The New Yorker: Russia's Museum Cats

These curators of St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum have the right idea. Perhaps this is the wishful thinking of a person without a pet, but I would love to work in an office full of cats...

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/russias-museum-cats

Much as dogs were humanity's first security system, cats were our original pest control. In an environment full of delicate artwork, where thousands of visitors circulate every day (including, I'm sure, many children), it makes sense that instead of rat poison and traps, the museum staff are resorting to this age-old solution to rodent problems. And, of course, they're providing a loving and safe home to a veritable squadron of cats, many of whom previously lived in less-than-healthful circumstances in the museum's heating system.

The article doesn't mention that these cats (their predecessors, really) were first brought to the museum, which was then a palace, by decree of the Russian empress Elizabeth. They were specially imported from Kazan, a city whose cats were reputed to be the best mousers in Russia. These cats lived in the palace for many years, until the feline population was virtually decimated during World War II. About twenty years ago, a program was begun to care for the animals, and in recent years, in addition to maintaining its existing cats, the museum has even begun to adopt cats in need of a home.

The museum director is noted to have said that "they are the spirit of the place. The museum’s genius loci.” It's a curious but apt comparison; genii loci were ancient Roman guardians of specific locations (usually homes), whose goodwill was usually secured through piety and sacrificial offerings. These cats seem to have become such a part of the fabric of the museum that without them, the Hermitage Museum would be a different, less feeling place. But as long as they continue to be loved by staff and visitors as they are, the cats appear quite content to stay in their unusual abode.

The Economist: Is the EU the Holy Roman Empire 2.0?

A thought-provoking historical perspective on the current economic and political situation in the EU:
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568659-old-empire-offers-surprising-lessons-european-union-today-european-disunion-done

Several such entities have been attempted in Europe through its long history, from the classical Roman Empire to today's European Union. Though the continent derives some unity from its vaunted Greco-Roman roots, it contains a great deal of diversity in terms of language, ethnicity, culture -- all the necessary components of national identity. There are, in fact, a number of key differences (some articulated in the above article, some not) between the current EU and comparable historical entities (interestingly, they all begin with 'c'). Here's my (history buff's) perspective (it's longer than usual, so I've put it under the cut):

NYTimes: Dragon Fruit has a Knack for Getting Noticed

The New York Times has discovered the dragon fruit: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/dining/dragon-fruit-has-a-knack-for-getting-noticed.html

I'm passably familiar with this odd-looking fruit; it's rather common in Chinese supermarkets when it's in season, and especially in China. It's interesting how America/Western Europe picks up products and practices from elsewhere in the world, and then all of a sudden, with a bit of marketing, they become the next big thing. Then again, that's been happening for hundreds of years (tea, anyone?).

I think it dates back to the Classical Roman idea of the exotic (it applies to most empires in human history -- Rome just happened to be one of the better-documented ones). The Romans often conquered because they were interested in the goods produced by far-flung lands -- silk from Asia, cotton from Egypt, horses from the Arabian Peninsula, &c. Trade quickly resulted in a demand for more specialized luxury products, such as spices and exotic pets, which were valuable for their scarcity, difficulty of transport, unfamiliarity, and distant origins -- sometimes more so for these incidental factors than for their inherent trade value.

Nowadays, there are all these health-, beauty-, and palate-related fads that claim to provide some benefit intrinsic to their provenances. Stripped down, they're much the same thing.

Today

is the 484th anniversary of the Sack of Rome. Since there have been multiple Sacks of Rome (makes Rome sound a bit like potatoes?), I'm referring to the one where Charles V's troops ran amok after the death of their commander Duke Charles and pillaged Rome. (Duke Charles III and Charles V were not the same person; Charles V was the Holy Roman Emperor and Charles III was the Duke of Bourbon.) His second-in-command (sort of) Philibert de Châlon, Prince of Orange, was a bit of a wet blanket, and nobody listened to him, so there was no one to prevent the troops from doing as they pleased. Not to mention that Charles V, while outwardly condemning the lawlessness of his men, actually stood to benefit greatly from the Sack of Rome, as it put Pope Clement VII under Hapsburg control -- so I would imagine that Charles V didn't do much in the way of preventing the Sack.

