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Filmed Theater Performances:

Όρνιθες / Birds, (1975) directed by Karolos Koun, produced by Θέατρο Tέχνης (Theatro Technis / Theater of Art)

I’ve already done a mini presentation here.

The first performance was staged in 1959. It would set the tone for the way Aristophanes’ comedies are staged until today. It is perhaps the most famous theatrical performance in all of Greece. Of course, it was not at all by chance. Karolos Koun is perhaps the most influential director of modern Greece. The text had been adapted by Vasilis Rotas, and the scenography*  was executed by Giannis Tsarouchis. With Rallou Manou, who did the choreography they created memorable images, taken straight out of ancient pottery scenes, while still retaining a contemporary festive character. 

Koun’s performances of ancient comedy pretty much defined the way these comedies are staged, with an active, participating chorus with a strong scenic involvement and characters who make the text theirs.  

The music was provided by none other than composer Manos Hadjidakis. You can hear the soundtrack here. A composer whose melodies defined an entire era. You can find the video of the performance on youtube.

*scenography is a very important field in greek theater, a scenographer is both a production designer and art director, and is responsible for the general image of a production as well as the minutiae of constructing that image. All the costumes were handmade by Giannis Tsarouchis in this performance. The feathers of the chorus are all individually painted pieces of cloth, treated with wood glue to give them rigidness and wired on a frame to keep them in place. At some part of the performance you can hear them rattle softly. Similarly the masks, and other fabrics are also made by the artist. In this way they are not just props, but individual works of art, with a life of their own. 

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Els Banys de la Reina (“The Queen’s Baths”), in Calp, Valencian Country.

According to the legend, this swimming pool carved in the rock was the place where a Moorish queen used to take baths, with secret tunnels that lead to her mysterious palace.

Actually, the site is much older, dating back to ancient Roman times. The pools were used to keep fish, and the “secret tunnels” were the cannals endig in perforated gates that allowed water to come and go while keeping the fish inside. It’s possible that the pools also served as an aquatic garden.

Near the pools, there’s a Roman thermal complex and a villa full of mosaics.

Source: calp

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Knossos (Greek Κνωσός), currently refers to the main Bronze Agearchaeological site at Heraklion, a modern port city on the north central coast of Crete. Heraklion was formerly called Candia after the Saracen name for the place, Kandaiki, referring to the moat that was built around the then new settlement for defence. Kandaiki became Byzantine Chandax.

The name Knossos survives from ancient Greek references to the major city of Crete. The identification of Knossos with the Bronze Age site is supported by tradition and by the Roman coins that were scattered over the fields surrounding the pre-excavation site, then a large mound named Kephala Hill, elevation 85 m (279 ft) from current sea level. Many of them were inscribed with Knosion or Knos on the obverse and an image of a Minotaur or Labyrinth on the reverse, both symbols deriving from the myth of King Minos, supposed to have reigned from Knossos.

Art and Architecture

The features of the palace at Knossos depend on the time period. Currently visible is an accumulation of features over several centuries, the latest most dominant. The palace was thus never exactly as depicted today. In addition, it has been reconstituted in modern materials. The custom began in an effort to preserve the site from decay and torrential winter rain. After 1922, the chief proprietor, Arthur Evans, intended to recreate a facsimile based on archaeological evidence. The palace is not exactly as it ever was, perhaps in places not even close, and yet in general, judging from the work put in and the care taken, as well as parallels with other palaces, it probably is a good general facsimile. Opinions range, however, from most sceptical, viewing the palace as pure fantasy based on 1920s architecture and art deco, to most unquestioning, accepting the final judgements of Arthur Evans as most accurate. The mainstream of opinion falls between. 

From an archaeological point of view, the terms, “Knossos,” and “palace,” are somewhat ambiguous. The palace was never just the residence of a monarch. It contained rooms that might have been suitable for a royal family. Most of the structures, however, were designed as a civic, religious and economic center. The term, palace complex, is more accurate. Anciently Knosos was a town surrounding and including Kephala Hill. This hill was never an acropolis in the Greek sense. It had no steep heights, remained unfortified, and was not very high off the surrounding ground. These circumstances cannot necessarily be imputed to other Minoan palaces. Phaestos, contemporaneous with Knosos, was placed on a steep ridge commanding the access to Mesara Plain from the sea, and was walled. To what degree Minoan civilization might be considered warlike remains debatable. Whatever answer is given, Knossos bore no resemblance to a Mycenaean citadel, whether before or during Mycenaean Greek occupation.

