Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury 9781350075405, 9781350075429, 9781350075399

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
FIGURES
CONTRIBUTORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTE ON THE TEXT
CHAPTER 1 THE THRILL OF ANCIENT VIOLENCE: AN INTRODUCTION
Definition(s) of violence
Violence from a transcultural perspective
The spectacle of violence
Structure of the volume
PART I ANCIENT VIOLENCE IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY PAINTING
CHAPTER 2 ANCIENT WAR AND MODERN ART: SOME REMARKS ON HISTORICAL PAINTING FROM THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Some modern debates concerning the representation of war, violence and pain
War in Spanish historical painting during the nineteenth century
A new vision of the dark side of war and violence
Some brief final remarks: ethics instead of epic?
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 3 VIOLENCE TO VALOUR: VISUALIZING THAIS OF ATHENS
Introduction
All her fault: Thais, Persepolis and Alexander in Antiquity
From codex to canvas: Thais in the Renaissance and Baroque periods
Thais goes to England
Thais goes viral
Sua Thais cuique: conclusions
Acknowledgements
PART II EMBODYING ANCIENT AND MODERN VIOLENCE IN CINEMA AND IN THEATRE
CHAPTER 4 SCREENING THE FACE OF ROMAN BATTLE: VIOLENCE THROUGH THE EYES OF SOLDIERS IN FILM
Introduction
The face of battle: from Keegan to ancient Rome
Fictionalization of soldiers’ experience in battle: literature and cinema
The ‘battle piece’ in Roman epics before Gladiator
Screening the ‘face of Roman battle’ in the twenty-first century
Conclusions
Filmography
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 5 PERFORMING VIOLENCE AND WAR TRAUMA: AJAX ON THE SILVER SCREEN
The fear and the fury on screen
Performing madness
Performing suicide
Performing violence
Filmography
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 6 EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL VIOLENCE WITHIN THE MYTH OF IPHIGENIA: STAGING MYTH TODAY
Iphigenia’s myth – the index of violence
Iphigenia by Antonina Grzegorzewska – the page-and-stage incident14
Conclusion
CHAPTER 7 KSENI, THE FOREIGNER: A BRAZILIAN MEDEA IN ACTION
Introduction
Contexts: Brazilian Medeas and Oliveira’s operas
Kseni and the production of Oliveira
From Kseni to Medea
Global Medea in action and conclusion
Acknowledgements
PART III DANCING VIOLENCE ON THE BALLET STAGE
CHAPTER 8 CHOREOGRAPHIES OF VIOLENCE: SPARTACUS FROM THE SOVIET BALLET TO THE GLOBAL STAGE
Introduction
Spartacus: choreography and bodies through film
Spartacus in ballet
Leonid Yakobson: Pictures of Roman Life (1956–62)
Yuri Grigorovich: Spartacus (1968)
Carlos Acosta: the body of Spartacus
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 9 IOCASTE’S DAUGHTERS IN MODERNITY: ANITA BERBER AND VALESKA GERT
The presence of metaphysical death in (philosophical) life
The absence of physical death on the stage of classical theatre
Heidegger’s philosophy and the presence of death in life
Modernity and the presence of physical death in dance
The film Just for Fun
CHAPTER 10 DARK TERRITORIES OF THE SOUL: MARTHA GRAHAM’S CLYTEMNESTRA
PART IV VIOLENT ANTIQUITY IN VIDEO GAMES AND COMICS
CHAPTER 11 SI VIS LUDUM PARA BELLUM: VIOLENCE AND WAR AS THE PREDOMINANT LANGUAGE OF ANTIQUITY IN VIDEO GAMES
Introduction
The evolution of games: a history of violence?
Why violence?
A cultural and commercial phenomenon?
A matter of (cultural) historical distance?
CHAPTER 12 WAGING TOTAL WAR PLAYING ATTILA: A VIDEO GAME’S TAKE ON THE MIGRATION PERIOD
The scenario of TWA
The migration period in scholarship and popular culture
TWA’s Huns – masters of violence?
Hordes and the Hunnic nature
(New) violent gameplay features
Scorched Earth (campaign map)
Dynamic fires and civilians (battles)
Decimatio (campaign map)
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 13 SEXY GORY ROME: JUXTAPOSITIONS O FSEX AND VIOLENCE IN COMIC BOOK REPRESENTATIONS OF ANCIENT ROME
Rome: sex and violence
Comics ‘for adults’
The Golden Ass
Julius Caesar
Caligula
Messalina
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 14 ARCHIMEDES AND THE WAR IN ITOSHI IWĀKI’S EUREKA
Introduction
A new Archimedes from Japan
Archimedes at war: a brief history of a tradition
Conclusion
PART V MAKING RECEPTION: ANCIENT VIOLENCE AND LIVING HISTORY
CHAPTER 15 FROM ANCIENT VIOLENCE TO MODERN CELEBRATION: COMPLEX RECEPTIONS OF ANCIENT CONQUEST WARS IN LAS GUERRAS CÁNTABRAS FESTIVAL
A new way to approach the past: historical festivals
Historical festivals in Spain
Cantabria and Antiquity
Las Guerras Cántabras Festival: war as the main topic
Episodes and characters
Conclusions
CHAPTER 16 DRAWING RECEPTION
CHAPTER 17 RE-ENACTING SOLDIERS AND DRESSING ROMAN WOMEN: AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIELLE FIORE
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

ANCIENT VIOLENCE IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION

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Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts Series Editors: Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner

Other titles in this series Art Nouveau and the Classical Tradition, Richard Warren Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music, edited by K.F.B. Fletcher and Osman Umurhan Classical Antiquity in Video Games, edited by Christian Rollinger A Homeric Catalogue of Shapes, Charlayn von Solms Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World, edited by Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Anja Wieber Representations of Classical Greece in Theme Parks, Filippo Carlà-Uhink The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Rosario Rovira Guardiola

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ANCIENT VIOLENCE IN THE MODERN IMAGINATION THE FEAR AND THE FURY

Edited by Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello, Carla Scilabra & Contributors, 2020 Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series cover design: Clare Turner Logo design: Ainize González and Nacho García. Cover image: Detail from Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons), Vasily Kandinsky 1913. Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection, Art Institute Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Berti, Irene, editor. | Castello, Maria G., editor. | Scilabra, Carla, editor. Title: Ancient violence in the modern imagination : fear and the fury / Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello, Carla Scilabra. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Series: Imagines – Classical receptions in the visual performing arts | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The collected essays in this volume focus on the presentation, representation and interpretation of ancient violence – from war to slavery, rape and murder – in the modern visual and performing arts, with special attention to videogames and dance as well as the more usual media of film, literature and theatre. Violence, fury and the dread that they provoke are factors that appear frequently in the ancient sources. The dark side of antiquity, so distant from the ideal of purity and harmony that the classical heritage until recently usually called forth, has repeatedly struck the imagination of artists, writers and scholars across ages and cultures. A global assembly of contributors, from Europe to Brazil and from the US to New Zealand, consider historical and mythical violence in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and the 2010 TV series of the same name, in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, in the work of Lars von Trier, and in Soviet ballet and the choreography of Martha Graham and Anita Berber. Representations of Roman warfare appear in videogames such as Ryse: Son of Romeand Total War, as well as recent comics, and examples from both these media are analysed in the volume. Finally, interviews with two artists offer insight into the ways in which practitioners understand and engage with the complex reception of these themes”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020022274 (print) | LCCN 2020022275 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350075405 (hardback) | SBN 9781350195035 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350075399 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350075412 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Violence in art. | Violence in popular culture. | Civilization, Ancient, in art. | Civilization, Ancient, in popular culture. | Arts, Modern--Themes, motives. Classification: LCC NX650.V5 A53 2021 (print) | LCC NX650.V5 (ebook) | DDC 700/.4552—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022274 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022275 ISBN:

HB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3500-7540-5 978-1-3500-7539-9 978-1-3500-7541-2

Series: IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Note on the Text 1

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

vii viii xii xiii Irene Berti

1

Part I Ancient Violence in Modern and Contemporary Painting 2 3

Ancient War and Modern Art: Some Remarks on Historical Painting from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Antonio Duplá Ansuategui

15

Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais of Athens Alex McAuley

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Part II Embodying Ancient and Modern Violence in Cinema and in Theatre 4 5 6 7

Screening the Face of Roman Battle: Violence Through the Eyes of Soldiers in Film Oskar Aguado Cantabrana

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Performing Violence and War Trauma: Ajax on the Silver Screen Anastasia Bakogianni

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External and Internal Violence Within the Myth of Iphigenia: Staging Myth Today Małgorzata Budzowska

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Kseni, the Foreigner: A Brazilian Medea in Action de Miranda Nogueira Coelho

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Maria Cecília

Part III Dancing Violence on the Ballet Stage 8 9

Choreographies of Violence: Spartacus from the Soviet Ballet to the Global Stage Zoa Alonso Fernández

107

Iocaste’s Daughters in Modernity: Anita Berber and Valeska Gert Nicole Haitzinger

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10 Dark Territories of the Soul: Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra Ainize González García

137

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Contents

Part IV Violent Antiquity in Video Games and Comics 11 Si vis ludum para bellum: Violence and War as the Predominant Language of Antiquity in Video Games David Serrano Lozano

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12 Waging TOTAL WAR Playing ATTILA : A Video Game’s Take on the Migration Period Fabian Schulz

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13 Sexy Gory Rome: Juxtapositions of Sex and Violence in Comic Book Representations of Ancient Rome Luis Unceta Gómez

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14 Archimedes and the War in Itoshi Iwāki’s Eureka

187

Giuseppe Galeani

Part V Making Reception: Ancient Violence and Living History 15 From Ancient Violence to Modern Celebration: Complex Receptions of Ancient Conquest Wars in Las Guerras Cántabras Festival Jonatan Pérez Mostazo

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16 Drawing Reception

213

Maria G. Castello and Fabio Ruotolo

17 Re-enacting Soldiers and Dressing Roman Women: An Interview with Danielle Fiore Carla Scilabra and Danielle Fiore

219

Notes Bibliography Index

227 275 305

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FIGURES

2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 5.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 9.1 9.2 10.1 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 16.1

Ramón Martí i Alsina, Last Day of Numantia (1858) Peter Paul Rubens, The Consequences of War (1637–38) Cy Twombly, Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963) Ludovico Carracci, Alessandro e Taide (1611) Joshua Reynolds, Thais (1781) Red-figured calyx-krater – Ajax suicide Artemis (Magdalena Warzecha) and Agamemnon (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz) Achilles (Marcin Przybylski) and Iphigenia (Anna Gryszkówna) Medea / Chorus Leader (Ewa Konstancja Bułhak) and the Chorus Jocy de Oliveira My Fair Lady Kseni, the Foreigner: the burning dress Carlos Acosta in the role of Spartacus, Bolshoi Ballet (2007) Anita Berber in Kokain Figurine for Kokain, sketch by Harry Täuber Isamu Noguchi, stage set for Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra (1958) Milo Manara, La métamorphose de Lucius, 52 Milo Manara, La métamorphose de Lucius, 53 David Lapham and German Nobile, Caligula Jean-Yves Mitton, Messalina Las Guerras Cántabras festival poster (2018) Gigantic stele of Barros and modern Cantabrian labarus Corocotta before Augustus Caius Antistius Vetus leading Roman troops Fabio Ruotolo, Lo specchio del tempo [The Mirror of Time]

19 21 23 32 35 66 78 83 87 94 101 103 121 132 133 144 178 179 181 185 198 202 207 208 214

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CONTRIBUTORS

Irene Berti studied Classics in Rome, Athens and Heidelberg, where she received her PhD and where she was a faculty member until 2015, teaching Ancient History and Greek Epigraphy. She currently teaches at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Heidelberg. She is co-editor (with Filippo Carlá) of Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Visual and Performing Arts (2015, Proceedings of the Congress Imagines III , Mainz, 2012) and of Hellas on Screen (with Marta Garcia Morcillo, 2008). Since 2007 she has actively researched on reception of classical Antiquity, one of her main research fields. Antonio Duplá Ansuategui is Professor of Roman History at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain). His interests range from politics and violence in the Late Roman Republic to classical reception, particularly the relationship between classicism and fascism and also between historical painting and nation-building processes in Europe and America. He is currently leading an international research team on Antiquity, Nationalism and Complex Identities in Western Historiographies (eighteenth to twentieth centuries: https://aniho.hypotheses.org). Alex McAuley is Lecturer in Hellenistic History in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University in Wales. He has written widely on the royal ideology of the Hellenistic dynasties, as well as the political history of the Greek mainland in the Hellenistic period. He has also published several articles and contributions on the reception of Antiquity in contemporary film and television, with a particular focus on how the ‘War on Terror’ has impacted popular perceptions of Antiquity. Oskar Aguado Cantabrana got his PhD from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) in 2019. Currently, he is a member of the ANIHO-ANIWEH research project (https://aniho.hypotheses.org). His main field of research is the reception of ancient violence and wars in modern media. Among his papers are: ‘La disciplina en el ejército romano a través del cine: de las fuentes clásicas a la recepción actual’ (2015) and ‘La recepción de la guerra en la antigua Roma a través del cine: un estado de la cuestión’ (2019). Anastasia Bakogianni is Lecturer in Classical Studies at Massey University, New Zealand. Her research and publications focus on the reception of Greek tragedy on stage and screen. She is author of Electra Ancient & Modern: Aspects of the Tragic Heroine’s Reception (2011), editor of Dialogues with the Past: Classical Reception Theory and Practice (2013) and co-editor of War as Spectacle: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict (2015) and Locating Classical Receptions on Screen: Masks, Echoes, Shadows (2018).

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Contributors

Małgorzata Budzowska is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Drama and Theatre, Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz (Poland). She is an author of two books: Phaedra. Ethics of Emotions in Euripides, Seneca, and Racine (Peter Lang 2012) and Metamorphoses of Myth on Stage. Polish Theatre of Twenty First Century from Cultural Perspective (Łódź 2018; in Polish) concerning reception of ancient drama in literature and theatre, and co-editor of three volumes. Her main research interests include classical reception in theatre and the concept of the tragic and the political in contemporary Polish theatre. Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. She spent a year as a Visiting Researcher at Brown University (as part of her PhD in Classics at the Universidade de São Paulo on Euripides’ Helen), has a master’s in Philosophy and degrees in Philosophy and Mathematics. She was a Visiting Scholar at King’s College, Universidad de Cádiz and Poznań University. She has published on Greek tragedy, Gorgias, Plato and Classics in Cinema and is the editor of Retórica, Persuasão e Emoções (2018). She also co-edited Cinema: Lanterna Mágica da História e da Mitologia (2009), Ensaios sobre Literatura, Teatro e Cinema (2013), Mito em Movimento: Recepção da Cultura Greco-Romana no Cinema (forthcoming 2020). Zoa Alonso Fernández is Assistant Professor at the Department of Classical Philology of Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. She investigates the role of dance and movement in ancient Rome, paying especial attention to the implications of the dancing body in the constructions of gender, sex, class, and ethnicity. Her publications also include classical reception studies, where she explores the staging and re-articulation of ancient myth and history in the medium of dance. Nicole Haitzinger is Professor at the Department of Art History, Musicology and Dance Studies at the University of Salzburg. She conducted her doctoral studies at the Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies (TFM) at the University of Vienna. Since 2019 she has been part of the leading team of the FWF-funded project ‘Border Dancing Across Time’ (together with Sandra Chatterjee and Franz Anton Cramer). She published Versehen: Tanz in allen Medien (ed. with Helmut Ploebst, 2011), Resonanzen des Tragischen: Zwischen Ereignis und Affekt (2015) and Chor-Figuren: Transdisziplinäre Beiträge (ed. with Julia Bodenburg and Katharina Grabbe, 2016). Ainize González García works at the Exhibitions and Public Programmes Department of the Ethnological and World Cultures Museum (Barcelona, Spain). She received her PhD in Art History and Musicology from Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2012 (Doctoral Thesis Prize). Her research focuses on twentieth-century visual culture, with a special interest in comparative studies and methodologies. David Serrano Lozano is a PhD student at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. His research interests include Latin epigraphy and classical reception in contemporary popular culture. His publications on both areas include analysis on provincial construction and Roman epigraphy in north-western Spain, as well as classical ix

Contributors

reception in cinema and videogames. He is a member of the international independent project Fasti Congressuum for the diffusion of academic activities about Antiquity. Fabian Schulz is a Classicist and Ancient Historian educated in Berlin, Oxford and Paris. After working at the Free University of Berlin and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities he joined the University of Tübingen as a principal investigator. His research interests include historiography, politics and mentalities in ancient Greece and late Antiquity. He co-edited (with Kamil Cyprian Choda and Maurits Sterk de Leeuw) Gaining and Losing Imperial Favour in Late Antiquity: Representation and Reality (2019). Luis Unceta Gómez teaches Latin Philology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain). Along with Latin semantics and pragmatics, one of his main research interests is classical reception in contemporary popular culture, especially in science fiction, comic books and film. He is also interested in the impact of ancient Rome in modern sexualities, as it is portrayed in mass media. Giuseppe Galeani PhD in Greek and Latin poetry and culture in late Antiquity (University of Macerata), works as teacher of Italian and Latin in high schools and collaborates with the University of Pavia and the web magazine Fumettologica. In 2011 he wrote the graphic novel Maria Grazia Cutuli – Dove la terra brucia and in 2014 his commentary on Prudentius’ Peristephanon VII was released. His research interests concern late Antiquity Latin literature and classical reception in comics. Jonatan Pérez Mostazo got his PhD from the University of the Basque Country, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitate, in 2018, defending a thesis entitled ‘Cantabri aut Vascones: La repección de la Antigüedad en la cultura histórica vasca del siglo XIX’. His field of research encompasses the reception of local Cantabrian issues in the modern age. His papers include: ‘Ecos de Silio Itálico en el imaginario literario vasco’ (2017), and ‘Cantaber ante omnis. Silio Itálico en el discurso político y cultural vasco del siglo XIX’ (2017). Recently he co-edited (with Antonio Duplá Ansuategui and Eleonora Dell’ Elicine) Antigüedad clásica y nociones modernas en el Viejo y el Nuevo Mundo (2018). Maria G. Castello obtained her PhD in Ancient History at the University of Turin. In 2012 she published Le segrete stanze del potere: I comites consistoriani e l’imperatore tardoantico. Since 2012 she has been researcher at Università degli Studi Torino, Dipartimento di Studi Storici. Her main fields of research are the evolution of Roman institutions and magistracies, the religion and the impact of religious creeds over the late Roman political history, and Roman law. She has written on the reception of the ancient world in comics and in anime. She organized the Fifth International Imagines Conference (Turin, September 2016). She is co-editor (with Eleonora Belligni) of La fabbrica della storia: Fonti della Storia e cultura di massa (2016) concerning the reception of ancient and modern world in modern mass media. Fabio Ruotolo is an Italian cartoonist and graphic artist with a classical background. He studied Archaeology at the University of Turin. He is the author of a number of illustrated children’s books, including Jack e il fagiolo magico and the graphic novel Petipó (2017). x

Contributors

Since 2009, Fabio Ruotolo has also taught at the Scuola Internazionale di Comics, Academy of Visual Arts and New Media in Turin. He also designed the poster for the Fifth Imagines Conference ‘The Fear and the Fury: Ancient Violence in Modern Imagination’, held in Torino in 2016: http://www.imagines-project.org/torino-2016/. Carla Scilabra is a classical archaeologist. Her PhD thesis (University of Turin in 2013) concerned the identity of pre-adult individuals in ancient Greece. She mainly specializes in the Archaeology of Identity and has cooperated in several excavations by the University of Turin in Magna Graecia, Etruria and Piedmont. Since 2011 she has researched reception, especially the diffusion and representation of themes coming from the Graeco-Roman heritage within the Japanese comics and animation industry. Recent works include Mary Renault: la trilogia di Alessandro (2017), ‘When Apollo Tasted Sushi for the First Time: Early Examples of the Reception of Classics in Japanese Comics’ in Antiquipop: La référence à l’Antiquité dans la culture populaire contemporaine (2018), and ‘Back to the Future: Reviving Classical Figures in Japanese Comics’ in Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia (2019). Danielle Fiore is an Italian fashion designer and historical model, who specializes in creating costumes for the re-enactment of historical events and costume celebrations. She has long experience with re-enactments, starting with the Middle Ages before discovering her passion for ancient Rome. In her atelier, Il Fiore Nero, she produces and sells dresses to other re-enactors. Using photography and sewing, she attempts to revive history.

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume would not have been possible without the contribution and the financial support of a number of institutions, colleagues and friends. The conference in Turin, which gave life to this book, was organized by the Imagines group (http://www.imaginesproject.org/) in cooperation with the Dipartimento di Studi Storici of the University of Turin and was funded by the Università di Torino and by the Dipartimento di Studi Storici. We are especially grateful to Sergio Roda, who encouraged us to hold the conference in Turin and supported the organization in many different ways. We would like to thank the editors of the Imagines series for agreeing to publish this volume and Lily Mac Mahon from Bloomsbury Academic for her valuable advice and help. Many thanks are due to the anonymous readers, whose suggestions and critique helped substantially to improve this collection. We would also like to thank all the museums, institutions and individuals who kindly granted us permission to reproduce the images in this volume. Special thanks go to Andy Redwood and Yuddi Gershon who helped with the proofreading of the English language; funding for the proofreading was generously provided by Maria G. Castello from the Dipartimento di Studi Storici of the Università degli Studi di Torino. Last but not least we would like to thank all the participants to the conference, whose lively discussions contributed to shape the content of this collection. Irene Berti Maria G. Castello Carla Scilabra Turin, 31 August 2019

xii

NOTE ON THE TEXT

References to classical works in the notes are abbreviated in accordance with The Oxford Classical Dictionary, available at: https://oxfordre.com/classics/page/855#s.

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CHAPTER 1 THE THRILL OF ANCIENT VIOLENCE: AN INTRODUCTION Irene Berti

In the trilogy The Hunger Games, the children from the twelve poor districts of a dystopian country called Panem are forced to take part in a deadly gladiator game, eliminating one another until only one survives, while the richest part of the population, the citizens of the Capitol, watch the spectacle on TV. Watching the film series The Hunger Games is thus a form of double voyeurism, as the public not only watches violence, but also both witnesses and participates in the more subtle violence of enjoying watching violence. So, why do we watch?1 As noted by Anne Rothe, who quotes Martha Woodmansee’s description of Romantic readers devouring gothic novels one after the other in Germany around 1790, the consumption of violence in media is not a contemporary invention, nor is it particularly connected to one specific medium.2 In the fifth century bc , Sophocles already recognized that violence both fascinates and repels, intrigues and arouses:3 centuries later, Augustine tells the story of his friend Alypius who, during a visit to Rome from his native North Africa, was reluctantly taken to watch a spectacle in the Colosseum. Unable to decline the invitation although he disapproved of such forms of entertainment, he at first kept his eyes firmly shut. But the roars of the crowd aroused his curiosity and as soon as he watched, he was captivated: For as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in its savagery and did not turn away but fixed his gaze on it. Unaware of what he was doing, he devoured the violence and was delighted by the wicked contest and inebriated by its cruel pleasure . . . In brief, he watched, he shouted, he was fired up and he took away with him the madness that would drive him to return again4 Violent spectacles, especially when set within an exotic frame, appear to be both fascinating and irresistible. This attraction has been a constant throughout history: Romans watched the gladiator games with incredible passion; public executions were a beloved spectacle in England until the middle of the nineteenth century; and bloody spectacles of dog-, cock- and rat-fighting, as well as wrestling, boxing and other combat sports were (and to varying degrees still are) very popular at any given time or place.5 The voyeuristic fascination with the display of pain, as well as with its sensationalism, could be equated to displays of nudity or sexuality; as has been noted by Susan Sontag, for centuries Christian art satisfied these urges with its depictions of hell and martyrdom.6 But if the presence and even the enjoyment of violence seem to be a constant in history, 1

Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination

the understanding of violence itself (and the spectacle of it) has shifted forms throughout the centuries: while Romantic readers were content with titillating fiction which alluded to violence without revealing too much, today’s audiences appear to be particularly greedy for the gory details.7 Moreover, violence itself, although an intrinsic element of every known human society, is culturally defined. Contextual factors always shape the meaning and significance of violence in the imagination of contemporaries, implying that both the manifestations of and discourses on violence are highly differentiated across time and space; what some call violence may be called ritual or sport by others. In a different cultural context, a human sacrifice would surely be condemned as a brutal murder; even the killing of animals, which went almost entirely unquestioned in Antiquity, is nowadays the subject of considerable debate.8 In the same way, the corporal punishment of undisciplined children was until very recently not considered to be violent behaviour at all but, rather, a legitimate means of education, while today most Western countries have adopted extremely severe laws to protect minors. Personal experience also shapes discourses on violence: how people conceive of and give meaning to violence depends on the perspective of those involved: the offenders, victims, spectators, witnesses or authorities.9 As Anastasia Bakogianni has demonstrated, for example, a fundamental difference between modern and ancient discourse on war is the fact that, while the majority of Western audiences have no direct experience of war, the audiences of the ancient Greek poleis were much more likely to have been involved in a conflict, or to have suffered the effects of one.10 Both our responses to the spectacle of war – and theirs – are shaped by this difference.

Definition(s) of violence In Antiquity, violence was often legally defined with respect to the political and social status of the subjects involved, as well as circumstantial considerations. In classical Athens, for instance, only socially relevant violence was made public. Aggressive behaviour against inferiors, by contrast, was considered to be normal: it offended no one’s sensibilities and was not necessarily registered as violence.11 Needless to say, our modern, Western understanding is very different. The increasing awareness of violence has changed our perceptions of it, as well as its social role. We are much more aware of aggressive behaviour than our grandparents were, and because we are more sensitive to it, we tend to classify as violent behavioural patterns which were not classified as such in Antiquity. The highly heterogeneous nature of violence is precisely what makes the phenomenon so elusive: without referring to a specific cultural context, it is hard to define what violence is.12 Since various disciplines in the field of humanities (as well as that of the natural sciences) have focused on this phenomenon, there are also a multitude of divergent definitions of violence.13 Modern social psychology defines violence in general terms as an alteration of the natural course of events which has destruction and/ or sufferance as a consequence, and more specifically as a form of aggression that is 2

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

usually connected to physical means of coercion.14 Sociologists describe violence through its relation to power as a social force capable of structuring reality. The body is the focus of this sociological analysis, in its double capacity of offending and suffering; violence is thus defined as the physical act through which a human being damages another human being by means of force. The sociology of violence, meanwhile, focuses on the interaction, in a situation of violence, between offenders and victims:15 violent relationships are one-sided social interrelations based on force, rather than mutuality.16 Generally speaking, violence could be defined as an action (usually intentional) that is intended to damage someone or something. Although the term ‘violence’ usually implies the use of physical force, there are many possible ways of ‘damaging’: physical aggression – implying blood, killing, torture, violation and constriction of the body – as well as the destruction or subtraction of material properties, are only some of the more ‘spectacular’ forms of violence.17 The anthropologist David Riches notes that ‘in everyday usage, the perpetrators of harm rarely speak of “violence”: it is rather a term enunciated by victims and witnesses’.18 It is thus clear that the term has strong pejorative connotations, conveying the unacceptability and illegitimacy of harmful behaviour. Trying to identify what social behaviour counts as violent, Riches proposes that the term ‘violence’ refers, in its primary sense, to ‘matters of contested physical hurt’,19 usually with the purpose of humiliation of other humans, often intended to gain dominance over others.20 From this somewhat minimalistic definition of violence, this volume wishes to begin.

Violence from a transcultural perspective While we tend to stigmatize and expel violence from our societies and condemn any manifestation of it (while still enjoying watching it!), violence was (to a certain point) inherent  – although not always consciously so  – to ancient societies, which allowed many forms of aggression to be tolerated and even positively accepted.21 The GreekRoman world was a violent one, as not only the literary sources concerned with political history and war chronicles show. Everyday life was also full of physical and psychological coercion, as papyri, defixiones and occasionally funerary epigrams testify.22 Violence between genders, as well as oppressive and threatening behaviour against the weakest members of society appear to have been a common experience, one that was often thematized in ancient literary sources. The fear of pirates, assassins or bandits was often the subject of comedies and novels.23 Rape, murder and theft were punishable by law, but still frequently occurred. Corporal punishment and torture, though usually not permitted against citizens, were normally used on slaves and foreigners; the enactment of the death penalty through extremely violent methods like crucifixion, beheading, apotympanismos (a capital punishment similar to crucifixion) and katakremnismos (throwing the victim from a rock) were relatively frequent, publicly performed and considered to work well as a deterrent.24 Ancient iconographies reflect this violent world and often depict extremely crude scenes, taken both from mythology and (less frequently) from reality: images of legendary wars against both human and superhuman enemies decorated temples and 3

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vases, while warriors and violence against animals (in the form of sacrifice or hunting) were ubiquitously celebrated.25 Notwithstanding the fact that aggressive behaviour was omnipresent in ancient societies, reflections on violence itself do not seem to have concerned ancient minds a great deal. Ancient languages usually lack a single word to express all the meanings we give to the term. Our concept of violence includes a range of contests that are described by the Latin expressions imperium, potestas, potentia, vis and violentia; in Greek literature, the term hybris perhaps comes closest to expressing the modern concept of the use of illegitimate force, although hybris has a much broader semantic spectrum, and includes offences that are not necessarily violent. Many other Greek words (like bia or kratos) imply manifestations of what we would call violence, although they never entirely overlap with our concept.26 How can we discuss violence from a transcultural perspective? In order to avoid a simplistic phenomenological approach, we propose to compare ‘complex entities’  – not violence itself (whatever violence may be!), but the various different concepts of violence, which are found within the frame of what is considered acceptable by any given society.27 Moreover, the fear and the fury connected with and provoked by the expression of violence are emotions. As Angelos Chaniotis has demonstrated, emotions play a fundamental role in history, and even if they are lost forever, they are nonetheless reconstructable because they leave traces, as with any human behaviour they inspire. As far as we know, the basic emotions known to us (fear, anger, love and disgust, to mention but a few) were also known in Antiquity. However, the ways in which emotions are controlled or expressed, repressed or valued, described or depicted, depends on cultural factors like morals, religion, education, social and legal norms.28 If, as I am firmly convinced is the case, the past is a foreign country, then the ‘parameters’ one should use to measure ancient emotions must be different from ours: we will never be able to truly know what ancient people ‘felt’. Nevertheless, we can reconstruct the parameters that determined when and how emotions were manifested, and we can certainly study the external stimuli that provoked them.29 Although human behaviour is culturally determined and manifests itself in different ways according to different cultures, there are nonetheless some commonalities, certain ‘patterns of behaviour’ that are similar in different contexts, because they are human.30 Scholars such as Garrett Fagan have applied the categories of social psychology to the study of history with some success, gaining new insights into the subject of Roman gladiator games. Gladiators fighting in the arena were admired for displaying Roman virtues, but they were also condemned as infames. Their bodies, publicly displayed for profit, were deprived of their humanity and became objects and sources of enjoyment and distress.31 Without denying the importance of a constructivist approach, and by using the Affective Disposition Theory to interpret what we know from the ancient sources about spectatorship at the gladiator fights, Fagan concluded that spectators  – without fully identifying with the fighters  – felt emotionally connected to them (‘parasocial relations’) and enjoyed a favoured fighter’s success (positive affective disposition), or 4

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

responded with enthusiasm to the violence enacted against one they disliked.32 These affective dispositions were fluid and could change during the course of the combat: the crowd’s reactions to the spectacle of the arena were widely diversified, making participation in the show a very dynamic and emotionally satisfying experience.33

The spectacle of violence In her analysis of suffering as spectacle, Susan Sontag argued that the voyeuristic lure of seeing the pain of others is partly based on the spectator’s comforting knowledge that what they see is happening to somebody else.34 But while observing violence from a safe place through the media is a necessary condition to experience this thrill, it is not sufficient to explain the attraction to violence in the media. Many other factors can come into play, depending on the situation and the spectatorship. Besides watching to evade boredom and their everyday routine, spectators enjoy violence in a multitude of ways: for moral reasons (especially when Good triumphs over Evil); to experience the pleasure of the forbidden and of rebellion; because they are in search of strong emotions (to feel the pathos and the suspense, as well as the relief or consolation when the tension is released and the adventure has a positive ending); or for the pleasure of cheering the beloved party in a conflicting situation (for instance in violent sporting competitions).35 Different responses to violence are also to be expected in different situations: the thrill experienced watching violence in a group can thus be entirely different from the feelings one has while watching alone; the sociocultural contexts (class, education, religion) as well as the reference values of the spectators also contribute to different expectations and responses. (Moral) reactions to violence also vary according to how violence is presented – as being ‘justified’ by revenge, self-defence, a reaction to external aggression, protection or rebellion of the weakest against the strongest . . . or the ‘unjustified’ rage found in criminal actions or madness. Furthermore, viewers may watch violent content in the media because they are attracted to the originality of the plot, the characters, the exotic situation, or unconventional moral values: in this case, the attraction to violence itself is a ‘secondary reason’ for consuming violent content.36 Ultimately, the question of why we enjoy watching violence cannot be answered comprehensively. The increasing intensification of the violence on display in modern media is certainly a general phenomenon, but depictions of the ancient world appear to be particularly affected by this. Moreover, a disturbing trend can be observed especially in video games and movies: a certain tendency to project any kind of increasingly graphic brutality onto Antiquity, creating a sort of ‘dark Antiquity’ which, in its hyperrealistic and omnipresent perversion, is as unbelievable as the idealized Antiquity of Classicism.37 It seems that Antiquity has become a ‘free space’ in which to display the most lurid modern fantasies, especially when violent sex is concerned, as Unceta Gómez demonstrates in Chapter 13 of this volume.38 This phenomenon of distancing violence is not new, and was also recognized in ancient societies: the Attic tragedy, for instance, habitually contextualized violence and sociopolitical crises in the distant mythical past, using the same strategies 5

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as modern media to create a distance between the public and the presentation of violence, thus gaining a certain degree of freedom to discuss disturbing subjects.39 A paradigmatic case is that of racial violence, which was almost non-existent in the ancient world but is an important factor shaping conflicts in modernity. Racism and racial issues are thus projected onto the ancient world (where ‘Otherness’ was not defined in terms of race), attributing a racial component to ancient slavery, for example, which is entirely modern (see de Miranda Nogueira Coelho, Chapter 7, and Alonso Fernández, Chapter 8, in this volume): in Antiquity, being a slave or a freeman was entirely independent of skin colour. Ancient societies had a different approach to violence: Greeks and Romans considered war to be an essential part of life. Aggression was not necessarily stigmatized; on the contrary, as long as it was directed against the right target, it was valorized.40 Setting violence in Antiquity can thus function as an excuse to present even the most brutal details in a more acceptable way, because violence loses its disquieting features if set in a world where we consider it to have been normal. The modern interest in ancient violence appears to be at least partially driven by a desire to legitimize contemporary violence. To conclude: which forms of behaviour are recognized as violence, and which go unnoticed because they are considered ‘normal’, depends on the context in which the violence occurs and in which the perpetrator and the victim live.41 Personal experience and collective normativity shape our approach to aggressive behaviour, establishing the frame of what is considered to be violence and what is not. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to suppose, as Fagan suggests, that there is at least an interdependence between the culturally contextual stimuli that influence behaviour, and our psychological propensities. Certain psychological processes and behavioural patterns can transcend time and space, even if they change in this process.42 The dialogue between ancient and modern perceptions of violence is the subject of this volume.