Edit: I realize, upon re-reading it a day later, that this post is rather incoherent. I blame lack of sleep...

NYTimes: The City

An ode to my hometown, or rather, an analysis of its continued prominence in the collective consciousness:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/opinion/08judt.html?src=me&ref=general

I've always known that I wanted to come back to New York -- that wherever I went, for school or work or pleasure, I would never find a place that quite compared. Where else would you find world-class museums, a fantastic theatre scene, an equally fantastic classical music scene, Broadway, and just about every major culture and language on earth (and some not-so-major ones too) -- not to mention that it's the hub of so many different industries, one of which is the publishing industry. It's a bittersweet fate, I must admit -- I have made some fast friends here at Stanford, and I'm not looking forward to the day I graduate and leave them all. (Most of them are computer scientists, and likely to remain in Silicon Valley.) And yet, it's a homecoming.

The magic of the City, methinks, is that it's secure in its brilliant, often-conflicting identity. New York has never sought to prove anything, never tried to claim any dubious superlatives, never really defined itself, or attempted to. The best analogy I can think of would be classical Rome -- the center of the world in its day, comfortable subsuming other cultures, or coexisting with them, or ignoring them, as was expedient. It required assimilation, but only to a point. So long as Roman subjects accepted its legal and political jurisdiction, so long as they also adopted aspects of Roman identity, they were allowed to retain their own languages, customs, and beliefs. They were, within a generation or two, accorded the rights of a citizen of Rome. Rome did not fear its immigrants, did not shun the unusual or the foreign, but kept them all until they became no longer quite so strange. And this is how Rome endured for centuries as the foremost city in the (known) world. And so, too, does New York.

Today

is the 1970th anniversary of the assassination of the Roman emperor Caligula, and the ascension of his uncle Claudius to his throne.

Caligula was insane. Actually, brutally insane. He made his horse consul (his motives are unfathomable, but presumably it was just because he could). He was fond of drunken orgies and senseless executions. He ruled ineffectively, squandering his treasury, and was indifferent to the starvation that resulted. It was a terrible time to be Roman.

Claudius (the one that features in Robert Graves's I, Claudius), succeeded him. He was physically infirm (this was probably how he survived Caligula's bloody reign -- he was consistently underestimated), but he was a capable and engaged administrator, well-versed in law and a prolific builder of public works. He was never completely secure on the throne (in comparison with other emperors), probably because of his manifest weakness, but was nonetheless successful in his reign.

The Original Snuggies

This is, of course, Raphael's "The School of Athens". I have a photograph of the original in its entirety in an earlier post. The speakers depicted are Plato and Aristotle, which makes it even better.

NYTimes: Pompeii -- Archaeologists' Dream, Conservationists' Failure

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:

This is scary. Really scary. For a historian and a (lapsed) Latin student, and an avid museum-goer, the idea of such artifacts, such a goldmine of Roman archaeology, being destroyed simply because of human incompetence and negligence, is a travesty:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/another-collapse-at-pompeii-renews-calls-for-better-care

I want to go to Pompeii sometime. I've never been, and I hope that by the time the opportunity arises, it won't be too late.

Pax Vobiscum

My roommate, Wendy, and I were discussing valedictions to formal letters, and I mentioned that I'm in the habit of signing off with "Pax vobiscum", or simply "Pax" (meaning "Peace be with you" and "Peace", respectively, in Latin). I thought that perhaps I should vary it a bit. With minimal Googling, I found the following site, which lists the translations for "peace" in practically every (written) language out there:

http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/pace/

I'm aware that "Pax vobiscum" is most often encountered within the Catholic Church, where it has the connotation of wishing God's grace and protection upon the recipient, a benediction, of sorts. It need not be imbued with any religious meaning, as the words themselves are purely secular. Latin in itself was not originally a religious language -- unlike, say, Hebrew.

Italy Travelogue, Part 3: Vatican City

If you're ever in Rome, the Vatican is definitely worth seeing. It'll take a day, at least, but do go. It's chock-full of centuries of artwork and architecture, and not all of it is Catholic; some of the most famous classical sculptures are there. The pièce de résistance, of course, is the Sistine Chapel; disappointingly, but understandably, we were not allowed to photograph it. We did take pictures of lots of other things...

