.e. past child-bearing age) and too foreign.

The next three women were all foreigners, and all related. The wife of the Emperor Septimus Severus was a Syrian woman called Julia Domna. She wielded power alongside her husband much more openly than previous Empresses, and was popular & respected when doing so. After Septimus’s death their son’s inherited jointly, which ended badly as one might imagine. Despite never forgiving her older son for murdering his younger brother she still helped to run the empire, and was grief-stricken at his death (although mostly because she wouldn’t have power any more after that). The next two Emperors were both put on the throne by female relatives of Julia Domna. Sadly the first of these teenage boys was utterly useless as Emperor, and despite the best efforts of his mother Julia Soaemias to rule through him he was overthrown by his aunt Julia Avita and her son Alexander. Alexander might’ve made it as a decent Emperor, but his mother forgot the cardinal rule of keeping the army onside and got stingy with their pay – with the obvious result.

Last of the powerful Roman women was Helena, who can’t really be missed out – mother of Constantine and discoverer of the True Cross (amongst other pious things). Edwards credited her as a major influence on Constantine’s move towards Christianity, and of his changing imperial policy to make the Empire Christian.

A good series, Edwards managed to make it both informative & fun. We did at times wonder how the Roman Empire had got anything done or lasted as long as it did – so many of the Emperors seemed useless or overly concerned with their own debaucheries at the expense of the Empire.

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King Alfred & the Anglo-Saxons

The second episode of Michael Wood’s series about the Anglo-Saxons was mostly about Æthelflæd, the daughter of Alfred the Great. Alfred was succeeded by his son Edward in Wessex, and his daughter Æthelflæd was married to the King of the Mercians. The main political crisis of the time was caused by Alfred naming Edward his heir. Alfred had succeeded his elder brother and re-taken Wessex from the Viking’s who’d killed his brother. His nephew Æthelwold had in many ways a better claim to the throne than Edward, but was cut out of the succession by Alfred. So once Alfred died Æthelwold rose up in rebellion, with the help of the Vikings who still ruled East Anglia & Northumbria. He was eventually beaten back by an alliance of Wessex & Mercia led by Edward & Æthelflæd.

Æthelflæd is known as the Lady of the Mercians, and after her husband’s death she ruled on her own. Unusually for the time there is documentary evidence for her power & rule – the “official” record of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle doesn’t refer to her much, but there is a chronicle written detailing the same events from her perspective (in the sense of she’s the main figure of the chronicle not in the sense of a first person account). She is recorded as acting as a King – she leads armies, she plans military campaigns, she acts as a diplomat. Wood tells us that without Æthelflæd & her leadership of Mercia there would not have been England as we know it. Æthelflæd was even succeeded by her daughter, the only time this has happened in English history, but she was removed from power by her uncle (King Edward of Wessex) and he ruled Mercia as King of the Anglo-Saxons.

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The Story of the Jews

The third episode of Simon Schama’s series The Story of the Jews covered the promise of integration of the early Englightenment, and the subsequent dashing of those hopes with the rise of a particularly anti-Semitic form of nationalism. At the start of the Enlightenment a spirit of toleration was growing – that put forward the idea that a Jew could be a person who just happened to follow the Judaic religion and should be treated like any other person. Many Jewish families in Germany & France began to integrate into the culture of the country they lived in, becoming members of society & even notable members of high society. Moses Mendelssohn was one of the first examples of this. Although some of his descendants (like Felix Mendelssohn the composer) were baptised, other families like the Beer family remained true to their Jewish religion & heritage. One of the prominent members of the Beer family was Giacomo Meyerbeer (who started life in Berlin as Jacob Beer, changing his name when he moved to Italy) who was a very popular composer of operas in Paris. He was an early patron of Wagner’s – encouraging him and providing him with opportunities to stage his own operas. Schama had other examples, including banking families & others – the common thread was that they generally thought of themselves as German or French or whatever people who happened to be Jewish, rather than Jews who happened to be living in whatever country it might be.

Sadly this promising mood of integration & an end to prejudice against the Jews didn’t last. Wagner as mentioned above might’ve had a Jewish patron initially, but he published anti-Semitic rants against Meyerbeer late. He took the stance that “true art” had much to do with nationalism and roots in a country and that Jews by definition could not be a part of that and so could not produce any real art – which frankly is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start to shake one’s head at it. This nationalistic stance was common in the late 19th Century, and incidents like the disgrace of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew in the French Army, for allegedly passing state secrets to the Germans hardened this anti-Semitism. The propaganda was that Jews could only be loyal to each other first, and their “adopted” countries second … along with the usual collection of prejudices dating back medieval times. And the rising anti-Semitism lead to a change in Jewish attitudes too and the rise of Zionism. Instead of integration into other countries & cultures many Jews now wanted their own country where they were already the culture.

