Mary Beard's Blog, page 74

Emperors' first speeches: Nero to Miliband

I'm sure you knew this post was coming. But any classicist reading Ed Miliband's first speech to conference will have instantly gone back to some good Roman precedents.

There was the new leader talking about his solid family life, not completely dishing his predecessors (he is partly dependent on them after all), but trying to put a bit of clear blue water between them and him: a new deal...new generation, who's in, who's out. (Here was the man who wrote the Labour manifesto, remember, now carefully rubbishing it!)

New Roman emperors were often in the same position, so not surprisingly they said much the same thing. That's what "succession" is all about -- a careful negotiation between past and present, to the advantage of the new order.

Anyway the first occasion that came to my mind was the succession speech of the emperor Nero (as reported by Tacitus, and one of my favourite passages in the whole of Latin literature --which I am sure I must have mentioned before).The young Nero, whose mother has wangled him onto the throne, at the expense of his (half) brother Britannicus, comes to the senate to give a rousing acceptance speech. Click here, the speech itself starts at Chapter 4.

What does he say? He had had a happy family life, and wasnt bringing any feelings of vengeance to his rule; family and state would be kept separate; he would clean up the corruption of the past and the financial peculation that had been going on. And indeed there was a honeymoon period -- for a short while. But there were worrying signs about quite how far Nero was likely to deliver in the long term.

For a start Mum used to listen in to senatorial up in the palace itself, hiding behind a curtain. So much for the separation of family and state. (Should we be watching out for old Mrs Miliband?)

As for the Miliband stress on being the child of immigrants, there's an even better Roman parallel -- in the emperor Claudius, Nero's predecessor.

In 48 AD Claudius is trying to persuade the senate to admit leading men of Gaul into their own number. Rome was an incorporative culture, welcoming immigrants, giving them citizenship ... but that doesnt mean they had no qualms about the process. Some senators were decidedly suspicuous about bringing the unwashed Gauls on board.

So what argument does Claudius use? The obvious one, according to Tacitus: he himself was the descendant of immigrants. Plus ça change...

 

 

 

Ed Miliband: the police caution

The husband and I were out at the Faculty this afternoon (preparing a party for returning alumni) when the result of the Labour leadership election was announced. I'm not sure how curious we really were to find out which Miliband had been elected -- and not sure what difference it would make anyway (I guess if I had still been a member of the Labour Party I would have thrown my vote away on Diane Abbott).But we turned on the BBC News on the computer in the office to see it anyway.

The...

Museum parties: balls, dances, conferences and the great and the good

I have been doing some work in the archives of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and particularly the nineteenth-century history of the place (on which more later). But a very quick trawl produces some eye-opening surprises.

I had always imagined that the idea of holding parties in museums was an invention of (well?) the 1970s. It was, I thought, a consequence of the underfunding of museums, with an added push from a Thatcherite business ethic. Indeed, when the Greeks objected in the 1990s to the...

Volcano! At Compton Verney

We had been meaning for ages to go and see the exhibition at Compton Verney on Volcanoes in art from Turner to Andy Warhol, but had been letting the time slip by (just like we didnt make it to see last year excellent show there on "The Artist's Studio"). The trouble is that it is two and a half hours drive from Cambridge each way, which makes it a bit of a long trip for a single day at a single exhibition.

But happily our friend from the Getty showed up in the UK wanting to see it, so we...

Digging for history: Newnham's excavations

Last year I reported on a lecture we had in college about Dorothy Garrod (first female professor of archaeology in Cambridge) excavating some Anglo Saxon skeletons in the college gardens in World War II. This year we have decided to re-excavate her excavation (on the site of the old air raid shelters near Peile Hall -- for those who know college), and to bring in school students to help in the dig. This is, actually, a big deal. In my day, if you were 17 there were plenty of excavations you...

Classics news: bad and good

This is a bit if a round up, of classical news and events, I am starting with the bad.

I am told of bad news from Scotland, where the Scottish Qualifications Authority looks as if it wants to axe  Classical Greek on the grounds of low uptake. You can access the arguments via a pdf link to the 'overview'  here. If you want to object, then you can email Michael Russell (Michael.Russell.msp@scottish.parliament.uk) or go the the Have Your Say section of the SQA website. Needless to say...

The politics of Britain's brainiest cemetery

I woke up this morning to a great item on the Today programme by my colleague Mark Goldie, about the cemetery 100 yards or so up the road from our house, "Ascension Burial Ground".

I first went there about 25 years ago, looking for the grave of James Frazer, on whom I was then working (with his fantastic, obsessive anal archive, compiled largely I suspect by Lady Frazer and now in the care of Trinity College -- on which more in a minute). And have wandered up every now and then ever...

Kicking the Tatler habit.

I don't have many secret vices. They are all pretty open. But I confess that -- unlikely as it may seem -- I do tend to buy a copy of Tatler, every now and then, to keep me going on the journey between Cambridge and London.

I'm not quite sure why. I'm really not much interested in which chinless wonder went to which party a couple of months ago...nor in the 100 most eligible heiresses. I think I like the glossy style (and indeed the glossy feel of the paper), the quality of the...

Does anyone here speak Dinka?

Our house is becoming a Babel of languages we don't understand . . . though I suppose "not understanding" is part of the definition of a Babel.

The husband and I don't do badly in the language department. We can read most major Western European languages and he can do Russian too ( and please don't ask me for a list of non major ones, but no certainly cant read Icelandic or Finnish).

And we can communicate in most of them, somewhere on the spectrum of competence between semi-fluent...

The (slightly boring) Blair interview

I was in the TLS office this afternoon, but rushed off smartish to catch the 5.45 and watch the Blair interview on telly at home. That's illogical I know -- as I could perfectly well have recorded it/watched it on iplayer or whatever -- but there is still something alluring in the idea of sitting at home and watching a television programme at the same time as millions of others, even if you are nowhere near them (it's a sort of 'virtual community').

Of course, I knew that it would feel like...