The Vatican Museums are home to some of the greatest artistic treasures in the world. Exhibit A -- Here's the marble of Laocoön and sons being strangled by Athena's sea serpents, the one that Pliny the Elder wrote about (Yes, I took Latin in high school, why do you ask?), one of the most celebrated statues from antiquity:


The story goes, Laocoön was a Trojan priest of Poseidon, who was in Poseidon's bad books because he took a wife and sired children (this is relevant only because his terrible luck and grisly death is sometimes attributed to the god's displeasure). Anyhow, he was one of the few Trojans who suspected that the Trojan horse was a ruse, and proposed that they set it on fire. Athena summoned a pair of giant snakes to strangle him and his sons. The Trojans then assumed that the horse was sacred (and that anyone who dared to harm it would meet a similarly nasty end), and so they brought the horse into Troy. I'm not sure who had it worse, Laocoön or Cassandra.

We also saw Raphael's even more famous The School of Athens:


This is often considered to be not only Raphael's finest piece, but also the very spirit of the Renaissance in painted form. The term itself, "Renaissance", means "rebirth", and the great artists and thinkers of the Renaissance felt a deep intellectual kinship with their Greco-Roman peers. It is only fitting that the spirit of the era is captured as Greek institution.

I had fun squinting up at it and trying to identify all the people in the painting, but I didn't get very far. The two figures in the middle (under the central arch) are Plato and Aristotle, in the red and blue mantles, respectively. Plato is supposed to be modeled on Leonardo da Vinci (and with that beard, I can see the resemblance). Michelangelo is in the middle on the bottom step (purple shirt and red pants, with his elbow on a box, looking bored), as a Greek painter (what else) of some importance. Raphael painted himself in, too, though I didn't find him until we got home. He's in the upper right, where the bottom of the arch meets the top of the pillar, next to the old man in the green cloak (he's wearing red and purple, too).

Fast-forwarding several centuries in art history, we come to Canova's Perseus, who is depicted in the style of the classical hero (read: naked), holding up the head of his slain foe (Medusa). Here he is:


I thought he looked rather familiar, and that's because he is. Canova made another Perseus, which is almost identical, and that one resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I've seen it before.

Canova's Perseus is one of the few post-Renaissance marbles to be exhibited so prominently in the Vatican Museums, and rightly so. He sculpted Perseus in the tail end of the Baroque era, when everything was excessively embellished (to the point of seeming nauseatingly garish), and manages to capture the hero triumphant, simple and clothed in little besides his own achievement.

The Vatican Museums also house a collection of artifacts of non-European antiquity. They have an excellent Egyptian wing, and also one with Near Eastern art. My sister and I were much amused to find, in the Assyrian section, this piece:


It's Birdman! (My sister is a better bird(wo)man than I am, I know; I have a terrible poker face.)

It's one of many long-standing points of reference for us. She currently attends the same middle school I did, and one of our favorite teachers is the inimitable Ms. Springer, archaeologist and historian extraordinare, who taught us sixth grade history. (She did a wonderful job of it, too; I was immensely surprised to find, in my Ancient Empires course reader, a passage from "Wen-Amon Goes to Phoenicia", which we read in sixth grade.)

Birdman was one of the most memorable characters from our Assyria unit. I still remember taking a field trip to the Met to see him; I thought he was enormous, back then. I spotted him in the Vatican all these years later, and we couldn't resist.

Of course, no trip to the Vatican is complete without a visit to St. Peter's Basilica. The lines were not as terrible as we'd feared (thank goodness!), and the inside was every bit as spectacularly grand as we'd imagined. I made a beeline for Michelangelo's most famous Pietà:


You'll have to click on it to get a closer view, and even then, it's still quite small; I was pressed up against the plexiglas wall, but I was still about a dozen feet away from it. Apparently, some crazy person tried to attack it with a hammer, and ended up chipping off Mary's nose, and so they won't let anyone get anywhere near it anymore. (Something similar happened to the David (who lost a few toes), and so there's a plexiglas shield around him, too.)

One of the first things anyone notices about the work is that Mary looks incredibly young. There's some debate about why this is; we know that Michelangelo made her deliberately so. Some say that it's an indication of her purity and favor with God; others say that she's actually supposed to be a young mother, and that she's holding her baby and having a premonition of her son's fate.

