Pasts Imperfect (6.22.23)
Romans on Film, Bavarian Swords, African Glass, an Archaeology of Disability & More
This week, ancient historian Gregory S. Aldrete takes us to the movies to explore ancient Rome through cinema. Then, archaeologists discover a gleaming Bronze Age sword in Bavaria, glass beads excavated in Zanzibar provide evidence for broad trade networks in the early medieval world, an open access book on global slavery is published, a workshop on how to use ChatGPT for grant writing, and much more.
125 Years of Films Set in Ancient Rome by Gregory S. Aldrete
One of the most common reactions that I encounter when I am casually talking to someone outside of academia and they learn that I am an ancient historian is that they immediately ask my opinion of their favorite film or TV miniseries set in ancient Rome. Depending on the age of the inquisitor, the work in question might range from the 1963 version of Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, to director Ridley Scott's Gladiator from 2000, to the STARZ Spartacus premium cable miniseries of the early 2010's. I suspect that this sort of experience is likely familiar to nearly everyone who studies the ancient world. Whatever the specific film, however, the particular aspect that they almost always want to know about is: how historically accurate is it?
Such interest testifies to the enduring allure of depictions of antiquity, and especially to filmmakers’ longstanding quest to bring the ancient world to vivid cinematic life. This connection goes back to the very dawn of cinema. December 1895 is often cited as the starting point for commercial cinema since it was then that the Lumière brothers held the first public showing of a film, projecting images with a cinematograph. No sooner had the new art form been invented than filmmakers turned to antiquity for inspiration and subject matter, as exemplified by an 1896 film short made by Georges Hatot that shows Néron essayant des poisons sur des esclaves ("Nero Trying out Poisons on his Slaves"). Hatot's short also exhibits several of the core characteristics that would dominate the ancient film genre over roughly the next century and a quarter:, a fascination both with depicting actual historical people, and doing so in as lurid and spectacular a manner as possible. Within just a few more years, nearly all the standard figures and tropes that would recur endlessly in cinema had already made their appearance onscreen, among them, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Nero, Jesus, gladiators, generals, emperors and empresses, soldiers, statesmen, slaves, charioteers, and Christian martyrs.
In universities today, "ancient history through film" courses are common ones that many (myself included) have taught. Such courses are typically popular with students and can be fun for faculty. More cynically, they are sometimes viewed as a means to boost enrollments in classics and history departments that are struggling to justify their existence to administrators obsessed with adding up numbers of students taught per faculty unit, or with trendy STEM fields. Beyond their popularity or utility, however, such courses and the films that they feature possess importance for teachers for the basic reason that movies are probably the most significant force shaping the public's notions about our entire area of study (although I'd argue that video games have now come to play an equally significant role).
Our students are not blank slates when they come into our classrooms. They enter already holding a plethora of preconceived ideas, images, and stereotypes about ancient history. Many of these beliefs are largely formed or at least strongly shaped by movies and TV shows. Thus, it is worthwhile to have a familiarity with the movies (even the bad ones) that are molding the public’s and our students’ perceptions of the ancient civilizations that we have devoted our lives to studying.
The interplay between film and ancient history took on personal significance for me when COVID struck. What's an ancient historian to do for entertainment when trapped in his house for a year during the initial phase of the pandemic? For me, the answer was to sit down with my wife and watch 50 films and miniseries set in ancient Rome. Naturally, being an academic, my next impulse was to write a book about it, surveying all 50 films and miniseries. For each one, I offer comments regarding the historicity of its plot, characters, costumes, and sets as well as relating information about its production and the challenges the filmmakers faced in bringing Rome to life.
Undertaking this project was not quite as random a choice as it might seem. I had long used films as teaching tools in ancient history classes, had taught some film studies courses on topics ranging from Kurosawa to Coppola, and, back in the 1990's, had presented a paper at the (then) APA conference on the “bread and circuses” motif in science fiction films. A fully developed strand of scholarship analyzing cinematic depictions of the ancient world also already existed to be drawn upon. Classicists and ancient historians, including Monica Cyrino, Martin M. Winkler, Jon Solomon, Maria Wyke, Arthur John Pomeroy, and many others, have authored numerous fine collections of essays, studies of aspects of the genre, and insightful monographs on individual films, as well as textbooks and general surveys.
Utilizing this rich body of scholarship, the resulting book, Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen: Myth versus Reality, is aimed directly at that curious member of the general public who asks "Just how historically accurate is it?" One interesting feature is over 50 paintings by professional illustrator Graham Sumner, who specializes in portraying ancient military attire and who has published a series of articles on films set in antiquity in Ancient History magazine. His paintings depict outfits worn by characters in various films side-by-side with more historically plausible reconstructions.