The archaeological site, Knossos, refers either to the palace complex itself or to that complex and several houses of similar antiquity nearby, which were inadvertently excavated along with the palace. To the south across the Vlychia is the Caravanserai. Further to the south are Minoan houses. The Minoan Road crossed the Vlychia on a Minoan Bridge, immediately entering the Stepped Portico, or covered stairway, to the palace complex. Near the northwest corner of the complex are the ruins of the House of the Frescoes. Across the Minoan Road entering from the northwest is the Arsenal. On the north side of the palace is the Customs House and the Northeast House. From there to the northeast is the modern village of Makrotoichos. Between it and the palace complex is the Royal Villa. On the west side is the Little Palace.

General Features

The great palace was gradually built between 1700 and 1400 BC, with periodic rebuildings after destruction. Structures preceded it on Kephala hill. The features currently most visible date mainly to the last period of habitation, which Evans termed Late Minoan. The palace has an interesting layout – the original plan can no longer be seen due to the subsequent modifications. The 1,300 rooms are connected with corridors of varying sizes and direction, which differ from other contemporaneous palaces that connected the rooms via several main hallways. The 6 acres (24,000 m2) of the palace included a theater, a main entrance on each of its four cardinal faces, and extensive storerooms (also called magazines). Within the storerooms were large clay containers (pithoi) that held oil, grains, dried fish, beans, and olives. Many of the items were processed at the palace, which had grain mills, oil presses, and wine presses. Beneath the pithoi were stone holes that were used to store more valuable objects, such as gold. The palace used advanced architectural techniques: for example, part of it was built up to five storeys high.

Frescoes

The palace at Knossos was a place of high color, as were Greek buildings in the classical period, and as are Greek buildings today. In the EM Period, the walls and pavements were coated with a pale red derived from red ochre. In addition to the background coloring, the walls displayed fresco panel murals, entirely of red. In the subsequent MM Period, with the development of the art, white and black were added, and then blue, green and yellow. The pigments were derived from natural materials, such as ground hematite. Outdoor panels were painted on fresh stucco with the motif in relief; indoor, on fresh, pure plaster, softer than the plaster with additives ordinarily used on walls.

The decorative motifs were generally bordered scenes: people, mythological creatures, real animals, rocks, vegetation, and marine life. The earliest imitated pottery motifs. Most have been reconstructed from various numbers of flakes fallen to the floor. Evans had various technicians and artists work on the project, some artists, some chemists and restorers. The symmetry and use of templates made possible a degree of reconstruction beyond what was warranted by only the flakes. For example, if evidence of the use of a certain template existed scantily in one place, the motif could be supplied from the template found somewhere else. Like the contemporary murals in the funerary art of the Egyptians, certain conventions were utilized that also assisted prediction. For example, male figures are shown with darker or redder skin than female figures.

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A LONG list Latin swear words/phrases/etc. you may find funny and/or useful!

Here is really the only thing I’ve retained after my 3 years of Latin. 

I made this list a year or so ago. Some I got from websites, and some I made up myself. (I had to remove most of the stuff I had b/c it was just too long!) So if im wrong, please feel free to make corrections or add your own!! 

“faex” - shit

“cane” - bitch (this is actually referring to a dog, however, and not the female derogatory)

“deodamnatus” - dammit 

“cunne” - cunt

“filius canis” - son of a bitch (literally ‘son of a dog’)

“fututus et mori in igni” - fuck off and die in a fire 

“futuere” - get fucked 

“futue te ipsi” - fuck you 

“irrumabo” - dick 

“trude id sursum tui cunni, faexnigre” -  shove it up your cunt, shitnigger.

“ede faecam” - eat shit 

“suge meum penem, cunne” - suck my dick, cunt 

“morde meum globes” - bite my balls (???) 

“Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” - i’ll fuck you up the ass and make you blow me (OR ’ I will sodomize you and face-fuck you’. this is from a poem called Catullus 16, the filthiest latin poems you can find)

“Te futueo et caballum tuum” - Screw you and the horse you rode in on

“Irrumator” - Bastard 

“Leno” - Pimp

“Flocci non faccio” - I don’t give a damn

“Mihi irruma et te pedicabo” - Give me head and I’ll ass fuck you

“Mentula” - Penis

“Meretrix” - Prostitute

“Bovis stercus” - Bull shit

“Es stultior asino” - You are dumber than an ass

“Es scortum obscenus vilis” - You are a vile, perverted whore

“Es mundus excrementi” - You are a pile of shit

“Bibe semen meum” - Swallow my cum (???)

“Bibe semen meum e baculo” - Swallow my cum from a cup (???)

“Globos meos lambe!” - Lick my balls

“Es stercus!”  You shit!

“Moecha Putida” - Dirty slut

“Podex perfectus es” - You’re a complete asshole

“Futue te ipsum!” - Go fuck yourself!

“Stercorem pro cerebro habes” - You have shit for brains

“Caput tuum in ano est” - You have your head up your ass

“Perite” - Fuck off!

“Impudens es leno” - You shameless pimp

“Vacca stulta” - You stupid cow

“Vescere bracis meis” - Eat my shorts

“Tu scronium es” - You are a whore

“Caput stercoris” - shithead (lit. head of shit)

“Mentulam Caco” - I shit on your prick

“Obesus porcus” - Fat pig

“Cupio te meam mentulam sugare” - I want you to suck my dick

“Matris futuor” - Mother fucker

“Te odeo, interfice te cochleare” - I hate you. Kill yourself with a spoon.

“Matris Prolapsus” - Bitch (??)

“Stercus accidit” - Shit happens

“Potes meos suaviari clunes” - You can kiss my ass.

“Quando podeces te regi eorum fecerunt?” - When did the assholes make you their king?

“Lupa” - Slut

“Cacator” - Shitter

“Plenus stercoris es" You are full of shit

“Derideo te!” - I laugh at you!

“Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?” - Is that a scroll in your toga, or are you just happy to see me?

“Fabriacate diem, punk” - Make my day, punk

“Id imperfectum manet dum confectum erit” - It isn’t over until it’s over

“Morologus es!” - You’re talking like a moron!

“Puto vos esse molestissimos” - I think that you are very annoying

“Qualem blennum!” - What a doofus!

“Qualem muleirculam!“ - What a bimbo!

“Quisque comoedus est” - Everybody’s a comedian

“Radix lecti” - Couch potato

“Raptus regaliter” - Royally screwed

“Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!” - Stand aside plebeians! I am on imperial business

“Stultus est sicut stultus facit” - Stupid is as stupid does

“Tace atque abi” - Shut up and go away

“Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant “ - May barbarians invade your personal space

"Utinam coniurati te in foro interficiant” - May conspirators assassinate you in the mall

“Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant” - May faulty logic undermine your entire philosophy

“Vacca foeda” - Dirty cow

“Vae!” - Damn!

“Viri sunt Viri” - Men are slime

“Immanissimum ac foedissimum monstrum! ” - Gross and putrid monster!

“Faciem durum cacantis habes” - You have the face of a man with severe constipation

“Mala pituita nasi” - Nasty nasal drippings!

“Si me rogas, potes abire et tu ipse cacare.” - If you ask me, you can go and shit on yourself.

“Commodum habitus es” - You have just been owned

“Canis matrem tuam subagiget” - Dog has desecrated your mother

“Hic erit in lecto fortissimus” - He is Hercules in the sack

“Asinus Stultissimus” - Dumbass (lit. “Very stupid donkey”)

“Caput tuum in ano est” - Your head is in your ass

“Tuam matrem feci” - I did your mother

“A tergo” - In the ass

“Scio erit in lecto fortissimus” - I am Hercules in the sack.

Have fun writing fanfiction now. ;-))

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greek and roman sling-bullet messages

i think one of my favorite things that we have from ancient greece and rome is the collection of military projectiles with amusing inscriptions. these were hurled at an enemy and frequently contained insults or crude humor so that the unfortunate recipient knew they were being laughed at. some of my particular favorites are:

DEXAI- catch!

LABE: take that!

L. ANTONI CALVI PERISTI- you’re done for, lucius antonius, you baldy

AISCRODORO- a nasty gift

PETO OCTAVIANI CULUM- i seek octavian’s ass

OCTAVI LAXE- octavian the limp-dicked

SOU- for you!