Structure of the volume Following a trend during the last few years of analysing reception within the frame of a single specific medium or genre,43 the chapters of this book are organized according to the media that they involve. This has allowed us to focus on the role of the chosen means of communication in generating reception, as well as to analyse the internal dynamics, underlining how various forms of receptions are both caused and structured by the media in question, the target audience and the history of the medium itself. This structure highlights the fact that, aside from the somewhat obvious tendency towards violent themes in video games, theatre and especially dance also thematize ancient violence surprisingly often. As is demonstrated by chapters from González García (Chapter 10) and Budzowska (Chapter 6) there is a kind of fascination with the dramatic reception of ancient myths towards subjects connected with physical and psychological coercion, rage, madness, revenge, war and assassination. This is occasionally also true for historical 6

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

themes, as Alonso Fernández demonstrates in Chapter 8. The influence of one medium on a different form of communication often produces interesting ‘cross-contaminations’ between these different media: for example, cinema is often inspired by paintings, while comics and video games develop subjects, motifs and plots that are in turn inspired by movies (and occasionally also by paintings). As demonstrated by McAuley (Chapter 3) for the case of the infamous literary figure of Thais – who became a heroine in visual media  – the stories and meanings can at times change entirely when transmigrating from one means of communication to another. Generally, video games – which focus on action and suspense – tend to exaggerate the violent features already present in cinematic reception. As Serrano Lozano argues in Chapter 11, video games set in the ancient world have been developed with consideration for an audience whose perception of Antiquity was already filled with violent content, an audience for whom the video games produced must be acceptable and understandable. While comics appear to offer more space for reflection and character development (see for instance the case of Archimedes in Galeani, Chapter 14), they can occasionally also become the perfect space for representations of the Roman Empire as a ‘pornotopia’, a place to vent otherwise forbidden fantasies of violent sexuality (see Unceta Gómez, Chapter 13). The volume is divided into five parts, each of which sheds light on a different communication medium. Many of the contributions could easily have been included in one of the other parts, as the aspects examined are often relevant to several topics, which clearly demonstrates how complex the mutual influence of media can be. In our view, for example, comics and video games are not only associated by the fact that they are both a relatively ‘new entry’ as a research object of reception studies, but also by the fact that they are both considered ‘popular media’ and share the same public, which is predominantly (but certainly not exclusively!) young and male. In a certain way they are both ‘pop products’ of a subculture, and although artistic tendencies are not absent from comics, both genres are closer to what archaeologists would call ‘material culture’ than to art. Nevertheless, a discussion of video games would have also fit well within the part on cinema, seeing as they are mostly developed from originally filmic versions (see Serrano Lozano, Chapter 11). The same is true for comics, whose visual imagery and plots are an important source of inspiration for the movie industry (famously Frank Miller’s 300 and the film of the same name). On the other side, historical painting also plays a major role in shaping reception across different media: famous paintings exert their influence not only on film and theatre, but also on the creation of the visual world of video games (see, for instance, Theodora in Civilization V, inspired by Benjamin-Constant’s famous painting); they even play a role in living history, inspiring roles, poses, costumes, masquerades and entire tableaux vivants. Given the importance of visual arts in shaping reception in different media, this book opens with two contributions dedicated to painting. Antonio Duplá Ansuategui’s ‘Ancient War and Modern Art: Some Remarks on Historical Painting from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ analyses the representation of ancient episodes of war in paintings from the last two centuries, as well as the changing nature of the message involved. In nineteenth-century Spain, historical 7

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paintings often featured two well-known ancient episodes of war, namely the destruction of Saguntum and Numantia. Here, the horror, cruelty and suffering of the population are described in great detail and usually exploited to reinforce Spanish national identity. Contemporary paintings from the United Kingdom, Germany or France show the same tendency towards dramatization and, like their Spanish equivalents, are clearly linked to nation-building processes. A century later, photography had replaced painting as the means of describing reality and war, which could be represented with a more detailed, immediate, close and apparently neutral eye than ever before. Artistic communication had changed, and with it the role of Antiquity in historical painting. Instead of realistic images of horror and brutality accompanied by heroism and sacrifice, fear and fury were now presented through a more conceptual language, as an appeal to denounce war, national myths and the manipulation of history. Alex McAuley’s ‘Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais of Athens’ focuses on the personal destiny of the Greek courtesan Thais, protagonist of one of the most famous acts of arson in Antiquity. McAuley argues that the infamous courtesan – who is alleged in the sources to have incited an extremely drunken Alexander into burning down the palace of Persepolis – has transformed over time in her reception from a villain into a vixen, thanks primarily to her evolving depiction in visual media. This profound change was neither instantaneous nor random, but rather came at the end of a long history of artistic reception from Antiquity through the Italian Renaissance and the English Romantic period into the twenty-first century. Within this passage, the moral judgement of the act itself also changed: the violence of the palace’s destruction became the valour of Thais’ empowered femininity. In the part dedicated to cinema and theatre, Oskar Aguado Cantabrana’s ‘Screening the Face of Roman Battle: Violence Through the Eyes of Soldiers in Film’ analyses certain new trends in the representation of ancient battles in cinematic productions during the last few decades. The author argues that since the release of Gladiator (2000), Ancient Roman epic films have portrayed battles following not only Hollywood’s aesthetic of hyperrealist violence, but also with an increasing focus on the soldier’s perspective. He proposes a comparative analysis between the imagery of battles in recent films and series such as Gladiator, HBO’s Rome (2005–06), Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011) and Spartacus: War of the Damned (2013), as well as other historical films produced in the same period, reconstructing the application of Keegan’s theory to cinema (The Face of the Battle, 1976), as well as those who have followed in his footsteps, including A. D. Lee (1990), Adrian Goldsworthy (1996) and Philip Sabin (2000). Turning from history to myth, Anastasia Bakogianni’s ‘Performing Violence and War Trauma: Ajax on the Silver Screen’ focuses on the reception of the ancient warrior Ajax in recent war movies, arguing that a number of indirect echoes of the ancient hero can be found in modern films that explore the effects of conflict on warriors, especially highly skilled and successful soldiers, as Ajax famously was. Many of Ajax’s symptoms – violent impulses, alienation, viewing the world as malevolent, and seeing no possible future  – would today be ascribed to PTSD. While Aguado Cantabrana looks at the portrayal of battlefield experience on screen, Bakogianni focuses on the experience of 8

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

returning soldiers and their difficulties in reintegrating into their families, using Ajax as an ancient lens that allows her to examine modern war films. Building on the comparison between modern warriors (as they are represented in movies) and the ancient tragic hero, the author problematizes ancient and modern views on the nature of heroism, as well as the kleos of war. Remaining in the realm of myth, Małgorzata Budzowska’s chapter, ‘External and Internal Violence Within the Myth of Iphigenia: Staging Myth Today’, deals with violence and gender in the myth of Iphigenia, focusing on the production of the Polish playwright and director Antonina Grzegorzewska (2008). The production extends the female/feminist plot, juxtaposing three mythical women  – Iphigenia, Clytemnestra and Medea  – to explore male aggression and subsequent female vengeance. Within the performance, the boundaries between male and female evildoers are blurred: images of the cruel goddess Artemis (who demands Iphigenia’s death) and a chorus of Muslim women (led by Medea and wearing burqas with explosive belts) are juxtaposed with scenes of male soldiers set in contemporary war camps in Iraq or Afghanistan, suggesting that murderous gestures belong to both men and women. Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho’s ‘Kseni, the Foreigner: A Brazilian Medea in Action’ analyses the complex reception of ancient tragedies that portray the myth of Medea in Spanish-speaking America and Brazil, where Euripides’ Medea has been taken up by many authors in the last few years. Generally ignored in European and North American scholarly publications, these works are nonetheless essential to understanding the metamorphosis of the tragic genre in Latin America from political, aesthetic, gendered and racial perspectives. The chapter discusses Jocy de Oliveira’s Kseni, the Foreigner, a contemporary opera whose focus is a defence of ‘the right to be different’. The feature that stands out most within Oliveira’s reception of the Greek myth, suggests the author, is her conscious and consistent political engagement, as can be seen from the initial words of the protagonist, which link Otherness with political exile, migration and nomadism. Opening the part dedicated to dance, Zoa Alonso Fernández’s ‘Choreographies of Violence: Spartacus from the Soviet Ballet to the Global Stage’ focuses on the reception of Spartacus in the Soviet and post-communist Russian ballet. Imagined as an example of an ‘ancient proletariat’, the gladiator’s rebellion against the oppressive Roman establishment in the first century bc was highly popular in the post-revolutionary years and quickly became a subject for ballet, an art form that is among the most important cultural achievements of the Soviet Union and their channels of propaganda. In 1956, the Ministry of Culture commissioned Leonid Jacobson to choreograph Khachaturian’s Spartacus for the Kirov Ballet. Since then, the Kirov and Bolshoi have restaged four different versions of the ballet with three choreographers and countless changes of scenery, including Yuri Grigorovich’s famous adaptation in 1968. Alonso Fernández examines how the various levels of violence are orchestrated within these choreographies of Spartacus, as well as how the bloody gladiatorial fight becomes a spectacle within the spectacle, concluding with the iconic performance of the Afro-Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta (2007). How does ballet represent and mould the bodies of gladiators and beaten 9

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slaves? How does body language relate to schemes of power and imperialism while conveying notions of debauchery and excess? Ancient and modern representations of violent death onstage are the subject of Nicole Haitzinger’s paper, ‘Iocaste’s Daughters in Modernity: Anita Berber and Valeska Gert’. The author analyses the act of dying in Anita Berber’s Cocain [Cocaine] (1922) and Valeska Gert’s Der Tod [Death] (1922), arguing that modernity reverses the ancient relationship between invisibility and visibility. In Greek tragedy, the act of dying is concealed and visibility is reserved for the corpse carried on stage; by contrast, contemporary dance presents extended acts of dying while the corpse becomes visible only for a moment. Ainize González García’s ‘Dark Territories of the Soul: Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra’ analyses Martha Graham’s four-act dance drama (1958) based on Aeschylus’ Oresteia, an interpretation of the famous passage of hatred and revenge from the doomed House of Atreus. Graham had already explored this subject in her Cave of the Heart (1946), where Medea, mad with hatred, devours her own entrails in a solo that is both tragic and frightening. Is the revenge of the Queen of Mycenae really the central theme of Graham’s Clytemnestra, or merely an excuse for something else? From what perspective is Clytemnestra ‘interpreted’ by Graham? In Graham’s Clytemnestra, the anguish, determination, violence and death are palpable, although in a manner that is more abstract than a mimetic representation, as is often portrayed on the Greek vases that inspired Isadora Duncan. The fourth part of the book is dedicated to video games and comics. As one of the most influential and popular forms of mass media during the twenty-first century, the influence of video games is essential to understanding contemporary popular culture in many aspects, including classical reception. In his paper ‘Si vis ludum para bellum: Violence and War as the Predominant Language of Antiquity in Video Games’, David Serrano Lozano argues that Antiquity in video games has been almost entirely dominated by a tendency – strongly indebted to cinema – towards displaying the ancient world as an environment based on violence, particularly on massive military conflicts or individual epic violence, such as gladiatorial-style fighting or principal characters with semi-godlike characteristics (Achilles, Kratos, Hercules). This tendency has helped to build a vision of Antiquity in which violence is not only the main component, but also virtually the only means of articulating an ancient context. In ‘Waging TOTAL WAR Playing ATTILA : A Video Game’s Take on the Migration Period’, Fabian Schulz analyses a strategy game released in 2015 that is set in the so-called Migration Period, which eventually brought an end to the western Roman Empire (ad 395–450). In the game, players control a certain tribe or group of people, classified as Eastern, Barbarian, Nomadic or Roman, leading them towards domination by managing cities and vanquishing their enemies in battle. The chapter focuses on the representation of violence, analysing how acts of conquest and destruction are translated into game mechanics and how the game stages the fear experienced by those who are subjugated. The new violent features of the game are intended to reflect its historical setting, while at the same time they attempt to relate to popular images, as well as to the scholarly consensus. Within this framework, the author considers how much freedom is given to the player to either adopt or refrain from a 10

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

violent style of play, and how these violent features of the game were received by the audience. Deeply indebted to the peplum genre of cinema, comic books set in ancient Rome have placed a strong emphasis on the explicitly sexual component of the narratives, taking the representation of Rome as an empire of violence and depravity to the extreme. In ‘Sexy Gory Rome: Juxtapositions of Sex and Violence in Comic Book Representations of Ancient Rome’, Luis Unceta Gómez argues that the pornographic comic, less stigmatized than its cinematic counterpart, enjoys the optimal conditions for representing the combination of violence and sexuality. The ‘distance’ offered by a Roman contextualization makes it more tolerable to contemplate the combination of these two basic human drives. In this context, Rome appears to take on the role of a ‘pornotopia’ par excellence, offering a cultured, educated alibi  – justified by historical accounts  – for explicitly presenting violent sexual practices. Finally, Giuseppe Galeani’s ‘Archimedes and the War in Itoshi Iwāki’s Eureka’ underlines the torment of the ancient inventor, who ends up repudiating his genial creations when they are used to cause suffering and destruction. In Eureka, Iwāki rereads the figure of the great Syracusan mathematician in a contemporary light (with clear references to the use of atom bombs during the Second World War), offering his readers a personal reflection on violence, cruelty and the folly of human beings at every point in history. In the last part, ‘Making Reception’, Jonatan Pérez Mostazo (‘From Ancient Violence to Modern Celebration: Complex Reception of Ancient Conquest Wars in Las Guerras Cántabras Festival’) focuses on a festival held in Los Corrales de Buelna (Cantabria, northern Spain) since the year 2000, which recalls the last episode of the Roman conquest of Hispania. Nowadays, the region of Cantabria is a ‘perfectly defined historical community’ according to its Statute of Autonomy promulgated in 1981, and resistance to Roman conquest is usually shown as the first appearance of a Cantabrian community in history. The festival is a playful event, which involves many local people and clubs in the celebration of an ancient historical episode that was presumably once performed by their own ancestors. The result is a complex combination of visual, scenic and aesthetic discourses. Contemporary pop culture, mass media and archaeology have their influence on the visual reconstruction of the Cantabrian Wars, but ancient literary texts remain an essential reference. Many episodes, characters and topics are directly related to ancient sources, but reformulated in a new and original way. Ancient violence, fear and fury are now cheerfully performed and celebrated in a popular visual discourse that appeals to a twenty-first-century audience. The last two chapters of the book are dedicated to the testimony of two practitioners, who themselves work with and create reception. As the protagonists of these chapters are not researchers themselves, their voices are heard through interviews, conducted by Carla Scilabra and Maria Goretti Castello. In ‘Drawing Reception’ the cartoonist Fabio Ruotolo explains what role the classics had in his formation, reflecting on the influence of classical imagery on the depiction of themes relating to violence and war. By means of examples taken from his graphic works, he illustrates the importance of stereotypes and the role of accurate historical reconstruction in the graphic arts. Finally, in ‘Re-enacting 11

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Soldiers and Dressing Roman Women: An Interview with Danielle Fiore’, Danielle Fiore, a creator of historical costumes, tells of her experience creating costumes of ancient Romans for historical re-enactments, as well as being a model and actress in modern performances of ancient battles. This collection of essays does not claim to be exhaustive: the case studies brought together in this book originate from a broad range of academic fields, spanning a wide chronological and methodological range, and pointing in many different directions. We hope that they have managed to give an impression of the complexity of the subject and that they will in turn stimulate new discussions.

12

PART I ANCIENT VIOLENCE IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY PAINTING

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CHAPTER 2 ANCIENT WAR AND MODERN ART: SOME REMARKS ON HISTORICAL PAINTING FROM THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES Antonio Duplá-Ansuategui

Some modern debates concerning the representation of war, violence and pain The ongoing debate over the motivations behind, and the functions of, representations of war  – considered as idealized expressions or, conversely, as historically accurate reflections  – constitutes a highly important subject which has received increasing attention during the last few decades. To find a historiographical turning point, we must likely return to 1976 and the publication of The Face of Battle by John Keegan. Keegan’s revision of the dominant academic interpretations represented a new trend in military history, shifting the focus from strategies, technical innovation and the commanders’ perspective to the behaviour and emotions felt by those directly exposed to combat, as well as the physical and psychological experiences they suffered.1 In more recent years, some of the newest approaches to the representation of war and violence are the analysis of war as spectacle, along with exploration of the role of senses and emotions in the experience of war and violence.2 In this context, Bakogianni talks of the ‘spectacle’ of war as a ‘multi-sensory event worth watching’.3 Both these references, which are representative of an ever-expanding bibliography, start from two pivotal considerations, which we see within Anastasia Bakogianni’s introduction. First, the omnipresence of war and violence throughout history and the simultaneous fascination and repulsion they evoke in human beings; second, following the brutality and the millions of deaths during the two World Wars, the shift in focus from the kleos (glory, prestige) of war to the suffering it causes.4 While also considering the omnipresence of war in the Western history of culture and art,5 our aim is nonetheless much more limited. With exactly the same premises as the aforementioned texts, this chapter aims to explore certain examples of the representation of war and violence, specifically within the area of historical paintings and related, to a certain extent, to the construction of national identities. After making a brief review of some earlier examples and debates, I will focus on two cases from the twentieth century – Anselm Kiefer and Cy Twombly – before closing the chapter with some brief considerations on the impact of the representation of war and violence and the ethical problems involved.

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Considering the ‘Fear and the Fury’ throughout history and the scope of this text, it is worth mentioning a famous painting from Antiquity, known to us through the suspected copy within a mosaic. The Alexander Mosaic, discovered in Pompeii during the nineteenth century and now exhibited in the Archaeological Museum in Naples, is presumed to be a copy of a painting that probably dates from the Hellenistic period, perhaps in the court of the Macedonian king during the fourth century bc . We mention it here merely as an example of a highly popular genre in Antiquity that is related to our topic but, unfortunately, almost unknown to us, aside from the opinions and descriptions given by authors such as Pliny the Elder and others.6 Our attention now shifts to our subject in modern times. One specific debate that is of interest to us when examining the representation of war and violence is that between idealization and historical accuracy. This debate arose again recently in 2011, when a new version of the iconic work Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze – painted in 1851 and admired by crowds in several cities across the United States before arriving in Washington DC and New York – was presented to the public. The new version by Mort Künstler, an American painter specializing in highly accurate reconstructions of American Civil War scenes, attempts to restore the historical accuracy which is supposedly lacking from Leutze’s version of the episode.7 We can presume that Washington was not in the heroic pose that Leutze gave him on the boat when crossing the river at night on Christmas Day, 1776; the flag – the famous Stars and Stripes – also did not exist at the time (it appeared a year later). However, in the words of Joseph Mankiewicz – speaking of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra entering the Roman forum through the arch of Constantine in his famous 1963 film – ‘Who would know?’8 Leutze’s painting, a patently romantic and idealized version of the event, was intended to awaken national pride and patriotism in the broader public: historical accuracy was not, at least not consciously, the painter’s main concern.9 As such, it can be considered a masterpiece, ascribed to the nationalistic historical paintings of the nineteenth century.10 The artist did a splendid job, especially when analysed within the parameters of his time and the historical and political contexts. Furthermore, while we now admire the painting in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, we cannot say whether Künstler’s new version will end up in the same institution. This recent debate evokes another of a more transcendental nature, which in the second half of the eighteenth century set the painters Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds in opposition to one another, the latter being Director of the Royal Academy at the time. The debate dealt with the portrayal of historical truth and whether it should be coupled with traditional idealization; that is to say, historical truth versus the grandeur of the design, the story. The origin of the debate was The Death of General Wolfe, painted by West in 1771 and strongly criticized by Reynolds and others for its excessive veracity (specifically the clothes of the dead general and the soldiers) and insufficient heroism.11 This contrast between realism and idealism can be illustrated by the opinion of the protagonists of this debate. First, West: ‘I consider myself as undertaking to tell this great event to the eye of the world; but if, instead of the facts of the transaction, I represent classical fictions, how shall I be understood by posterity?’12 Reynolds, in his Fourth 16

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Discourse delivered to the graduates of the Royal Academy in December 1771, then clearly alluded to West: But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain and keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in pursuing the grandeur of his design. [. . .] Alexander is said to have been of a low stature; a painter ought not so to represent him. Agesilaus was low, lame and of a mean appearance. None of these defects ought to appear in a piece of which he is the hero.13 For Reynolds, the masterpiece of the genre was The Death of Socrates by David (1787), who also gave us a superb idealization of war in his Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814). At last, an agreement was reached: West’s painting was bought by the Academy, he became its second director and the genre assumed both realistic and idealistic perspectives. Yet to some scholars, the Death of General Wolfe in fact represented a step backwards in the centrality of classical tradition as a reference in historical painting.14 From the same century, we know of another event in this debate concerning the representations of war, violence, pain and suffering: one which is directly linked with classical Antiquity and the reactions these can evoke from the public. This is the essay, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie [Laocoon. An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry], published in 1766 and openly oppositional to Winckelmann.15 Focusing on the well-known Hellenistic sculpture, Lessing analyses the representation of violence and pain and the self-restraint of the artist, who aims to provoke admiration and compassion rather than rejection. While Sophocles’ tragedies Philoctetes and Hercules, as well as the representation of Laocoon in Virgil’s Aeneid, offer expressions of anger, violent pain, crying and shouting, Lessing states that Laocoon shows a clear contrast – the open mouth clearly reflecting silent suffering, but without shouting  – again, moving towards admiration and compassion rather than disapproval and rejection. Furthermore, the reasons for the artist to refrain from showing signs of extreme pain in Laocoon are related to the specific rules of art, its limitations and claims at the time.16 In fact, Lessing concludes that the visual arts are more limited than literature when it comes to expressing emotions, as they can only reflect a specific moment. Similarly, following Lessing’s thoughts, we can say that poetry ‘seems better fitted [than sculpture and painting] for the communication of ethical concerns, precisely because it is set below beauty and need not respond to it as a matter of its formal constitution’.17 This contrast between realism and rationalism on the one hand and idealism on the other, can, to some extent, be dated back to Antiquity. Indeed, a number of modern scholars have pointed out the differences between the archaic Dying Warrior (in the east pediment of the temple of Aphaia at Aegina) with his apparent serenity and acceptance of his fate18 and the Dying Gaul two centuries later, where in contrast the realism is dominant and the warrior, a barbarian, appears reluctant to accept his fate, his death.19 This debate dates back to Aristotle (Poetics 1451b) and the superiority of poetry over history, of fiction over the actual events: ‘For this reason poetry is something more 17

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scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.’20 For Reynolds, as we have seen, poetry must be the main inspiration for painters, both in terms of ‘invention’ (the topic) and execution. In a historical novel, The Volcano Lover, published in 1992 and based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his wife and Lord Nelson in Naples at the end of the eighteenth century, Susan Sontag alludes to the limitations of historical painting at that time. Referring to her protagonists, she wonders: ‘What is a hero supposed to look like? Or a king? Or a beauty? Neither this hero, nor this king, nor this beauty have what Reynolds would regard as an appropriate appearance. [. . .] [We] are so remote from the time when painting was expected to represent an ideal appearance.’21

War in Spanish historical painting during the nineteenth century Continuing our journey through the representation of war and violence, we can now shift our attention to representations that evoke glorious episodes linked to national identities, by referring to some Spanish examples. In an earlier volume edited by the IMAGINES project, I mentioned how Carlos Reyero, one of the leading Spanish scholars of this genre, has claimed that the most important dimension of nineteenth-century history painting in Spain is probably the fact that it was a ‘mirror of national identity’.22 In a century that began with a cruel war against the Napoleonic troops on Spanish soil, the theme of fighting for independence against foreign invaders was central to the construction of a Spanish national identity. Consequently, various historical episodes related to war were an inspiration for painters, writers, poets and also musicians. Antiquity also offers some splendid examples, celebrated by the ancient authors themselves, of this vindication of independence and freedom, even to the point of sacrificing the lives of an entire community to preserve these sublime ideals. Two wellknown episodes were paradigmatic: that of Sagunt – the city conquered by Hannibal at the beginning of the Second Punic War towards the end of the third century bc  – and that of Numantia, the Celtiberian city destroyed by Scipio during the thirties of the second century bc .23 In both cases, ancient authors outlined the absolute annihilation of the cities and the death of entire populations after months of dramatic sieges. We know of several pictorial representations of these last days of Sagunt or Numantia, all of which follow the same patterns and serve the same purposes. Among others, we can mention Último día de Numancia [The Last Day of Numantia] by J.A. Ribera (1802), which remains in the formal neoclassical style; later, in a more romantic style, the work by Martí i Alsina (1858) is also noteworthy; there is also Último día de Sagunto [The Last Day of Sagunt] by Francisco Domingo Marqués (1869) and the sculpture Sagunto [Sagunt] by Augusto Querol. The most famous painting of them all, which was repeatedly reproduced in textbooks and encyclopaedias, is Último día de Numancia [The Last Day of Numantia] by Alejo Vera (1881).24 Most of these paintings have a somewhat ‘institutional’ character: Domingo Marqués presented his work to the 18

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local Government of Valencia as proof of his achievement while enjoying a public scholarship in Rome, while Martí i Alsina presented his work at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1858; Vera, who also painted his work in Rome, obtained a medal at the National Exhibition in 1881.25 All three of these pieces were purchased by public institutions and exhibited in public buildings. The principal means of interpreting these paintings are similar. Here, war is an excuse to highlight patriotism and nationalism, as well as to underline a specific element  – namely, consciousness of the urgency and significance of the struggle for freedom and independence – supposedly present in the Spanish national character from the earliest known times. While direct experiences of war very often tend to divide communities,26 these wars in quite distant times can serve to unify people. ‘Fear and Fury’ appear here as constitutive elements of these stages of war, reflecting suffering, destruction and poignancy, but also signifying heroism and pride. Within these paintings, heroism has a collective dimension  – the hero is not an individual, an outstanding general or a combatant, but rather the people. What is more, while we do see some men, it is mostly women, old people and children – the civilian population in modern terms. Regarding pain and suffering – and particularly fear – the painters spare no details in their romantic and pathetic interpretations, with a number of scenes recurring across the various artworks, including corpses on the floor, a mother killing her child, a citizen

Figure 2.1 Ramón Martí i Alsina, Last Day of Numantia (1858). © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado.

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drinking poison, and fire. The consternation we see in their faces is not trepidation in the face of death, but rather the fear experienced when upon encountering the imminent loss of their freedom. Meanwhile, the fury is the determination of resistance, to see the situation through to its dramatic end. This is evident in Martí i Alsina’s painting, depicting those who view the burnt city as symbolic of their unavoidable fate (Fig. 2.1). The pathos is present, although the viewer is invited not to reject war (a response later images would provoke), but rather to praise the heroism of the people of Sagunt and Numantia, while also proudly identifying with their glorious ancestors.27 The repetition of these scenes in textbooks, historiography, literature and visual arts confirms the connections between these historical examples and the collective imaginary throughout nineteenth-century Spain. This is an interesting point, because the protagonists represented in the paintings are in fact the victims: civilians who, as the innocent who suffer the consequences of war, became the authentic protagonists in a new narrative of war (albeit only within the twentieth century) following the Second World War and the Holocaust.

A new vision of the dark side of war and violence In sharp contrast to this heroic representation of war (framed within a process of ideological nation-building, as seen in the Spanish paintings from the nineteenth century), it is interesting to now turn to the opposing point of view, focusing our attention on certain artists who were radically positioned, one way or another, against war and violence. Although we have previously insisted on the importance of the two World Wars as the turning point in the modern denouncement of war, it is possible to find earlier precedents of this sort of critical attitude. To highlight just two examples of painters who fall within this category, we may briefly mention Peter Paul Rubens and Francisco de Goya. The atrocities of war, here presented through allegorical language directly related to classical Antiquity, are clearly depicted in Rubens’s The Consequences of War (1637–38) (Fig. 2.2), painted for Ferdinando II of Medici and currently on display within the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The atrocities of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) in central Europe, the difficulty of reaching peace and the suffering of the innocent all clearly motivated the painting. We know of the painter’s interpretation from a letter he wrote to a friend: ‘Fear and the Fury’ depicts a terrified mother and child, along with various symbols from more peaceful times (books, musical instruments and architectural devices) that are trampled and broken; Venus appears to be trying to stop Mars, who is followed by a trail of destruction spread by Famine, Pestilence and Fury. Before the open doors of the Janus temple stands a defeated Europe (dressed in black).28 Of course, one cannot speak of representations of war, its suffering and its victims, without at least briefly mentioning Goya and his dramatic series of etchings, Disasters of War (1810–20).29 The war represented here, the so-called Spanish War of Independence against the French invaders, was one of the first wars in modern times to directly afflict and involve the civil population in the combat, as opposed to the struggle between two (professional) armies. Once again, there was no longer a mythical, laudatory and heroic 20

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Figure 2.2 Peter Paul Rubens, The Consequences of War (1637–38). Public domain. narration of war, but a focus on the victims. Even in his ‘official’ paintings (The Charge of the Mamelukes, Third of May, 1808) Goya focused on the victims and strayed far from the glory and heroism traditionally associated with war.30 However, as previously mentioned, the first step towards a more sweeping rejection of war as a mechanism for conflict resolution between different states or peoples came with the Great War. In order to consider a variety of art genres, we may turn to the poems of Wilfred Owen, who died in the trenches: his famous The Old Lie denounced with tragic irony the phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori;31 we can also read narratives of war such as Captain Conan, by Roger Vercel (1934), later filmed by French director Bertrand Tavernier; additionally, we have the terrifying comics of Jacques Tardi, such as C’était la guerre des tranchées (1993), graphically illustrating the brutality of war in the trenches. Later, following the renewed horrors of the Second World War, war was definitively repudiated – at least theoretically, in political thought and in public opinion – and democracies were considered to be inherently pro-peace.32

Two examples from the twentieth century that relate to Antiquity In the twentieth century, we find two very interesting examples of critical representations of war and violence: a series of paintings by German artist Anselm Kiefer, Varus and Ways of Worldly Wisdom: Arminius’ Battle [Hermannsschlacht] and the series Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963) by American painter Cy Twombly. As might be expected, their approach is very different from that of previous centuries; war and violence is now conceptualized in a critical way and – particularly in the case of 21

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Kiefer – is used as a means of denouncing nationalism and the manipulation of history, as well as to consider national identity.33 The story of Arminius-Hermann is well-known: in ad 9 Arminius, chief of the Cherusci, commanded an alliance of German peoples who ambushed and annihilated three Roman legions led by the commander Quintilius Varus. Suetonius tells how Augustus desperately called for his legions that were lost in Germany (Aug. 23.2). Arminius-Hermann later became one of the most prominent German national heroes: subsequently, in the nineteenth century, the battle of Teutoburg gained traction as a symbol representing the German struggle for freedom. Teutoburg, transformed into a mythical space, was supposedly also the place where the Niebelungenlied occurred. We have a wide range of artistic conceptualizations of the reception of Arminius-Hermann, from the Hermannsdenkmal near Detmold in Germany, to Handel’s opera, as well as several historical novels, paintings, films and comics.34 In 1976, Kiefer painted Varus (1976, Endhoven), a view of a forest (Teutoburg) with the names of those whom he considered important within the theme of the battle and its utilization in Germany’s history and culture.35 In 1977, he published Hermannsschlacht [The Battle of Hermann] (a woodcut book of sixty-six pages) and he produced, from 1977 to at least 1993, several versions of a series of woodcuts entitled Wege der Weltweisheit:36 Hermannsschlacht [Ways of Worldly Wisdom: Arminius’ Battle].37 While in the first piece, Varus, we can only read certain names, later on we also see portraits of representatives from German culture and history. Apparently, Kiefer based his selection on history books, journals and encyclopaedias from the National Socialist era (for instance, Das deutsche Führergesicht [The German Leader’s Face], by Karl Richard Ganzer, published in 1935, with the subtitle 200 Bildnisse deutscher Kämpfer und Wegsucher aus zwei Jahrtausenden [200 Portraits of German Fighters and Trailblazers from Two Millennia]). Among the portraits we find writers (Kleist), philosophers (Kant), soldiers (Arminius, Bismarck) and national martyrs (Horst Wessel, murdered by a Communist militant in Berlin in 1930).38 The forest is represented by a number of trees that are surrounded by more than thirty figures, who are connected by branches and vines, with a ‘purifying’ fire in the centre of the scene, depicting a very claustrophobic space, as was described by Rosenthal.39 As has been noted recently, history, myth and literature (as manipulated and distorted by the Nazis, as well as perhaps by cultural and political elites from previous centuries) are here placed in a new, critical and contemporary context.40 Far from celebrating the glory of war and the pride of victory, Kiefer underlines the tragedy of war and the mythologization of victory. In some ways, we might say that he is playing, as a form of remembrance, with these prominent political and intellectual figures from German national culture and history in order to denounce the tragedies caused by Germany  – particularly by the National Socialists  – during the twentieth century. However, what should interest us more here is the general repudiation of war and its consequences. Kiefer is permanently and deeply involved in reflecting on the past and as such he can be considered a special historical painter, interested in keeping memories alive. He is 22

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particularly devoted to condemning Germany’s responsibility for the twentieth-century turmoil and to emphasizing its controversial historical nation-building practices. In this sense, ‘Kiefer offers art as a theoretical antidote for the terror of human history and the failure of mythic figures.’41 At the same time – and it is this point that is most interesting to us here – his work (and in particular the series of paintings and woodcuts mentioned previously) represents a direct appeal against violence and war, with explicit allusions to classical Antiquity, specifically focusing on the historical figures of Varus and Arminius/ Hermann. I would like to briefly analyse a second example of a characteristic twentieth-century new artistic approach to history, albeit in an entirely conceptual and abstract manner. This is the work Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963), by Cy Twombly (Fig. 2.3), exhibited for the first time in March 1964 at the art gallery Leo Castelli in New York and met with highly negative critical reviews.42 In 2007, it was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum and thereafter exhibited in Bilbao.43 The work consists of nine large canvases (204 × 134 cm each) to be viewed together in a specific order. Each one depicts a grey background and two big smudges of colour, and the story advances from a seemingly relaxed scene on the first canvas, resembling white clouds against the sky, towards gradually more expressive and violent colours. The series culminates in the last few canvases in an explosion of violence and chaos, paralleling the history of Commodus’ reign itself, which ended in his assassination following an outburst of megalomania, repression and executions. The artist was, apparently, inspired by a series of political murders, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. The series on Commodus closes a dark period in the life of Twombly, probably influenced by the political crises at the beginning of the 1960s. In our case, the reference is to the Roman emperor’s cruelty, madness and eventual assassination in ad 192. Conflict and tension dominate the nine paintings, which, as aforementioned, are to be regarded sequentially, from the quiet clouds in the first piece to the explosion of blood in the last.44 Playing with colours throughout the series, from the white and blue of the first painting (which features a grid to signify order and rationality) to the explosion of bloody red in the final pieces,

Figure 2.3 Cy Twombly, Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963). © Cy Twombly Foundation. 23

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Twombly presents the insane psychological evolution, along with the violent attitudes and initiatives, of the Roman emperor, whose tyrannical behaviour led to his own death. We know of Twombly’s long-standing fascination with ancient history and classical mythology and that he had read several classical authors.45 However, as has been rightly asked by Stefan Priwitzer, why did he choose the historical figure of Commodus? The emperor Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, was the ruler of the Roman Empire from ad 180 to 192. If we are to believe the ancient sources (namely Cassius Dio, Herodian and the Historia Augusta), he was the very opposite of his father, who was the ideal emperor-philosopher.46 We know from a letter to his gallerist from December 1963 that Twombly was even interested in acquiring a bust of the emperor: this bust would have been the inspiration for the series. Similarly, a hypothesis concerning the possible influence of the historian Edward Gibbon has also been advanced. Although specialists and critics do not agree on the interpretation of the series, nor the characterization of Commodus by the artist, nor even on the narration it presumably contains,47 it is interesting to explore the possible parallels with his other paintings, dated to around the same time, that depict the death of powerful men, such as Patroclus or the rivals in the civil wars of the Late Roman Republic, Pompey and Caesar. In the words of Cullinan, the ‘funereal atmosphere’ of the early 1960s was presumed to have inspired Twombly’s focus on death and violence.48 This would provide us with yet another work of art that encourages us to denounce abuses of power and simultaneously to reflect on the fragility of even the most tyrannical leader.

