Meggie Macdonald

I recently went to see the new version of Clash of the Titans here in Canada, starring Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Mads Mikkelsen.  Through a very honest mistake, we ended up seeing the film without paying for tickets and, I can honestly say that the movie was worth every cent we paid for it.

If you want to watch for deep characterization, actors’ range, or a realistic plot, I suggest avoiding this film.  It almost virtually remakes the original 1981 version which, even when it came out nearly 30 years ago, was the kind of denigrating ’sword-and-sandal’ epic that makes everyone cringe.

However, I have to say that I sincerely enjoyed watching it (and not simply because Sam Worthington would be worth watching under any circumstances).  The film added a gritty element to what was previously terribly camp.  The ongoing jokes about Harry Hamlin’s hair in the 1981 version are a perfect example.  In the latest version, people get dirty, people die, and people get stuck in gigantic scorpions full of – naturally – green goo.  And it’s hysterical. 

This is one of those good bad movies that audiences will enjoy watching.  It’s fun, partly because the story itself is a bit of a romp, but also because the film tries to take itself seriously.  Ignore the drama, enjoy the game!

Charlotte Higgins includes her own joyous review on her blog with The Guardian here.

In a lovely little post on The Guardian blog On Culture, Charlotte Higgins relays her experiences as recipient of the 2010 Classical Association prize of 2010 for her contributions to public understanding of the classics.  In all honesty, I’ve not yet read either It’s All Greek To Me or Latin Love Lessons but, if reviews are anything to go by, both books present classics and classical culture in a way that encourages interest and pursuit.

Congratulations to Ms. Higgins.  I hope to follow her example and add something of my own to public consumption of Classical history.

I was recently contacted by an American student who is hoping to work on the Villa Della Vignacce site this summer in Rome with the American Institute for Roman Culture with questions about background reading that would help supplement the research that they would be undertaking in Italy.  I wish this student the best of luck in securing a position with AIRC and admit to being a little (but very happily) jealous of the opportunity.

Among the various questions I was asked, one stands out because it is a question that I never thought to ask when I was an undergraduate student myself and only recently became aware of.  There are important implications for historical study when the necessary primary sources are not only unavailable but, in all likelihood, no longer exist at all.

This student was looking for a primary source similar in scope and detail to Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars which ends with the death of the third Flavian emperor, Domitian in AD 98.  The most obvious extension of Suetonius’ work is of course the Historia Augusta that chronicles the reign of Hadrian beginning in AD 117 to Carinus in AD 284.  Written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine (Diocletian reigned from AD 284 until his abdication in AD 305; Constantine reigned from AD 306-337 and was sole emperor from AD 324 until his death), the authors of this document claim to be picking up precisely where Suetonius left off.  This of course suggests that the reigns of the Five Good Emperors and that of Trajan were once included in this compilation as well and have since disappeared.

More recently, scholars have disputed this claim, stating that there is nothing to suggest that the Historia Augusta ever contained the histories of emperors prior to Hadrian.  So where did we get the information on these emperors?  And what can be said about the information from the Historia Augusta on the emperors from Hadrian to Carinus?

At this stage, I will address the latter question.  The Historia Augusta is not a primary source for the second half of the second century AD.  It was written nearly one hundred years later by an author, or multiple authors (that debate still rages as well), who could not have seen the events they described unless they lived well into their hundreds (as unlikely 2,000 years ago as it is today).  Therefore it is a wonderful primary source for the fourth century AD but must be taken with grains of salt regarding the second.  It is also largely agreed that the information in the opening pages of the HA are much more reasonably objective than the grossly unsubstantiated details in the later chapters, where chronologies and events vary sometimes by decades.

In situations like this – and, in fact, it is good academic practice to take every primary source at less than face value – we can compare and contrast the primary sources that are available to paint a fuller picture of events at a given point in time.  What the HA cannot offer with reasonable accuracy, we can sometimes find in other sources, such as the letters of Simon bar Kochba written during the Second Jewish Rebellion in AD 132-136, the report on aqueducts written by Rome’s Water Commissioner, Sextus Julius Frontinus, in the first century AD, and even other historical treatises that may be Roman but do not represent eye-witness accounts or living testaments to the nature of the world in the second century AD.

One must look at historical evidence with the same discerning eye that a jury considers witness statements during a trial.  Are they trustworthy accounts?  Is there something about one account that makes more or less sense than another?  Are there details that do not quite fit that you feel would benefit from further study to confirm or deny?  Remember, what you might consider an outlandish description may in fact have more grounding in truth that you would expect.

Never assume, always corroborate.  Happy hunting!