The programme ended where one would expect – with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, as the extreme towards which that anti-Semitic strain of nationalism was tending. A sombre end to a period which had begun with such hope.

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This Week’s TV Including Romans, the Indian Ocean, Jewish History and Cute Fluffy Animals

Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome

Catharine Edwards presents this series about the women with power in the Roman Empire. While there was no woman who was an Empress in her own right there were still women who helped to shape the politics of the empire. In the first episode Edwards’s focus was on Livia who was the wife of the first Emperor, Augustus. Her public role was as the epitome of the perfect Roman matron – she was submissive & demure, and attended to the domestic sphere rather than the political (spinning & weaving for instance). Augustus used this public persona of Livia’s to his advantage – first to contrast her with Cleopatra. And also to help his personification of his rule as back to basics & himself as just the first amongst equals. Behind the scenes Livia wielded more power & there are references to her influencing the outcomes of trials, and pulling strings to get things done. After Augustus’s death she was given the title Augusta & made the high priestess of his cult, and she started to wield power somewhat more overtly (which her son Tiberius who was now Emperor wasn’t so keen on).

During the programme Edwards also told us about Julia, the daughter of Augustus and Julia’s daughter Agrippina. Both of these women misjudged their way in the balance between power & appearances. Julia behaved scandalously – although her children were all presumed to be her husband’s this was because she’d made sure to only take lovers while she was pregnant. But the scandals were to be her downfall, she didn’t fit in with the image of the imperial family that Augustus wanted to portray, and she ended up exiled for her behaviour. Agrippina was married to one of Livia’s descendants and was the mother of Caligula. After her husband’s death in suspicious circumstances, which she blamed on Livia & Tiberius, Agrippina returned to Rome to fight for justice & for her family’s right to the throne. She too ended her days in exile.

The second episode covered Agrippina the Younger & Messalina. This Agrippina holds the distinction of having been sister of one Emperor (Caligula), wife of the next (Claudius) and mother of the one after (Nero). Messalina was the wife of Claudius when he became Emperor & she and Agrippina were bitter rivals during Messalina’s lifetime. Edwards spent some time discussing Messalina’s ruthlessness in getting rid of rivals (including Agrippina’s sister), and also Messalina’s bad reputation. She’s been immortalised in history as a nyphomanic, but Edwards pointed out that this sort of gossip was a way of attacking the power of the Emperor – if he can’t even control his wife, how can he rule the Empire? Of symbolically castrating him. So the reputation is probably undeserved. However, it was sexual misconduct that brought about her downfall – she is said to’ve undergone some sort of a marriage ceremony with a lover in front of witnesses & “spent the night with him as man & wife”. When Claudius heard of this she hoped to be able to talk her way out of it, but some of Claudius’s loyal freemen had her executed before she could do so.

After Messalina’s death Claudius married Agrippina – she engineered this, but it made sound political sense as she was a direct descendent of Augustus (unlike Claudius who was descended from Livia). But he was also her uncle, which made it an illegal marriage so it needed special dispensation from the Senate. Agrippina pulled strings to get this to happen. After her marriage she was pretty much an equal partner in the government of the Empire, and publicly visible as such – which the various later Roman historians like Suetonius and Tacitus did Not Approve of. She took care to organise things so that her son Nero would become Emperor next, rather than Claudius & Messalina’s son. This included having Nero adopted by Claudius, and by having Nero marry Claudius’s daughter. So the woman Nero was married to was a) his wife, b) his step-sister, c) his adoptive sister and d) his first cousin once removed. Which seems a few more relationships than are really necessary 😉 And he didn’t like her, either. Once Claudius died (conveniently timed for Agrippina, and probably at her orders) Agrippina attempted to continue to rule as the dominant partner with Nero as the junior. Edwards pointed out the Agrippina wasn’t one to compromise or persuade, and Nero as a teenager who was being taunted about being under his mother’s thumb did not appreciate her “help”. Eventually he had Agrippina murdered.

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The Burrowers: Animals Underground

This series presented by Chris Packham is looking at the underground life of three burrowing British mammals. The first episode introduced us to the animals – rabbits, water voles & badgers – and showed us how the team have built burrows for each species that have cutaway sections where the researchers & cameras can see the animals. So far the rabbits moved in and started breeding like rabbits. The pair of water voles seemed less keen on each other, separating to opposite sides of the burrow, but at the end of the programme we were show indications they may’ve bred after all. And the badgers are all orphan cubs, which are bonding to form a social group – the drama here is that the last addition might or might not integrate (and won’t survive if she doesn’t).

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Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve

The last instalment of how we’re screwing up the planet, Indian Ocean edition, covered Indonesia to Australia. Along the way Simon Reeve visited an area of Indonesia where they’re enforcing strict Sharia law, including arresting teenagers who are incautious enough to make public displays of affection. He also visited a team who study slow lorises, which are really very cute and very endangered. The team don’t just study them in the wild they also rehabilitate animals that’ve been sold as pets and subsequently confiscated from their owners – they are generally mutilated before sale, their teeth are removed because their bite is poisonous. Reeve managed to surreptitiously film in a pet market in a nearby city where there were slow lorises openly for sale, along with other endangered species, all kept in poor conditions.