On the subject of Pietàs, I edited the Florence part to include some pictures from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo that I oddly couldn't find the first time around, so scroll down if you're interested in one of Michelangelo's other Pietàs.

Well, that's Italy. It was a lot of fun (and a historian/erstwhile Latin student's dream). There was plenty we didn't get to see this time around, so I'd definitely want to go back sometime in the future!

Italy Travelogue, Part 2: Rome

Rome is big. Not quite as big as New York (what is?), but after Florence, Rome seemed huge. Of course, it was the place to be (in Europe, at least) for several centuries, way before any of the other major metropolises even existed. We procured four Roma Passes, which are designed for tourists and include discounts to major attractions (museum tickets are expensive!) and free public transit, valid for three consecutive days.

Four days in Rome was definitely not enough (especially since one of them was spent outside of Rome, technically, in the Vatican). Unlike Florence, which rose to prominence in the Middle Ages, Rome was the center of a vast empire in antiquity, and has several millennia of history on Florence. (Huzzah for Ancient Empires!)

The afternoon we get there, I drag them to see the Pantheon. (I'm a sucker for Greco-Roman mythology, but this one's really worth seeing.) It also houses the work of several Renaissance masters, as well as several of their graves, most notably that of Raphael. This is an interior view of its dome:


The Romans were really architectural geniuses, given their level of technology. It's incredible that the Pantheon survived several regime changes and wars. Of course, one of the reasons it wasn't quarried for marble or anything was that it was converted to a church in honor of the Virgin Mary and assorted Christian martyrs. It stands in stark contrast to many of the temples in the Roman Forum (dating from the days of the Republic) and the later Imperial fora; most of those now lie in ruins, much of their marble facing carted off to adorn other facades. Even so, the Roman Forum is well worth seeing. Here is a photograph of the Temple of Romulus:


This was one of the most intact of the temples in the Forum (and indeed, in all of Rome), mostly because it was converted to a church, that of the saints Cosmas and Damian, two Greek brothers, to stand in stark contrast to the Temple of Castor and Pollux, also in the Forum. This is, unfortunately, all that's left of the latter:


Freestanding monuments and buildings not constructed of marble were also generally in better repair; take, for instance, this photograph of the northwestern corner of the Forum:


In the middle of the picture is the Arch of Septimus Severus, commemorating the emperor's victories against the Parthians. He was a strong leader and a military man, which was good for Rome, given the corruption and political disunity of the preceding reigns. He also sponsored numerous public works, among which were several arches like this one.

The brownish building on the right (the one with three windows above its main entrance) is the Curia Julia, the Senate building built by (somewhat ironically) Julius Caesar. (He never saw it in its current form, as it was completed during the reign of Augustus.) The height of its ceiling is particularly impressive from the inside.

While I'm at it, here's another Augustan monument:


My sister and I are standing in front of the Ara Pacis (English: Altar of Peace). It was built by the Senate on the occasion of Augustus's subjugation of Gaul and Hispania, to celebrate the Pax Augusta, the peace that the emperor brought about by uniting various far-flung European peoples under imperial rule. My father, when I explained the altar's history, aptly remarked that Augustus was rather like the first Qin (秦) Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), who unified China. (Personally, I think Augustus was a lot friendlier. Also, Augustus's overall geopolitical achievement was probably somewhat less impressive, given that he was building upon Julius Caesar's successful military campaigns, whereas the Qin Emperor had to conquer the other six Chinese states, which were more or less equal in power to his at the start of his campaigns. Not to say that Augustus wasn't awesome, because he was.)

We also spent an afternoon at the Capitoline Museum, where there is a great glass-roofed hall housing some remarkable and historic bronzes. This one is the very famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only such statue of a pre-Christian emperor still in existence. It survived the Christian fanaticism of the Middle Ages mainly because it was thought to depict the Christian Constantine; this sort of imperial statue was quite common in the Roman Empire, but all the others were melted down.


It's greenish because it used to be prominently displayed on a pedestal outdoors, but then people moved it inside and put up a replica instead, because of precipitation damage.