KUE- get pregnant with this!

TROGALION- here’s your dessert

and my personal favorite, PAPAI- ouch!

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How do you feel about Scylla?

so all the tales about scylla & charybdis follow the odyssey, which is a story that’s really anxious about women. you’ve got the beautiful powerful witch circe, who turns odysseus’ crew into pigs; helen, for whom the kingdoms went to war and were washed red; penelope, who’ll destroy her husband’s livelihood if she’s unfaithful; clytemnestra, who saw her king and husband dead; the maids in odysseus’ house who sleep with his enemies; the sirens, whose voices enchant & ruin men.

scylla and charybdis are homer’s most monstrous women, lurking in a narrow strait in the tyrrhenian sea. on one side there’s charybdis, who swallows the sea, gurgling in delight as she retches water up and wrecks ships on the rocks. charybdis is a place and a person, she’s the sea as devouring space, as voracious woman

and on the other side there’s scylla, she-dog of the sea, a six-headed woman with rows of shining teeth and a snarling pack of dogs below her waist. her voice is like dogs howling. she’s a dozen male fears about women, a monster made of appetite and power and ruthlessness (when clytaemnestra murders her husband in agamemnon, she’s called a hateful biting beast, a scylla living in the rocks). in ancient greek mythology, women–especially dreadful and powerful women–are often associated with dogs: the canine goddess hecate, the harpies, the erinyes (furies). dog is also an insult thrown at frightening women: in agamemnon, clytemnestra is called dog (κύων); in the iliad and odyssey helen is called dog; in hesiod pandora has the mind of a dog. it implies deceit, violence, and shamelessness, lust. but beneath the insult there’s fear: of women who can’t be controlled, who dupe and defy and emasculate men

circe warns odysseus that scylla can’t be fought, but he doesn’t listen. then there’s a scene that could’ve come from the iliad, where odysseus puts on his shining armour and readies himself to fight. you think there’s going to be a great battle and aristeia, a hero’s glorious rampage against his enemies. there isn’t. scylla can’t be fought, evaded, deceived, placated; he can’t fool her like he fooled the cyclops because the roaring of charybdis drowns out all his clever words. if anything, the aristeia is scylla’s: in one swoop she eats six of odysseus’ men, and he’s lucky to survive. when his ship slinks away it’s not glorious, it’s humiliating

the word used to describe scylla’s voice, λελακυῖα (from λάσκω, “shriek”), is used for dogs but also people; specifically, women crying funeral laments. scylla seems like the fitting downfall for the achaean schemer who conceived of the trojan horse–an artificial monster of war with many heads and many arms in its belly–the man who made possible the sacking of troy and all the death after

so basically i like to think of the two of them, yearless and undying, old monsters from a gone world that was never kind to women, admiring each other across that narrow strait, together wrecking and eating all the men who dare to trespass in their strange wild hidden corner of the sea

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Two-handled jar (amphora) with Herakles driving a bull to sacrifice

Greek Archaic Period about 525–520 BCE the Andokides Painter, the Lysippides Painter

“This amphora is decorated on both sides but in different painting techniques. One side has a scene depicted in the Red Figure style, and the other side shows the same scene in the Black Figure style. This type of decoration puts the vase into the so-called Bilingual group.”

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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GREEK FIRE: 

GREEK Fire was an incendiary weapon first used in Byzantine warfare in 678 CE. The napalm of ancient warfare, the highly flammable liquid was made of secret ingredients and used both in catapulted incendiary bombs and sprayed under pressure so as to launch flames at enemy ships and fortifications.

It was also used with success in defensive situations. Greek Fire became the most devastating weapon of Christendom for over seven centuries and ensured that Constantinople resisted all comers. Emperor Romanos II (r. 959-963 CE) knew its value and declared three things must absolutely never reach foreign hands: the Byzantine imperial regalia, any royal princess, and Greek Fire. As it turned out, the first two were, on occasion, bestowed on foreign rulers but never the third.

Read More 

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How concise Latin is! The language, like Roman architecture, is sturdy, carefully fitted together, built to withstand the incursions of time. Roman edifices and bridges have weathered millennia, one heavy stone placed next to or atop another, their mortar the architectural equivalent of declensions and conjunctions. Everything fits snugly, compactly. Thats what gives the language its ponderous feel and its grandeur. … Language, like architecture, is an ever-evolving structure that we create and re-create throughout our lives. The new always incorporates what came before. No attempts at a made-up “universal” language have ever taken hold. Nor has classical proportion been replaced by “modern proportion.”