Once in Australia Reeve started by visiting a fish farm & the helping to catch a salt water crocodile. These are very dangerous animals, and so if they start harassing an area where people live they need dealt with – often they’re shot, but they are also endangered. So the people Reeve was helping catch them & put them in a wildlife sanctuary instead … it was a pretty hair-raising sequence, much respect for people who willingly get that close to an over 8 foot crocodile. After that he visited the mainland of Australia to see the sorts of places where vast industrial complexes are being built to get at the mineral resources. The programme did end on a note of hope though – a team in south west Australia who are championing establishing National Parks in the oceans around Australia. Over fishing has been a theme through the series, and this scheme is a part answer to that problem – if there are areas where people cannot fish, then the wildlife recovers and this will spill over into replenishing fish stocks in the surrounding ocean too.

This has been an interesting series, but interesting in a sobering way. Although Reeve did visit some nice places & see some interesting things the theme was mainly how we’re screwing up the environment through our (the West in particular’s) desire for cheap food, and how people are treating each other badly.

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The Story of the Jews

The second episode of Simon Schama’s series about Jewish History covered over a millennium from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem through to the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492. The title of the episode was Among Believers & this was one of the threads tying the programme together – the Jews lived in Christian or Muslim societies through the majority of these years. Schama looked at both how they worked at staying Jewish & at what this cost them. To keep their faith & culture in the absence of the ritual centre (the Temple) the Jews turned to even stronger veneration of the word. In the early years their Bible was extended with commentary and the oral traditions of the Jews, and books were written that reorganised & gathered together the laws & teachings – so you could for instance look up what was & wasn’t permitted on the Sabbath in one place rather than search through the text for all references. This was later extended further with commentaries (and still, I believe, gets extended) and commentaries on the commentaries into the Talmud. This collection of the original text & the thoughts of Rabbis over the years on these texts is part of an on-going conversation or argument across the centuries about how to be Jewish in the changing world around them.

In terms of what it cost them – demonisation of the Jews started early in Christianity, with Paul. His message of the Christ killers who didn’t recognise the Messiah was taken further by John Chrysostom who preached against the Jews as not fully human devil worshippers who sacrificed their own children. Unsurprisingly when Islam first arose Jewish relations with Muslims were better – there was even a brief period right at the start when it looked like the two traditions might exist in harmony (it didn’t last). But in the medieval Islamic world Jews (and Christians) were “only” treated as second class citizens – they had to distinguish themselves by their clothing, there were whole lists of petty things they couldn’t do (like not ride horses, too dignified, only riding donkeys side-saddle like a woman was permitted). But at least they were treated as human beings rather than demonic devil worshippers. Muslim Spain was a particular centre for a flourishing of Jewish culture – Schama quoted us poetry & show us beautiful books & architecture from that time. Sadly the Reconquest of Spain by the Christians and the replacement of the Caliphate with fundamentalist Islamists from Morocco brought this golden age to a close ultimately ending with the expulsion of all Jews from Spain.

Schama also covered Jews in the rest of Christendom during this period – using Lincoln as his example because it had good examples of both threads. On the one hand Jews were terribly useful to the governments of the day – they would lend money (at interest) to Kings, nobles or the Church, which was a sin for a Christian. Aaron of Lincoln was one of this money brokers, who became very rich from lending money to build such places as Lincoln Cathedral. But then they were resented as they got rich, and the same people who took advantage of their loans would look the other way while angry mobs attacked them (and conveniently destroyed records of loans, oh how fortunate). And the mobs were fuelled by the sorts of things Chrysostom had preached about so long ago – in Lincoln there was an incident of a young boy, Hugh, who was murdered. Fury was whipped up by a story that he’d been tortured & killed by Jews in a mock crucifixion – the blood libel that has often been falsely raised against Jews. While Hugh wasn’t officially canonised there is still the remains of a shrine to “Little Saint Hugh”, and only shockingly recently has the sign next to it been changed to reflect the fact that the stories told about his death were lies.

The other thread running through the programme was a quote from Deutronomy:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed;*

Schama used this to illustrate how even after being expelled from their homes, after being demonised & libelled, the Jews continued to choose life & to choose to continue as Jews. Their books of may’ve been designed to be portable – suitcase ready, Schama said – but they were still beautifully made, and treasured. Even tho ultimately their homes may’ve been temporary and were only theirs at someone else’s sufferance, they built beautiful synagogues to meet in.

*I looked this up to check the wording, but only via Googling for it, so hopefully I have the text correct. I used this wording because the site is explicitly saying it’s Jewish rather than Christian.

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