Some brief final remarks: ethics instead of epic? The debate over the effects of how war and violence are represented to audiences is one of the most intense and controversial today. War and violence could be considered objects of consumption and entertainment, as we find them in video games and in many films; they are an unavoidable feature of the global media, fundamental to its ability to connect with broader audiences. Images of war and violence are used as a tool for political propaganda, as can be seen with ISIS ; they can also be used as instruments to inspire ethical reflections on their content, as Susan Sontag reminds us in one of her most interesting books, Regarding the Pain of Others. War as spectacle, as sanctification, as adventure, as insanity; as a waste of time, resources and human lives. Indeed, these simultaneous readings and interpretations are all viable. While the vast majority of the population are exposed to all of these representations, it is, at first glance, hard to imagine that the public who enjoy ultraviolent video games, the television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand or the film 300 would also appreciate the paintings of Kiefer or Twombly. Perhaps an investigation into this question would yield some interesting results, especially across generations. Regarding the representation of war and violence, we are, in fact, now witnessing dualistic imagery: on the one hand, there is the hyperrealism of video games and films 24

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and our overexposure to information provided by news outlets; on the other, images are used to provoke a reaction from the audience, to reach beyond their initial shock and ignite an active response. It is true that the ease of access to information about war over the internet may result in the aestheticization and banalization of violence.49 Furthermore, it is possible that the display of images concerning the atrocities of war, of pain and cruelty, could generate compassion; yet they may also excite rejection or even indifference, as was noted by Susan Sontag in her aforementioned Regarding the Pain of Others.50 The repeated contemplation of images of extreme violence may have the effect of anaesthetizing the audience, as was the case in Europe during the Bosnian war, or recently with the videos of the killing of prisoners by ISIS , which were widely available on the internet.51 In contrast to all this, the works of Kiefer and Twombly do not offer images of war or violence for the public to uncritically consume: they do not distance us from the cruel realities of war, but rather invite us to reflect on war through two distinct pictorial languages. Here, as Anastasia Bakogianni noted in reference to Cacoyannis’ interpretation of the Euripidean tragedies, the kleos of war is entirely absent – war and violence are employed as artistic themes to denounce them.52 Perhaps the new pictorial languages used by both artists, typically modern in their rejection of archaeological detail and textbased narratives,53 are precisely what push the viewer (if s/he has time) to pause before the painting and consider it for a moment.54 If we take into account the different perspectives examined in this chapter, particularly contrasting certain nineteenth-century approaches with more recent, twentieth-century viewpoints, the difference is clear. In both cases, Antiquity seems to be the period of choice in which to find pivotal references for national and (in general) Western culture and history. War and violence are also the topics selected to illustrate the message that artists wish(ed) to present, both in the more distant past and in more recent times. However, the approaches taken are radically different. While the nineteenth century celebrated war as a glorious national and collective enterprise, later artists preferred to highlight the negative, darker side of the experience, the dangers connected to its idealization and the suffering and excesses associated with irrational violence. In this context, far removed from earlier epic presentations, we now have the highly interesting critical revisions of the representations of war and violence by Anselm Kiefer and Cy Twombly, which – we hope – will provide a space for new ethical reflections.

Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank the editor, Irene Berti, for her patience and Alison Keable for her assistance with English. I am very grateful to Miren Lourdes Oñederra, Jonatan Pérez and Oskar Aguado for their helpful comments. This chapter forms part of the research project HAR 2016–76940-P ‘Antigüedad, nacionalismos e identidades complejas en la historiografía occidental (1789–1989): Aproximaciones desde Europa y América Latina’ (see aniho.hypotheses.org); Grupo de Investigación UPV /EHU GIU 16/64. A. Duplá: ORCID 0000-0001-7566-0482. 25

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CHAPTER 3 VIOLENCE TO VALOUR: VISUALIZING THAIS OF ATHENS Alex McAuley

Introduction As later artists and commentators try to visualize the events described in vivid narrative detail by ancient authors, figures who only lurked in the background of Graeco-Roman literary sources are inevitably thrust into clear focus. Over the course of centuries of evolving receptions, the light in which they are cast and the colours of the character in which they are painted inevitably begin to depart from the words with which they were first described by antique biographers and historians. In the process vice is transformed into virtue, manipulation into wisdom and, in the case of Thais of Athens, violence into valour. I argue over the course of this chapter that this (in)famous courtesan who is alleged to have prodded an infinitely susceptible (and inebriated) Alexander into burning down the Achaemenid palace at Persepolis has gone from being a villain to a vixen over the two millennia since that fateful drunken evening in the winter of 330 bc thanks primarily to her evolving depiction in visual media. It was by her transition from being drawn by the adjectives of Plutarch to the brushstrokes of Sir Joshua Reynolds that she ceased to be the evil seductress blamed by the former and became instead the empowered heroine painted by the latter in 1781.1 This profound change in popular perceptions of Thais was neither instantaneous nor random but, rather, came at the end of a long arc of artistic reception that bore Thais from Antiquity through the Italian Renaissance and English Romantic period and into the digital world of the twenty-first century. As contemporary audiences gradually came to see Thais from a different angle, so too were they led to reconsider the morality of the deed with which her character is inextricably linked: the destruction of Persepolis. If Thais was a heroine then it came to follow logically that this act must have been a heroic deed; the besotted violence of the palace’s destruction decried by Alexander’s biographers became the valour of Thais’ empowered femininity by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this case study the depths to which perceptions of acts of ancient violence are linked to the character of their perpetrator are remarkable, in visual media and beyond. The example of Thais, I believe, serves to bring the inevitable moral connection between act and actor to the fore, as the two, in her case, cannot be separated neither by ancient writers nor by modern artists. In order to examine this enduring connection, we shall begin by establishing our point de départ with an overview of how Thais and Persepolis were first described by Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus.2 From there we shall track Thais’ transition from literary into visual media during 27

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the Renaissance, and then how the vastly different social climate of the eighteenth century led to her redemption in the popular eye. Thais then took on a life of her own in the twentieth century thanks in no small part to a Russian author whose literary resurrection of her career inspired dozens of fascinating new visual depictions of her on the internet, to which we shall turn to bring us back into the twenty-first century. At the end of all of this, what was once held to be proof of Thais’ violent vice instead became her triumph, and Thais’ own personality overshadowed the very event for which she became famous.

All her fault: Thais, Persepolis and Alexander in Antiquity By all accounts the destruction of the seat of Achaemenid prestige and power should have been a moment of righteous and symbolic violence, justified as retribution for the crimes of Xerxes against the cities and temples of the Greek mainland, particularly Athens, during the second invasion of Greece.3 But curiously the ancients by and large criticize Alexander for putting the palace to the torch, depicting it instead as a moment of excess and wantonness that tarnished his own reputation and sullied the capital of a once-noble empire. Despite attempts by contemporary authors to link the fire to some broader ideological or military strategy, both ancient and modern scholars alike have been puzzled as to why Alexander would have chosen to destroy, as Parmenion noted according to Arrian (3.18.11–12), what had become his own property in such a violent fashion – and in the process alienate the very people he had just conquered.4 Alexander is otherwise praised by the ancients as a brilliant commander and cunning strategist, so some explanation had to be sought for such a seemingly illogical act. As I have argued elsewhere, it is out of this need to account for Alexander’s lapse in judgement that ancient authors have shifted the blame for the palace’s destruction onto an easy target: an Attic courtesan named Thais who was present that evening.5 Transferring the guilt to Thais in turn exonerated Alexander of this violent transgression, as it seemed rather more understandable for him to be susceptible to female suggestion than it would have been to admit his strategic fallibility. Out of the five ancient authors that mention the destruction of Persepolis during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, four of them – Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Curtius and Athenaeus – hold Thais responsible with varying degrees of bluntness. But when we combine these ancient testimonia we can gain some glimpse of the original account which informed them – likely Callisthenes via Cleitarchus – which in turn allows us to re-create the base from which subsequent receptions of Thais and the violence of Persepolis were formed. According to this original narrative, Alexander the Great paused at Persepolis in the winter of 330 bc as he was set to march against Darius, who retreated to the eastern edges of his empire in order to reorganize his forces against the Macedonian advance. One evening, Alexander gathered with his companions for a night of drinking and revelry, at which there were women present and everyone had become thoroughly loosened by the wine. Among these women, Thais, an Athenian, put forward the idea that 28

Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais

destroying the palace at Persepolis would be a fitting way to avenge the atrocities wrought against the Greeks, particularly her native Attica, by the Achaemenids during the Persian Wars over a century and a half previously. The boisterous crowd loudly supports the idea, Alexander gives in to the pressure of Thais and his companions, and the palace falls victim to this wine-fuelled thirst for Greek vengeance.6 As I have reconstructed it, this original account is comparatively neutral: it seems to be a factual description of an evening at which the original author was likely to have been present himself, or was informed by those who were there first-hand, and it largely avoids casting the kind of aspersions that we see among later authors.7 But this account provides the twine which is rewoven by subsequent authors, ancient and modern, who make of the event a tapestry depicting the vice of Thais, the susceptibility of Alexander to flattery, or the atrocity of the palace’s tragic fate. This, in turn, provides the literary inspiration for the visual artists to which we shall shortly turn. Each ancient author peers into this violent episode and sees something different therein. To Diodorus Siculus, our earliest source for the episode, the fire comes at the culmination of the raping and pillaging of the city, and represents an undeserved end to a noble locale: ‘thus the greatest and the most renowned of all the palaces in the world was destroyed by hubris and utter ruin’ (17.70.3). The Sicilian unsubtly emphasizes the drunkenness of everyone present (τῶν οἰνωμένων, 17.72.1; διὰ τὴν μέθην ἀλόγως μετεωριζομένους 17.72.3), and Thais is described as simply ‘one of the women present’.8 In the account of Diodorus Siculus, Thais clearly is the agent behind the palace’s destruction, as it is her flattery combined with the inebriation of Alexander that leads him to be ‘lifted up’ by her words (in the passive voice), and then he throws the first torch that lights the palace on fire.9 Thais, though, was the driving force behind all of this, and this female agency leads to a gender inversion that Diodorus Siculus feels cheapens the entire event: the violence wrought on Persepolis could have been justified retribution for past wrongs, but the hand of a women in all of this cheapens the affair.10 Plutarch (Alex. 38.1–4), writing in the late first and early second centuries, views this through a biographer’s lens and sees the alcoholism and susceptibility to flattery of Alexander’s character in the flames that consumed the palace. Plutarch provides the most vivid account of the episode, using such detailed language that it is easy to visualize what is occurring – and thus he seems to me to be the most likely candidate for inspiring later visual artists. Thais is more vocal and verbose: she is, in his words, the ‘most renowned of the women present’ and much of her appeal to Alexander centres on her own experience rather than a more Panhellenic sensibility.11 Alexander again is persuaded, again in the passive voice, towards such violence, and then commits the act which he is described as having almost immediately regretted the next day.12 Quintus Curtius Rufus, the enigmatic historian of Alexander (5.7.1–11), does not pull any punches in his criticism of Alexander and those present at the episode, and he generally lacks the elaborate narrative of Plutarch. To Curtius, Thais is an object (quite literally in the neuter gender) of scorn: identified as an ebrium scortum (5.7.5), and also as temulenta (5.7.3), she is among a group of women ‘whom indeed it would not to be a crime to violate’.13 She spurs Alexander to the deed by appealing to his ego, though the 29

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event was clearly not premeditated as Macedonian soldiers are described rushing to the scene to put out a fire that, to them, could only have been accidental. The fact that Alexander was driven by a whore towards the destruction of such a famed locale in service to nothing but his own ambition makes this episode nothing short of a violent desecration in the eyes of Curtius: And thus the palace of the entire Orient, where previously so many peoples had sought justice, the native city of so many kings who had struck unparalleled terror into the Greeks by building a fleet of a thousand ships, the army and navy that inundated Europe after it had bridged the sea and cut a channel through mountains into which a canal flowed, had this end.14 Finally, the destruction of Persepolis appears in brief detail in Athenaeus’Deipnosophistae. According to him, Cleitarchus was the first author to attribute the fire to the agency of Thais, thus this was not really Alexander’s fault.15 Thais, as do many other courtesans discussed in the same section, represents the dangerous side of such female influence, as women such as her can use their clout for virtue or for vice. In this case, the undue influence of this particular courtesan over Alexander the Great resulted in excess and violence. Thais was able to bring out the worst in the character of the Macedonian conqueror, and play to his least noble inclinations. Violence, in all of its Latin sense of impetuosity and fierceness, was the product of this dangerous breed of female influence. Alexander was, technically speaking, the perpetrator, but the sincerest efforts of these ancient authors went towards exonerating him of the guilt for the crime. This negative judgement of Thais, as we shall see, endured well over a millennium and a half, only being challenged as the destruction of Persepolis gradually came to be depicted with images instead of words.

From codex to canvas: Thais in the Renaissance and Baroque periods Thais’ afterlife in the centuries following her last depiction in the ancient sources has been discussed elsewhere, and the details need not detain us here save for a few salient observations before turning to the visual material.16 First, tracking the late-antique trajectory of Thais is rather difficult given the uncertainty surrounding how the Hellenistic Thais famous for Persepolis relates to the other figures named Thais that appear later, especially the Thais of Menander and the enigmatic St Thais of Alexandria. Given this ambiguity, we do not know for certain if the Thais who appears in Canto 18 of Dante’s Inferno (133–5) should be identified with our Thais from the destruction of Persepolis. Nonetheless, her identification as ‘la puttana’ who is punished eternally for her sins of flattery and manipulation makes for an unpleasant afterlife regardless of the specific character to which Dante is referring. At any rate, even if it is our Thais then it seems that the judgement of Curtius had not softened by the fourteenth century. But Thais of Athens and the infamous destruction of Persepolis are without a doubt the subject of a drawing and later two paintings by the Bolognese master Lodovico 30

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Carracci and his school, which we shall consider in turn. Carracci, despite the hesitations of his masters Fontana and Tintoretto, persisted in his artistic endeavours and went on to found the Eclectic School.17 In 1589 he, along with his nephews Agostino and Annibale, founded what they called the Accademia dei desiderosi (later renamed the Accademia degli incamminati), which identified itself as the ‘school of those who regret the past, despise the present, and aspire to a better future’.18 It would seem that this ideology guided their selection of Thais, Alexander and Persepolis as the subject of a drawing dated to c. 1592 which is currently held by the National Gallery in the United States. The drawing in pen and brown ink on paper washed an orange-brown colour captures the pair at the head of the procession that set fire to Persepolis with torches, and by all accounts seems to follow Plutarch quite faithfully. The choice of subject is noteworthy in and of itself: the Accademia dei desiderosi would have identified the wanton violence and debauchery at Persepolis as a prime episode that gave them cause to regret the past; it is among the transgressions from which they sought to move forward in the future. The style of this Early Baroque drawing captures the passion and fervour of the evening described by Plutarch beautifully: there are few strong horizontal or vertical lines, Thais and Alexander are drawn in almost blurry detail, which clearly conveys a sense of motion while also communicating the inebriation of the evening. Alexander is holding a torch and seems to be staggering forward, while Thais is pulling him forward towards committing the deed. In the background (bottom left) we catch a glimpse of a distant group of figures that must represent Alexander’s hetairoi rushing to keep up with their king.19 The gaze of each captures Plutarch’s analysis of the agency of the scene: Alexander is not looking forward, towards Persepolis, but rather his eyes are locked on Thais, looking down at her face over his shoulder. Thais, for her part, is looking forward towards their destination – presumably the first part of the palace that she wants to set alight. There is, if we look closely enough, perhaps the hint of a smile in the pen strokes that form Thais’ lips  – whether this is grim determination or bemusement is difficult to ascertain. Their posture and placement also support this reading of the drawing: Thais and Alexander are clearly both moving forward in a hurry, but on closer inspection both of Thais’ feet are in front of Alexander’s, so she is certainly taking the lead – which itself represents a slight departure from the canonical narrative of the ancients. According to Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus and Curtius alike, Alexander led the procession at the instigation of Thais, but here we see the courtesan being put into the lead – and thus her own agency and role within the story is heightened. The torch that is placed between her and Alexander seems to be held by the Conqueror, but she is dragging him along to throw it onto their target. The violence, the passion of Alexander and Thais, stand in stark relief to Persepolis itself: the few straight lines that we find in this drawing are of the palace itself, whose columns and archways stand humbly in the background to this swirl of movement. The message of the piece, though, is clear: Thais was the one who dragged an either inebriated or hesitant (or both) Alexander towards committing this act of violence; their lack of composure is contrasted to the stability of the palace itself; and the same judgement of the event passed down by Plutarch finds a representation here in an Early Baroque drawing. 31

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This drawing from 1592 evidently was an early sketch for an oil on canvas painting that is currently held in the Palazzo Francia in Bologna, entitled Alessandro e Taide incendiano Persepoli.20 The title is clear enough, though interestingly in the transition from sketch to finished painting some subtle details of the piece’s composition have changed that in turn reflect a rather different reading of the story. While in the drawing Thais was clearly in the lead and looking forward as Alexander stared at her from behind, in this instance the gazes are reversed: Alexander is looking forward towards the viewer – and thus the violent act that lies ahead of him – while Thais looks back over her shoulder towards him. The placement of both figures in the foreground makes it seem as if they are both standing in plano, and thus the pair seem to be leading the charge towards destroying the palace together, rather than Thais dragging Alexander as in the previous sketch. The posture of Alexander and Thais in this version indicates movement rather than intoxication, although the whirl of dancing revellers in the background clearly establishes the festive context. A third work by the same school of artists  – which in and of itself indicates the importance of the story to them – seems to capture with almost photographic detail the narrative of Plutarch (Alex. 38.5–8). This oil on canvas painting from 1611, currently held in the Palazzo Tanari in the artists’ native city, shows the moment at which Alexander is being convinced by Thais to exact this violence on the Persian palace (Fig. 3.1). All of the details highlighted by Plutarch are there: Thais and Alexander are sitting on a couch, and the courtesan proffers the two instruments of Alexander’s destruction in her hands: a cup of wine and a flaming torch. Thais, this time imagined as a blonde, is clearly in control of the situation and has an elegant composure as she leans towards

Figure 3.1 Ludovico Carracci, Alessandro e Taide (1611). Image © Wikimedia Commons. 32

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Alexander but locks eyes with the viewer. Alexander, for his part, is in rough shape: he is reclining back away from Thais, appearing to hold on to his spear for dear life to prevent him from falling off the couch – presumably after losing his balance because of drink. An empty jug of wine lies at his feet, so the libation being offered him by Thais was clearly neither his first nor his last drink of the evening. The Conqueror, as depicted by Plutarch, is himself conquered by his fondness for wine and his susceptibility to flattery. Though Alexander would go on to commit the deed, according to Carracci it was decidedly not his idea. While this Early Baroque school adopts much of the responsibility for the violent destruction of the palace as doled out by the ancients, it does so without some of their excesses: Thais, in each painting, is fully clothed and seems both beautiful and elegant. She is not the ebrium scortum of Curtius, but rather is much more the hetaira of our Greek sources. The crowd, which plays such a pivotal role in convincing Alexander in the ancient narrative, has been reduced to the obscurity of the background, and the key players of this episode have been reduced to two. Whether or not destroying Persepolis was a triumph or a tragedy is, based on these paintings and drawing, difficult to discern – which itself is a break with the past.

Thais goes to England At roughly the same time as this very negative image of Thais was being created by Italian artists following Plutarch, a very different view of the couple was being composed in Elizabethan England. Again, we must begin with literary receptions of the courtesan and her violent deed before turning to the visual art they inspired. The renowned English playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe brings a character whom we can presume to be Thais into his late sixteenth-century adaptation of the German Faustbuch for the stage, Doctor Faustus, which was performed towards the end of his life but not published for several decades.21 To entertain the Emperor Charles V, Faustus conjures up the spirit of Alexander and his unnamed ‘paramour’, and after the shades of the pair appear on stage Alexander’s ghost presents his paramour with the crown of the slain Darius.22 The mysterious paramour, whom we can assume is Thais, is something of double-edged character: although in this particular scene she is crowned as the queen of the vanquished East by her fawning lover, the spirits of the pair are meant to represent those who suffer eternally for their actions in life. Thais, then, has momentarily benefited from the destruction of Persepolis and the largesse of her beloved Alexander, but in the long term she is condemned to the tragedy’s purgatory for the violence she committed while alive. But even this is a step away from Carracci’s Thais: this version of Thais is a lover of Alexander, his paramour, not simply a courtesan present at a festive evening, and as Thais crosses into the English literary tradition we see that the relationship between her and Alexander has been given a critical added dimension: love. This image of a romantic, amorous Thais reappears alongside her love Alexander in the work of John Dryden, the country’s first Poet Laureate and the leading figure of Restoration England’s literary circles. In 1697 the poet penned the ode ‘Alexander’s Feast’ 33

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(later set to music by Handel), in which he narrates the events of that fateful evening.23 The usual themes from Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus and Curtius are present here as well: inebriation, the manipulative effect of music on those whose hearts and minds have been made malleable by wine, and Alexander’s susceptibility to coercion. But here, as with Carracci, we find Thais taking the lead in the destruction of the palace, as Dryden writes that ‘led the way / to light him to his prey / and like another Helen, fired another Troy’ (123–5). This event, then, was all Thais’ doing, but these are not the actions of a scheming courtesan, but rather a lover who is equated to ‘a blooming eastern bride’ sitting beside Alexander in the early lines of the poem (10–11). Thais is thus not merely a lover, but a spouse, even a wife to Alexander, and she is identified with the very same Eastern allure of the palace she was responsible for destroying. These two English authors have elaborated a romantic impression of Thais that in turn would be painted by one of the most prominent artists of the Georgian period: Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1781 this founder of the Grand Style, which seeks to idealize the imperfections of its artistic subjects, composed a painting entitled Thais of Athens with Tourch  – a portrait of our Thais on the fateful evening of Persepolis’ destruction (Fig. 3.2). Given the intrigue behind this depiction of the Athenian courtesan, we shall begin with the painting’s visual elements before turning to the backstory of its composition. In the broader body of Reynolds’s work, this painting clearly has elements of a portrait given the centrality of Thais in the composition as a whole, but can more accurately be classified as what the artist himself would identify as ‘history painting’. Reynolds elaborates on his conventions of this genre in a speech given on 10 December 1771: [I]t ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is. All this is not falsifying any fact; it is taking an allowed poetical licence. A painter of portraits retains the individual likeness; a painter of history shows the man by showing his actions. A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit.24 Reynolds thus made it abundantly clear that, when depicting historical figures such as Thais through the visual medium, only the grandest and most notable elements of the subject’s character should be brought forward, and smudges of their person or character – Alexander’s short height, or the ‘mean appearance’ of Agesilaus ought to be avoided in depicting a hero.25 We find in this approach a vastly different depiction of the drunken passion captured by Carracci in the Early Baroque period, as Reynolds has chosen to paint an elegant, beautiful and even inspiring courtesan rather than the ominous seductress of the ancient tradition. Most notable in this painting is the total absence of Alexander, which seems to be something of a promotion for Thais: she has gone from being the behind-the-scenes instigator of our ancient authors to the leader of the procession that destroyed the palace, and been elevated from a simple courtesan into the lover (even bride) of Alexander.26 Now, in Reynolds’s piece, she has left behind the figure of Alexander with which she is so 34

Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais

Figure 3.2 Joshua Reynolds, Thais (1781), oil on canvas. Waddesdon (National Trust), Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957. Acc no: 2556. Photo: Waddesdon Image Library, Public Catalogue Foundation. Used with permission.

often associated and stands on her own two feet in an art-historical sense. Thais, dressed in an unblemished white gown and baring her shapely thigh in the foreground of the painting seems to be leading a heroic charge rather than a drunken stumble, as she holds a torch forward towards Persepolis and beckons to those behind her to join in the deed. She has a strength and elegance to her posture that she lacked in the previous visualizations of her, standing with strong verticals that connote the stability of her convictions. Fires rage in the distant dark background of the painting again, thus presumably the city is already being destroyed as the group led by Thais heads towards the palace itself. The architectural elements we can glimpse in the background are strong and elegant but painted in sombre tones; whether they should be viewed as ominous or defeated is up to the individual viewer. Regardless, we have here a vastly different Thais that we have not 35

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yet encountered in the tradition surrounding her and Persepolis: she acts alone for a seemingly noble cause, and the disparaging details of the story have been jettisoned. The words of one critic quoted by Reynolds’s biographer, James Northcote, captures this new view of Thais perfectly, as he wrote that the piece ‘had caught the very spirit of the heroine, and that she seemed rushing from the canvas to destroy Persepolis’.27 Another review from 1857 praised ‘the unusual beauty of the subject, and the unwonted verve of the composition’.28 As Thais has again made the transition from literary to visual media, then, her image as well as her role in this violent episode changes: she is not depicted as a besotted harlot, but as a fairly refined and elegant courtesan, who by all accounts seems to have taken the lead in committing a violent – but now praiseworthy – act. But there is a subtext to this entire piece – in this case quite literally another layer of paint lying beneath its present form  – that perhaps leads us to read the painting in an entirely different light. As mentioned above, the elements of portraiture in this ‘historical’ painting are difficult to dismiss: Thais is the only figure present, she is clearly in the foreground and well-lit against the sombre background, and she is looking directly at the viewer. It is not a difficult leap of thought, then, to consider that this work might originally have been a portrait of a lady. This idea is as old as the painting itself: even at the time of the work’s composition and exhibition, rumours were swirling of the intrigue that lay behind this depiction of the Athenian courtesan. Northcote wrote ‘that this picture of Thais gave rise, but very unjustly, to some attempts at scandalous anecdote’.29 According to Waddesdon Manor, the collection which now holds the piece, the ‘scandalous anecdote’ was that the piece was originally supposed to be a portrait of a woman named Emily, commissioned by her lover, Charles Grenville, who paid a deposit of 75 guineas to Reynolds.30 The painting, according to Reynolds’s biography, was begun in 1776 – thus five years before it was first displayed at the Royal Academy in 1781. This ‘Emily,’ who went by a variety of surnames – and was probably also painted by George Romney  – is said to have parted company with her lover Charles Grenville, instead becoming the mistress of a gentleman employed by the East India Company named Bob Plott. Grenville was thus unwilling to pay the balance of the artist’s fee, and unfortunately for all involved Emily died in transit with her new lover just before reaching India in the spring of 1781.31 The story as recounted by Philippa Plock of Waddesdon Manor goes that Reynolds was furious that Emily was unable to pay for the work he had done on her portrait, and by means of revenge he set about depicting her as an infamous courtesan (Thais) setting fire to the Temple of Chastity (Persepolis). Thais, at the time, was a common moniker for courtesans and mistresses, and thus the message would hardly have been lost on the audience. Although Reynolds and many of his supporters vehemently denied the story, the fact that this painting took five years to complete and was produced before Reynolds’s actual portrait of Emily was finally paid for by Greville in 1786 makes it seem like Thais was a timely response. The more vehement the denial, perhaps, the more truth to the matter, but in the end this offers us another subtle reading of this depiction of Thais: although she is beautiful, heroic and able to inspire great passion in Alexander and in eighteenth-century viewers alike, she is still a courtesan. 36

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Thais goes viral In a broader perspective it is unsurprising that by 1781 popular perceptions of Thais and the violence of Persepolis would have changed so dramatically because attitudes towards almost every aspect of the subject had changed profoundly since the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Among the English elite of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries philhellenism was becoming popular to the point of being obligatory in the circles of London’s well-to-do, and as the British increasingly viewed themselves as the inheritors of the classical tradition the destruction of Persepolis would have been viewed in a highly positive light as the victory of Hellenism over Persian decadence and excess that we would have expected it to be. Reynolds was painting as Romanticism was gaining a literary and artistic foothold in Europe, and in this new intellectual milieu the verve, independence and panache of Thais would have been cause for contemporary praise rather than the antique scorn that was heaped upon her. This combination of her personal beauty and empowerment along with the sexual allure associated with Greek courtesans has given Thais another (after-) life on the internet, particularly in the Russian-speaking world. With this we turn to the final chapter in the visual representation of Thais and the violent episode at Persepolis, which is in no small part inspired by another turn in her literary history. Thais’ popularity in the Russian-speaking world is due largely to a novel called Thais of Athens (Таис Афинская) written by a Soviet archaeologist, botanist and sometime auteur named Ivan Yefremov. Yefremov’s book was only published after his death in 1972, and has only recently been translated into English by the Ukrainian author Maria Igorevna Kuroshkepova.32 This novel focuses entirely on the life of Thais, beginning with her as a courtesan in Athens, aged only seventeen but already a ‘celebrity’ whose friends speak of her as a goddess. This Thais is not a prostitute to be scorned, but a beautiful and brilliant woman to be pursued: short, with tanned skin and grey eyes, charming and witty, poetic and romantic.33 Accompanying Ptolemy on the campaigns of Alexander, she goes to various sites in Anatolia, Egypt and Syria, winning the confidence and admiration of the king as well as the love of his companion. Throughout the work Yefremov describes the Greeks  – embodied in Thais herself – as a tolerant and liberated society, something of a twentyfirst-century ideal avant la lettre. The Greeks are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and science, they are egalitarian and meritocratic, and the freedom of each individual extends beyond their political status and into their personal lives. It is clear, then, that Yefremov ascribed to Tarn’s vision of Alexander the Great.34 When the Macedonians arrive at Persepolis, we find in Yefremov’s work the kind of orientalism that we would perhaps more readily expect from ancient authors than twentieth-century Soviet archaeologists: on the way to Persepolis, Alexander and Thais come across mutilated Greek craftsmen who had been tricked into working at Persepolis, only to be purposefully disfigured to prevent them returning home. Thais cannot comprehend how Xerxes could destroy something as beautiful as Athens, but the memory of this endured far beyond the invasion: ‘The black wounds marking our beautiful land strengthened the Greeks’ hatred and rage during the battles against Asian 37

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conquerors’ (226). Compared to the noble Greeks, the Persians are arrogant, totalitarian, abusive and hateful of all that is good and pure in society. Persepolis symbolizes their failings: ‘here, at the foot of the Mountains of Mercy, the rulers of Persia had built a special city. It was not to serve gods or celebrate country, but solely to glorify themselves’ (230). Thais is unable to find any picture of a woman, and this, to her, meant that ‘the Persian state was bound to fall into ignorance and breed nothing but cowards’ (230). After doing Alexander a favour by dressing up as the Queen of the Amazons in a performance for his men, Thais is then invited to the king’s banquet the following evening  – at which she arrives wearing the same unblemished white gown of Joshua Reynolds’s Thais. Following a stunning vocal performance, the crowd demands that Alexander give her a gift, to which he is more than happy to oblige, and Thais asks to give a speech to the assembled revellers. She begins by noting that all of the excesses of Xerxes’ palace, the gold and the ornamentation, serve no other purpose than ‘to elevate the rulers by humiliating the subjects.’ She then goes on: Is that why Xerxes and his vicious envoy brought blood and death to Hellas, twice burned down my native Athens, and enslaved thousands upon thousands of skilled artists of our country? I am here alone with you, victorious heroes who crushed the might of evil rulers. I serve the goddess of beauty and know that there is no crime worse than raising one’s hand at beauty created by others.35 Alexander then asks Thais what she wants as a result of this, to which she answers simply: ‘fire’. The pair then make their way off to the heart of the palace and set fire to everything they find along the way in a rush of eminently justified destruction. The palace is burnt, the city is pillaged, and at last the arrogant transgressions of Xerxes have been avenged by a scion of Athens. It is striking, in this account, that we find the value judgements of the ancients almost entirely inverted: Thais is to be praised for being a liberated, influential figure, and Persepolis needed to be destroyed as punishment for Eastern decadence. This Thais, it would seem, could only have been conceivable after centuries of evolving receptions of this courtesan and the palace for which she is known. The rest of the book then goes on to narrate her marriage to Ptolemy, giving birth to her daughter and being made queen of Memphis by her visionary husband.36 It is Yefremov’s literary vision of Thais that has most profoundly influenced the image of her that we now find on the internet. There are literally dozens and dozens of different depictions of Thais, all united by the common thread of the brilliant combination of irresistible attractiveness and deep intelligence wound about her by Yefremov. A Russian female psychology club is named after her because she ‘is a symbol of women’s development’, ‘the guiding light that illuminated Yefremov’, and has regular meetings and seminars to promote confidence and inner strength. There are several videos on YouTube that try to re-create the alleged seductive dance of Thais, which is an odd combination of belly dancing and seemingly religious ecstatic convulsion.37 A fancreated digital animation video depicts Thais of Athens arriving in Persepolis with Alexander, showing her as an attractive, tanned, dark-haired woman in accordance with 38

Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais

Yefremov’s description. As the pair arrive in Persepolis against a background of Russian pop music, Alexander gives her a key to the city before a drunken party featuring other belly dancers ensues. There is even a 1983 full-length film entitled Таис that is loosely based on the novel of Yefremov, and has a spectacularly excessive banqueting scene on the night of the fateful fire of Persepolis – though this deserves another article entirely.38 Thais also has a YouTube playlist dedicated to her, featuring such unmissable videos as the forty-five-minute documentary ‘secrets of the sexual energy of Cleopatra’ and ‘Three Energies that Feed a Person’.39 Given the amount of interest Yefremov’s Thais has generated, it is unsurprising to find an abundance of fan art on the internet. Thais has now been the subject of everything from a Latvian ice sculpture in which she is reclining on Greek columns wearing a very revealing and, allegedly, Greek-style gown to a swirling dancing girl or a nude seductress inexplicably reclining on a carpet next to a tiger.40 There are dozens of profiles named ‘Thais of Athens’ on dating websites, and she appears as an entry on various escort pages and informational websites about ancient women. In most of these she is visualized as the short, tanned, dark-haired vixen of Yefremov, rather than the pale blonde Thais of Joshua Reynolds, though in the digital realm, it seems, everyone has their own version of Thais.

Sua Thais cuique: conclusions As Thais has gone from being an image of the mind of ancient authors who sought to find some explanation for the wanton violence at Persepolis in 330 bc to the subject of painters, authors and artists over the course of two millennia she has, it is safe to say, taken on a life of her own. Thais was a figure plucked from the background of the scene at the destruction of Persepolis and thrust onto centre stage as the culpable figure behind the atrocity, but as time has gone on she has come to dominate our interest to the point of overcoming the context in which we first found her. The vivid detail of Plutarch and Quintus Curtius Rufus depicted a courtesan whose ambition and seductive influence were entirely responsible for a reprehensible act of violent desecration, as the noble capital of the famed Achaemenids fell victim to the flames fanned by the excessive passion of a woman and her susceptible target. But later visions of Thais have better captured contemporary sensibilities about gender, power and sexuality than any glimpse of what we could consider ‘historical truth’. Thus, as the heading to these conclusions states, ‘to each their own Thais’. By the Early Baroque period, Thais had taken greater prominence in the destruction of Persepolis than the ancient authors had given her: in the eyes of Carracci and his school she took the lead in lighting the fire that would consume the Persian palace, and, in the process, become almost solely responsible for the act. But even this early image of Thais betrays artistic fascination with the question of what such a woman would have looked like. As literature informed visual art in a repetitive cycle over the following centuries, Thais became no longer a mere courtesan, but a lover, a paramour, in a textual image that was 39

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then translated into Reynolds’s vision of her as a heroine. Another author, Yefremov, paints a novelistic picture of her as a paragon of liberated sexuality and intelligence, further elevating her above the rather humble surroundings in which she first appeared in Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch. This link in the chain has led to dozens more visualizations of Thais as an object of reverence and desire, the sort of confident and influential woman who should be emulated rather than scorned. In the long process, Persepolis, and even Alexander, have both slipped out of sight. The act itself has faded into the background of cultural memory, replaced by our fascination with the glowing image of someone who in Antiquity was seen as nothing more than the perpetrator of a violent crime. As we have come to visualize her more, perhaps we understand her less.