A number of trends emerge from surveying 125 years of ancient Rome on film. One of the main lessons is the entirely predictable conclusion that movies about antiquity often reveal far more about the circumstances and values of the era in which they were made than they do about the ancient world. From the Art Deco glory of the sets and costumes in the 1934 version of Cleopatra; to Scipione l'Africano (1937) being made at Mussolini’s prompting in order to justify his invasions of North Africa and Ethiopia; to the echoes of McCarthyism in Ben-Hur (1959); to the avant-garde experimentation of Fellini Satyricon (1969); to the pointed satire and comic irreverence of Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979); to the CGI spectacle and heroic anti-tyranny themes of Gladiator (2000); to Centurion’s (2010) and The Eagle’s (2011) grim depictions of legionaries traversing a hostile landscape inhabited by resentful indigenous tribes, paralleling US soldiers’ experiences in Vietnam and Afghanistan; to the over-the-top graphic novel-style violence and absurdly sculpted abs of STARZ Spartacus (2010-13): films set in the Roman world unfailingly serve as mirrors reflecting contemporary concerns.
Bibliography
Aldrete, Gregory S., and Graham Sumner. Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen: Myth versus Reality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.
Cyrino, Monica. Big Screen Rome. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005.
__________, ed. Rome, Season One: History Makes Television. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008.
Cyrino, Monica, and Antony Augoustakis, eds. Starz Spartacus: Reimagining an Icon on Screen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
Michelakis, Pantelis, and Maria Wyke, eds. The Ancient World in Silent Cinema. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Pomeroy, Arthur, ed. A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen. Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.
Solomon, Jon. Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
___________. The Ancient World in the Cinema. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.
Winkler, Martin, ed. The Fall of the Roman Empire: Film and History. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2009.
________, ed. Spartacus: Film and History. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007.
________, ed. Gladiator: Film and History. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005.
Wyke, Maria. Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Public Scholarship and a Global Antiquity
Archaeologists in Germany report that at the site of Nördlingen, in Bavaria, they discovered an over 3,000-year-old Bronze Age Sword. The sword was part of a collection of grave goods. It is an Achtkantschwert type sword with an octagonal hilt made using a process called “overlay casting.” It dates to around 1300 BCE.
The latest issue of the African Archaeology Review, edited by Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, focuses on “Glass in African Archaeology.” Additionally, in PLoS One, Ieong Siu and collaborators have a new article: “Early Islamic glass (7th– 10th centuries AD) in Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar: A microcosm of a globalised industry in the early ‘Abbasid period.” Their article looks at 82 glass vessels from the site of Unguja Ukuu in Zanzibar. Using a method called laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), they discovered that,
Combined with existing research on early Islamic glass, the authors reveal a complex trading network in the globalisation of Islamic glass, particularly involving glass corresponding to modern Iraq and Syria, in the 7th– 9th centuries AD.
Glass has been a key trace material for modern scholars interested in reconstructing the trade networks of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
On July 1st, the Index of Medieval Art will become freely accessible to all without the need for a subscription. As they note:
The collections include images and descriptive data related to the iconography of works of art produced between late Antiquity and the sixteenth century. Although the Index of Medieval Art was formerly known as the Index of Christian Art, it now includes secular subjects as well as a growing number of subjects from medieval Jewish and Islamic culture.
At the Past and Present Society Blog, Eva Miller reflects on the Warwick Global History and Culture Centre Annual Conference that she organized with Guillemette Crouzet: “Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Making of the Modern Middle East: Global Histories 1800–1939.” Miller remarks on some of the important trends and theses advanced by this conference:
Of the many leitmotifs running through our conference, one of the most persistent was a personal, local, or regional sense of antiquity, in contrast to a de facto Eurocentric ‘world historical’ approach. Participants sought to recover Middle Eastern perspectives on the Middle Eastern past, or at least reframe historical discussions with this in mind. The significant new results they presented indicates the benefit of new approaches to familiar texts, and tapping ignored archives.
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The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History, edited by Damian A. Pargas and Juliane Schiel, is now available #OpenAccess. It draws attention to slavery as a global and globalizing phenomenon and includes substantial coverage of ancient and medieval slavery. There are 39 chapters in total, with two sections dedicated explicitly to ancient (to 500 CE) and then medieval (500-1500 CE) societies.
In archaeological and museum news, Rome’s Largo di Torre Argentina has opened to tourists. The site is known as a sanctuary for cats and, well, as the site of Julius Caesar’s assassination. Additionally, the exhibition “Ancient Mexico: Maya, Aztec and Teotihuacan” is now on display at the Tokyo National Museum. It will be open until September 3, 2023.