This one, from the same hall, is the equally well-known bronze of the Capitoline Wolf, with Romulus and Remus as suckling infants:


Its origins are still uncertain, with some art historians contending that the wolf was first cast in the Etruscan era and others (a minority) arguing that it was made in the 13th century (both parties agree that the twins were a later addition). Either way, it's an iconic sculpture in the modern consciousness, where Rome is concerned.

This is getting ridiculously long. I'll write a third post on the Vatican, and lump in the Renaissance stuff with it. Stay tuned for travelogue part 3!

Blog Hiatus

My family and I are going to Italy for about ten days, leaving tomorrow, so the Miscellany is temporarily going dark. We'll be back towards the end of next week. The itinerary includes Rome and Florence, with a tentative day-trip to Siena. I'll post pictures and/or a travelogue when we return.

The earlier, very brief dearth of posts (last weekend) was due to my friend Lucas visiting New York, and because I got a new computer, which needed setting up and so forth. Here we are:


(That's me, Lucas, and Mycroft. (See, Brett, here's a picture of me!))

He's 13" (if it isn't evident from the picture), and he's named for Mycroft Holmes, of Whitehall and the Diogenes Club, the lesser-known but more important of the Holmes brothers. Sherlock Holmes was (and still is) one of my favorite action heroes from my childhood (yes, he's a mostly cerebral detective, but he's also well-versed in boxing, fencing, single-stick, and "Baritsu" (see "The Final Problem"), all of which qualify him as an action hero). I thought Mycroft's personality and function were more suited to that of a computer.

Anyhow, see you all in about two weeks!

BBC: Churchill's Butterfly Garden, 70 Years in the Making

This is a must-see, if you're ever in Britain (Kent, specifically):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11025174

From the picture accompanying this article, the estate looks beautiful. Butterfly conservation is increasingly important in industrialized nations, and such a conservatory (with such an illustrious patron) can only aid efforts therein.

It's interesting how famous (and infamous) leaders often had such incongruous hobbies; aside from Churchill, the Emperor Hirohito would have preferred to be a marine biologist rather than an emperor (and was especially saddened by his ejection from the Royal Society), Nero famously played the harp (fiddles weren't invented yet), Henry VIII was a composer of some talent, and Marcus Aurelius is better remembered for his philosophical writings than for his statecraft.

Obama plays basketball, I hear.

Today

is the feast day of St. Lawrence of Rome. He is one of my favorite saints (it's probably rather odd to have a favorite saint, but there you go), and like most saints, is best known for his rather grisly martyrdom, but he has probably the most interesting last words of any saint I know of. The story goes, he was sentenced to death by grilling, and as he was dying, he remarked to his tormentors, "Turn me over; I'm done on this side." Talk about gallows humor!

Today

is the 1931st deathday of the Emperor Vespasian, who was arguably one of the best emperors to ever rule the Roman Empire.

Vespasian ascended to the throne from relatively unimpressive roots; his was a family only promoted to the senatorial class after the fall of the Republic. Although he had been consul prior to becoming emperor, he is more known for his military exploits, having been involved in major campaigns in both Britannia and Judea (as the areas were called in those days). He came to power during the period of unrest known as the Year of the Four Emperors, of which he was the last surviving contender for the throne.

As an emperor, and as a man, Vespasian was known for his forceful personality, his generosity, and his support for arts and letters. He rebuilt Rome after the civil war, adding many new buildings and public spaces, including the Colosseum and the new Roman forum. He favored leniency in dealing with political opponents and took criticism well. All in all, he was a man I should have liked to know, and a fine father to his people, rather like Caesar Augustus.

The Classics Rock! (article)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/02/the_classics_rock

The classics do rock! I definitely get the sense that too many people automatically assume that Latin and Ancient Greek, being "dead languages", are automatically less valuable than say, modern Romance languages, or just modern languages in general. While I don't deny that modern languages are, on the whole, more practically applicable than purely written languages, this doesn't mean that the classical tongues are any less worth study. That's the equivalent of an assertion that pre-modern history is less valuable than recent history, because it was much further past. For all that has changed, human nature remains much as it was a millennium or two ago.

The Classics rock!

Times (UK): Hannibal’s Real Alpine Trunk Road to Rome is Revealed

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article7029508.ece

Punic Wars! Elephants! Hannibal!

That is all.