Acknowledgements My thanks to the editors of this volume for their invitation to contribute, and their editorial guidance.

40

PART II EMBODYING ANCIENT AND MODERN VIOLENCE IN CINEMA AND IN THEATRE

41

42

CHAPTER 4 SCREENING THE FACE OF ROMAN BATTLE: VIOLENCE THROUGH THE EYES OF SOLDIERS IN FILM Oskar Aguado Cantabrana

‘The eyes are the first defeated in all battles’ Tac., Germ. 43.5

Introduction Films and TV series set in ancient Rome, from Cabiria (1914) to the latest version of Ben-Hur (2016), have tended to show a large number of battle scenes. These large-scale battles have excited and entertained viewers since the beginning of the Seventh Art. However, the manner in which the battles of ancient Rome are portrayed on screen has changed throughout the long history of the genre of films set in Antiquity. In a recent book on the depiction of ancient battles in movies, Jeremiah McCall concluded that ‘there are moments of genius in many of the films; soldiers are emphasised and a face of battle is sketched’.1 I agree with this statement, and believe that it is especially evident within the most recent productions. The author also introduces an element I consider vital: the influence of John Keegan’s well-known book, The Face of Battle (1976), on academic literature on battles during the last few decades, including the most recent works.2 However, although interesting, McCall’s book only analyses the representation of ancient battles regarding their level of accuracy. It is true that when commenting on the battle scenes, it provides some information on shots and focusing, but there is no indepth analysis of cinematographic language. Likewise, as McCall himself clarifies in the introduction, his book also fails to show the motivations of the creators, or the modern context in which the film has been produced.3 However, McCall uses the work of Keegan, as well as that of the authors who have applied their method to the battles of Antiquity, only as a theoretical support with which to compare the cinematographic representations. Nevertheless, I will argue that it could be used to question to what extent the historiographic turn begun by Keegan has been able to influence recent battle cinematic depictions in general, and those set in ancient Rome in particular.4 I propose that since the release of Gladiator (2000), Roman epic films, along with certain TV series, have portrayed battles following the Hollywood aesthetic of visceral and hyperrealist violence, while simultaneously focusing to a large degree on the soldier’s perspective. For a more in-depth understanding of these cinematic depictions of ‘the face 43

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of Roman battle’, a revision of scholarly works that focuses on this approach is necessary, as well as a comparative analysis of the imagery of battles in recent Roman epic films and series5 to those of previous films of the genre, along with other war films. I will thus attempt to answer the question of to what extent these depictions are influenced by scholarly research – the ‘face of battle approach’ – as well as by Hollywood’s conventions and the contemporary context in which each production is created. The face of battle: from Keegan to ancient Rome The publication of The Face of Battle by John Keegan in 1976 represented a turning point in military history, as well as a shift away from how historical battles had previously been studied.6 Keegan moved away from tactical explanations and the commander’s perspective to examine both the physical and psychological conditions of fighting, focusing on the specific behaviour and emotions generated by the experience of battle itself. However, it is necessary to mention that several years before the publication of this work, some authors had already attempted to better understand human behaviour in battle. Keegan quoted two of them in his introduction, the French colonel Charles Ardant du Picq, and American combat historian S. L. A. Marshall.7 Ardant du Picq is worthy of mention because his book, entitled Etudes sur le combat: Dans l’antiquité et dans les temps modernes,8 written in the mid-nineteenth century, focuses not only on battle experiences of his own epoch, but also those from ancient combat, ‘believing that the ancients were far more honest about the reasons why men ran away during the battle’.9 As for S. L. A. Marshall, he remains relevant to us because of the impact on popular American society of his wellknown work Men Against Fire, published in 1947, as well as the cinematographic adaptation of his other book, Pork Chop Hill (1956).10 Men Against Fire was the result of a group of combat historians – led by Marshall, among others – who researched the behaviour of US soldiers in combat during the Second World War. Among its conclusions is the recognition that fear is universal among combatants but that, as Marshall argued, they ‘commonly are loath that their fear will be expressed in specific acts which their comrades will recognise as cowardice’.11 However, the most famous of his conclusions was likely the fact that only a quarter of all soldiers fired their weapons against the enemy.12 It is worth noting that the work of these authors had ‘no effect on the way military history was written’.13 Keegan’s masterpiece, however, did have an effect. The following quote effectively summarizes the aspects of battle that Keegan tried to study: What the battles have in common is human [. . .]. The study of battle is therefore always a study of fear and usually courage; always of leadership, usually of obedience; always of compulsion, sometimes of elation catharsis: always of violence, sometimes also of cruelty, self-sacrifice, compassion; above all, it is always a study of solidarity and usually also of disintegration.14 Keegan analysed the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme; a few years later, other scholars also broached the study of ancient battles using this new perspective. The 44

Screening the Face of Roman Battle

Western Way of War, published in 1989 by Victor D. Hanson, focused on the hoplite infantry battle in ancient Greece, with The Face of Battle as both model and inspiration.15 In terms of Roman warfare, The Roman Army at War, 100 bc –ad 200, written by Adrian Goldsworthy in 1996, was a pioneering piece of research.16 Goldsworthy said that ‘the evidence exists for a detailed examination of how the Roman army actually fought its wars and battles after the style of Keegan’s investigations’,17 while at the same time recognizing that there were insufficient sources to deeply analyse any individual specific battle.18 He attempted to explain the human factor in Roman engagements through a variety of evidence, though predominantly by using the literary sources of classical authors who witnessed the legionaries in action, such as Caesar or Josephus.19 Through these sources, Goldsworthy focused on the physical and psychological factors of combat that can affect Roman legionaries. He emphasized the importance of analysing individual actions, as well as soldier morale and the social background in which the army was created.20 He also wrote on tactics and the various types of unit and weapons, but as he recognized, ‘neither the study of tactics nor individual weaponry can adequately explain what happened in a battle of this period, for the single reason that neither takes account of the behaviour of the soldier’.21 In a nutshell, he wanted to change the popular – but also academic – perception of the Roman soldier as a sort of totally disciplined automaton, and the legion as a military machine that was absolutely effective in battle.22 Other authors have continued this approach, focusing on different aspects. Fernando Quesada distinguishes three lines of research:23 first, the specific nature of hand-to-hand combat between massed formations in pitched battles,24 but also in skirmishes;25 second, an attempt to understand the constant tension between the Roman concepts of virtus and disciplina,26 a tension that would have also been evident during battle; and third, the violence generated in these sort of engagements, as well as the brutality of close combat with bladed weapons. In the same way, other aspects related to Roman soldiers’ experience, such as the chaos and confusion of battle,27 the morality of war,28 morality in combat,29 or courageous and cowardly actions,30 have all been studied. Finally, despite the lack of sources needed to develop a deeper understanding of an actual battle from this perspective, some authors have tried to explain the experience of battles in the Punic War in general,31 and that of Cannae32 in particular. The main problem that each and every one of the cited pieces of research faced is the scarcity of sources. As Philip Sabin has pointed out, ‘sadly, we do not possess for Roman battles anything like the “soldier’s eye view” which memoirs give us for more recent military history’.33 Literary sources give us limited information – Roman authors even less so than Greeks34 – and although the research was conducted using iconographic and archaeological sources, they have attempted to make up for this lack of evidence through comparisons with the experience of combat in more recent historical periods. This kind of comparison may be useful, but is also daring. This last idea reminds me that I cannot conclude this historiographic review without mentioning a series of investigations that attempted to establish analogies between 45

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ancient and contemporary warfare: a sort of comparative history exercise, in some cases pushed to the logical extreme. The series of books in which Victor D. Hanson developed his theory of the ‘Western way of war’, as well as other ideas on ancient and modern warfare, are perhaps the best example of this approach, which has been predominantly followed by US authors.35 In this respect, the past few years have witnessed a flourishing of literature on the psychology of combat and post-traumatic stress disorder – PTSD  – from a reading of the classics, especially Greeks.36 This kind of research has been applied to a lesser extent to the Roman world, a paradigmatic example being a paper entitled ‘Aeneas in Iraq: Comparing the Roman and Modern Battle Experience.’37 Given the limited information provided by ancient sources on the experience of discharged combatants, author Stefan Chrissanthos decided to focus on the battle trauma  – and its continuing effects  – experienced by Roman Republican soldiers still in combat. Working on the assumption that human beings usually respond in similar ways to what were  – in many ways  – analogous military experiences, he argues that ‘modern and ancient soldiers shared similar campaign hardships and similar terrors in combat, despite being separated by centuries, culture, and military technology’.38 In this regard, he also states that: In Roman and modern times, combat led to increasing problems while the men were still on active service. Whether this is called shell-shock (World War I), or combat exhaustion (World War II ), or combat fatigue (Korea), or PTSD (a term that developed after Vietnam), or Gulf War Syndrome, or even if there is no name for it (ancient Rome), these problems were always part of the human combat experience. Regardless of time or place humans often reacted in similar ways to the threat of catastrophic injury or death, or to the sight of comrades suffering injury or death.39 Despite the fact that Chrissanthos has proven to be knowledgeable on the Roman army,40 some of his statements appear to be questionable, particularly in the conclusion where he proposed using the military background of ancient literary sources to prevent logistic problems and help US soldiers, who were still fighting in Iraq when the paper was published.41 More recent research has demonstrated that ‘definitive evidence for the existence of PTSD in the ancient world does not exist’,42 while also highlighting that modern soldiers ‘actually face more complicated psychological factors than did the Romans’  – given the impact of modern technologies and because of a different relationship towards violence43 – but in spite of the lack of evidence, ‘the view that the Greco-Roman world knew PTSD is fast becoming dogma’.44 Although many ancient military historians have voiced their disagreement with such a risky comparison between ancient and contemporary soldiers’ battle experiences, we have to admit that these ideas have had a huge impact on popular culture. In this context, it would not be odd for onscreen depictions of Roman legionaries to be conditioned by academic interpretations very close to the collective imagination.45 46

Screening the Face of Roman Battle

Fictionalization of soldiers’ experience in battle: literature and cinema The ‘face of battle’ approach was Keegan’s proposal in the field of historical academia, but to what extent is it possible to find something similar to The Face of Battle in literary and cinematographic historical dramas? It seems evident that literature, and especially cinema, have greater potential to represent the soldier’s experience in battle, considering there is no need for historical accuracy, nor to indicate the lack of information, given the fragmentary nature of the sources. It should be mentioned that the re-creation of a soldier’s perspective in battle through popular media does not have to be precise, or veracious.46 This is the great difference between a scholar’s historical research and a historical drama. Alexander’s (2004) depiction of Gaugamela is regarded as the most historically accurate ancient battle ever shot, but even its director, Oliver Stone, recognized that his film was not a history book, nor a documentary; it was a dramatization.47 Keeping this premise in mind, I would like to make a brief review of the literary and cinematographic works that have attempted to depict soldiers’ experiences of battle. We may find our starting point in Homer’s Iliad, which in some passages reflects the horror of combat in its visceral descriptions of the hand-to-hand combat.48 However, we must jump to the nineteenth century before we find a key narration that deeply changes the way battle is described, namely Stendhal’s picture of young Fabrizio at the battle of Waterloo in La Chartreuse de Parme (1839). Hemingway’s commentary on that narrative is significant: ‘once you have read it you will have been at the battle of Waterloo and nothing can ever take that experience from you’.49 Likewise, Tolstoy’s depiction of the Battle of Borodino in his novel War and Peace (1869) appeared to follow Stendhal’s design, focusing on Pierre’s point of view to describe the chaos and the fear of immediate death.50 The invention of the cinematograph at the end of the nineteenth century brought new ways to depict the battlefield experience. However, even masters of the new-born cinema, like D. W. Griffith, had little success in depicting the battle experience from a soldier’s point of view.51 The movie that marked a turning point was Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). While Wilfred Owen concluded his famous poem by affirming that Horace’s famous quote dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was an old lie, the film not only explicitly sets out the same idea through different speeches, but also represents the horrors of battle from a soldier’s point of view as never before.52 This antiwar approach was, to a large degree, put aside during the next decade, when filmmakers returned to producing more Manichaean, patriotic and adventurous war films as Hollywood served American interests during the Second World War. During the Korean War, a film like Steel Helmet (1951) dealt, to a certain extent, with the psychology of the combatant. However, it wasn’t until after the war ended that a truly interesting film was released depicting a soldier’s perspective. Also directed by Milestone, and based on the homonymous book of the aforementioned S. L. A. Marshall, Pork Chop Hill (1959) showed many battle scenes that emphasized the American combatants’ perspective and morality. Marshall’s research on the soldiers’ experience of battle certainly became more 47

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popular through this production, but it is more problematic to demonstrate that Keegan’s ideas surpassed the boundaries of the academic world.53 The BBC ’s 1985 TV series, Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle, in which Keegan himself participated, may have helped the popular diffusion of this academic approach. Recently, Quesada has analysed the adoption of Keegan’s ideas by certain historical fiction writers, who have focused on ancient military history.54 He argues that since the 1990s, many novels set in Antiquity have included the soldiers’ point of view and experience in their narration, for example Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire (1998) and The Afghan Campaign (2006). In terms of cinema, since the end of 1970s and aside from the potential impact of Keegan’s ideas, there are other factors that influenced the representation of cinematographic battles. The most important was the impact of the Vietnam War, which created a new sensibility towards war that has its reflection on the big screen. From that moment onwards, cinematic war depictions were more focused on the individual traumatic experiences of the battlefield.55 Since the end of that war, several movies have shown front-line combatants’ point of view, such as Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Hamburger Hill (1987) and Casualties of War (1989).56 Moreover, at the turn of the present century, a series of successful films depicted battles in a bloody, visceral and realistic way while focusing on the psychological and physical experiences of the combatants. The Thin Red Line (1998), and especially Saving Private Ryan (1998),57 as well as TV series like Band of Brothers (2001), and its ‘German version’ Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (2013), Generation Kill (2008) or The Pacific (2010) are popular examples of this new way of approaching war epics. One of the most recent examples of this trend in representing battle experiences would be Dunkirk (2017).58 Even films set in the Middle Ages and ancient Greece, such as Braveheart (1995), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Alexander (2004) and 300 (2006) have focused, to a certain extent, on soldiers’ experiences and the gory aspects of battles with bladed weapons.59 What about movies and series set in ancient Rome?

The ‘battle piece’ in Roman epics before Gladiator ‘Battle piece’ is the name given by Keegan to accounts of battles that do not focus on soldiers’ experiences, nor on the real fighting conditions. The features of a ‘battle piece’ would be ‘the reduction of soldiers to pawns, a disjointed rhythm, conventional imagery, and a high degree of focus on leadership’.60 To some extent, we can establish a comparison between the accounts that Keegan defined as ‘battle pieces’ and the depiction of Roman battles in early Italian movies such as Cabiria (1914) and Scipione l’Africano (1937), as well as in Hollywood epics of the 1960s like Spartacus (1960) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). The following quote from the conclusion of Adrian Goldsworthy’s aforementioned book effectively illustrates the image of the Roman army in classical cinema, as well as in scholarly works: 48

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The popular image of the Roman army is of an incredibly modern force, highly organized and rigidly disciplined. [. . .] The Roman military machine was so perfect that it had no need for the overall direction of commanders. [. . .] This picture of the Roman army owes as much to the Hollywood epics as anything written on the subject. The 1960 film Spartacus contains a sequence showing a huge Roman army advance to attack. The legions move in a checker-board pattern of units, their formations perfect. The whole army manœuvres and changes formation, apparently without anyone ordering it to do so. The Roman commander is a mere spectator, watching the inevitable Roman triumph.61 Many would think it difficult to abstract humans into impersonal units through moving pictures, but Stanley Kubrick managed it. Of course, there was a dramatic purpose behind his much-dehumanized depiction of the Roman army in Kubrick’s Spartacus; it was a highly visual way to show the struggle for freedom between slaves and a heavily militarized totalitarian power.62 The legionaries in the film are something close to automata, small parts of some massive machine.63 Moreover, the camera affords relatively wide-angle long shots, offering the spectator a global point of view of the battlefield,64 something akin to a general’s view. Likewise, the brutal and bloody aspects of the battle were limited by the censorship of the Motion Picture Production Code; the famous scene in which a legionary’s arm is cut off had to be removed from the final version.65 It could be argued that the image of legionaries was not as dehumanized in early Italian epic movies, or at least that the idea of the creators was to offer a positive, rather than negative image of Roman military power. In the case of Cabiria – released in an epoch when Italian cinematic depictions of ancient Rome and her conquests were discursive practices for the construction and legitimation of a national identity, as well as to justify colonial pretensions66 – the battle scenes were spectacular for the period, but the personal experiences of the legionaries were not shown. Static general shots and the lack of sound in silent film67 limited any attempt to show this. On the other hand, Scipione l’Africano, produced under the fascist regime, established a clear analogy between the Second Punic War and the Second Italo-Ethiopian war.68 It depicted the legionaries in a very humanizing manner, compared to the Carthaginians, though their motivations to fight appear to be reduced to blind patriotism. The Battle of Zama is depicted as a brutal affair, with close-ups that focus on wounded legionaries and more general shots showing the fear of facing down charging elephants, but when the legionaries begin to retreat, Scipio’s intervention into the first rank – along with his shout of ‘victory or death’ – is enough to bolster the morale of the infantry once again.69 Returning to Hollywood epics of the 1960s, the representation of Roman soldiers is highly dehumanized, with battle sequences that do not come close to showing the real face of battle, even in less Manichaean depictions of ancient Rome like The Fall of the Roman Empire.70 Legionaries are presented as automata, even when they are about to die during the decimation, and the battle sequence in Armenia ‘is shot in the style of a western, giving a good view of events from a distance’, making the soldiers ‘just human beings dwarfed by the landscape’.71 49

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Screening the ‘face of Roman battle’ in the twenty-first century It has been argued that the release of Gladiator in 2000 represented not only the resurrection of a cinematographic genre,72 but also an aesthetic change in the way classical Rome is represented onscreen.73 Among a variety of highly different topics, the approach to war is one in which this change has been evident.74 The battle aesthetic also changed,75 along with the soldiers’ narration of the engagements. In this new context, both historical and cinematographic, how is the face of battle emphasized? The initial battle sequence of the film Gladiator, set in Germania, is entirely different from the Roman battles I have previously commented upon. The Roman army is still represented as a well-disciplined modern war machine, in fact more modern than ever, especially given the fact that the explosions produced by its artillery  – created with special effects – are comparable to the napalm bombs of the US army in Vietnam. It is an unhistorical depiction, but in such conditions the battle trauma generated in ancient soldiers may be comparable to that of contemporary warfare. Ridley Scott, in the DVD commentary, casts significant light on the image they wished to convey to the viewers: ‘It looked like a First World War battleground. [. . .] We immediately set a standard and a tone for what this film would be which is about real people, not theatrical people dressed in Roman costumes. Right? I think that’s what grabs the audience almost immediately is they’re looking at a real situation, a real battlefront [sic].’76 Meanwhile, David Franzoni – the writer and producer of the film – commented that ‘the battle at the front had to be All Quiet on the Western Front. Realistic, brutal, not glorious. They won, but it was filthy’.77 Attempting to compare this battle sequence with one of the most famous anti-war films is a clear statement of intent. Of course, it is difficult to define Gladiator and other Roman epics from this century as anti-war films, but following the aesthetic of current war films,78 the creators have tried to reflect the horrors of the battlefield, and in doing so they have had to humanize the Roman soldier. In the same way, Robert Jones, the producer of Centurion (2010), notes that the film resonates with modern audiences because it talks about ‘about armies going into places that shouldn’t necessary be going into, only to find out they’ve gotten into something that overtakes them’.79 It is evident that Jones was thinking of modern war experiences like those of Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq.80 As we can see, in many cases the creators of some recent films have found inspiration for depicting ancient Roman battles in twentieth- and twenty-first-century war experiences. There is no doubt that among the various aspects represented in Keegan’s approach, the most interesting for the film’s creators is the brutal violence and intensity of combat with bladed weapons.81 Roman battles in recent movies, from Gladiator to the newest version of Ben-Hur, are bloody, brutal and filthy. The lack of censorship, as well as the technological developments, allows the production of visceral battle sequences that have never been seen before, and that have been defined by their creators as ‘realistic’.82 The initial battle of Gladiator is a perfect example of this new aesthetic, where ‘we catch glimpses of terrible violence’83 through many shots of blood spatters, seriously wounded soldiers, severed limbs etc. Likewise, among the deleted scenes from the 50

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original version, there is one immediately following the battle in which Maximus walks among dead and wounded soldiers in a field hospital. ‘All these post-battle scenes are always tricky and we shortened this dramatically’,84 comments Ridley Scott, perhaps suggesting that one of the reasons for its deletion was the fact that it could have offended viewer sensibilities. To a greater or lesser extent, the mini-series Spartacus (2004) and the series Rome (2005–07), as well as films such as Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011) and Ben-Hur (2016), all contain battle scenes that follow this aesthetic. The brutality, harsh conditions and dead bodies that result from the battles are not only shown but emphasized, through various pieces of dialogue. For instance, in the second season of the series Rome (episode 6, 54ʹ00ʺ–54ʹ11ʺ), after the Battle of Philippi, Mark Anthony and Octavius have the following exchange, while in the midst of dead bodies: Anthony

Breathe deep, boy. The smell of victory

Octavius

Smoke, shit and rotting flesh

Anthony

Beautiful, isn’t it?

In Centurion, the horror of battle, as well as the soldier’s perspective, is well depicted through Quintus’ narration after the massacre of the Ninth Legion (27ʹ09ʺ–27ʹ32ʺ): ‘In the chaos of battle, when the ground beneath your feet is a slurry of blood, puke, piss and the entrails of friends and enemies alike, it’s easy to turn to the gods for salvation. But it’s soldiers who do the fighting, and soldiers who do the dying. And the gods never get their feet wet’. These words fit well with the graphic violence of the Roman battle against the Picts. Indeed, one of the taglines of the film was: ‘History is written in blood’. In this sense, we must take into account the cinematographic background of the director, Neil Marshall, who worked on such bloody films as Dog Soldiers (2002),85 The Descent (2005) and Doomsday (2008). Marshall mentioned in the ‘making of ’ that he demanded a huge quantity of blood. The special make-up effects designer, Paul Hyett, met Marshall’s demands by using a variety of methods to create artificial blood, without using CGI (computer-generated imagery), in order to make it more realistic.86 The battle scenes from Spartacus: War of the Damned (2013) deserve special mention as they are even more visceral, and entirely hyperrealist. The blood is created digitally, and covers the entire screen following each sword stroke, in the style of the graphic violence of 300 (2006). By using a multiple camera array, the image is also slowed down in order to focus on the wounds and blood, intensifying the fighting scenes.87 But in this case, rather than reflecting the horrors of war, the combat is portrayed as a simple spectacle. The combat performances in battle and in the arena are the same. The creators tried to bring the Colosseum into the battlefield, attempting to maintain the wrestling fights of the previous seasons. If recent movies have made an effort to show the brutality and carnage of ancient Roman battles in the most explicit way, there is another topic on which cinema has 51

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failed to focus: the form that close-range clashes between massed heavy infantry took during the Roman period. As we have noted, ancient sources offer little information to reconstruct the mechanics of battle, but several scholars have pointed out that the battles would have been slower, with breaks in which the front lines would separate to rest.88 In cinematographic depictions of battle scenes, the Roman army is initially presented in formation, but when the infantry clash begins, formations break and the engagements become a sort of individual duel.89 As Philip Sabin has mentioned: ‘This might look good for a few seconds on the silver screen, but it is utterly implausible in reality. It would require a suicidal willingness on the part of the individual troops to forfeit the protection of their comrades and expose themselves to an unseen strike from flank or rear.’90 Only during the first minutes of the first season of HBO’s Rome do we see coherent formations of Roman troops during a battle. Additionally, the fact that Vorenus and his legionaries are sweating and covered in blood – even before the Gallic attack – shows us that the episode opens in the middle of an engagement, and that the first ranks have just had a break from fighting,91 as the aforementioned historians suggested. The historical consultant for Rome, Jonathan Stamp, comments that the battle reconstruction is based on ‘the latest geeky research on how Roman legions would fight in close combat’.92 What is more, in the entirely chaotic final battle of the last episode of Spartacus: War of the Damned, there is a particular scene (29ʹ24ʺ–30ʹ58ʺ), in which a group of legionaries who are formed into various lines perform a similar rotation, which is clearly inspired by Rome rather than by any ancient evidence.93 Another aspect I wish to analyse is the atmosphere re-created onscreen in order to show the limited point of view of soldiers in battle, as well as the loud sounds that they would have heard. As Lee L. Brice has demonstrated, the initial battle sequence of the first episode of the Rome series is highly successful in portraying this experience. Quoting Brice: ‘the use of hand-held cameras, close-ups with limited depth of field, key low-angle shots, and judicious editing further emphasize the limited scope of the combatant’s vision’.94 Likewise, the battle is noisy, confusing and frenetic. There is no soundtrack during the combat, quite the opposite of other productions, which use music to emphasize the dramatic nature of battle; in this way, the noise that the viewers hear would be closer to that of ancient Roman engagements. The battle sounds reveal the din of shouting and screaming by combatants and the clashing of swords and shields. I also want to comment on the battle of Philippi in the second season. Although it is filmed with more open shots, certain scenes emphasize the fog of war using sand and fans to simulate the dust that would have been thrown up by such a quantity of legionaries in combat.95 In addition, certain point-of-view shots  – like those of the inside of the testudo formation – show the limited vision of Cassius and his legionaries. Likewise, in The Eagle’s engagement outside the Roman fort, the legionaries form a testudo that offers point-of-view shots from inside the formation. In a previous sequence, when the Britons attack the Roman camp, they attempt to emphasize the personal scale of the combat, as the director recognized: ‘We wanted to make the battles feel messy, real, almost confusing at times. You’re not quite sure who’s in control, who’s winning, and 52

Screening the Face of Roman Battle

who’s not. And I think that’s probably what it was like if you were in the midst of one of these.’96 Recent movies have also dealt with the topic of Roman soldier’s morale and fears, both before and during battle. At the very beginning of Gladiator, there is a sequence in which Maximus walks among his troops and we see close-ups of the faces of the legionaries, some of them looking scared or worried, others confident. It is a rather accurate portrayal of individuality (3ʹ13ʺ–3ʹ32ʺ). Likewise, during the aforementioned battle of Philippi in the second season of the Rome series, we see a legionary in the midst of combat without his helm, with a lifeless gaze, totally bewildered and in shock due to the traumatic situation he is witnessing. Many recent war films have shown similar close-ups of dazed soldiers after a nearby explosion. In Rome’s depictions of Philippi there are no explosions – as in Gladiator – but despite this, the brutality of a civil war battle in which Romans fought against Romans is given an appropriately dramatic touch, which serves to humanize the soldiers. In the same battle, when the first ranks are about to clash, there is another trait of individuality related to the fear of being wounded or killed, which McCall describes perfectly: ‘Right before the clash, the order of the infantry degrades just a bit as each soldier chooses when to charge the remaining few feet to his enemy. This is a good take on human behaviour in battle  – despite their high discipline, they are men, not machines.’97 In The Eagle, as Roman troops are forming ranks inside the castrum and are about to go outside to face the Britons, the film shows close-ups of the legionaries to emphasize their pre-battle fear and uncertainty (17ʹ21ʺ–18ʹ06ʺ). Once again, McCall’s description of the scene deserves to be quoted: ‘The film does an excellent job at this point illustrating the tension between fear and the discipline instilled by training. A scan of the Roman soldiers’ faces shows some apprehension, a little fear, but acceptance of the task.’98 The DVD commentary on this scene from director Kevin Macdonald is also interesting, because again it becomes clear that the war referents of the film’s creators are contemporary, not ancient: I always thought this sequence was quite successful in portraying the fear that you must have had if you were a soldier in this day and age, particularly, but even today [. . .]. It’s like the First World War, going over the top of the trenches, to face the horrors on the other side. Somebody pucking up there and, I think, that must have been pretty commonplace [sic]. Lastly, in Ben-Hur there is another example of a legionary completely terrified in the midst of battle. Messala’s orders are to move forward – ‘If we stay here, we’ll die!’ – but the legionary is frightened, and remains crouched under his shield (21ʹ42ʺ). In recent movies, the legionaries’ battle experiences are shown not only visually, but also told by those who were there. Often, the soldiers’ accounts are visually supported by flashbacks of the narrated events. 53

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In the mini-series Spartacus (2004), the battle of Vesuvius is narrated in the senate by the only survivor of the massacre, a legionary who still seems to be traumatized, while a flashback shows other legionaries screaming and completely terrified: ‘I was asleep. I woke up to screaming. The sound of screaming. I was screaming. Their men were everywhere like ravenous beasts. And their women followed, feeding like harpies on the wounded. The killing went on and on. Our men began to throw down their weapons and plead for their lives. But there was no mercy.’ Another example is that of The Eagle, when the veteran legionary Lucius Caius Metellus (Mark Strong) remembers the massacre of the Ninth Legion using these words (56ʹ45ʺ–57ʹ36ʺ): For weeks we marched. No sign of them. Suddenly they just appeared out of the mist. We could hear them, picking the men off at the back, one by one. Finally, we just stopped trying to find open ground and we turned and faced them. Those last few days of the legion, I’ve never been so frightened. We fought back-to-back. No sleep. Pissing where we stood. They came at us like animals. In this case, a veteran walks through the forest where the battle took place while narrating the event, while very short flashback scenes of the massacre are shown, though not clearly, as if in a memory. In a later scene, when Marcus Flavius Aquila asks Lucius if his father died fighting, Lucius answers that he ran before the end, like many others. Marcus calls him a coward, to which Lucius responds: ‘You weren’t here. You don’t know what it was like’ (59ʹ13ʺ– 59ʹ24ʺ). This example demonstrates a topic that is rare in Roman films, although very common in war movies: the importance of the survival instinct over honour on the battlefield. In Ben-Hur (2016), we have two further examples of Roman soldiers remembering previous battles. The first is an account of Messala, when he returns from war. Compared to previous scenes, his face has something different, and he seems traumatized. His story speaks of a brutal experience (21ʹ32ʺ–22ʹ47ʺ): ‘I’m not sure you want to hear everything. And you were right about life as a soldier. Sleepless nights in the mud. Cold and wet [. . .] I saw much blood spilled. More than I can describe.’99 In another scene, Messala tells Tirzah how he got the scar on his face and what he thought of when he was close to dying in battle (30ʹ26ʺ–30ʹ48ʺ): ‘I look like a monster. You know this scar, of course. This one I got in Germania. The other one I can’t show you. I was run through. I thought fatally, and. . . as I lay there, I. . . I wished I could see you again. Talk to you one last time.’ Lastly, after the attack of the Zealots on the Roman camp near a Jewish cemetery, an unknown legionary is found in agony, covered in blood; when Messala asks him what happened, his answer is brief: ‘Zealots. They poured through the encampment under cover of night. We had no way of—’ (26ʹ50ʺ–26ʹ52ʺ) The legionary does not finish his sentence, but the viewer can imagine that it was a massacre. In all these cases, the viewers’ approach to battle is not as external observers, but through the memories of those who fought, with an emphasis on the psychological effects of living through such a traumatic situation. 54

Screening the Face of Roman Battle

Conclusions In the not-too-distant future, technology may turn soldiers into mere automata without conscience; deadly, disciplined killing machines. This terrifying perspective is offered by an episode from the third season of the critically acclaimed Black Mirror series, whose title, ‘Men Against Fire’, is a clear reference to the aforementioned work of General S. L. A. Marshall. Of course, we cannot foresee if something like that will come to pass, but we can rest assured that we will not find such a historical precedent in ancient Rome. Thanks to pioneering research such as that from Goldsworthy (1996), the role and behaviour of the Roman legionary in battle is better understood, and can no longer be imagined as a highly dehumanized automaton soldier. As I have attempted to explain, a number of recent films have shown us examples of this new way of understanding the figure of the Roman soldier, free from the historical considerations that constrain academic papers. It can thus be argued that, in general, the recent films and series I have analysed portray a more humanized image of the Roman soldier than those found in older films of the genre. Some of these recent productions have dealt with the ‘fear and the fury’ of the Roman soldier on the battlefield. In modern cinema, Roman legionaries onscreen are more than automatons, more than merely small parts of some massive machine; they are humans. As we have seen, using different cinematographic techniques such as the choice of shot, set design, dialogue, sound, special effects and CGI , the creators have attempted to depict the ‘face of the Roman battle’. I do not intend to imply that recent Roman engagements on screen are more accurate than older ones, because accuracy is generally sacrificed in favour of drama. Movies strive for verisimilitude rather than accuracy, and for modern audiences, verisimilitude is obtained through a soldier’s point of view. One reason for this change may be found in the plots of these films. Many of the recent entries to the genre are told from a Roman point of view, for example Gladiator, Rome, Centurion, The Eagle and even Ben-Hur, where Messala takes a more active role than in previous versions. In some cases, the protagonists are Roman soldiers – legionaries or centurions – rather than generals. To a significant extent, this change serves to present a much less Manichaean Rome than that which is shown in the productions of the previous golden ages of the genre. However, in the twenty-first century there are also films and series in which Rome remains the oppressive enemy – for example Spartacus (2004) and Spartacus: War of Damned (2013) – and although these have focused less on the legionary’s point of view, they have somehow also found ways to show this aspect. Therefore, the fact that the protagonists are Romans is not, by itself, sufficient to explain this change in aesthetic. Both Keegan’s theory, and those of authors who use Roman battles as case studies, may have influenced the film creators in some way, in particular the scholarly works that compare ancient and contemporary battle experiences. However, I must recognize that these depictions are influenced more by modern approaches to the historical battlefield in the Seventh Art. In many cases, what we see in recent cinematic Roman battles is a generalization that can be applied to any timeless battle. Keegan pointed out that ‘battles 55

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belong to finite moments in history, to the societies which raise the armies which fight them, to the economies and technologies which those societies sustain.’100 We should understand that cinematographic battles, although set in ancient Rome, belong to the society in which they are produced. During the 1950s and 1960s, Rome was presented in American epic movies as an analogy of totalitarianism or British imperialism; in recent movies, however, the Roman Empire is often used as an analogy of the United States.101 In this new context, Roman soldiers must be humanized, as they essentially represent US soldiers. After the Vietnam War, the popular perception of soldiers’ experiences in battle and the cruelty of war changed. Since the 1980s, PTSD has been considered a real illness, and more recent conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan have increased popular interest in these topics. Modern society is now aware of the horrors of war and how they can affect individual soldiers, and for this reason many recent war and historical movies show us this kind of battle, including those set in ancient Rome. In any case, one thing is for sure: the visual power of spectacular and bloody battle scenes is still a major attraction for viewers in a world in which, unfortunately, violence exists not only on the big screen.