Ann Patty, Living With a Dead Language (via mesogeios)

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Throughout her translation of the “Odyssey,” Wilson has made small but, it turns out, radical changes to the way many key scenes of the epic are presented — “radical” in that, in 400 years of versions of the poem, no translator has made the kinds of alterations Wilson has, changes that go to truing a text that, as she says, has through translation accumulated distortions that affect the way even scholars who read Greek discuss the original. These changes seem, at each turn, to ask us to appreciate the gravity of the events that are unfolding, the human cost of differences of mind.

The first of these changes is in the very first line. You might be inclined to suppose that, over the course of nearly half a millennium, we must have reached a consensus on the English equivalent for an old Greek word, polytropos. But to consult Wilson’s 60 some predecessors, living and dead, is to find that consensus has been hard to come by…

Of the 60 or so answers to the polytropos question to date, the 36 given above [which I cut because there were a lot] couldn’t be less uniform (the two dozen I omit repeat, with minor variations, earlier solutions); what unites them is that their translators largely ignore the ambiguity built into the word they’re translating. Most opt for straightforward assertions of Odysseus’s nature, descriptions running from the positive (crafty, sagacious, versatile) to the negative (shifty, restless, cunning). Only Norgate (“of many a turn”) and Cook (“of many turns”) preserve the Greek roots as Wilson describes them — poly(“many”), tropos (“turn”) — answers that, if you produced them as a student of classics, much of whose education is spent translating Greek and Latin and being marked correct or incorrect based on your knowledge of the dictionary definitions, would earn you an A. But to the modern English reader who does not know Greek, does “a man of many turns” suggest the doubleness of the original word — a man who is either supremely in control of his life or who has lost control of it? Of the existing translations, it seems to me that none get across to a reader without Greek the open question that, in fact, is the opening question of the “Odyssey,” one embedded in the fifth word in its first line: What sort of man is Odysseus?

“I wanted there to be a sense,” Wilson told me, that “maybe there is something wrong with this guy. You want to have a sense of anxiety about this character, and that there are going to be layers we see unfolded. We don’t quite know what the layers are yet. So I wanted the reader to be told: be on the lookout for a text that’s not going to be interpretively straightforward.”

Here is how Wilson’s “Odyssey” begins. Her fifth word is also her solution to the Greek poem’s fifth word — to polytropos:

Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.

When I first read these lines early this summer in The Paris Review, which published an excerpt, I was floored. I’d never read an “Odyssey” that sounded like this. It had such directness, the lines feeling not as if they were being fed into iambic pentameter because of some strategic decision but because the meter was a natural mode for its speaker. The subtle sewing through of the fittingly wavelike W-words in the first half (“wandered … wrecked … where … worked”) and the stormy S-words that knit together the second half, marrying the waves to the storm in which this man will suffer, made the terse injunctions to the muse that frame this prologue to the poem (“Tell me about …” and “Find the beginning”) seem as if they might actually answer the puzzle posed by Homer’s polytropos and Odysseus’s complicated nature.

Complicated: the brilliance of Wilson’s choice is, in part, its seeming straightforwardness. But no less than that of polytropos, the etymology of “complicated” is revealing. From the Latin verb complicare, it means “to fold together.” No, we don’t think of that root when we call someone complicated, but it’s what we mean: that they’re compound, several things folded into one, difficult to unravel, pull apart, understand.

“It feels,” I told Wilson, “with your choice of ‘complicated,’ that you planted a flag.”

“It is a flag,” she said.

“It says, ‘Guess what?’ — ”

“ ‘ — this is different.’ ”

The First Woman to Translate the Odyssey Into English, Wyatt Mason

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i have a 1500 word essay due on friday & this is all i’ve done

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ancient greek word of the day: δακέθυμος (dakethumos), heart-eating, heart-vexing

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Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

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~Statue of Athene (“The Peiraeus Athena”). Medium: Bronze Date: 340—330 BCE. Athens, Archaeological Museum of Piraeus (Αθήνα, Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Πειραιά)

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I spent two years at a top university, was taught by some of the finest modern archaeologists, and THIS is my what I learned.