New Antiquity Journal Issues (by @YaleClassicsLib)
Judaïsme Ancien - Ancient Judaism Vol. 10 (2022)
Revue d'Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques Vol. 68, No. 2 (2023)
Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Vol. 62, No. 4 (2022)5th International Workshop on Computational Latin Dialectology
Erudition and the Republic of Letters Vol. 8, No. 2 (2023)
Novum Testamentum Vol. 65, No. 3 (2023) NB Jeremiah Coogan, “Meddling with the Gospel: Celsus, Early Christian Textuality, and the Politics of Reading”
Chronique d'Egypte Vol 97, No 193-194 (2023)
Sacris Erudiri Vol. 61 (2023)
Revue archéologique Vol. 75, No.1 (2023)
Arheologia = Археологія No. 2 (2023) #openaccess
Revue d'Égyptologie Vol. 72 (2022)
Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 77, No. 3 (2023)
Erga-Logoi Vol. 11, No. 1 (2023) #openaccess NB Robert Mayhew, “Sacred Sneezes in Aristotle, Historia animalium I 11 and [Aristotle], Problemata physica XXXIII 7 & 9”
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Vol. 32, No. 4 (2023) #openaccess Books Known Only by Title Project
Dotawo: A Journal of Nubian Studies, Vol. 8 (2023) #openaccess War in the Sudan
Mnemosyne Vol. 76, No. 4 (2023)
Antiquity Vol. 97, No. 393 (2023)
African Archaeological Review Vol. 40, No. 2 (2023) Glass in African Archaeology
American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 127, No. 3 (2023)
Revue archéologique de l’Est Vol. 70 No. 193 (2021) #openaccess
American Journal of Philology Vol. 144, No. 1 (2023) NB Jennifer Weintritt, “More Useful and More Trustworthy": The Reception of the Greek Epic Cycle in Scholia to Homer, Pindar, and Euripides”
Plato Journal Vol. 24 (2023) #openaccess
Anais de Filosofia Clássica vol. 16, no. 31 (2022) #openaccess Almas Ancestrais
Anatolian Studies Vol. 73 (2023)
IWNW Journal of the Faculty of Archaeology Ain Shams University Vol. 1, No.1 (2022) #openaccess
Arethusa Vol. 56, No. 1 (2023)
Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin Vol. 8, no. 2 (2022) #openaccess The Transmission of Mark’s Endings in Different Traditions and Languages
Ancient World Lectures, Conferences, and CFPs
The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) will have a free virtual workshop on June 26, 2023 at 1:00 PM ET (7:00 PM EET) that will commence with a lecture by Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian, who will discuss Harvard’s Digital Giza Project. Afterward, the “lecture will be followed by a presentation introducing our ongoing project to bring digital humanities to US college classrooms. This workshop provides all the tools and knowledge necessary to implement this research in your classroom. Using ARCE’s online archives as a starting point, students will create digital exhibitions that can be published to a global audience on Google Arts & Culture.” Register for this lecture and workshop here.
The exhibition, “An Archaeology of Disability," curated by David Gissen, Jennifer Stager, and Mantha Zarmakoupi, will soon be in Athens. From June 28-October 30, 2023, you can see the exhibition at the Canellopoulos Museum. It was originally created for the Venice Biennale Architettura 2021 and opened on January 21, 2022 at La Gipsoteca di Arte Antica, Pisa. There will be tours in Greek with Greek Sign Language interpretation. Registration is required for the tours.
From July 5-6, 2023 will be the “Animals and the Environment in Ancient Mediterranean Medicine International Conference” (in hybrid format) organized by Rebecca Flemming: “This conference will explore animals as both objects of ancient medical and scientific endeavour and as subjects in their own right within their wider environmental context.” Panel Topics include: Women, Sex and Animals; Turning Zoonotic; Animal Subjects; Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry; Animal Materialities. For further details (including full program and registration) go here.
The Institute for Statistical and Data Science (Instats) reports it will be running workshops on how to use ChatGPT for grant writing and academic publishing in a three-part series: “Using ChatGPT for Academic Publications and Grants” (running July 18, October 17, and December 5, 2023). “Through hands-on applications, the seminars cover AI-driven research methods in a way that is specifically designed for researchers, graduate students, and professionals seeking to leverage the power of ChatGPT to enhance their research—especially in the domain of grant writing, which as we all know can be quite tedious (even as it becomes increasingly important due to funding cuts).” Register here.
On September 14-15, 2023 there will be Hybrid conference "Researching a Rigged Game: Open Source Data & the Trade of Cultural Objects" at University College London & online: “This conference aims to explore methodological, ethical & disciplinary considerations in the use of open source data to research the trade & transfer of cultural objects.” Please submit your abstract (max 500 words) and a short bio (max 300 words) of the author(s) to Emiline.Smith@glasgow.ac.uk and Summer.Austin.20@ucl.ac.uk by June 26, 2023.
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