Filmography Ben-Hur (Bekmambetov, 2016, United States) Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914, Italy) Centurion (Neil Marshall, 2010, United Kingdom) Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000, United States) Rome (HBO, 2005–07, United States – United Kingdom – Italy) Scipione l’Africano (Carmine Gallone, 1937, Italy) Spartacus (Robert Dornhelm, 2004, United States) Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960, United States) Spartacus: War of the Damned (Starz, 2013, United States) The Eagle (Kevin Macdonald, 2011, United States – United Kingdom) The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964, United States)

Acknowledgements This paper is part of the international research project ‘Antiquity, Nationalism and Complex Identities in Western Historiography (1789–1989): An Approach to Europe and Latin America’ (HAR 2016-76940-P), as well as the research group ‘Textos, sociedad, política, administración y recepción del mundo antiguo’ (GIU 14/64). I am very grateful to Maria Wyke, Andrew Elliott, Fernando Quesada, Amanda Bristow and last but not least to my supervisor Antonio Duplá for their helpful comments on the initial draft of this article. 56

CHAPTER 5 PERFORMING VIOLENCE AND WAR TRAUMA: AJAX ON THE SILVER SCREEN Anastasia Bakogianni

The ‘seduction exerted by “classical” ideas and cultures’1 is so potent that classical Antiquity is often invoked in discussions of the burning issues of our day. In the turbulent new millennium the Graeco-Roman classics’ portrayal of war has remained an emotive focal point for such transhistorical connections. From Greek plays performed in protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to opinion pieces in newspapers, books and online, the classics remain in the news as a culturally significant point of reference for debates about modern conflicts.2 Beginning in the war-torn twentieth century this process shaped our current relationship with the classics. Greek drama acts as one of the key gravitational axes for these ongoing debates because of the prominence of the theme of war in our surviving corpus. Over the course of the last century these ancient dramatic texts became ever more popular as they were co-opted in support of liberal agendas.3 From Euripides’ Troades to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata the anti-war interpretation of these ancient plays has become the new orthodoxy among both scholars and theatre practitioners. More recently, classicists have questioned such easy comparisons and sought to uncover the ideological underpinning of these ‘readings’ and the creative adaptations that they give rise to.4 The highly emotive debates surrounding modern wars have polarized our world. Classical perspectives can help us problematize simplistic positions and easy assumptions. Starting with the obvious, attitudes towards armed conflict, war was an essential part of life in ancient Greece and Rome. Aggression was valorized.5 But all this did not detract from the acknowledgement of the suffering war brought both to those who fought it and to non-combatants – prominent themes in a number of our surviving ancient Greek tragedies, including the one that acts as the classical lens in this chapter: Sophocles’ Ajax. A famous ancient warrior gifted with extraordinary fighting skills, Ajax dies at Troy. Crucially not on the battlefield itself, but in the Greek army camp, thus remaining forever trapped in a liminal space between war and peace time. The majority of the spectators that made up the audiences that attended the Greek dramatic festivals in fifth-century bc Athens would have experienced war first-hand, over a prolonged period, as their polis’s ambition led to its increasing involvement in a series of conflicts. In contrast, for the overwhelming majority of citizens living in the West, wars are fought by professional armies in geographically distant places and reported on our twenty-four-hour news cycle and now also online.6 This paves the way for a disturbing blurring of the lines between reality and fiction,7 and between the spheres of peace and war. As civilians, it is all too easy to distance ourselves from the reality of war, to become mere consumers of information, 57

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rather than engaged, critical and active citizens.8 But, as in Sophocles’ tragedy, life after war comes with its own set of challenges for soldiers and their communities and this harsh reality is increasingly acknowledged and played out in public debates and in the performing arts. Ajax’s disturbing trajectory in our ancient sources encapsulates these tensions. In the Iliad, he is the Achaeans’ ‘bulwark’ in battle (3.229),9 but the Sophoclean Ajax is fury and fear incarnate.10 The ‘θύμος’ (deep anger) is already present in the Odyssey when the hero’s ghost refuses to even reply to Odysseus (11.543–67), so deeply ingrained is his wrath. When we encounter Ajax at the beginning of Sophocles’ play he is exultant, believing he has succeeded in killing his former philoi, the commanders of the Greek army at Troy, who disrespected him by awarding the armour of Achilles to Odysseus. Unfortunately for him, thanks to Athena’s intervention, his fury is not meted out on his intended victims, but on the camp animals. The toxic mix of shame, fear and anger that result from that failure lead him inexorably towards suicide. On the modern stage, Ajax is already being successfully appropriated as an ancient model facilitating a close engagement with the highly emotive topic of war trauma and its consequences.11 The play has been translocated to Afghanistan and Iraq, in plays like Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Ajax (2013) and Ellen McLaughlin’s Ajax in Iraq (2011), and in performances and readings that emphasize its connections to recent conflicts. The character of Athena in Wertenbaker’s play deliberately draws the audiences’ attention to the successful relocation of the ancient tragic hero to modern times: And as his mind wandered and stepped on all the unexploded mines of terror, I launched a barrage of blood-soaked memories . . . Past horror crashed into the present neon flashes of mutilation . . . on, off, the same again and again, his own, a film, a story, who knows?12 Two notable examples of how Sophocles’ Ajax has been co-opted as an effective therapeutic tool to connect with veterans, and to bring these issues to the attention of the wider public, is Bryan Doerries’s ongoing project Theatre of War (2009–) and Peter Meineck and Aquila Theatre’s Ancient Greeks / Modern Lives.13 Doerries, ‘a self-proclaimed evangelist for classical literature and its relevance to our lives today’,14 uses cold readings of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes as a starting point for discussions with veterans, their families and the wider public.15 Peter Meineck and Aquila Theatre have included Ajax in their chosen list of Greek classical texts that they feel are best suited to connect with the American public on a variety of burning current issues, including the United States’ ‘War on Terror’ and its consequences. In his tragic incarnation, Ajax thus successfully acts as a classical lodestone for public debates on the impact of war on soldiers and the challenges they face as they attempt, and at times fail, to integrate back into civilian life,16 a transition that the classical hero never completes. In Doerries’s view Ajax is ‘a fierce warrior who 58

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slides into a depression near the end of the Trojan War after losing his close friend, Achilles’.17 In this modern framework, Ajax’s madness is interpreted as a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD )18 and his suicide understood as the tragic result of his war trauma. While we must be careful of such simplistic ancient–modern comparisons,19 we should nonetheless engage in these public debates about combat trauma and PTSD, bringing the ancient perspective into dialogic contact with the modern.20 Despite his topicality, however, Ajax rarely puts in an appearance on screen, and when he does it is usually in his Iliadic guise as the Achaean’s second strongest warrior.21 My discussion is intended to test the limits of where classical reception can take us by pushing the envelope to include ‘indirect’ cinematic receptions of Ajax, including, as with my case studies in this chapter, those where I as a scholar of classical reception am proposing a new connection.22 Moving beyond ‘authorial’ (‘directorial’) intentions I argue that we can posit a meaningful connection between the Sophoclean Ajax and recent films that portray the uphill battle that returning soldiers face as they attempt to re-enter civilian society. Drawing on debates in the field of comparative literature, which has adopted new rules for comparison that allow us to go beyond concrete lines of relation or descent, I argue that a case can be made for a thematic connection between Sophocles’ tragedy and modern anxieties as expressed in recent films that focus on the mental and physical toll that war takes on soldiers. By juxtaposing our tragic hero’s madness and suicide, and their consequences, with the depiction of veterans in post-9/11 films, we can uncover a new chapter of Ajax’s reception and debate the long-term impact of warfare by viewing it through a classical lens. By focusing on the shade of Ajax in modern movies that explore the toll PTSD takes on returning soldiers we can also unpick modern interpretations of the tragic hero. The shadow that the suicidal tragic hero casts is a long and disturbing one, as indeed it should be.

The fear and the fury on screen The war movie genre has experienced a real renaissance in the new millennium in response to the widely publicized conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.23 American cinema has returned again and again to the subject of combat, its aftermath and impact on the soldiers, especially as these conflicts drag on and soldiers do multiple tours of duty.24 Greater awareness of war trauma and PTSD,25 with their increased risk of suicide,26 have the potential to furnish us with valuable tools with which to revisit the ancient hero and the debates surrounding his suicide and his motivation. Applying this modern framework backwards onto Sophocles’ drama is avowedly anachronistic, but it can help us connect in a meaningful way with this problematic hero. Modern readers and audiences have trouble understanding Ajax’s point of view because his Iliadic warrior code is so alien to us. But many of Ajax’s symptoms violent impulses, alienation, viewing the world as malevolent and with no possible future, would today be ascribed to PTSD.27 Aislinn Melchior questioned ‘to what extent we can apply modern experience to unlock or interpret the past’,28 but can we not use the classical past to help us understand the 59

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present and the ideological frameworks that underpin both? The proposed classical connections add further layers of meaning and bring ancient examples into dialogue with burning current issues, such as the impact of war on soldiers and the physical and mental toll it takes, making their reintegration into society all the more difficult. These are topics that classicists should not shy away from, if we truly want our field to remain vital and engaged.29 The past is neither dead not irrelevant, but shapes the present and our responses to the world around us, as well as our constantly renegotiated relationship to our cultural past. The figure of Ajax, warrior extraordinaire, who ends up disgraced and commits suicide alone, separated from his family and community, offers us the opportunity for resonant connections to modern debates about the trauma of combat and how it affects soldiers, their families and their wider communities. Traditionally mainstream cinema has preferred to celebrate the heroism and/or selfsacrifice of soldiers. The cultural unease surrounding the representation of the private, painful experience of war trauma in this popular medium is exemplified by Ajax’s most recent blockbuster outing in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004).30 In the film, ‘Inspired by Homer’s “The Iliad”’, Ajax (Tyler Mane) is peripheral to the main action. He features in the scene of the arrival of the Greek fleet at Troy during which he is granted a short cinematic aristeia as a berserker, who, like Achilles (Brad Pitt), lives for battle. This cinematic version of Ajax dies heroically, if rather unexpectedly, in a duel with Hector (Eric Bana), rather than committing suicide as in classical myth and in Sophocles’ eponymous tragedy. Troy’s Ajax seems devoid of any complex feelings, and can thus only ever be a minor character. This lack of complexity also makes him a less interesting model for juxtaposition with Sophocles’ tragic version of Ajax and the hero’s later reception. The nuances of Sophocles’ dramatic portrayal of Ajax are missing from this ‘direct’ cinematic reception of Ajax’s story. The movie reduces the ancient hero down to one quality, his exceptional strength and does not fully engage with the other aspects of Ajax’s story his madness, his quarrel with the other Greeks and his suicide. War correspondent Chris Hedges argued that ‘war is a drug’,31 and prolonged exposure irrevocably changes those who fight it. Reintegration into civilian life becomes challenging and for some impossible.32 Ajax fought in the Trojan War for ten years and never returned home, choosing instead to commit suicide after the disrespect shown to him by his former comrades and the shame of his failed attempt to avenge this grave insult. It is little wonder, then, that modern theatre practitioners are drawn to this classical story of an extraordinary warrior who is betrayed, suffers madness and ultimately dies by his own hand. But cinema has not followed suit, the representation of male suicide remaining highly problematic, especially in the case of a heroic soldier like Ajax.33 Mainstream cinema abounds with depictions of male characters risking their lives, but this trait is construed as heroic, selfless and in the service of a greater purpose.34 Traditionally the act of deliberate self-killing has been viewed in negative terms and is considered a cultural taboo.35 When it is represented it is ‘othered’, performed by the female, racial and ethnic ‘other’.36 One exception to this rule, though, is madness. So the question becomes is Ajax ‘out of his right mind’ when he commits suicide? In modern interpretations, Ajax’s spells of madness render his suicide more culturally acceptable by 60

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‘othering’ the male heroic self, rendering him vulnerable and thus penetrable by his enemy’s sword and the spectators’ gaze. Sophocles’ drama, however, offers us a different conceptualization and representation of madness. Equally crucial are the motives that underlie Ajax’s decision to commit suicide. We can explore these issues by juxtaposing them with modern examples where the connection is proposed on the basis of perceived commonalities of character and narrative and in terms of their corresponding conceptual, ideological and cultural differences. For the performance of war trauma as delusion/ madness, I selected the French psychological thriller Disorder (2016), for the performance of suicide, two American movies Harsh Times (2006) and Brothers (2009),37 for reasons that I hope will become clear in the course of this discussion.

Performing madness Performing madness on stage is always challenging, but it exerts a powerful spell on audiences, inviting them to enter the mind of the character suffering from its symptoms. Sophocles’ drama opens with a disturbing spectacle of madness; the goddess Athena has driven the great hero mad and invites both internal and external witnesses to observe his delusions as a demonstration of her divine power. Sophocles puts Ajax, a cultic hero whose statue was on display in the Athenian agora,38 on display on the Athenian stage. Athena turns the great warrior and protector of the Achaean army into a victim suffering from vivid visual and aural hallucinations.39 In Greek tragedy, madness was portrayed not as an internal, chronic condition, as we currently understand it, but as a powerful external force, divine in origin, that infects mortals and is irresistible.40 Athena is punishing Ajax for his hubris, his arrogant belief that his great feats in battle were all accomplished without her help.41 Athena’s obvious relish for Ajax’s loss of self is given a particularly cruel twist when she invites Odysseus, the winner of Achilles’ armour and now Ajax’s bitter enemy (echthros), as witness and messenger to the rest of the army.42 Observing Odysseus observe Ajax’s cruel and violent delusions can produce a powerful metatheatrical effect for both ancient and modern spectators, reminding us that what we are seeing in the ‘place of viewing’ (theatre)43 is another kind of illusion/delusion.44 The internal narrative signposts the illusionary act of theatre making. This discomfiting scene only serves to strengthen the general sense of unease this intrusive act of ‘seeing’ engenders in the audience, thus laying the groundwork for the even more disturbing performance of suicide. Cinema tends to offer audiences an immersive experience making the spell of witnessing the performance of madness more potent. Most mainstream movies generally seek to disguise their audiences’ awareness of the filmic illusion catering to their voyeurism. Alice Winocour’s Disorder (2016, French title: Maryland) plays with this mainstream filmic practice by stretching it to its very limits, until the audience starts to question its very understanding of what it is ‘seeing’. The film accomplishes this by immersing its audience fully into the point of view of its disturbed protagonist Vincent Loreau (Matthias Schoenaerts), a physically and mentally wounded veteran of the 61

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Afghanistan war. In an interview, Winocour discussed her hope that viewers would ‘surrender to his psyche and his body’,45 thus experiencing somatically, even at thirdhand, the physical toll that war trauma takes. An early scene at the doctor’s establishes that Vincent is suffering partial hearing loss and has to wait to be cleared for duty on both medical and psychological grounds. It also quickly becomes clear that he is selfmedicating; his fear of not being allowed to return to active duty leads him to lie about his physical and mental state. Despite the damage to his mind and body, Vincent is desperate to return to war and the comradeship and sense of purpose it offers him, a connectedness that Ajax has lost. The film opens with its protagonist on a training run with other soldiers, the most at ease the audience ever sees him. This is his natural environment, but for the rest of the movie, moonlighting as a bodyguard for a shady Lebanese financier and his family, he is always on edge. Vincent’s war trauma manifests itself as hypervigilance:46 simply put, he perceives threats everywhere until his sense of paranoia starts to infect the viewer. Is Jessie (Diana Kruger), the beautiful trophy wife, really in danger or is it all in Vincent’s head? The hallucinatory quality of the movie’s visuals raises doubts about the protagonist’s reliability as narrator, especially given his attraction to Jessie, which manifests itself in stolen glances and by monitoring her on CCTV. But it is the movie’s distorted soundscape that unsettles the most47 causing the audience to suspect that Vincent is so traumatized, that like Ajax at the beginning of Sophocles’ tragedy, he is experiencing aural as well as visual hallucinations. The villa, where the majority of the film takes place, for all its luxury and privilege is a claustrophobic place full of unseen threats. The sleep-deprived Vincent prowls around the house at night checking and rechecking the cameras. Like the Iliadic Ajax, Vincent is at heart a ‘killer-protector’ and he finally gets his chance to demonstrate his abilities during a kidnap attempt while on an outing with Jessie and her son, and in the follow-up attempt at the villa. Happy endings are a Hollywood speciality, but Disorder’s ending is deliberately left open-ended. One suspects that the last shots in the movie, in which Jessie returns and tenderly embraces Vincent from behind, her face shrouded in darkness, are wish-fulfilment on his part, a pleasanter kind of delusion, his heroism rewarded. One reviewer complained that the film was ‘done in by its denouement’,48 but its open-endedness actually serves to reinforce that the after-effects of war last well beyond the end of conflict and are not so easily ‘fixed’ or resolved. Ajax’s loss of trust in the Achaean leadership is mirrored in interesting ways in the shady modern politics and underlying class divisions that form the subtext of Disorder. Winocour does not draw any explicit connections but leaves it up to her audience to piece together the clues. The world of international high finance, represented by Imad Whalid (Percy Kemp) and his party guests, is decidedly sordid. Fragments of overheard conversations, combined with snatches of news footage, reveal that Whalid’s fortune was made in arms sales and that sections of the French government were complicit in his business for their own gain. More effectively than any outright statement, Disorder’s subtext establishes that the war that wrecked Vincent and countless other soldiers was fought for morally questionable reasons. The corruption and self-serving motives of the French elite are stigmatized. The inclusion of news footage on television sets in the 62

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background subtly alludes to the global impact of the decision to go to war, while Vincent’s severe PTSD testifies on the personal level to the impact on returning soldiers. The Atreidae’s leadership and reasons for going to war is questioned not only in tragedy, but also in epic. It is telling that both the Achaeans’ strongest warriors, first Achilles and then Ajax, grow to resent Agamemnon and Menelaus and feel aggrieved over their mistreatment at the hands of their leaders. The royal brothers’ inflexible stance in Sophocles’ Ajax is troubling, especially when contrasted with Odysseus’ empathy for his rival. Their insistence on the importance of obedience is clearly self-serving.49 Ajax might have broken the covenant between himself and the leaders of the Achaean army, but that does not justify their vindictiveness. Agamemnon and Menelaus lay claim to a superiority that in their minds places them at the top of the Achaean social and political pyramid. The gulf between employer and employee in Disorder further increases the audience’s sense of unfairness. The Whalid family treats Vincent like a servant, giving him menial tasks to perform, delegating him to a small Spartan room in their luxurious home, and ignoring his advice and opinions on the rare occasions he expresses them. In a jolting moment that testifies to the social gulf between them, Jessie introduces herself to Vincent in the villa’s kitchen. But this introduction does not take place when he is first assigned to her as her personal bodyguard. She only acknowledges him as a person worth knowing after he saves her and her son from a kidnap attempt. Jessie (and by extension the audience) finally recognizes Vincent’s value as a ‘killer-protector’, but class divisions are not so easily overcome. She continues to ignore his advice and resents his attempt to discipline her son. Vincent’s alienation from the people around him prevent him from forming any meaningful connections, as is painfully revealed in the scene where he watches as his friend Denis effortlessly flirts with Jessie, while he watches on enviously. The lack of a clear resolution at the end of the movie suggests that there will be no happy ending for Vincent – his trauma too severe, his sense of the world inalterably distorted. The movie was a passion project for its director Alice Winocour, who was inspired by war photography and the stories of returning soldiers to explore the challenges they face after they leave the battlefield, but still carry its memories and learned behaviours into civilian life.50 As Denis explains to Jessie, ‘In his head, he’s still over there.’51 The name of the movie was changed for the Anglophone market to Disorder, making the film’s close engagement with PTSD explicit in its English title.52 Jonathan Shay’s point that PTSD is not actually a ‘disorder’, but a war ‘injury’,53 psychological trauma that has serious physical and mental long-term consequences, is vividly demonstrated in Winocour’s movie. Clinicians place soldiers with long exposure to combat in the higher risk category for PTSD because ‘prolonged combat can wreck the personality’.54 Vincent’s body and mind are demonstrably wrecked, to the point where even he starts to doubt his perception of the world around him. The skills that made Vincent an effective soldier, his awareness of his surroundings and his ability to counter any threat with deadly violence, have turned harmful.55 The potential that he could just as easily become the threat simmers beneath the surface of the film. Like Ajax, his altered, distorted senses could trick him into a serious misjudgement. 63

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The suspense ratchets up, fed by a sense of simmering anger and fear, and the leashed violence that Vincent emanates. This is unleashed explosively near the end of the movie when Jessie witnesses Vincent countering a threat to her life with brutal violence. Vincent overpowers the attacker in hand-to-hand combat, but continues to whale on him long after he stops being able to defend himself. This violent confrontation is realistically portrayed and leaves Vincent breathing hard and obviously feeling the after-effects. Jessie turns away; arguably the audience is tempted to follow suit, but the movie’s strongest point is that it forces the viewer to walk a mile in Vincent’s shoes through its multisensory immersion into his point of view. This makes the explosion of brutal violence all the more hard-hitting, finally Vincent (and, by extension, the audience) have an outlet for their pent-up frustration and anger. Ancient thinkers likened extreme anger to madness56 and Sophocles’ Ajax is fuelled by furor. Ajax’s madness might be Athena’s punishment for his arrogance, but his deeply seated anger and his desire to avenge the grave insult dealt him by his former allies underlies and feeds his delusions.57 He is set on revenge from the outset; his delusion is that he thinks he has achieved it. Ancient and modern audiences can sympathize with Vincent and Ajax, in spite of their delusions and the fury and fear that both powers and ultimately wrecks them.

Performing suicide In the Sophoclean version of his story Ajax commits suicide because he cannot live in shame, his identity as a great warrior irrevocably wrecked by his madness and his failure to carry out his vengeance. Greek attitudes towards suicide were complex, and depended both on the motivation and the manner in which the act was carried out. Ajax’s desire to avoid shame, and to (as he sees it) regain his honour in death,58 render his suicide more acceptable, and made it possible for ancient audiences to sympathize with him.59 In modern times we have found another way to understand and empathize with Ajax’s actions, by explaining away his madness as a symptom of war trauma that inexorably leads him towards suicide:60 ‘By depicting the innermost thoughts of an ancient warrior who is in the throes of suicidal thoughts, thereby humanizing his ambivalence and articulating his despair, Sophocles’ Ajax provides a clear perspective on the internal struggles of service members and veterans today.’61 Watching Ajax committing suicide62 helps, to a degree, to overwrite the previous shameful spectacle of Ajax’s madness. He ‘kills’ himself with only the audience as his witnesses,63 irrevocably implicating them in his performance of suicide, another kind of spectacle. The ‘dead’ hero then proceeds to dominate the rest of the drama as Teucer defends his half-brother’s right to receive proper funerary rites. With Ajax dead, the drama refocuses on the impact of his behaviour and choices on his dependants and on the wider community, a theme that is echoed by modern movies, where war follows returning soldiers home, and veterans turn suicidal.64 Harsh Times and Brothers feature two returning soldiers,65 Jim Davis (Christian Bale) and Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) respectively, who reach a ‘breaking point’ because of 64

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war trauma.66 Their worsening mental state leads them ever closer to suicide, but in the end neither actually goes through with the act of self-killing. Both near-suicides are positioned close to the end of their narrative arcs. Jim is seriously wounded as he drives away from a shoot-out brought about by his own inability to control his rage and bloodlust, the culmination of a pattern of behaviour that has seen him grow increasingly violent as he hits roadblocks in his search for a job in law enforcement, a cherished ambition. On several occasions he endangers his best friend and sidekick Mike Alonzo (Freddy Rodríguez), and even threatens his Mexican girlfriend and their unborn child. Jim asks Mike to put him out of his misery (both physical but mostly mental), by shooting him dead instead of taking him to a hospital. In Brothers, Sam destroys the family kitchen in a violent episode and pulls a gun on his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), whom he wrongly suspects of having an affair with his wife Grace (Natalie Portman). When the police arrive on the scene he taunts them, waving his gun around and letting off a shot. Sam even urges them to shoot him; hoping for suicide by cop. When Tommy persuades the officers to hold off, Sam aims his gun at his own head. The audience shares his aural point of view in this key moment,67 voices are muted for Sam, but eventually his brother and wife get through to him and his hearing returns to normal. With an acknowledgement of ‘I am drowning’ he surrenders to the police and is institutionalized. The film leaves his final fate open-ended. He calls his brother from the hospital and admits to his wife that during his capture in Afghanistan he was forced to kill a fellow American soldier and has been drowning in guilt ever since that fatal act. They embrace and in a final voice-over Sam wonders, ‘Can I live again?’ Both films draw on cinematic tropes established in earlier depictions of the trauma of veterans of the Vietnam War. Their protagonists come close to representing suicide, but ultimately do not end their narratives with one – partly, perhaps, because unlike Ajax they are not alone when they are at the brink. Jim is killed and Sam threatens, but does not go through with the act of self-killing because of the intervention of his brother and his wife. There are complex reasons for the cultural reluctance to represent male suicide in Western culture. The ancient iconographic tradition allows us to explore the transhistorical anxieties surrounding the representation of male self-killing.68 The subject of Ajax’s suicide was not popular in Antiquity,69 although there are some notable exceptions to this rule.70 Among them is a red-figured calyx-krater from Etruria, currently held at the British Museum (see Fig. 5.1).71 This rather graphic depiction of Ajax’s suicide, his body impaled on an exaggeratedly large sword, highlights the visual impact of seeing the act of suicide performed on stage, and in the modern world increasingly on screen.72 The vase also reinforces the key role played by the sword in Ajax’s act of suicide and the very different ways in which suicide was conceptualized in ancient Greece. For a warrior like Ajax to kill himself, rather than dying in battle, is a deeply transgressive act, especially since he dies by his own hand, ἁυτόχειρ in Greek.73 But this is, to a large degree, offset by the fact that the sword he uses is given agency. The instrument rather than the hero becomes the ‘slayer’ (Soph., Ajax 815).74 Ajax and Teucer both adopt this point of view (815–23 and 1024–26 respectively). Shifting the blame onto the sword is made easier by the fact that the sword was given to Ajax by Hector, his Trojan enemy (echthros),75 65

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Figure 5.1 Red-figured calyx-krater – Ajax suicide © The Trustees of the British Museum.

in an exchange of gifts following their inconclusive duel in the Iliad (7.284–305). This more easily enabled Athenian audiences to shift the blame for the suicide onto the inanimate object.76 This vase offers us a violent visual spectacle: Ajax’s grotesquely impaled body. It was not possible to re-enact such a scene on the fifth-century bc Athenian stage, and it would be too Grand Guignol even for the modern stage. But it is well within the technical capabilities of cinema. Moreover, mainstream cinema’s emphasis on realism coupled with its practice of aestheticizing violence allows audiences to enjoy graphic portrayals of death.77 The depiction of male suicide, however, remains rare in mainstream cinema and is usually mediated, softened and explained away in some way. PTSD and war trauma provide narrative justification for self-destructive behaviour in returning veterans. Unlike Ajax, however, who kills himself by his own hand, the protagonists in my two cinematic case studies come close, but ultimately pull back from the brink. Transhistorical comparisons of the representation of heterosexual male suicide uncover an underlying cultural fear that the performance of suicide undermines male identity, stripping it of power by objectifying male bodies, turning them into shameful spectacles of weakness and failure. 66

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Ajax’s motivations for committing suicide are represented very differently in Sophocles’ tragedy: for him it is above all a question of honour. Modern artists and theatre practitioners, however, understand his decision to kill himself as the result of war trauma and explore the impact of his decision on his family and comrades.78 Contemporary concerns about returning soldiers are not restricted to the veterans themselves, but encompass their close family and friends, who are most directly affected by their behaviour and symptoms. In both my cinematic case studies this is starkly highlighted, particularly in Sam’s case, who at the beginning of Brothers is a devoted and loving husband and father. As a result of his capture and torture he undergoes a severe personality change. His pathological jealousy and his disconnectedness nearly destroy his family. Suicide begins to look like the only way to escape the guilt of having killed a man in order to survive and return to his family. This act lies at the heart of his trauma, making fear the root of his anger. The challenges and dangers of living with someone suffering from severe PTSD are also demonstrated in one of the most disturbing scenes in Harsh Times when Jim threatens his pregnant girlfriend Marta (Tammy Trull). Following her refusal to get an abortion, Jim snaps and threatens to punch her in the belly, before grabbing her by the throat and shoving a gun in her face. The attack takes place in the claustrophobic confines of a car, the tension further heighted by intercutting a series of distorted visuals that reveal Jim’s deteriorating mental condition.79 Only Mike’s intervention defuses the situation. At the end of the movie, Jim urges Mike to kill him by reminding his friend of all his violent, dangerous behaviour. He admits that he ‘deserves’ to die. Like Ajax, Jim sees no other way out but death. The toxic mix of fear and anger he is living with make him a danger to everyone around him. The ‘hypermasculinity’ of the returning veterans in these two films is demonstrably the result of their experiences on the battlefield. Their war trauma is fuelled by both fear and anger and causes them to lash out in increasingly violent ways. Sam’s behaviour is made more surprising because the audience can compare it to his earlier calm, in-control persona. Following his return home, he quickly unravels. His fear that his secret will be discovered leads him to verbally attack those closest to him; his inner turmoil spills over and he becomes a real threat to his family. There are lashings of graphic violence in Harsh Times as Jim commits several crimes  – theft, drug dealing and murder. The opening of the film establishes that Jim is suffering from PTSD, as he dreams of his time as a Ranger when killing was valorized. Like Ajax, Jim is fury and fear incarnate. His displays of hypermasculine posturing and behaviour, and the regularity with which he resorts to violence, reveal his underlying fear that he will not be a success in his own eyes. His downward spiral accelerates when he is rejected from the Los Angeles Police Department. He is even prepared to abandon his Mexican girlfriend when the chance arises to become a government agent in Colombia, a job that would make it impossible for him to marry a foreigner and would require him to return to another type of ‘battlefield’, where his abilities as a killer can be utilized to the full. Jim is prepared to sacrifice his lover on the altar of his male ambition. Ajax, too, places his personal concerns above all other considerations, making the decision to leave his family and dependants in a place that has turned hostile. Both Tecmessa and the chorus beg him not 67

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to abandon them as they rely on his strength and leadership (e.g. 162–66, 392–93, 514– 19 and 587–88). In order to select the case studies for my transhistorical comparison with the Sophoclean Ajax I searched for the following criteria: the madness of a warrior, interpreted today as PTSD, with accompanying suicidal thoughts, and violent displays of anger fuelled by deep-seated fears. These criteria also serve as a tool with which to question the conceptualization of traditional masculinity as dependent on physical prowess and worldly success, even at the cost of human relationships. Disorder, Harsh Times and Brothers offer us cinematic explorations of the ways in which war trauma can adversely affect returning soldiers and lead them down some very dark paths towards suicide. Fear-fuelled fury turns self-destructive in these disturbing narratives, as indeed they do for Ajax in Sophocles’ drama. The Iliad condemns the raving fury of an enemy on the battlefield,80 but in Ajax we see the Achaeans’ second-best warrior surrender himself to extreme anger fuelled by his shame and fear over his loss of status.

Performing violence The disturbing portrayals of physical and mental violence on stage and screen discussed in this chapter are intrinsically connected to the ongoing public debate about the performance of violence as a form of entertainment in modern media.81 Quentin Tarantino, a director notorious for his shockingly graphic portrayals of violence, commented in an interview: ‘It’s almost like Edison and the Lumière brothers invented the camera for filming violence.’82 The prevalence of graphically violent content in our media today83 makes this view appear ‘natural’. Repeated exposure to violent content, moreover, leads to ever-diminishing returns, so violent spectacles tend to become ever more graphic over time as audiences grow desensitized.84 The portrayal of the ancient world on the large and small screens in the last two decades exemplifies this trend; the intensification of the violence on display becomes immediately apparent when we compare Gladiator (2000) and the more recent Starz television series Spartacus (2010– 13).85 There are two major schools of thought about the effect of watching violence on viewers. One side is convinced that violent content is highly detrimental to viewers,86 especially young viewers,87 and that there is a direct and quantifiable connection to levels of real-world violence. The opposing position holds that we cannot conclusively prove a direct link between watching violence and committing violence.88 The question we should be asking, however, is not why there is so much violence in our media, but why it is so popular with audiences in the first place. In the commercial environment of global media, violence sells. Affective Disposition Theory (ADT ), originating in media studies, offers us theoretical insight into this question. This set of theories reveals that audience members’ emotional affiliation with characters and their storylines determine their enjoyment of media content.89 In other words, spectators can enjoy violence perpetrated against those they feel a negative dispositional alignment, or when it forms part of a retributive ‘justice sequence’.90 How audience members evaluate 68

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the behaviour of the character(s) is based not only on the information provided, but also on what they themselves bring to the reception process. This is not a simple formula but a dynamic, fluid one in which intentionality matters.91 Viewers can form a positive affective disposition towards a morally ambiguous character if their evaluation of that character’s intentions is favourable. In other words, they might condemn the character’s moral outlook, but condone some of his or her actions as justifiable. For example, viewers might be able to empathize, at least to a degree, with the repellent Jim Davis in Harsh Times, when he begs his friend Mike to kill him. Within Jim’s personal narrative this is a rare moment of self-awareness, an epiphany that war trauma has turned him into a loaded weapon, and the only way to ensure the safety of his loved ones is to remove himself from the equation. By extension, audiences witnessing Ajax’s madness on stage, his lack of empathy for Tecmessa’s plight, his use of dolos to achieve his aims and, finally, his suicide can still choose to empathize with his decision to kill himself in the context of the situation he finds himself in. Much depends on how these elements are combined in performance, which aspects theatre practitioners choose to emphasize and on each audience member’s evaluation of Ajax and his actions. Such judgements are of course culturally conditioned and do shift over time to reflect changing attitudes. The current view is that Ajax is suffering from war trauma, which renders his actions more understandable and sympathetic for modern audiences. Bringing these wider considerations into our examination of the representation of violence specifically connected to armed conflict refocuses the discussion in key ways. Without a doubt, war, including the representation of historical conflicts, is being packaged in modern media for our consumption and enjoyment. Western cinema’s preoccupation with the ‘War on Terror’, however, also reflects our culture’s ongoing analysis of the impact of this global conflict on our collective psyche and on the way those of us living in the West understand and relate to the world today. On those occasions when the focus shifts to the ‘Aftershock’,92 war trauma, PTSD, suicide and the challenges veterans and their families face, we have an opportunity. My case studies in this chapter are not strictly speaking war movies, but veteran movies, their focus squarely on the aftermath reflecting the Sophoclean drama’s post-war storyline and the challenges warriors like Ajax face in this new reality. Rather than simply glamorizing violence, this growing body of films and documentaries offers us narratives that exemplify war’s negative impact on peoples’ lives.93 We should also strive to problematize more conventional portrayals of war by reading against their filmic text, deliberately highlighting the aftershock as a means of problematizing simplistic heroic and patriotic narratives.94 Our classical models offer us a stark and challenging perspective on these heated modern debates and anxieties. They allow us to capitalize on the benefits that the distance between the ancient and the modern worlds affords us to reflect more critically on these divisive issues. In the highly competitive world of the ancient Greek city-states in the archaic and classical ages, armed conflict was quite simply the means by which a polis established and defended its territory and, if successful, expanded its sphere of influence and improved its position vis-à-vis the other Hellenic states. The ambitious and bellicose 69

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city of Athens, the polis where Greek tragedy originated in the fifth century bc , is typical of ancient Greek cities in this respect. On the individual level, too, ancient Greek men trained from early childhood onwards to hone their fighting skills. Masculine selfidentity was irrevocably linked to a man’s fighting ability and his performance in battle, as was his identity as a citizen, at least until the end of the fifth century. It is little wonder, then, that the theme of war dominates ancient Greek literature, especially considering that male authors produced the overwhelming majority of our surviving corpus. Plato even argued for the pedagogical merits of observing warfare first-hand as an essential part of children’s education.95 Despite these ideological, social and cultural pressures, Greek tragedy does not simply valorize war, but problematizes it by dwelling on its impact on soldiers and non-combatants alike. The distancing effect of setting these conflicts in a mythical past made it easier for audiences to accept alternative perspectives that challenged state and individual ideological agendas. Ultimately these dramas offer no easy answers or pat solutions, but leave it up to each audience member to decide. They demand active spectatorship, not the passive consumption of simplistic narratives usually on offer in our modern media. Sophocles’ Ajax exemplifies this ‘tragic’ approach. The complex and ambiguous hero as the heart of the play, and the partial resolution achieved at the end,96 leave the story wide open to multiple interpretations and therefore ripe for adaptation and reinterpretation. As a society we are in desperate need of this type of challenging narratives, their complexity forcing us to engage our critical faculties. War is endemic in human societies,97 and ignoring this disturbing truth does not make it disappear; we are simply sweeping it under the proverbial carpet. Better to engage in a critical debate about the causes of current and past wars, humankind’s propensity for violence, and the after-effects of conflict both on the individual and the societal level.98 My focus in this chapter has been on the soldiers that fight our wars, and their families, but these serve as a microcosm for war’s larger societal impact. Karelisa Hartigan argues that drama ‘offers the possibility of cure’99 and the Athenian dramatic texts can and indeed have been utilized to explore this potentiality. While we should not simply assume that the success of using ancient literature to treat veterans today is evidence for PTSD in the ancient world,100 as engaged classicists we should respond in a thoughtful manner to the current trend of projecting PTSD backwards onto historical periods. Through the media of film and television the condition has been popularized and its symptoms rendered recognizable to a wider audience.101 Ultimately, anachronistic interpretations of the Graeco-Roman classics are now part of the way we understand and relate to these ancient texts, important additions to our ongoing conversation with the classical past.

Filmography Brothers (2009), directed by Jim Sheridan, Lionsgate. Disorder (2016, French title: Maryland), directed by Alice Winocour, Soda Pictures. Harsh Times (2006), directed by David Ayer, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 70

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Acknowledgements This chapter is dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandfather who fought in the Second World War. A special debt of thanks is owed to Marta García Morcillo (Roehampton University) for a series of meaningful discussions that helped me crystallize my ideas for this chapter and to Irene Berti (Northeast Normal University of Changchun/Pädagogische Hochschule, Heidelberg,) for her incisive editorial suggestions and help. Many thanks are also due to my colleague Anne Mackay (University of Auckland) for her help with the iconographic tradition.

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CHAPTER 6 EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL VIOLENCE WITHIN THE MYTH OF IPHIGENIA: STAGING MYTH TODAY Małgorzata Budzowska

Ah! there is no man who would be free; for he is a slave either to money or to fate, the crowd of citizens or laws prevents him from following the course of his thought. But if you are afraid and defer too much to the mob, I will free you of that fear. Eur., Hec. 864–8701 The mythical figure of Iphigenia, as represented in the tragedy by Euripides (Iphigenia in Aulis), epitomizes a twofold involvement of violence. First and foremost, she is a victim of collective ferocity as a scapegoat sacrificed to restore order within the community. Consequently, this external collective violence evokes the internal violent disturbances in Iphigenia’s self-identity. The process of introjection of the victim’s figure into Iphigenia’s psychic apparatus flees swiftly from both perspectives, external and internal, which are mutually interdependent. Such appalling circumstances  – spreading fear and fury through violence  – inevitably engendered an artistic response. Since the mechanism described in Iphigenia’s myth is primordial, artists turn to ancient myths in order to show the immutability of human nature in violent (re)actions. The production of Iphigenia by Antonina Grzegorzewska from the National Theatre in Warsaw (2008) represents an artistic response to the ancient myth or, more precisely, to the core of the myth, which is identified in terms of external and internal violence. The fact that the artist, in her first step, overwrites2 the ancient Euripidean dramatic version of the myth, creating a new drama fashioned on the aesthetics of brutalism, is also noteworthy. In her second step, she stages her play by transcoding verbal meanings into their performative (corporeal) emanations. The way in which the ancient index3 of Iphigenia’s myth is transcribed into the brutalist aesthetics of Grzegorzewska’s two-dimensional piece of art will be analysed within this chapter. Iphigenia’s myth – the index of violence In terms of the external violence experienced by Iphigenia – as a mythical figure and a dramatic character in ancient plays4 – she is well equipped with the signs of a victim, 73

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which acquire significant value in times of crisis. As René Girard has observed, in critical situations within a community, ‘the strictest taboos are transgressed’,5 and people who are the most protected in times of social stability become the objects of persecution and attack. The collective persecution, comparable to witch-hunts, as Girard explains, takes ‘place in time of crisis, which weaken normal institutions and favour mob formation’.6 The social crisis can be caused by many different external and internal circumstances, such as natural disasters or political disturbances, and its most significant result is ‘an extreme loss of social order’.7 Since the social order is based on the family unit and hierarchical differences, these very differences disappear. Consequently, the weakest member of a family, such as a child, and the strongest representative of authority, for example a father or a king, are both assaulted. Girard indicates that in the time of crisis: there are violent crimes which choose as object those people whom it is most criminal to attack, either in the absolute sense or in reference to the individual committing the act: a king, a father, the symbol of supreme authority, and in biblical and modern societies the weakest and most defenseless, especially young children. [. . .] the persecutors always convince themselves that a small number of people, or even a single individual, despite his relative weakness, is extremely harmful to the whole of a society.8 To be able to commit such crimes, the community that at the beginning became a crowd, i.e. a spontaneous gathering of people, must be then transformed into a mob with a clearly defined enemy to be attacked. Girard makes a significant observation on this matter: underlining the difference between crowd and mob, he indicates that mob involves mobilization in military terms, when a crowd organizes itself to attack an enemy. Ultimately, such a mobilized crowd – the mob – becomes an army of persecutors that ‘dream of purging the community of the impure elements that corrupt it’.9 By employing this matrix to analyse the myth of Iphigenia, we can effortlessly recognize the stigmata of the persecution’s victim that is inscribed into the figure of Agamemnon’s daughter and situated within the particular state of emergency. The dramatic plot of the Euripides play is staged in the military camp of the Greeks in Aulis. The army of soldiers from all the Greek poleis, united in the expedition against Troy, constructs an obvious sign of social crisis caused from the alleged attack on Greek civilization by barbarians. The Greeks are mobilized for war against Troy because a Trojan prince, Paris, seduced and took to Troy Helen, the wife of Menelaus, one of Greek kings. The ‘Helen casus’ as causa belli (a cause of war) has been extensively discussed; as an emblem of warfare and masculine heroism, it was considered to be a paradoxical framework. According to Ruby Blondell, the figure of Helen evoking the Trojan War can be regarded in the context of the lost masculinity that must be recovered on the battlefield: ‘The lust for beauty that “attacks” men and destroys their manhood becomes a lust for heroic combat that proves their manhood even while taking their lives for the sake of a woman.’10 Significantly, the myth of the Trojan War exposes how strongly the Greeks defined their civilization within patriarchal structures. Being attacked from both sides, by the internal female enemy of 74

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kalon kakon (‘beautiful evil’, i.e. Helen), and by external barbarian masculinity (Paris), they react with extraordinary fury, allowing them to unify against their enemies. Consequently, Helen becomes merely a scapegoat, a pretence masking the true motifs of the Trojan War, which are based on the Greek quest to predominate all the barbarian nations. In this context, the Greeks becomes a community of men whose social, patriarchal, ‘civilized’ order is disturbed by the external, ‘barbarian’, enemy of Trojan prince coupled with the internal, female, enemy of treacherous wife. Thus, the Greek men create a crowd of soldiers, under the command of Agamemnon, that seeks action to recover their disintegrated masculinity organized within the patriarchal order. The military mobilization of men fighting for their lost manhood is the social construct that epitomizes the violence in crudo. Their inability to continue their revenge due to divine female anger (Artemis) is a spark for internal crisis within the crowd of soldiers. The plot of Euripides’ drama focuses on the situation when the Greek army is stuck in Aulis, because the goddess Artemis, demanding a propitiatory sacrifice from Agamemnon, prevents Greek ships from sailing to Troy. Turning towards magical explanations of the immobility of the military crowd is one of the mechanisms that initiates the transformation of the crowd into the mob and search for a scapegoat. Using the supernatural principle of causality,11 the mob feels permitted to break all taboos, since the divine sign abolishes any forms of human hierarchy. In these circumstances, Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, faultlessly meets the stigmatic requirements of a scapegoat described by Girard: she is a female child of the king, the weakest member of a family who are themselves the strongest representatives of authority. To attack a royal child is the most criminal action and therefore the mob of Greek soldiers chooses Iphigenia as the object of its assault. A diabolical plexus of all the victim’s stigmata in one figure makes Iphigenia the most tragic persona in Greek drama. Euripides seems to be aware of such a mechanism for the mob’s violence, as evidenced by the words of Clytemnestra, mother of Iphigenia: ‘Truly the mob is a dire mischief ’ (Eur., IA 1357). Overwhelmed by the ‘clamorous cries’ (Eur., IA 1359) of his army, Agamemnon also becomes a social scapegoat, whose suffering should recover the social order. In a state of crisis, the community plunges into anarchy (the violence of many12), and under this social pressure the king decides to act against the most essential natural law of protecting his offspring. Furthermore, this situation reveals an extremely violent disintegration of the social structure and its religious values. For the Greeks, only the animal offering was a normal and necessary element of social order. The human sacrifice always indicated crisis, with an eternally cruel and repulsive form.13 Intriguingly, while Aeschylus (in his Agamemnon) describes the sacrifice of Iphigenia as a violation of the sacrificial ritual, because his Iphigenia is sacrificed ‘laid hold’, ‘enwrapped in her robes’, and ‘with a gag upon her lovely mouth’ (Ag. 230–5), Euripides presents the ritual in the opposite way. In his drama, Iphigenia ‘bravely yields [her] neck without a word’ (IA 1560). This change is a crucial dramaturgical procedure employed by the younger playwright, who focused on the phenomenon of the individual’s reaction to social violence. Consequently, he depicts a doubling of violence, or rather its reduplication, when a forceful external demand of the mob initiates the violent internal disturbances of the victim. 75

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Euripidean Iphigenia gives the impression of being a child who becomes a hero, and such a figure appears to escape the imposed role of a scapegoat. However, this image could also have the opposite effect, of Euripides not wishing to show a heroic attitude within a girl who bravely matures to be a warrior: ‘a destroyer of Ilium’s town’ (IA 1475). Considering how strongly Iphigenia fought for her life, it is hard to believe her sudden desire to sacrifice herself for Greece. Agamemnon’s daughter then appears to show the appalling mechanism of the infectious influence of the mob on the individual – Iphigenia does not change her mind, but is forced to accept the imposed violent rhetoric of noble sacrifice for the state. As a child she is significantly prone to external suggestions, and the rhetoric of patriotism finally finds fertile ground in her immature personality. Thus, Euripides’ image of Iphigenia does not depict a maturation to heroism, but rather how an immature mind is infected and corrupted by the violence of the mob. Therefore, this version of the myth illustrates the triumph of persecution and defining a scapegoat, since Iphigenia ultimately accepts the role imposed on her, while the ritual of human sacrifice pretends to be performed in an ordered and socially established manner, as if circumstances were normal, rather than in a state of crisis. The interdependence between external and internal violence proves how deeply individual life is intertwined into the social structure. Significantly, both manifestations of violence are evoked by fear. The mob of soldiers cannot find a rational explanation for their situation, instead employing magical thinking to cover their fear and initiate the persecution in order to find a guilty party who can be punished and recover the social structure. In these circumstances, the king is merely a puppet, as he himself admits: ‘the people’s slave’ (Eur., IA 450), and his fear forces him to act against the natural law. The external violence that attacks Iphigenia is then evoked by the train of fears and, consequently, induces the same fear in herself, initiating her violent internal struggles. From this perspective, the myth of Iphigenia should be perceived as an image of fear that poisons the collective imagination and evokes extreme violence towards an innocent victim, whose mind becomes the final object of fear’s pollution. Euripides’ drama, providing a plot that concentrates on social crisis, persecution, fear’s pollution and the final sacrifice of the scapegoat, all together discussed within the overarching framework of restoring the lost order of manhood, became an inspiration for artists to explore such organized mechanism of violence. The following section will investigate the reception of the ancient Euripidean index of Iphigenia’s myth, as it was discussed here, by Polish artist Antonina Grzegorzewska, who wrote a new, modern version of the myth and then staged it so as to prove that literary and theatrical media are the most efficient to examine the appalling mechanism of initiating and spreading fear and fury by humans.

Iphigenia by Antonina Grzegorzewska – the page-and-stage incident14 It is within the framework of contemporary terrorism, the current machinery of polluting with fear, as explored from a gender perspective, that Antonina Grzegorzewska 76

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wrote her version of Iphigenia’s myth and staged it in the National Theatre in Warsaw (Iphigenia, 2008). It is difficult to clearly separate the drama and the production, in which the author is also the director. Grzegorzewska herself considers staging (sc. introducing text on stage) as broadening the scope of artistic contemplation: ‘I am not interested in staging itself. Producing on stage becomes for me an extension, deepening, and the final manifestation of the process that I start at the literary level, writing a play.’15 Both fields of her artistic considerations, which complement each other, thus constitute the original reception of the ancient myth, at the same time becoming a repetition of the ancient Greek playwrights’ protocol of staging.16 The characters in Grzegorzewska’s play are constructed mainly by and in words; however, their staged incarnations into the actors’ phenomenal bodies and their audial, visual and kinetic signs significantly expand and improve the verbal signs of drama. Iphigenia by Grzegorzewska, in its page-and-stage incidental form, by exposing reflections on the entanglement of human beings in gendered social masks, deals with the idea of masculinity and femininity. For this reason, the concept of this piece of art is based on the clash of a group of male attitudes with a group of female attitudes, to reveal how all attempts to strictly define masculinity and femininity are stereotypical and incompatible with human experience. As two fundamental manifestations of human existence in the world, they are mutually complementary and interchangeable, and as such they cannot constitute the essence of the individual’s identity – there are masculine women and feminine men. The main reflection of Grzegorzewska’s entire artistic work concerns the tragedy that constantly pulsates beneath the appearance of happiness;17 her considerations on the flexibility of gender self-determination are thus inscribed within the context of extreme situations – despair, wars, betrayals and, above all, rejection. The war and its contemporary involvement in media spectacles of death is the background for Grzegorzewska’s play. The issue, which the artist ponders in her performance, is the problem of the participation of women and men in the theatre of power and wars – both domestic, as played out between husband, wife and children, and the worldwide entangling of individuals in a political game for power. This is a text about claustrophobia, [. . .] about narrowing the possibilities between individuals of the same species. As a result of circumstances beyond our control. Short X-ray which captures possible distortions. [. . .] Translating the quarrel into the language of drama. With time, however, this transposition turns out to be temporary and the language of body begins to govern the text: when words are spit out with saliva.18 In this introduction to her play, the author noticeably indicates the corporeal nature of the quarrel’s experience; it thus gets its performance on stage, in the phenomenological bodies of the actors. The author simultaneously underlines the brutality of the language of anger which, if it wishes to be believable, has to be shown in its full animality: ‘In protest against an exaltation in the areas of high art, I like hangmen on the door handles, 77

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the faecal meat of human despair and madmen who hit their heads against the wall and break off the table at the dinner party.’19 ‘The faecal meat of human despair’ is re-presented in the fields of masculinity and femininity, involved in the extremes of war that from Antiquity to the present day has been constituted by one permanent feature  – innocent victims sacrificed to the altar of wars, victims shamelessly forgotten or necrophilically cherished in the name of constructing an ideological identification. Grzegorzewska applies signs of the myth, but makes obvious references to contemporary wars involving terrorism that evoke the essential changes of identity in individuals and societies. Thus, she creates a chorus consisting of women dressed in black Muslim chadors and carrying explosive belts, who sing partially in ancient Greek with Euripides’ verses (Iphigenia at Tauris). This stage procedure seems to be aimed at communicating the meaning of war not with the use of verbal signs, but in the space of audio-visual signs – the wailing voice of the chorus and the image of Muslim chadors with explosive belts. The fact that the chorus sings verses from Iphigenia at Tauris appears to recall the image of Iphigenia, who was transformed from a victim into an executioner and took the tools of death into her own hands.20 In the performance, the phenomenon of war is felicitously depicted in the figure of the goddess Artemis (Magdalena Warzecha), who emerges from the tub of blood and grabs Agamemnon’s (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz) hair (Fig. 6.1) with the words:

Figure 6.1 Artemis (Magdalena Warzecha) and Agamemnon (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz). Photo by Robert Jaworski. Artistic Archive of the National Theatre in Warsaw. 78

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War is the permanent orgasm of corpses. If you want to move your army from the port – impotent, to Troy – the territory of the apocalypse, send Iphigenia, your daughter, Agamemnon, as the sacrifice to me.21 The brutality of her language, which contrasts the apocalypse of war with the sexual sphere, appears to refer to the mythical motif of the Trojan War that oscillated around two men fighting for a woman. The offended male pride of Menelaus is constantly recalled by Grzegorzewska: You will conquer Troy, I will take back my shabby, worn wife. Helen will spread her legs in front of me again, on the floor, by the fridge, in the tub, wherever I want.22 According to Artemis, the masculinity that is defined within the continuum between impotency and orgasm, culturally completes itself in the war. The male army of the Greeks is an impotent character that is stimulated to fight by the bloody sacrifice of a woman, and who finalizes his orgasmic experience of killing with death in the territory of a Trojan apocalypse. The goddess also recognizes the war imperative of ‘beheadings and victims’ that creates the identity of a ‘statesman’ – Agamemnon – and their involvement in the media spectacle of death that drives the war machine’s grand narration: Father of the nation, you want to be a statesman. The true revolution always demands the beheadings and victims, which newspapers can consider as its main title.23 The involvement of war narration in the dependent relationship with the media theatre of death is shown on stage by the employment of news tickers displaying proand anti-war slogans. These are projected onto the narrow screens placed on one side of the stage. By using props of advertising and news displays that surround us everywhere in everyday life, the director indicates the atrocious fact of how ordinary and common the tragedy of war becomes for us. Communicated on fast-moving news tickers, it ultimately becomes just one of the multiple info codes that disappear into the trash of adverts and trivial information. In such a conceptual framework of war signs, Grzegorzewska begins the discussion on masculinity and femininity. The male group consists of four figures: Agamemnon, Menelaus, Achilles and Patroclus, who are arranged in contrasting pairs exemplifying two radically different images of masculinity. The brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaus, represent the characters of soldiers who fulfil their war mission with wild satisfaction that belongs to the stereotypical image of a man-soldier. The director develops these clichés, giving Menelaus the characteristics of an alcoholic and a sexual maniac (as a private), while Agamemnon has the attributes of a cynical and calculating politician (as 79

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a military commander). Agamemnon’s cynicism, interwoven with his political hybris, is revealed in his dialogue with Artemis when, asking for favourable winds for the Greek army, he makes a hideous promise to the goddess: Send me the wind, I will bring you the sacrifices from Troy, dragged from their beds in a child’s room, a school schedule for Tuesday crossed out with blood from the wrist of a mother raped on unfolded notebooks for physics and with the sweat of the tormentor rubbed into her tattered skirt Send me the wind, I will save the children drenched with petrol and splashed with sperm.24 The violent language of Grzegorzewska illustrates what is hidden deep within all grand narratives of war, when the ‘political imperative’ obscures the tragedy of civilians. The combination of violence and sex is, according to Grzegorzewska, an obvious phenomenon on the battlefield, because in these both spaces the masculine domination over the defeated foes manifests itself.25 In the imagination generated by masculine thought, the murder or kidnap of children and the disgrace of women is a clear message to the enemy that his ‘property’ has been taken away from him. Such fabricated masculine war games, in which women and children become the ‘tools’ of death, seem to be a rule in the world of Agamemnon; it is thus the kidnapped children who, as symbols of domination, are offered to the goddess as sacrifices. Nevertheless, the goddess suggests redefining this ‘offer’, demanding the child of the potential winner, thus reversing the order of the masculine war rationale. In doing so, the goddess exposes the frailty of masculinity, its non-linearity and non-obviousness. A man who connects the divine and titanic elements in himself, the grandness and weakness, was a common figure in ancient Greek drama, which discloses this tragic contradiction hidden in myths. Characters like Agamemnon, Ajax, Oedipus or Theseus are clearly marked by this paradox – grandness broken by weakness – that becomes a source of suffering. Artemis’ claim, diverting the masculine order of war and defeating the winner, is a gesture to recall this cruel truth about the fragility of human happiness, marked by weakness. Grzegorzewska’s Agamemnon does not appear to be particularly distraught by the goddess’s demand. Perhaps, however, one can read this figure through the prism of repressing the burden of the tragedy that affects a father who, in his cynicism and calculation, finds the opportunity to face the cruelty of divine intervention. Nonetheless, without further ado, he accepts this ‘strong deal’26 with the goddess: I am not an anaesthesiologist of war. Killing is the language of war, and dealers do not have paracetamol. Soldiers hidden under the deck of sixty boats think that they are also war artists. Cannon fodder, whose slow spoiling pushes me against the wall like a whore in the parking lot. They play cards and demand my daughter from me because 80

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they got bored with the smell of fish from the smokehouse and wanted to have fun in rebellion [. . .] Which NOW is more terrible: Iphigenia in blood or me being mocked, lying in the tomato gutters?27 The character of Agamemnon, played by Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, thanks to the style of his acting and the specific physicality of the actor, gains a deeply tragic dimension. The phenomenological energy of Radziwiłowicz’s acting body allows him to play Agamemnon as a man deeply experienced and suffering, but continuing his masquerade with fate, when the old king suffers the burden of war in the face of a tragedy that cannot be internally rationalized. Grzegorzewska relevantly casts Radziwiłowicz in the role of the Greek leader, whose posture, face and timbre of voice allow him to fully express the father-leader’s tragedy. Agamemnon is thus described in the text and visualized on stage in his ambivalent suspension between fatherhood and chieftainship  – as Euripides depicted him in the ancient drama. The portrayal of Menelaus becomes just a supplement to the image of Agamemnon when contextualized in this manner. Grzegorzewska performs a procedure of exaggeration while forming the character of the king of Sparta abandoned by a woman. She tends, as might be surmised, to overdraw the issue of Menelaus’ sense of lost sexual property. Therefore, his statements are focused almost exclusively on sex, sexual revenge on his wife and the drunkenness that allows him to forget about his humiliation by Paris. Chop off the left breast and right breast, pour rust into wounds, wring out legs, hands, head of unfaithful wife. You have no idea, woman, what you say. I only will teach you what it is to separate the soul from the body, what is it to beg, do not stop, to unlace you.28 Menelaus’ figure, both in the ancient myth and its overwritten version by Grzegorzewska, is only an excuse and a tool for achieving the goals of expansive politics represented by Agamemnon. With the juxtaposition of these two characters  – a commander and a soldier, a cynical statesman and a drunken private with a rampant libido, an older and younger brother, phenomenologically re-presented by the acting bodies of an old man and a young man (Arkadiusz Janiczek) – Grzegorzewska achieves the effect of an exaggerated metaphor of the militaristic features of masculinity, actualizing itself in the struggle for domination within the spaces of war and sex that are intertwined in language and action. Such an excessively negative image of masculinity, which forms its identity on the battlefield, is obviously an intentionally biased metaphor aimed at revealing the motives of warfare that are usually hidden under smooth, grand narratives. The overdrawn portrayals of Agamemnon and Menelaus have their justification both in the author-director’s desire to highlight the types of men who manage and are managed within the war machine, as well as to confront them with the different images 81

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of masculinity epitomized by the figures of Achilles and Patroclus. The director sets up a mythical hero in tandem with his friend, as it was in the ancient myth. The mythical Patroclus was a mirror for Achilles, one in which the narcissistic warrior saw his most faithful follower and imitator. The masculine friendship of both heroes already suggested a homosexual intimacy in Antiquity, which in the cultural context of Greece at the time did not constitute a novelty.29 The relationship of the mythical warriors, from the perspective of Achilles, has the qualities of eros paidikos, as the great warrior adores his friend according to the pattern of erastes (the one who loves), directing his feelings towards the youth of eromenos (beloved). The worship vectors, however, have a mutual nature in this configuration, because Patroclus equally intensely admires Achilles, perceiving in him an unrivalled role model. Grzegorzewska takes over the mythical image of a pair of friends, not hesitating to transplant it into the context of a lovers’ relationship. Concurrently, the director uses the same procedure of exaggeration as with Agamemnon and Menelaus, composing the characters of the gay men by using schematic cultural clichés. Thus, Patroclus is a ballet dancer with a typically womanish approach to his external appearance30 – he looks like a sleek and fashionable homosexual, promoting himself and despising the military masculinity: Swans’ tongues. I am a pacifist. I just want to live in peace. I just want to perform pirouettes peacefully. I am not suitable for army.31 A declaratively pacifist pair of mythical warriors, Achilles and Patroclus, is simultaneously transfigured into a pair of gay men, fascinated by ballet, small dogs and bike repair  – spaces of expression for homosexual identity inherent in the scheme of effeminacy. Achilles’ bicycle fascinations in Grzegorzewska’s drama are thus part of the concept of crossing the ‘bourgeois masculinity’, and together with Patroclus’ ballet shoes and their small dog Reks, it composes a bromide of ‘effeminate gayness’: masculinity tagged with a cliché of femininity. The cultural construct of ‘gayness’ is used by the director to reveal the extremes of masculinity, in opposition to the image of the macho. In her drama, the author situates Achilles as being unconsciousness of his martial fate. The greatest mythical warrior of the ancient world ‘does not know yet that he is a warrior’,32 and war appears in his hipster world only as an obstacle to a life of entertainment. On stage, the actors portraying Achilles and Patroclus (Marcin Przybylski and Robert Jarociński, respectively) excellently act out the cultural patterns assigned to these characters by Grzegorzewska. The two young men make tender gestures only to each other. The mythical figure of Achilles – in Euripides’ drama honestly touched by the fate of Iphigenia – on Grzegorzewska’s page-and-stage remains absolutely impassive in the face of the tragedy of the woman: Iphigenia Stay, please, do not go out. I’m begging you as whimpering dog, to arouse more pity. I am hollow, and you hold 82

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my heart, if it is not a stone thrown between cans. [. . .] Achilles Madwoman, go home, take a shower, cry alone.33 Hugging Achilles, Iphigenia begs him to intervene, but he leans back from her (Fig. 6.2), trying to free himself from her grip: I will be, I fight for my life. Resuscitate me while I am alive. Then I will flow with water dripping from the veil under the ground. [. . .] I will hold you, I do not want to be alone. Wedding dress is a bandage, fiancé is a father’s lie, father is a euthanasia. No, do not try to free yourself.

Figure 6.2 Achilles (Marcin Przybylski) and Iphigenia (Anna Gryszkówna). Photo by Robert Jaworski. Artistic Archive of the National Theatre in Warsaw.

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I will not let you go. You are warm, you digest a dinner, your clothing smells of fresh washing. You are a human being, and I am a hybrid of a tangle of hair, sweat, gums and holey tights.34 Achilles by Grzegorzewska, despite being placed on the opposite pole of masculinity to Agamemnon, shares with him a similar attitude to the objectification of women. In fact, both characters, Agamemnon and Achilles, are guided by the same frustrations resulting from male dependence on a woman. Agamemnon’s masculinity is defined by domination over and subordination of the female element, without which he is unable to function. Achilles’ masculinity forms itself by the negation of the female element, a form of annihilating it from reality. Iphigenia bounces off the wall of indifference represented by both kinds of masculinity, her father’s and that of his potential successor – her fiancé. However contradictory they might be to each other, they unite in opposition to the woman. Whether this is a ‘bourgeois masculinity’ marked by patriarchal condescension, or the hipsters’ ‘masculinity in crisis’ paradoxically taking on the masks of femininity, in both forms men build a wall against which women, like being mad, ‘bang their heads in a gesture of human despair’.35 These two extreme aspects of masculinity, as I have described them, constitute the background for a dominant dramatic mimesis of femininity. Various derivations of femininity are shown in drama and on stage, at the intersection of various myths. The motif of Iphigenia lured to her death with the insidious promise of marriage is used by the author-director to portray the question of marriage itself, which is seen as a deadfall for women: Your marriage was a nonsense. Declarations of your husbands are cancelled under the influence of new facts. They do not want your dinners and bodies anymore. Stop common taxes. They burned out. They are sorry, but they cannot anymore, They were unhappy. Daily life kills them, men are hunters. War will put Agamemnon on his feet, New wife – Jason.36 These words, sung by a chorus, are directed to the women present on stage  – Clytemnestra (Aleksandra Justa), Medea (Ewa Konstancja Bułhak), a character introduced into the text of the drama and on stage from another myth,37 and Iphigenia (Anna Gryszkówna). For Agamemnon’s and Jason’s wife, these words concern previously experienced traumas, but for Iphigenia, a would-be bride, they are a warning. On the basis of a concept thus formulated, Grzegorzewska performs her stage cogitation on 84

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femininity, with the aforementioned chorus of women stylized as suicidal terrorists in the background. The central figure of Iphigenia is portrayed with the tags of a rebellious teenager. The protagonist of the drama demonstrates her youthful rebellion with the train of orders and prohibitions directed at her mother.38 On stage, the teen revolt expresses itself in Iphigenia’s crazed dance performance to Janis Joplin’s song ‘Piece of My Heart’. The icon of the pacifist movement perfectly fits with the initial attitude of Iphigenia, whose youthful, anti-system rebellion is a manifestation of the process of moving towards adulthood, marked by her searches for identity. In the same scene, with the song in the background, Iphigenia throws off her dresses, as if indicating another rejected identity choice: ‘Iphigenia builds her personality in the process of subsequent amputations: I am not a daughter, I am not a teenager, I am not a wife, I am not a mother.’39 This is, therefore, an image of the birth of female identity, of which Iphigenia must give a distinctive definition. The obvious point of reference for Iphigenia is her mother, Clytemnestra, who represents the scenario of femininity by wearing the typical patriarchal masks, and who, in perfect make-up and stylish clothes, plays the role of wife. However, this appearance becomes subversive if we know that Clytemnestra, next to her sister Helen, is one of the few female characters (at least human) in Greek mythology who boldly, if not arrogantly, oppose the narrative of masculine logos. The two sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra, constitute symbols of treacherous wives, although they are also perceived as women rebelling against the imposed patriarchal models of life. In the myth described by Euripides and overwritten by Grzegorzewska, Clytemnestra, the abducted wife of Tantalus, fully plays the obedient role of her new husband, Agamemnon’s, wife, finding meaning in her existence by making meals, doing laundry and taking care of the children. These signs of a woman involved in the patriarchal order of a family are shown by Grzegorzewska on stage in the living room, arranged between the couch and the fridge: You look bad. You are pale, waiting is not for you. Leave me waiting, I am a wife.40 In the verses quoted above, the author-director perfectly captures the essence of the existence of a woman imprisoned in a patriarchal relationship of domination  – the waiting, constantly waiting for attention, a gesture or even the very presence of a man who directs the relationship without attentiveness to the woman’s desires, situating her in the schematic role of maid and mother. Such a scenario of femininity is what her mother represents to Iphigenia in the initial sequence of the myth, thus confirming that even the most rebellious woman can succumb to slavery, in this case for the good of her children. Nonetheless, the myth reveals the rebellious nature of Clytemnestra at the moment when Agamemnon decides to sacrifice Iphigenia. The mother then becomes a woman fighting for another woman and, above all, for her child. From the latter part of the myth, it is known that the failure to save Iphigenia’s life will cause significant changes 85

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in the personality of Clytemnestra, who will enter into a new relationship in the absence of her husband and finally murder him, thus taking revenge for her daughter’s murder. The transformation of Clytemnestra’s personality41 occurs simultaneously with the characterological conversion of Iphigenia, although both changes take place in opposite directions. Clytemnestra takes off the mask of an obedient wife to oppose her husband’s decision to kill her daughter and announces her revenge: Suffering too horrible for this space. Agamemnon, go to the bath, I am already waiting in the foam, naked on your call, come, blood does not clot in the water.42 It is noteworthy that Grzegorzewska reveals the rebellion of Clytemnestra after her meeting with Medea. The juxtaposition of the two heroines is based on their marital obedience, which is broken by rising up against the harm suffered from their husbands. The author-director raises this issue, considering marriage in terms of a trap for both women and men, but pointing to men as those who destroy the organized order of the relationship: Your marriage was a nonsense. [. . .] Frying pan burnt, again goulash. How do you look, how do you move. The other day I was crazy about you. Do not control me. Crisis. Not anymore. I do not know why, but not anymore. That’s life. Yes, I betrayed you, Medea. Yes, I promised her to Artemis, Clytemnestra.43 Within this approach, the dedication of Medea or Clytemnestra to their marriages turns out to indeed be ‘a nonsense’. Both characters in Grzegorzewska’s drama rid themselves of their wedding rings as symbols of their enslavement. Their gestures clearly refer to Helen’s behaviour, a woman being the (official) reason for the war of Agamemnon and Menelaus with the Trojans and the indirect cause of Iphigenia’s fate. All three rebels – Clytemnestra, Medea and Helen44  – represent for Iphigenia the images of potential scenarios for a woman’s life. In the case of Clytemnestra and Medea, their dedication to their families was not recognized in the eyes of a man, nor did it prevent them from being left by man, whether mentally or physically. In the case of Helen – a woman who refuses to participate in a marriage arranged for her and decides to implement her own plan for a relationship – in accordance with her will, she leaves her husband. Mythical Clytemnestra and Medea exemplify the typical social roles of women inscribed into the 86

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pattern of obedient wives and mothers. Both, however, meet within Grzegorzewska’s page-and-stage performance, and as the ‘wives who do not have the tools of revenge’,45 they share the common theme of women rising up against an order moderated by masculine logos: Clytemnestra Agamemnon, if I was a fairy, like she is, I would chop off your growing limbs with the axe, because chopping off only four, it’s not enough, octopus of lies. Medea I will hang on a rope of bibs and squeeze blood from the breast instead of milk. I have a uterine infarction. [. . .] No Jason, no, I will not leave the children for you, I will not take child support from you, I will not let Creon’s daughter shake a bottle of milk.46 In the performance, Medea leads the chorus of women in Muslim chadors with explosive belts (Fig. 6.3). Significantly, this chorus is accompanied by another, composed of three silent women dressed in colourful, feminine dresses. In the background of the dialogue between Medea and Clytemnestra they perform the gestures of the Three Wise Monkeys from the Japanese proverb: ‘I see nothing wrong, I hear nothing bad, I say nothing bad’, covering their eyes, ears and mouth in turn with their hands. This proverb,

Figure 6.3 Medea / Chorus Leader (Ewa Konstancja Bułhak) and the Chorus. Photo by Robert Jaworski. Artistic Archive of the National Theatre in Warsaw. 87

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supported by their gestures, symbolizes the attitude of consenting to evil that is ‘unseen, unheard, unspoken’.47 This ‘colourful’ chorus creates a visual counterpoint to the main chorus of Muslim women in black chadors, but its gestures, symbolizing a conformist attitude, deny the idea of rebellion, for which Medea / the chorus leader calls. In the attitude of the two characters, Medea and Clytemnestra, reinforced by the image of the two female choruses, Iphigenia can recognize the possibility of her revolt, or its rejection. She thus finds herself (or rather is poised to do so) in the situation of ostensibly choosing a feminine, mature identity. Her father’s deceit is for Iphigenia an accelerated rite of passage to adulthood, accentuated in the drama and performance by the contrasting images of an enthusiastic teenager and a desperate woman, who eventually becomes a hybrid dragged to the altar by her hair  – a patchwork of identities imposed and forced upon her by the grand narrative of the masculine logos of the ‘war imperative’. A few moments earlier, the chorus addresses a warning to her: Do not get lost in dreams, Iphigenia. Stop. There is only you and the world. Do not want anybody for happiness. Spend time alone. Do not beg anyone on your knees.48 However, later, Iphigenia confesses to her father: My body was a temple you insulted I am fully prepared for death. I am going to the path of torture. I leave into exile, I am going to homelessness.49 Homelessness, which Iphigenia speaks of, seems to relate to her sense of namelessness and non-identity  – a hybrid tangle of imposed clichés of existence created by the narratives of the characters surrounding her. Her fate is moderated by masculine logos, but there is no doubt that in her mind there are the echoes of feminine voices calling for rebellion, just as with the voice of the changed Clytemnestra: Daughter! Live! Wish to live! Do not make your father an idol, look, I also transfused new blood for me! (she shows the finger without wedding ring)50 Clytemnestra, with the ‘transfused new blood’, frees herself from the trap of marriage and observes with despair her daughter being involved in a scheme of equally submissive entanglement within the masculine patriotic narrative created to make people the tools of death. Iphigenia stresses her resignation from the fight with words about a change of identity, although in fact it is its loss: 88

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I changed my identity. I lost my temperament. I no longer have a riposte. Achilles prefers boys. Patroclus. Among all the boys I prefer Achilles. Father prefers war.51 Iphigenia, dragged by her hair by a soldier, expresses her monologue, conceptualizing the issue of narratives of identity creation and of the language used as a tool of death. Aware of the ‘featherweight of a word in relation to the heavyweight of events’,52 Iphigenia defines words as ‘cannonballs’ that can hurt or merely irritate, but which should be spoken and heard: These are words without a baccalaureate, words from blocks of flats, words from dumps. These words are your only chance – do not underestimate them. You can make the words stop growling and will say a sentence announcing the agreement.53 The scene of Iphigenia’s sacrifice with her monologue summarizes the essence of tragedy contained in the drama, which oscillates around the issue of not only captured and imprisoned identity, but also the problem of identity created by others and imposed as a mask with the silent consent of others, in accordance with the wisdom of the Three Wise Monkeys. With her attitude, Grzegorzewska’s Iphigenia seeks to reveal the hypocrisy embodied in the words that are used for fighting, not for agreement. The whole page-and-stage performance by Grzegorzewska is the great exemplification of this problematics in crudo  – characters do not exchange dialogue, they only deliver monologues. When they finally notice their interlocutors, it is only to fight with them, to beg them or merely present their own narratives. Each time this takes place, whether with a defensive or offensive attitude, it is using the warmonger’s words, which in the performance are represented through the visual signs of soldiers’ uniforms and explosive belts. The constant struggle is shown on stage through the dynamic counterpoints of female choruses in black chadors and colourful dresses, in the clash of extreme masculine attitudes expressed in costumes and movements, in the gesture of Artemis emerging from the tub of blood and grabbing Agamemnon’s hair, or in the shouts of the women’s chorus as commanded by Medea. Its culmination is the scene of dragging Iphigenia by her hair to the altar. Interestingly, although Grzegorzewska shows Iphigenia in such a violent conclusion, she still allows her to hope: You will be pacified, tame, docile The primordial aggressive mood will cease to be a chaos. Your mood will receive the status of ritual. Combs of minutes spent with each other and weeks in which your mutual presence will cease to be the hidden cause of sleepless nights and abortion of dream, will comb out your babbitt. 89

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[. . .] Your distrust will cease to be a permanent feature, you will become a Family again.54

Conclusion The characters created by Grzegorzewska frame themselves with language, in a profound self-analysis that takes the form of conversations with themselves, seeking selfrecognition and self-definition. Although Dorota Mieszek, with regard to Grzegorzewska’s drama and performance, notes that ‘the world of characters is ruled by an ontological, not epistemological, dominant. The heroes, more than wanting to get to know themselves (and each other), want to re-create and re-appear themselves’,55 yet it seems that it is the epistemological dominant that moderates the protagonists’ behaviour. There is no doubt that in re-cognizing themselves, the characters simultaneously determine their ontological status. Grzegorzewska focuses on this process of self-inquiry that is aimed at re-cognizing the self and confirming one’s existence, while simultaneously indicating the traps of cultural clichés, over which an individual constantly stumbles and into which s/he usually imperceptibly falls. The author-director describes this practice with particular emphasis placed on the cultural constructs of masculinity and femininity, stressing the enslaved female identity; however, her reflection concerns the human being beyond gender, and her main postulate is the renunciation of mutual enslavement. Grzegorzewska’s reflection, considered on a universal level (for which Iphigenia’s myth is just an exemplification) can be perceived within the notion of ethico-political theatre. This raises the issue of the autonomy of a human seeking constitutive markers of the self. Furthermore, the author-director seems to be looking for an intersubjective concept to overcome the individual egotism involved in gender clichés. By showing the process of forming – or rather transforming – identity in its most painful rite of passing from childhood to adulthood, the artist intercepts these moments of crisis by exposing the individual to enslavement in cultural constructs of identity (i.e. social roles) in which the self remains in a desperate disagreement with the framework created. All the protagonists of Grzegorzewska’s drama speak of the need for compatibility with the self, constructing extensive dialogues with themselves. However, Iphigenia, who observes these internally dialoguing tableaux vivant, remains in the paralysing powerlessness of finding the self in herself, eventually adopting the imposed identity of a victim  – a scapegoat for the cruel ‘dire mob’ who in times of war/crisis suspends morality in favour of the ‘war imperative’. Grzegorzewska does not allow Iphigenia the noble death of a warrior, ‘the destroyer of Ilium’s town and the Phrygians’ (Eur., IA 1475–6), that Euripides attributed to her, but does place in her mouth a manifesto postulating the liberation of individuals from a violent egoism that makes agreement impossible. A conversation with the self, transferred into a space of interpersonal relations, may result in words that will ‘stop growling’ and that will begin to express trust and understanding. It seems that the most important part of Grzegorzewska’s message is to search for this type of words in 90

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humans ‘without baccalaureate’, in ‘blocks of flats’ and ‘dumps’, or – as one can understand – outside the spaces of the smooth elitist narratives of the establishment, close to ordinary people whose life is least marked by false self-creation. These are the words of those ‘madmen’ who ‘break off the table at the dinner party’ and express ‘the faecal meat of human despair’, who speak the brutal language, without narrative sublimations to falsify the essence of human tragedy. Iphigenia’s myth, at the level of the incident, is in fact the myth of the false narrative of patriotism, which is one of many emanations from the violent patriarchal narrative. At the level of the index  – the essential tragedy that it exemplifies – this is the myth of searching for the self and of falling into the traps of identity constructed to enslave the self. Because everything takes place at the level of language, Grzegorzewska’s page-and-stage performance has a truly political nature. Characters reveal themselves and their self-reflections come into being in the community, to accentuate their existence; however, they are constantly either on the defensive or offensive. The gesture of Iphigenia risking ‘the opening [of] her body to a public view’56 is an obvious political gestus which, along with her ethical manifesto, fully fits the notion of the ethico-political turn – which considers the ethics of an individual’s involvement in one’s various otherness – into the contemporary space of the human world polis.

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CHAPTER 7 KSENI, THE FOREIGNER : A BRAZILIAN MEDEA IN ACTION Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho

O earth, o ray of the Sun that lightens all, turn your gaze, o turn it to this ruinous woman before she lays her bloody murderous hands upon her children! They are sprung from your race of gold, and it is a fearful thing for the blood of a god to be spilt upon the ground by the hands of mortal men. O light begotten of Zeus, check the cruel and murderous Fury, take her from this house plagued by spirits of vengeance. Eur., Medea1

Introduction The reception of the myth of Medea in Brazil provides a deeply rich and stimulating case study for our understanding of Greek culture, as well as the reception of this myth through the transposition of Euripides’ Medea. The metamorphosis of one of the most famous, widely performed and frequently adapted of Euripides’ tragedies is welldocumented and studied, yet existing research focuses mainly on adaptations or transpositions in Europe and North America.2 In my opinion, the variety of transpositions of this Euripides play in Brazil deserves more attention, for a number of reasons. This powerful story has undergone many changes in terms of style, format and content. The choices and changes made by the authors of each transposition demonstrate, for example, how differently some of the principal traits of this famous woman – her anger and her fury  – have been interpreted and portrayed. Furthermore, in transplanting Euripides below the equator and into the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture, each artist proposes a new way of continuing the dialogue with the original Greek tragedy, even though (or perhaps because) the Euripidean play is not the main source for this transposition. In works published elsewhere,3 I have comparatively explored many literary and philosophical aspects of the reception of Medea’s myth in both cinema and Brazilian theatre, predominantly comparing it to Euripides’ Medea, but at times also considering Seneca’s Medea. In this chapter, I focus on the concept of the fury of an outlander, and how this is portrayed and performed within the contemporary opera Kseni, the Foreigner.4 It was composed by Jocy de Oliveira, a prize-winning pianist born in 1936, who in the 1960s transformed her career as an international classical concert musician to become Brazil’s first multimedia artist (Fig. 7.1).

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Figure 7.1 Jocy de Oliveira as a young performer. © Jocy de Oliveira. Oliveira’s opera (from here on referred to as Kseni) premiered in Brazil in 2006 at the Carlos Gomes Theatre in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the eighth opera of eleven she has authored. Oliveira was responsible for the concept, text, music, video and direction of Kseni, and due to the fact that she recorded all her operas, they are now also available as a source of study. It is worth noting that this is not a group of operas intended to be staged and filmed merely as an afterthought to provide a record of the work, but rather staged productions that incorporate filmed images and were also conceived of, from the start, as being filmed.5

Contexts: Brazilian Medeas and Oliveira’s operas Before we analyse certain aspects of Kseni in greater detail, I believe it is necessary to place it within the context of other transpositions of the Medea tragedy in Brazil, as well as other operas by Jocy de Oliveira. I will not go into the reasons here why I chose the term ‘transposition’ (from among the plethora of names we find in reception theory) to identify a process of creative and interpretive recreation of an earlier and renowned work.6 I believe that the use of this term may be accepted, considering that the aim of this text is not to discuss the theory of reception. Adding certain historical information into the picture will enable us to understand how innovative Oliveira is, and how her work, Kseni, provides important variations. These include a political approach to the history of Medea, whose acts have been considered by some scholars and artists to constitute a family drama, focused on the female universe of feelings and private life.7 94

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Euripides’ play has been transposed to Brazil by seven other authors during the last sixty years (I do not include here the other cases in which the play was staged, and by no means intend to deplete the discussion of its transposition).8 The first and most polemic transposition was Além do Rio (Medea) [Beyond the River (Medea)], written by Agostinho Olavo and published in 1961 within the book (in Portuguese) Dramas for Blacks and a Prologue for Whites: An Anthology of Brazilian Black Theatre. There is no precise information on when it was written, but we do have certain elements to affirm that it was penned in the late 1940s. Olavo’s play is a post-colonial (avant la lettre) rereading of Medea in the context of the trafficking of slaves to Brazil in the seventeenth century, and the subtitle (Medea) indicates a link to ancient patterns. However, the characters’ names, as well as its references to Candomblé (a syncretic Brazilian ritual practice) highlight the play’s combination of Greek, Christian and African traditions. Beyond the River (Medea) was never performed. In 1966, the Brazilian government forbade its performance  – scheduled to represent the country at the First World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal – when it prohibited the Black Experimental Theatre group from travelling to Dakar, where the festival (organized by Leopold Senghor) took place.9 This decision can be seen as a form of political rage against its members, whose progressive agenda included discussing popular education, racial violence and otherness. If we compare the previous success of plays like Orfeu da Conceição (1956), written by the composer and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes and the basis for the award-winning film Black Orpheus (1959), to that of Beyond the River, we find peculiar cases of the reception of Greek myths being biased by strong racial prejudice. Furthermore, this is a case in which fiction and historical facts were intertwined, evoking fear and fury from conservative members of Brazilian society and its dictatorial government, who viewed it as a dangerous play that dealt with interracial relationships, gender and racism. Although we will not discuss this here, it is nonetheless important to bring it to light. This polemical and cursed transposition (the play was never staged until now) of Medea was followed by a television adaptation, Caso Especial-Medéia (Special Case – Medea), directed by Oduvaldo Viana Filho, which was screened in 1972. In 1975 came the most famous adaptation, the play Gota d’Água [Drop of Water], authored by the playwright Paulo Pontes and the renowned composer, singer and writer Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (also known as Chico Buarque). At the time of its debut, Gota d’Água won the Molière Prize in Brazil, yet the authors did not attend the awards ceremony in protest against the censorship carried out under the country’s military regime. Its subtitle is ‘uma tragédia carioca’ (a carioca tragedy). Carioca is an indigenous word (Tupi-Guarani) which etymologically means ‘house of white man’. The term ‘carioca’, however, is also a word for the native inhabitants of the city of Rio de Janeiro, where the action takes place. The interweaving of tragic elements with the urban reality of Brazil in the 1970s takes place in the peculiar manner that I have already analysed in another context.10 The play evokes many elements of the former text by Oduvaldo Viana Filho, such as the suicide of Joana (Medea’s name in a play in which, curiously to say the least, the names of all the women were changed, but the principal male characters were still called heroic Greek names, such as Jasão, Creonte and Egeu) after she killed her children, and in my opinion can be viewed as more of a social drama than a tragedy. 95

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In 1995, twenty years after Gota d’Água, Des-Medéia appeared, written, directed and performed from a feminist perspective by Denise Stoklos. Rather than killing herself (as in the previous two works), Medea decides to live and not to murder her children, in a deconstruction of the myth; the title indicates this through the use of the prefix ‘des’, equivalent to dys-. Eleven years later, in 2006, Kseni was performed in Brazil, although certain parts were also presented earlier, as a recital in Germany. More recently, other Medeas have come into being, the majority of them within works concerned with themes of racism and otherness. Celso Jr, from Bahia, directed the play Saluba.Medeia in 2014, associating Medea and Jason with the Orixás (Afro-Brazilian divine spirits and forces of nature) Nanã and Oxalá, respectively. It explores the conflict between them following the death of their son Omulu, drowned by Medea in a river, as in Agostinho Olavo’s play.11 However, the actors who performed this play were not Afro-Brazilians, as were all the actors who staged Beyond the River in the 1960s. In the last two years, four new plays have been staged. In 2018 we had Medea Mina Jeje, a monologue conceived and performed by the actor Kenan Bernardes, directed by Juliana Monteiro and which, like Além do Rio, was staged in the seventeenth century, with Medea as an enslaved woman. The second play, Medeia Negra [Black Medea] from 2018, was also a monologue and was directed by Tânia Farias; in 2017, the third, Mata teu pai [Kill Your Father], was conceived by Grace Passô and directed by Inez Viana. All of these discuss xenophobia, racism, misogyny and violence. In 2019, Filhos de Medeia [Sons of Medea], a hybrid of music and theatre, was conceived by Nina Reis. The director, Marco Nunes, also brought the story into the twenty-first century, in a collaborative work that focuses on the concepts of the Barbarian and the Civilized.12 The works I have quoted give us some idea of the richness of the reception of Medea’s myth in Brazil, and Jocy de Oliveira’s piece will be better understood and evaluated if we keep this context in mind. If we consider other works by Oliveira, we will also find elements to better analyse her Medea, in which we find meaningful references to Greek literature,13 as well as to gender issues that reveal her interpretation and appropriation of Euripides’ Medea.14

Kseni and the production of Oliveira In her earlier work, prior to the creation of Kseni, Oliveira brought another character from Greek mythology and tragedy onto the stage once again: Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon. The description of her death, with her mouth gagged so that her laments will not be heard by the army that observes the sacrifice of a beautiful virgin, is dealt with in one of the six parts of the opera The Malibrans.15 This opera is also striking in its conception and perspicacity in mixing reality and myth. The title is a reference to the great opera singer (as well as pianist and composer) Maria Malibran, who lived in the nineteenth century and died when she was just twenty-eight years old. Some of her personal objects are now owned by the mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli who, in 2008, in commemoration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Malibran, organized 96

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an exhibition in her honour that toured various European countries. However, while Bartoli revitalized the myth of the diva, Oliveira had an entirely different perspective. For her, Maria Malibran’s story becomes an inspiration to consider other divas who lost their reason, becoming objects that were manipulated by men who contributed to their sacrifice in some way, at times for their own honour or pleasure. Desdemona and Ophelia were also characters in this fragmented and surreal story of possession, alongside Iphigenia. According to Oliveira, when speaking of The Malibrans and Kseni, art  – particularly music and theatre  – are privileged places for a (largely) male audience to enjoy the suffering and death of creatures they can control and manipulate. However, in this case Medea breaks with this pattern. It is worth highlighting that in Oliveira’s operatic work, two myths are thematically connected: that of the daughter sacrificed by the father (Iphigenia in As Malibrans), and that of the mother who sacrifices her children (Medea in Kseni). Yet there is a great asymmetry here, not only in the way each character acts, but in the way the public evaluates the same action: filicide. The anger and fury of Iphigenia is expressed in lament, as passive resignation; in Medea, it is expressed as action, through infanticide. However, it is Medea who transforms this act into political discourse. In order to better understand the opera, let us now perform a detailed analysis of some of its constituent parts. First, I wish to draw attention to one point, a phrase that is repeated from the first act onwards: ‘I, Kseni pampharmakos!’16 Here we encounter a reference to Medea’s knowledge of drugs. Panpharmakon is a complex term. Medea is not simply a sorcerer or a primitive, a telluric and irrational being  – terms that are generally associated with magic, as well as with herself. Her ability to use pharmaka is supplemented by her clarity of reasoning and her awareness of the consequences of her actions. In Oliveira’s opera, this balance manifests itself in the conjunction of ritual cries and speech that denounce the social and political situation of ‘foreigners’, those who are different (a relational concept, of course). We should also remember that pharmakon can be a word of incantation, a charm with psychagogic power. In Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen (10), the power of words to affect the soul (due to techniques of composition) is compared to a medicine.17 When transposed to the genre of opera, where music, words and gesture are associated, Medea’s story can be more effective in producing fear and fury. However, the emphasis of Oliveira’s reception of the myth is also revealed in the affirmation: ‘Beware those who judge me and those who feel the weight of the tragedy of becoming the author of their own destiny’ (Kseni, scene 1). In this sense, the work connects with my own interpretation (as well as that of others) of Medea as a political tragedy.18 From the perspective of heroic morals, it is not easy to judge Medea as guilty (and perhaps this is not even possible).19 The more political aspects of Oliveira’s opera sustain the tragedy of the act of infanticide found in the source text. Her Medea, like Euripides’, bears the consequences of her actions at both the political and personal level. Regarding Medea as a panpharmakon xeina, Graf observes that ‘the basic theme of Medea’s persona remains constant: she is a foreigner’20 – and thus not a Greek. Oliveira clearly focuses on these aspects, as she also chooses to quote the phrase from Euripides’ Medea (1339–40) where Jason states that ‘No Greek woman would have dared to do this’, but replaces ‘Greek’ for ‘civilized’.21 97

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From Kseni to Medea As this is the only explicit reference made to Euripides within the piece, I believe it is a good moment to return to the Greek tragedy in order to explore the potential connections between Kseni and Medea. Here it seems to me that we are at an interpretive crossroads: Oliveira’s political option enables us to return to Euripides and question those interpretations of the play that reduce it to a domestic drama about a jealous and abandoned woman. At this point I would like to summarize an argument that I developed many years ago,22 and which I would argue remains not only valid, but has grown more widely accepted with the passage of time. In his deservedly influential volumes on Greek tragedy, Kitto noted that the play deals with domestic disputes in a prosaic and vulgar environment, highlighting characteristics that portray Medea as a blind and irrational force of nature, which does not represent an ‘honest revenge’ and thus cannot be seen as authentically tragic heroine.23 However, in my opinion it is important to defend Euripides’ construction of a character in which rationality and heroism are emphasized, from the perspective of the values of the Greek polis, one of which is the defence of citizenship. Here, the dialogue with contemporary theatre points to the modification of certain elements (plot and character’s construction, for example) which indicate the specific values and beliefs within our society that shape how the myth is received. To resurrect words I wrote previously,24 in the case of Euripides’ Medea, it is common to either naturalize or animalize her actions. Jason and the nurse compare her to a bull or a lioness;25 however, had she followed her instincts, she would have killed her traitorous husband and spared her children. One point of note in Euripides is that, through wellarticulated rhetoric, Medea demonstrates how limited Jason’s outlook is as he arranges his new marriage – he seeks to gain power in the city, but does not perceive the disastrous consequences of breaking an oath. He is also betraying relationships of confidence and reciprocity that are of great importance to Greek men, for example by endangering the citizenship of his children. Medea, despite her status as a barbarian, is both more Greek and more heroic than Jason. It is this aspect that makes the play a political tragedy rather than a merely domestic one, as some have interpreted it. And – to better understand her decision – how could Medea have left her children with a traitor? In Douglas Cairns’s study of feminism and misogyny in Medea, when arguing that the marriage between Medea and Jason presents many regular features (albeit taken to extremes) of an Athenian marriage, he reminds us that this institution was virilocal, or patrilocal: a stranger would have been transposed from her oikos to that of her husband. The bride (an intruder) ‘has to ‘betray’ her father’.26 It could be argued that the ‘dysfunctionality of her marriage’ (as in Cairns’s analysis) could be a justification for her culpability, although Cairns does not infer this. He reminds us that because the dexiosis – the ritualized gesture she made with Jason, which was broken – was a subversion of the traditional process of the engue, sealed by the dexiosis, it should not be a contract between man and wife, but rather between the bride’s male guardian (or kurios) and the bridegroom. However, even if they did not follow the ritual correctly, we are still more sympathetic (as in the case of Antigone) to Medea than to Jason, with his misdeeds and 98

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perjury (313, 438 and 439, as the chorus notes). Smit27 has perspicuously noted certain strategies to portray otherness  – namely that the solution to depicting her as a nonGreek is to make her non-white: Euripides’ Jason ascribes her act to her sexual jealousy and also to her belonging to a different culture. She is not Greek. A Greek woman would never commit such an act. That Medea is a barbarian must be a factor. To connect excessive appetites and sexual passion (526–31, 549–73, 913, 1338) is a way to distinguish her from the Greek woman, to stress her otherness or barbarism. In some transpositions, this sexuality is connected to another characteristic  – blackness.28 Plays written from a post-colonial perspective, like Beyond the River, bring out this complex, dangerous and often avoided connection. The analysis of other black Medeas (that has recently become available in Wetmore’s edition), like the plays by Jim Magnuson, Ernest Ferlita, Steve Carter, Silas Jones, Marianne McDonald and Edris Cooper, can shed more light on the subject. In the latter, the title of the introduction is significant, and points to this connection: ‘Medea the Outsider / Medea as a Woman of Color’. Oliveira, meanwhile, chooses an option in which otherness is not so connected to ethnic, or even gender issues (in spite of her feminism), but with human beings in exile, displaced, an option that also brings about a dialogue with a highly political Medea. When we place the play Medea in context  – which can be done by investigating the tetralogy to which it belongs – we are inclined to emphasize the political aspects of the play. Medea was part of a tetralogy that also contained Philoctetes, Dictys and the satyrplay Thersitae. As Karamanou has shown29 with consistent arguments, although the three tragedies belong to different myths, they are nonetheless interrelated, as they all deal with key notions of exile and otherness. However, Medea is not only an abandoned foreigner (222–4, 386–90), but also a woman, bringing forth problems related to gender issues (230–51). Karamanou concludes that the four plays ‘constitute an early, fine and eloquent example of Euripides’ systematic treatment within the same tetralogy of the vulnerability of otherness and its political and cultural ramifications’.30 For Oliveira, we can thus argue that her opera stresses precisely these two aspects: the political decision of casting Medea as a foreigner, and a transgressive discussion of exile and borders that is aligned with the political aspect of the Euripidean tragedy. The first words spoken by the protagonist of Kseni are: ‘Transgressor  . . . Immigrant  . . . Barbarous  . . . Terrorist  . . . Woman  . . . My body, my only weapon . . .’ The principal focus of Oliveira’s opera is a defence of ‘the right to be different’. These words also bring the opera to a close. Kseni is divided into five scenes or acts. The original titles of the scenes are: ‘Medea profecia’ (‘Medea’s prophecy’); ‘Revenge of Medea’; ‘Who Cares if She Cries’; ‘Nenhuma mulher civilizada faria isso’ (‘No Civilized Woman Would Do This’); and ‘Medea Ballade’ (‘Medea’s Ballad’). The fact that Oliveira uses three different languages – English, French and Portuguese – for the names of the different parts of the opera can be interpreted as linguistic variety drawing attention to cultural diversity. It is important to note that the music of the last scene was modelled on a medieval melody about Medea, which originated in the French region of 99

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Languedoc and was also presented separately in 2002, commissioned by the Dresden Festival of Contemporary Music as a short play. As I noted earlier, Oliveira is a pioneer of musical multimedia performances in Brazil, and the creator of the musical group Ensemble Jocy de Oliveira. Leonardo Martinelli, critic and music lecturer, has observed that opera effectively combines sacred and profane elements: ‘instead of theatre, the stage is transformed into an altar dedicated to Medea, where music takes on the role of the priest and the opera takes on the dimension of secular liturgy. Here the singing is not song, but rather ritualistic sound’.31 I believe that, although this may not be intentional, it seems very appropriate, considering that the play deals with strongly religious elements (such as the divinity of Medea’s grandfather) alongside very human (rational) elements – namely how Medea is clever with words and rhetorical strategies. It is worth noting that the connection between women and barbarous behaviour can also be observed in other art works; even when this is done from a very different perspective, it can nonetheless be illuminating, as I proposed in a recent paper comparing the musical My Fair Lady to Kseni.32 In addition to the common characteristic of how they use music, there are other common elements that can be analysed. Directed by George Cukor, the 1964 film is based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (inspired by the homonymous Greek character). The plot is simple: a poor young woman named Eliza Doolittle (played by Audrey Hepburn, Fig. 7.2), who speaks ‘substandard’ English that is heavily marked by her ‘uncivilized’ cockney accent, attracts the attention of a linguist, Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) and his friend Hugh Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White). Higgins make a wager that he can transform her into a lady, which he ultimately manages to do. Like Jason, he brings her into ‘civilization’. However, unlike Medea, Eliza ends up resigned to bringing her beloved tutor his slippers. There is no fury or anger; she ends up a well-dressed woman, living in a discreet and obedient manner, with a man who sings to his male friend: ‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man? / Men are so honest, so thoroughly square / Eternally noble, historically fair’.

Global Medea in action and conclusion The feature that stands out most within Oliveira’s reception of the Greek myth in Kseni is her conscious and consistent political engagement, as can be seen from the initial words of the protagonist, already quoted, which link otherness with political exile, migration and nomadism.33 This is an opera about a barbarian woman from a peripheral country who could, in truth, be anybody. The boundaries depend on where the centre is established, a centre where exclusion and inclusion are relational concepts, which is perhaps one of the most important warnings provided by the many artists who have adapted the story of Medea. Euripides created the seminal characterization of Medea in one of his most political tragedies, despite the fact that his tragic heroine has frequently been dismissed as merely an excessively passionate woman, as I have previously noted. In Kseni, Oliveira emphasizes Medea’s heroism, despite her status as an ‘other’. The strength of Oliveira’s opera lies in its exploration of the problematic meaning of the term 100

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Figure 7.2 My Fair Lady. © Common media. ‘barbarian’. Ksenos, in ancient Greek, signifies one who is not Hellenic, i.e. not a citizen, or who does not speak Greek; it can even mean pilgrim or refugee, and from this comes the modern word kseni (the female form of ksenos, still in use in modern Greek). Even though Oliveira focuses on the position of women in her work, Kseni represents any person who comes from another culture in terms of ethnicity, belief or sex. In this sense, Oliveira wishes to universalize the character. She turns Medea into a symbol, although in a more radical way than Denise Stoklos, as she makes no reference to Brazil, which Stoklos did in her play. Through explicit references, Oliveira demonstrates that her work is not decontextualized from the scenario of globalization, nor from themes relating to contemporary political agendas such as terrorism and genocide. All of the theatrical elements utilized, including the costumes and sets, accentuate the awkwardness and radicalism of certain acts, whether it is Medea killing her children, or Medea blessing them when they are sacrificed as suicide bombers. Far from judging 101

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these acts, the play leads us to try to understand how they came to be, and by way of a Brechtian perspective, to warn ‘those who will come after us’ and those who will continue to bear witness to the sacrifices of the ‘war show’. Medea, ‘as the daughter of the sun’, foreshadows the terrors that those who come afterwards will suffer (Kseni, scene 5). The preoccupation with the human condition – personified by the female singing voice of Medea – is touching, and connects this reception with a feminist and political agenda, without causing Medea to lose her radicalism, or even her agrios ethos. One of the manifestations of her fury is her rebellious disposition of being a body that is like a bomb – not to kill people, but to metaphorically destroy exploitation and false, abusive borders. However, as it is an opera, Oliveira’s work also stimulates other emotions, through other means. I wish to mention two sequences in particular: in the first of these, Oliveira uses a film to project a scene in which Medea is naked, washing her hands and arms in a pool of water on the sand. At this moment she could represent any woman in the prosaic act of cleaning herself, or even a sort of purification (even if the choir, in Medea, 846–55, indicates that purification would not be possible had she committed the filicide). The other is a scene in the second act where we see a gigantic wedding dress; the camera portrays the dress as if it were alive, yet with no body inside. It suddenly catches fire, and in a long shot we see the fire billowing from the inside to the outside. We can of course be reminded of Creon’s daughter and the manner in which she dies, but there is also a possibility that, as there is no Creusa or Creonte in this play, the dress may symbolize her fury – not against a particular person, but against a world that, with its borders, expels people from their places. The dress may be understood as a small house, although even this cannot be maintained. Oliveira chose to present her Medea using two women, one an actress and a singer, the other purely a singer. Had she so wished, she could have introduced Creusa (or Glauce) onstage. In my opinion, to juxtapose a divided woman who explodes in anger, fury and fire with an empty dress is much more effective than to place another woman, even a rival, inside the dress. Her enemy is not another nymph (like her), but a world in which war and power – two concepts that are connected within Greek society, largely by men  – go beyond all other values, including the importance of preserving vows and demonstrating sympathy for others. As we are dealing with opera, a genre in which music is a fundamental element, another observation must be made. Within opera, music, silence, shouts and whispers are all elements of aesthetic appreciation. In Oliveira’s work, they are also harmoniously integrated with video projections. In Kseni, by using projections that include images of the gigantic burning bridal dress (Fig. 7.3), we also see and hear drops of water dripping from white hands, as well as hands being washed in a puddle of bloody sand. All of these images serve, within this context, as ritualistic gestures. In key moments, the physical presence of the two women playing Medea, Marilena Bibas and the soprano Gabriela Geluda, is particularly striking. Their faces are painted in complementary patterns of black and white, which also act as a mask. The play, free from any form of vulgarity, reinforces the idea that it is a ‘political reflection on the rejection of the right to be different’. According to Jum Nakao, the art director, the costumes were conceived of as 102

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Figure 7.3 Kseni, the Foreigner: the burning dress © Jocy de Oliveira. straightjacket bandages, or a form of armour. The musicians are presented as metallic objects, oppressive figures that function as cogs in a machine. All these images, including those that are projected onto the stage, produce a superimposition of the real onto the virtual. They accentuate the awkwardness that stems from how the protagonist is characterized. On the other hand, a short film is also screened in which one of the women who plays Medea, Gabriela Geluda, is shown wearing clothes that remind us of Medea’s costume in Pasolini’s Medea. She speaks the words ‘No civilized woman would do this’ in many languages, thereby bringing the figure of Medea closer to that of other women. This echo becomes stronger when Gabriela appears in the film wearing only a loose robe. Following this scene, the audience sees her naked body. Medea throws the bloody water that has collected in a sandy puddle on the beach over herself, while images of the two children are superimposed onto that of her own. At that very moment, her body  – without any garment that could identify her as belonging to a particular culture – comes to symbolize not the body of an individual woman, but of every woman.34 In 2008, Jocy de Oliveira launched a series of DVD s of her operas, thus widening her audience beyond the limits of the concert hall (her last opera, Liquid Voices – A História de Mathilda Segalescu, 2017, is now also available). Their release has also offered researchers greater opportunities to study her work, or at least certain aspects of it. It is my hope that the considerations I have brought to light here will serve to stimulate readers to watch her operas, as well as the works of other Brazilian artists, thus expanding the rich universe of reception, as well as the possibilities to perform the deinos – the fury and anger in action – transformed into fire, a powerful symbol for this seductive woman.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Irene Berti for the opportunity to participate in the conference Fear and Fury in Turin, where I could present some aspects of the reception of the myth of 103

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Medea in Brazil, and the motivation to write in English, re-elaborating themes on which I have previously published in Portuguese. My thanks also to Miriam Adelman and Andy Redwood for correcting my English, as well as Jocy de Oliveira for sending me the pictures included in this chapter – the other image used here (screenshot) appears in compliance with fair-use rules of international copyright regulations.

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PART III DANCING VIOLENCE ON THE BALLET STAGE

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CHAPTER 8 CHOREOGRAPHIES OF VIOLENCE: SPARTACUS FROM THE SOVIET BALLET TO THE GLOBAL STAGE Zoa Alonso Fernández

Introduction The story of Spartacus can be analysed in terms of bodily motion: from Capua to Mount Vesuvius, up north across the Apennines, over the border of Cisalpine Gaul and then back to the south, the routing strategies of the gladiator and his slave army to flee from the Roman territory sharply contrast with the final crucifixion of his men along the Appian Way.1 There, the bodies of six thousand rebels are fixed to the ground in retaliation for the actions of their leader – who turned the arena into battlefield, transformed manto-man combat into a massive struggle of the social body and abandoned his performance as a wrestler to becoming choreographer of his own war. To see the slave revolt of 73 bc through the methodological lens of choreography helps problematize the dynamics of the event as an endeavour through which social and historical changes were both registered and pursued.2 One may observe, for instance, the role of Spartacus in arranging disciplined soldiers and gaining new participants for his cause, but also the geographic pattern of his military tactics, the tensions between individualized and collective bodies, and the involvement of witnesses as more than simple spectators of the acts of war. All this responds, ultimately, to the inherent performing qualities of the armed conflict as a whole, something that allows us to characterize the occasion as a sort of ‘spectacle’ in which audiences engage by means of embodied experience and where the reality of viewership overlaps with broader notions of agency and corporeality.3 From an artistic-representational point of view, Spartacus’ choreography of violence finds in the medium of dance an incomparable setting for re-enactment. By placing the body of the hero onstage – or acknowledging his role as a driving force in stirring up the action – choreographers are able to scrutinize aspects of oppression and social mobilization from multiple angles, repeatedly transforming the ancient revolt into new modes of conceiving injustice. In this chapter, I will examine a series of ballet productions of Spartacus from the Soviet repertoire (1956–68), as well as their recent restagings between 2007 and 2013. In each of these versions, I will elucidate the most persistent themes in the handling of the uprising and examine how, in different time periods, the vocabulary and conventions of classical ballet are deployed in accordance with the narrative’s ideological agendas. Inevitably, the corporeal/legal status of slaves in the ancient world as well as the 107

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spectacular reality of gladiatorial combats complicate the standard distribution of roles between audience and performers within and outside the ballet. Such complexities, however, turn out to be essential to understanding the treatment of these bodies as both objects of imperialistic gazes and agents in their revolutions. Within this framework, the final section of the chapter will consider the performance of the Afro-Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta in the role of Spartacus in the Bolshoi’s 2007 production, directed by Yuri Grigorovich. This approach will allow for a wider and more expansive investigation of the reception of the ancient slave, pondering issues of blackness, embodiment and reenactment in the fields of classics and ballet.

Spartacus: choreography and bodies through film A useful lens through which we may evaluate the movement – and mobilization – of Spartacus in ballet is cinema.4 Since the silent era, audiences of the epic film have encountered numerous forms of kinetic spectacles set in ancient Rome, with the increasing standardization of choreographic patterns that lay at the basis of this filmic vocabulary. Yet, in addition to the stereotypical ‘balletic’ compositions of gladiatorial combats, orgies, equestrian battles and military parades – all moving performances with functional and diegetic purposes within the films5 – the actors’ bodies play a decisive role as more than simple objects of the spectators’ gaze. In the case of Spartacus, the symbolic status of his figure activates a series of visual discourses that vary with each of the versions released, as does the collective company of slaves who incarnate the hero’s public dimension.6 As Maria Wyke observes, the muscular body of the protagonist in Spartaco (dir. Giovanni Enrico Vidali, 1913), a strongman ‘king de force’ called Mario Guaita-Ausonia, becomes a readily available site for displaying the strength of the modern body politic after Garibaldi and the Italian unification, but the mass audiences in the cinemas of 1913 also had the opportunity to visualize their own collective engagement with their national history through the spectacular exhibition of vast crowds of extras before whom and for whom the strongman acts.7 In a later version of Spartaco (dir. Riccardo Freda, 1953), Wyke notes the transformation of the slave’s muscular figure into a martyred body and relates it ‘to a broader history of post-war alterations to the Italian national self, projected in historical films’, whereby ‘screens are filled with the wounded bodies of martyrs sacrificed to the despotism and ambition of Rome’.8 In the decade of the 1960s, a renovated version of Spartacus emerges in the United States with a Hollywood production that seeks to invigorate American ideals of freedom and equality through the athletic bodies of the leading cast. In Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960)  – probably the most influential work in the Western reception of the ancient episode  – the iconic language of the epic becomes a multifaceted tool to tackle the frictions of Cold War rhetoric in terms of Communism and Americanism. Taken together with the script’s underlying ideologies,9 the imagery of Spartacus provides a significant set of aesthetic and formal parameters for the study of the many and multimedia products that proliferated in those years on the deeds of the ancient 108

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idol-slave, including the ballet productions created on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain. From the structural point of view, the film alternates spectacular scenes of intense motion with more static frames that heavily draw on the physicality of the gladiator and his companions to convey the episode’s full spectrum of violence. In the opening sequence, where the slaves work in the mines, the body of Kirk Douglas is placed at the centre of the account as a dehumanized (animalized) symbol of slavery.10 Here an almost naked Spartacus is chained to a rock for having bitten one of the guards and the owner of a gladiatorial school (Peter Ustinov) approaches him to examine his teeth. This initial stance of the bounded hero has a conspicuous parallel at the end of the film, when Spartacus appears as one of the crucified rebels of the Appian Way – something that contradicts the ancient sources.11 For the whole scene, Spartacus remains silent and barely moves a muscle. As Martin Winkler argues, this Christ-like figure epitomizes the messianic aura of a character who dies for the sake of his people’s freedom as they try to return to their native lands.12 Overall, the immobility of Spartacus sharply contrasts with his performance as an active revolutionary, but with this oppressive climate of stasis the film provides a clear framework for the action while highlighting the rise and fall of the revolt. Unsurprisingly, Spartacus initiates his move right after the film’s first gladiatorial contest, a private match organized for two wealthy Roman couples. Once the training period is over and the wrestlers have acquired the necessary fighting techniques, the Thracian Spartacus is matched to an imposing retiarius named Draba, incarnated by the African American actor Woody Strode. In this competition, the pair displays extraordinary physical power. As they enter the ring, they take off their cloaks and engage in a single hand-to-hand combat, which exemplifies the transformation and objectification of their bodies after the instruction received. As Ina Rae Hark points out, the preparation of a gladiator implies that he is ‘selected, groomed, and trained for the sole purpose of providing a worthy spectacle’ and so ‘the suitability of his body, both athletically and aesthetically’ becomes a crucial criterion for it.13 According to this, Spartacus and Draba are fighting for nothing except the titillation of spectators. ‘Rome maintains and enforces its power through making spectacles of those it dominates’14 so, with the almost naked figures of the two slaves, it is the looking at their bodies that constitutes the Roman final mechanism of control and subjugation. In the course of their contest, the fighters know that they will have to satisfy the viewers by confronting one another. And this is what they do, for over two minutes of choreographic duel, until finally the black gladiator rises up: Draba turns his trident on the Romans and tries to climb up to the balustrade, but he is finally stabbed by the general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and falls to the ground. At this point of the story, the show becomes troubled within the narrative because the spectacularized body of Draba ‘resists its assigned role’15 while activating an empowering manoeuvre to mobilize the audience. Draba throws his weapon directly at the camera ‘suggesting that to take pleasure in looking upon such a scene is to become no better than a Roman’16 and, after thus asserting mastery over his own body and actions, he returns 109

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to die in the arena, the stage in which he was supposed to find a glorious gladiatorial death.17 From a general perspective, Strode personifies the film’s theme of freedom. Attaining an aura of moral authority in the cause of emancipation, his character becomes ‘a spiritual model who teaches Spartacus about nobility and dignity’.18 First, his striking assault with the trident casts new light on the exposure and vulnerability of the actors’ bodies in front of the camera, as he reminds cinemagoers of the parallels between the spectacle of the amphitheatre and the so-called ‘beefcake genres’.19 But more than that, Strode is an African American actor, so his presence in the picture opens another dimension for the viewers’ racialized gaze. The fictional character of Draba appeared for the first time in the 1951 novel Spartacus by Howard Fast, a member of the US Communist party who had been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Almost ten years after the publication, Dalton Trumbo – another ‘un-friendly’ screenwriter of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ – adapted the novel for the screenplay, including the sequence of Draba to show his commitment to the civil rights cause.20 In the American popular tradition, the story of Spartacus had been associated with broader discourses of abolition and emancipation ever since the nineteenth century, when slavery started to be regarded as the institution that led the foundation of American racial oppression.21 Under these circumstances, the explicit introduction of Draba in a heroic role problematized the racial struggle from a more concrete perspective, now focused on ‘the readiness of African-Americans to lead their fight for equality’.22 Above all, Strode enriched his character’s significance ‘by transferring contemporary realities of discrimination and racism onto the back of the fighter who confronts Spartacus’.23 Yet, despite the sympathy of Fast and Trumbo towards the situation of blacks in America, the actions of the African gladiator were, in reality, promoting a rebellion of white slaves.24 As Daniel O’Brian notices in his analysis of the film, ‘there appear to be just a handful of black rebels, glimpsed fleetingly, in Spartacus’ overwhelmingly white army’ and, apart from the character of Draba, the rest of the rebel commanders are all Caucasians, just like Spartacus himself.25 Certainly, up until the scene of the duel, the film seems to reflect the non-racial condition of ancient Roman slavery, with black and white gladiators who share an equal position in terms of status and rank.26 Nevertheless, the encounter between Spartacus and Draba discloses the ‘exotic’ qualities of the latter, as the pairing obeys the sponsors’ craving for ‘variety’. The Roman ladies are invited to ‘admire’ the men and ‘make their selections’ for the combat when Draba is described as ‘the most beautiful’ and ‘the big black one’. The emphasis on his great stature, beauty and colour assimilates his black body to an attractive commodity, ready to provide entertainment and implied sexual pleasure.27 His docility and calmness further emphasize his own prowess as a wrestler. So, with the activation of these prototypically essentialized features, his performance in the arena finally complies with the imperialistic dynamics of the spectacle and the standards of a modern colonizing gaze. Once the show is over, Draba will no longer be a leading part in the rebellion, but his presence occupies a crucial place within the plot. Whereas in the novel, the owner 110

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of the school castigates his insurrection by killing another black gladiator in front of everybody and crucifying the two corpses as an admonition to the other slaves, the film concentrates on the sole figure of Strode, a ‘token of punishment’, who is left hanging upside down in the barracks ‘until he rots’. As in other moments of Spartacus, the spectacular display of a criminal even after he becomes a corpse ‘represents the body’s translation from the material realm to that of signification’28 and so the rebel’s unsuccessful performance finds a whole new meaning in the quietness of his hanging body. The sequence’s treatment of violence grows deeper with an image that formally operates as a reversed parallel of the crucified Spartacus29 but, most especially, because it indirectly emphasizes the racialized status of the character as an objectified, subsidiary body without a purpose for his own sake: the black gladiator has demonstrated his urge for mobilization but, at the end of the day, he only manages to set in motion Spartacus’ choreography of insurgence. This time, it is his immobility that turns resistance into action.

Spartacus in ballet While Kirk Douglas and the rest of the executives of Bryna Productions sought to tie Spartacus to a uniquely American narrative of freedom, a Soviet idea of the rebel was being articulated on the other side of the Iron Curtain. As a hero of slaves, the Thracian emblematized the ideals of the European revolutionary in his drive against oppression and imperialism, so he became a crucial reference in shaping a socialist historical culture.30 Marx had described him as ‘one of the best characters in the whole of ancient history’ in an 1861 letter sent to Engels, in which he presented Spartacus as ‘a genuine representative of the ancient proletariat’.31 Similarly, Lenin praised the German communists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg for adopting his name for their Spartakusbund,32 and soon the ancient champion became an idealized role ‘in the revolutionary mythology and martyrology of the Soviet Union’.33 Since the 1920s, the athletic disciplined body of the gladiator incarnated the powerful spirit of the subjugated classes. A number of the workers’ sports clubs were named after the ancient leader and the most important international competition sponsored by the Soviet Union was called ‘The Spartakiad’.34 It was not coincidental that a ballet production about the ancient revolutionary was commissioned within these ideological agendas, especially at a moment when Soviet ballet started to look actively for heroic themes.35 In 1933, the writer Nikolai Volkov began to assemble the libretto of Spartacus. The piece intended to reflect the values of socialist realism by using the slave uprising as an allegory of Communism and its ideological foundations. It sought to present the slaves of ancient Rome as analogous to the peoples who suffered the tyranny of totalitarianism in the years preceding the Second World War and relied on the fascist self-appropriation of Roman political and military symbols as an obvious link to the past.36 Spartacus was based on Raffaello Giovagnoli’s novel (Spartaco, 1874) and followed the artistic conventions of the so-called drambalet.37 This Soviet genre of dramatic dance was 111

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characterized by the use of large casts, realistic sets and a pantomimic vocabulary that recalled silent-film gesturing while trying to demonstrate ‘both the monumental scale of history and the internal psychology of their characters’,38 so the theme of the ancient gladiator fit nicely with the glorious rhetoric demanded by the style. In the original libretto, Volkov recounted the slave rebellion of 73–71 bc and focused on the personal struggle between the Thracian leader and the Roman Marcus Licinius Crassus. In order to embellish the dramaturgy, the plot incorporated scenes of Spartacus’ love story with his wife Phrygia and introduced a second storyline involving a courtesan (Aegina) who seduced the protagonist’s best friend (Harmodius). A highly detailed account, the libretto offered a meticulous reading of the ancient episode, encompassing a series of complicated actions and multiple extras that increased the sense of accuracy, but which posed significant obstacles to the staging.39 The music of Spartacus was composed by the Armenian musician Aram Khachaturian, but he did not finish his score until 1954, when Cold War tensions cast new shadows over the original scenario. Khachaturian conceived the music ‘in the grandiose Socialist Realist style of the 1930s and 1940s, deploying the resources of an immense orchestra and wordless choruses to evoke the monumentality of the Roman era’.40 Like some of the most celebrated musicians of the nation, he had become a target for the party bureaucrats after the meeting of the Union of Composers in 1948, when Andrei Zhdanov denounced him for his formalist style,41 so the possibility of reviving Volkov’s old project would grant him the opportunity to produce a more heroic and realistic work to please the regime again.42 The music, therefore, echoed the schemes of Stalinist drambalet by means of a careful system of leitmotifs associated with each of the main characters as well as with the larger groups. These musical themes were redeployed throughout the ballet to emphasize the binary opposition between the world of the Romans and that of the slaves and showed the characters’ development within the narrative. In addition, Khachaturian incorporated a variety of folk elements from different USSR traditions and a number of orientalist tropes that revealed the score’s alignment with the state’s cultural policies in promoting nationalism through multiculturalism and international relations:43 the Stalinist idea of nation was in this way identified by the multi-ethnic air of the music and not just by the plot’s anti-imperialist overtones. Spartacus premiered in Leningrad, at the Kirov Theatre, in December 1956. Although the original plan was to entrust the choreography to Igor Moiseyev, it was Leonid Yakobson who finally staged the ballet. After the initial production, which remained part of the Kirov’s repertoire for the following eighteen seasons,44 three other versions were commissioned for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, each of them arranged by a different choreographer: Moiseyev (1958), Yakobson for a second time (1962), and Yuri Grigorovich (1968). Of all these adaptations, Moiseyev’s probably complied more closely with the initial conception of the work, as he created a colossal drambalet that preserved the epic style of the music and libretto. The result, however, turned out to be an extremely long and already outdated product of socialist realism, so the work was soon eliminated from the theatre’s repertoire.45 112

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Leonid Yakobson: Pictures of Roman Life (1956–62) In the first production of Spartacus, the violence of ancient Rome takes place at multiple layers of representation: the battles and gladiatorial combats demanded by the narrative are juxtaposed with other scenes of implicit aggression, such as the Feast at Crassus’ or the one at the Slave Market, where the foreign prisoners are forced to perform in front of their masters. For all these sequences, Yakobson envisaged a series of tableaux vivants that froze the choreographic flux and condensed the strength of each act before the dance started, creating the impression of what he would call ‘Pictures of Roman Life’.46 From the beginning, Yakobson imagined his Spartacus as a ‘grandiose spectacle, monumental, sculptural, and massive’47 for which he found inspiration in Graeco-Roman literature and art. Apart from reading the ancient historical sources, he studied the sculptures of the Pergamon Altar, which was those days held in the Hermitage, and developed a figurative vocabulary that evoked the suffering bodies of mythological characters. With this in mind, he devised the inclusion of pictorial headpieces designed by Valentina Khodasevich in form of ancient reliefs that merged with his live vignettes as the curtain rose and separated one scene from the other. These friezes prompted an almost archaeological association with the dancers, who intensified the movements’ sequential effect by using transitional cinematic techniques of slow motion and stopaction. With Spartacus, Yakobson intended to tell a universal story of conflict and rebellion that mirrored the tensions of his own day. Convinced that classical dance was unable to communicate the kind of issues that he sought to articulate,48 he elaborated an innovative style where there was ‘no divide between acting and dancing’49 and where the Roman Pictures flashed by as jigsaw pieces of an epic film. Primarily, he emulated the modernist approaches to ancient Greek dance initiated by Fokine and Nijinsky in the early twentieth century.50 But he also borrowed movements from gymnastics, athletics and ‘Oriental’ dances, which he combined with pantomimic expressions in order to convey the ‘naturalness’ of the ancient struggle.51 He finally introduced ancient costumes and sandals, eliminating pirouettes, en dehors positions, virtuoso jumping and the ballerinas’ pointe work. For the scenes of the corps de ballet, Yakobson alternated impressively well-arranged parades with explosions of uncoordinated chaos, wherein multiple characters carried out a plurality of actions at the same time. Known as ‘choreographic recitatives’,52 these polyphonic formations created a vivid effect of realism, particularly appropriate for battles and orgies, and recalling the long shots of a film set in ancient Rome. Aside from these massive occasions, he composed a series of intimate tableaux that focused on the protagonists’ emotions and were supposed to facilitate the audience’s identification with the historical cause. His aim was to depict the empire’s spectacular power but, more specifically, to explore the human costs of this imperialist grandeur at a more personal level, so he conferred a distinctive voice on each of the individual victims of the story.53 One of the most celebrated moments of the ballet was Phrygia’s final lament, an extremely poignant performance that recreated the mourning poses of ancient Greek figures and 113

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became emblematic of Yakobson’s ‘choreographic plastique’.54 Similarly, at the Slave Market, he reserved a central place for the solo of an Egyptian girl, who encapsulated in her waving body the collective misery and sorrow of all the other slaves.55 With this blending of styles, the choreographer enhanced aspects of cultural symbiosis that were notably exploited in the score of Khachaturian.56 Yakobson was a Jewish citizen and had experienced the torment of exclusion after a strong wave of anti-Semitism in the early 1950s so, in sympathizing with the various groups of slaves, he intensified the multi-ethnic atmosphere of the oppressed peoples through dancing, costumes and sets. On the one hand, Phrygia and Aegina danced in bare legs and sandals with small heels that enabled the innovations of an ‘antique plastique’.57 On the other, an exaggerated exoticism of the peripheral characters created ambiguous scenes for staging the spectacle of difference: in the arena, a multiracial company of gladiators executed an array of anarchic fights, whereas the Feast at Crassus’ incorporated clumsy acrobatics by a troupe of Athenian jugglers, frenzied dancers from Cadiz, and the extremely sexualized performance of an Etruscan trio. In all these occasions, the bodies of foreign slaves were exhibited in front of the Romans as an attractive blend of subjugated nations performing for their masters’ amusement, but the pleasure that the outside spectators of the ballet might take in watching their ‘otherness’ could complicate the standard narrative about who the oppressor was in the end.58 Considering that Spartacus premiered after Stalin’s death, it turned out to be a rather propitious moment to rethink the complexities of agency, power and viewership precisely with the spectacles within the spectacle, and therefore to subvert political imperatives through an apparently obvious and straightforward plot.59 Still, as Anne Searcy has rightly observed, Yakobson’s depiction of exoticism mostly followed the conventions of nineteenth-century Russian ballet and his lack of more explicit criticisms against these choreographic interludes demonstrated that his notion of multiculturalism was not completely apart from the state’s cultural policies.60 As a result, the ambiguities of Yakobson’s ideology went mostly unnoticed and the ballet was endorsed by the theatre’s artistic council. In Leningrad, Spartacus was a box-office hit and Fyodor Lopukhov, then director of the Kirov, expressed his enthusiasm for the project. The story, however, failed to be seen as the effective revolutionary epic that the Soviet Union was expecting.61 In Yakobson’s view, the libretto did not consider the requirements of the stage. He blamed Volkov for describing non-theatrical situations and Khachaturian for his long and repetitive score, which the composer refused to rework.62 But the reasons for this unfulfilled achievement had to do with the vagueness of the storyline and the ostensible lack of choreographic spur. Essentially, the piece never got to mobilize the public as the government had wished because the values it sought to promote were lost among the many actions carried out in performance. Overall, the structure of the ‘Roman Pictures’ provided the audience with a bombastic spectacle of music and dance, an almost cinematic piece of entertainment but which obstructed the fluidity of the dramatic progress by means of endless snapshots, hundreds of dancers and the excessively detailed language of pantomime. So, when the Bolshoi Theatre restaged the ballet, Yakobson agreed to the necessity of intensifying the heroic aspects of the story by eliminating the subplot between 114

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Aegina and Harmodius and concentrating on the deeds of the rebel. Still, the depiction of Roman debauchery continued to overshadow the central theme of the ballet.63 After the premiere in Moscow in April 1962, audiences applauded the powerful music of Khachaturian, the new decors by Vadim Rindin, and the performance of Maya Plisetskaya in the role of Phrygia, but they criticized the choice of a choreography that gave prominence to silent acting and subordinated dance to the visual impact of the basreliefs.64 In addition, they complained about the exaggerated suffering of the leading couple and the feeble personality of Crassus, who was mainly an acting character outside the dance.65 Moreover, in September 1962, the Bolshoi took Spartacus on the company’s diplomatic tour around the United States and the reviews turned out to be devastating. Generally, the Western critics shared the same impressions about structure, choreography and artistic approach that had been pointed out in Moscow months before. The piece was described as a ‘richly costumed tale of Roman violence and lust’66 and a grandiose ballet without concrete action, mainly characterized by the absence of dancing.67 In addition, the Americans openly disliked the extreme figurativeness of Yakobson’s ‘plastique’. First of all, the Bolshoi presented its evening-length spectacle only two years after Kubrick’s blockbuster. Critic Allen Hughes of the New York Times stated ‘the work as a whole represents a sadly disappointing attempt to do something that Hollywood manages better’.68 Likewise, Walter Terry from the New York Herald Tribune compared the ballet to a Hollywood production and highlighted ‘the eye-battings, lurchings, and gesticulations’ that had ‘out-DeMilled DeMille’, thus assimilating the Russian ballet to an outdated silent movie and not to the critically acclaimed 1960 production.69 But more than the inevitable comparison with the filmic language, it was the propagandistic aura of its grandiloquence that raised the most disheartening critiques. Either because the Americans did not read the ideological ambiguities of the ballet or because they openly disagreed with these underlying messages, they mostly saw in Spartacus another pompous example of the Soviet narrative.70 Commenting on the opening night’s applause, Hughes mentioned that the Moscow public went wild for this particular Spartacus and presumed ‘a special patriotic or ideological appeal for Russians’ that the Americans did not share.71 Hughes wondered whether ‘the “spectacle” was more spectacular on the Bolshoi stage’ than it was on the Metropolitan Opera House, whereas Terry raved about the ‘company of more than two hundred performers’, the ‘larger-than-life-statues’ and the ‘biggest wine-red curtain in history’.72 In a long review published in The Dancing Times, Lillian Moore wrote: Spartacus is a colossal ballet, and its importation was a colossal mistake. Heralded as a spectacle on the grand scale, it turned out to be gigantic indeed [. . .] It includes a triumphal parade, in which legions of soldiers march in goose-step, a gladiatorial combat, with endless conventionally staged hand-to-hand struggles, all ending in disaster (at one point there are 27 corpses strewn about the arena), and an orgy, in which hordes of lavishly undressed dancing girls writhe and wriggle in pseudobacchanalian frenzy.73 115

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In her description, Moore emphasized Yakobson’s spectacularization of violence by pointing at the grandiosity of the production and its exaggerated pictorial realism, which transformed the choreographer’s ‘expressive naturalness’ into colossal poignancy. This monumentality of the struggle increased the explicitness of bloodshed and generated a certain sense of unease among the American ballet-goers, who were not habituated to grand-scale representations of conflict, more typical of operas and Broadway shows.74 In addition, reviewers distrusted the alleged historical accuracy of the dancers’ plasticity and costumes. This conventional realism was seen as ‘distressingly  – or hilariously  – standard’,75 as in the case of the triumphal parades, or erroneously misleading, as in the dances of the orgy. The Etruscan entertainers at the Feast at Crassus’, for example, two men and a woman dressed up in a leopard-print body wrap and a jewel bikini top, executed a belly-dance performance that could be defined as ‘pseudo Roman, pseudoOriental [. . .] pseudo quite a few other things’,76 just like ‘the hordes of dancing girls’ who ‘wriggled in pseudo-bacchanalian frenzy’.77 Finally, the female ‘neo-Grecian’ technique78 or, in other words, the ‘Duncanesque vein of Maya Plisetskaya [. . .] with touches of Delsarte’79 supposed an incursion into outdated languages that were absolutely uninteresting for the American public at the time. For the past two decades, dancers from the United States and Western Europe had positioned themselves as upholders of modernism – and, by extension, of freedom of artistic expression and aesthetic invention. This position implicitly criticized the restrictions of formal experimentation in the Soviet Union so, with the Cold War tensions as a backdrop for these criticisms, the dialectics of modern dancing prevented Yakobson’s choreographic innovations to be seen as something other than ‘old-fashioned’. As a result, Spartacus was taken out of the programme before the tour was over. Upon return to Moscow, the Bolshoi too removed the ballet from its repertoire.

Yuri Grigorovich: Spartacus (1968) In 1967, during the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, the Kremlin requested a new version of Spartacus to be restaged at the Bolshoi. The Ministry of Culture needed an uplifting production with contemporary political significance to celebrate the Soviet spirit and invited the newly appointed Bolshoi’s master-in-chief, Yuri Grigorovich, to rethink the ballet. Before moving to Moscow, the choreographer had been a soloist at the Kirov. He had danced the part of a gladiator in Yakobson’s 1956 Spartacus and was particularly familiar with the project.80 Yet, Grigorovich was also aware of the irregular history of its reception since its Leningrad debut, so he sketched a radically different concept for the choreography. Grigorovich’s Spartacus premiered in April 1968 in the secondary stage of the Bolshoi, precisely situated in the Palace of the Kremlin. Due to a series of technical circumstances, the ballet was conceived in a less spectacular way, where the colossal sets gave way to an open space for the dance.81 The new choreographer reused most of Yakobson’s adaptations of the original libretto, yet simplifying the excessive details of the plot. First, he regrouped 116

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almost every peripheral character into homogeneous factions and standardized the corps de ballet but, most importantly, he condensed the narrative action by placing the four soloists – Spartacus, Phrygia, Crassus and Aegina – at the centre of the account.82 Grigorovich transformed the conventionally static role of Crassus into a vibrant dancing figure and privileged his relationship with Spartacus over any other aspect of the ballet. Although the female characters also contributed to incarnate the two sides of the conflict, it was the tension between Spartacus and Crassus that moved the threads of the dramatic conflict. Moreover, Grigorovich was an expert master of male dancers, so his decision to increase their weight in performance marked a turning point in the traditional Russian display of virility onstage, with the resulting categorization of these two figures as quintessential referents of ‘masculinity’ in the history of Soviet ballet.83 With Spartacus, Grigorovich revived the conventions of ballet technique. He exploited the quality of classical language to its greater extent and reclaimed the virtuosity of the Russian repertoire by increasing the display of male heroic bravura and the ballerinas’ pointe work. Unlike Yakobson, Grigorovich persuaded Khachaturian to cut the old score into small segments and recompose it into a new order, which allowed him to eliminate a considerable amount of the music.84 This configuration alternated well-arranged scenes of the corps de ballet with several combinations of pas de deux (Spartacus–Crassus, Spartacus–Phrygia, Crassus–Aegina, etc.) and a series of ‘monologues’ that characterized the main roles precisely by means of repetitive formulas in line with the musical leitmotifs. In escaping from the almost cinematic linearity of the previous versions, the function of these solos was to underpin the dramatic process by emphasizing the mere choreographic opposition between the two heroes and their wicked correlates. Thus, the elevation of Crassus’ backbend jumps, or the whole gestural system of his upper body, mirrored Spartacus’ expanded grands jetés and his chained arms, always opened in a wide second position. Similarly, the sexual innuendo of Aegina’s elongated legwork had a straightforward parallel in Phrygia’s melancholic penchés. All this contributed to a more symbolic approach to the ancient event. As a choreographer, Grigorovich was not concerned with the ‘true’ representation of the past, so he advocated for a less accurate staging, in line with his exploration of the soloists’ emotional dichotomies. First, he managed to encapsulate the violence of the struggle in the dancers’ bodies. The absence of architectural sets and masses of extras called for a more sober costume design that dressed the characters in a plain – almost ahistorical – style. Thus, despite the use of figurative props and scenery, he concentrated on the sheer execution of movement as a way to connect with the score and based the expressive strength of his dancing on the aesthetics of the so-called ‘choreographic symphonism’, a new genre of dance that reintroduced abstraction into Russian ballet.85 In addition, the homogeneous portrayal of slaves also implied the abandonment of any sense of ethnic diversity: with the new standardized corps de ballet, the various groups within the ensemble functioned as an extension of the soloists in such a manner that they ‘shared characteristic movement motifs with the corresponding solo character’.86 This group realization of the individual conflict reinforced the sense of embodied violence and so the personal and the subjective might become anonymous and comprehensive. 117

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Grigorovich’s evasive concretization of the ancient struggle has been interpreted as an artistic mechanism to distort the ideological messages behind the original assignment of the work. In alluding to the choreographer’s innovative style, Christina Ezrahi has tried to demonstrate a form of resilience on the part of Grigorovich, thus claiming a sort of separation between his artistic aspirations and the ballet’s political demands that turns out to be hard to imagine.87 Surely, the choreographer’s choice for a non-figurative vocabulary proved to be decisive for the ballet’s worldwide acclaim. In his New York Times review of the London premiere in July 1969, Clive Barnes expressed it thus: Grigorovich has trimmed the Volkov libretto to its barest essentials. It is good versus bad, the oppressed slaves against the might of Imperial Rome. If there is any political message in it, I suspect that different people may well find different interpretations to that message. One man’s North Vietnam might be another man’s Czechoslovakia – that is always the advantage of allegories.88 With this allegory, however, Grigorovich was acceding to the artistic demands of the party. As Searcy has effectively demonstrated, many of Grigorovich’s innovations ‘tracked shifts within the national political discourse’ to the extent that the radical changes in the ballet were carried out in accordance with the state power after the Stalinist period. On the surface, the Soviet ideology of the Thaw era was impeccably embodied by Spartacus and his fellow slaves:89 the standardization of the corps de ballet staged the move in the government’s nationalities policy towards a unified idea of nation90 and the choice for a classical technique softened internal tensions in the theatre after Yakobson’s enterprise. Nevertheless, it is also true that the aesthetics of Grigorovich’s dance language have allowed the transfer of the ballet’s political idiosyncrasies into new realms of signification as the choreography moved away from its original deictic representation of the past. Today, Spartacus is a centrepiece of the Bolshoi repertoire. The 1968 version of the ballet has become canonical and has remained ‘a staple’ of the Bolshoi tours ever since its first performance in London one year after the premiere.91 Outside the former USSR , this is perhaps the best-known piece of the Soviet repertoire and a number of Western troupes have started to include it as part of their programmes:92 from its premiere in the Kremlin, Grigorovich’s Spartacus has managed to activate new ways of approaching the uprising precisely by moving across the global stage.

Carlos Acosta: the body of Spartacus In July 2010, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg (the former Kirov) premiered a full-scale revival of Yakobson’s 1956 Spartacus. After two important revisions in 1976 and 1985, the theatre revived the original three-act structure, with scenery by Khodasevich. Three years later, in February 2013, Leonid Yakobson’s company performed a one-act version of Spartacus, which was subsequently expanded into two acts.93 For this particular staging, the company was not able to reuse the original sets, but it ‘carefully restored the 118

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ballet’s most memorable scenes’.94 The shared aim of these two projects was to revitalize Yakobson’s ‘creative heritage’ precisely by presenting exceptionally faithful reconstructions of his choreographies:95 in watching these colossal versions of Spartacus, the twenty-firstcentury spectator would be able to travel back in time and witness the grandeur of Yakobson’s ‘choreographic plastique’ in its entire splendour. The reconstruction, hence, would become a fossilized sample of the choreographer’s repertoire, allowing the modern spectator to approach the ballet as it was in the Soviet days, now turned into a piece of memory with apparently no interaction with the present day – unless an interaction with the present is simply unavoidable. In the first act of the ballet, during the scene at the circus, the Romans observe a battle between a Gaul, a Numidian and an African gladiator. This fight exemplifies Yakobson’s interest in depicting a multiracial group of slaves coming from different lands and forced to fight against each other, just as the filmic combat between Spartacus and Draba does.96 Strikingly, however, in both of the modern versions of the ballet, the dancers impersonating the Numidian and the African wear different tones of dark makeup to stress the racial differences between the three of them.97 Given the reconstructionist zeal of these revivals, it is likely that this feature goes back to the original staging, as some pictures of the 1962 Spartacus suggest.98 Still, while the custom of using dark make-up to portray racial others in Russian ballet has been a rather extended practice at least until the last decade of the twentieth century,99 today it represents a rightly distressing feature that also challenges the politics of diversity promoted by the most important ballet companies across the world.100 Other than the antiquarian – almost archaeological – note, the scope of these ballet reconstructions poses significant problems that increase, half a century later, the risk of Yakobson’s reductionist search for a ‘natural realistic plastique’ in terms of artificiality, verisimilitude and re-enactment. But more than the general aesthetic approach, scenes like the ‘colourful’ combat in the arena expose the incapacity of these kinds of revivals to generate new critical discourses and to engage with audiences beyond the usually elitist and most conservative spectator of classical ballet. The painted bodies of these gladiators operate within a long theatrical tradition of introducing highly stereotyped characters in blackface in order to convey racial identity.101 This tradition is deeply problematic, as it still allows choreographers and directors to ‘represent’ characters of colour even as their companies remain predominately white, thus denying current debates about race, culture and ethnicity in narrative and theatrical dance. Consequently, even if the darkened bodies of the African and the Numidian gladiator in the battle were initially supposed to intensify the atmosphere of injustice and ethnic oppression in the story, the make-up on their bodies smudges most of the ballet’s original demands. In 2007, the Afro-Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta arrived at the Bolshoi Theatre to perform the role of Spartacus in Grigorovich’s production. A black performer, he had been the principal dancer of London’s Royal Ballet since 1998 and was the most visible icon of the troupe’s move to integrate dancers of various racial identities, ethnic backgrounds and national affiliations. In this context of ‘ideal’ institutional diversity, Acosta offered an exceptionally attractive style, through which he was able to consolidate 119

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his position at the forefront of male ballet performance. His dance language was characterized by specific traits of ‘natural’ charisma, manliness and muscularity that coincided with long traditions of racialized identification of black bodies’ performance,102 but it also drew on the virtuosity of his Cuban training and technique. So, with the audience’s fascination for his ‘fetichized’ otherness, he became an asset for the company’s endorsement of multiculturalism.103 Ballet is an exclusive, traditionally white, art form.104 Throughout his career, Acosta had to battle for full control of his body and for being cast in the principal roles of the repertoire, where he shone thanks to his technical precision, acting abilities and formidable physical prowess. Yet, having demonstrated his star status in leading ballets such as Romeo and Juliet, Coppélia, Giselle and Swan Lake, he started to look for another kind of role. His new title in the Royal Ballet as principal guest artist allowed him to exert more agency in choosing his repertoire so, tired of the limitations of ballet casting conventionalisms in terms of class and ethnicity, he saw in Spartacus an occasion to reinvent his work. To Acosta, the role of the gladiator was ‘like tailored-made’ for him.105 A member of an ethnic minority oppressed by imperialist powers, the ancient slave gave him an opportunity to address questions of struggle and conflict and to communicate in a radically different register, where he could stress his Afro-Cuban working-class origins, advocating for a less superficial form of diversity in ballet. From the technical point of view, the challenge to dance Spartacus was an issue that defined Acosta’s professional persona, as it represented another obstacle to overcome in the dancer’s trajectory to success – a story that the media narrativized as a rags-to-riches tale but which actually exemplifies the real difficulties of racial and cultural difference in the context of ballet’s ‘new cosmopolitanism’.106 Characterized by Grigorovich’s virtuosic bravura, Spartacus is one of the most demanding roles of ballet’s male repertoire and requires weeks of intense preparation. Thus, after the premiere in Moscow, Acosta felt the role to be the culmination of his dancing career.107 He became so personally invested in the project that he claimed: When I’m dancing this role, I give all my life. I lose three kilos every time I dance this, because it is the hardest, the most brutally demanding role that you can imagine [. . .] All of a sudden, I had this vehicle to really go for the best, the maximum [. . .] Definitely I think this is the role of my life. It was the best experience I had in my career.108 While Acosta emphasized the immense training and effort required to dance Spartacus, his colleagues at the Bolshoi insisted on a ‘natural’ connection between the dancer and the character. Nina Kaptsova, Acosta’s partner in the role of Phrygia, stressed ‘it is his role, his ballet [. . .] It is completely in tune with Acosta’s temperament, his physicality, his will power, his endurance, his belief in a better world’. Similarly, the director of the Bolshoi Alexei Ratmansky, stated ‘he is Spartacus. He does not need to act. Maybe it is something with his Cuban origins and his upbringing, but the way he acts is so natural. It comes from really deep inside’.109 This shared impression about Acosta’s 120

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inherent assimilation with the role was partially sustained on the dancer’s performance of masculinity. Certainly, the conventionally hypervirile style of his Cuban training matched well with the aesthetics of manhood that Grigorovich had devised for the character. But beyond the level of stamina, it was the ‘blackness’ of his performance that produced such sense of uniqueness about his Spartacus: as a dancer of colour, it seemed for granted that Acosta fitted in the role of ‘a slave’, as if he could naturally connect with the character no matter his dancing qualities or the requirements of the ballet.110 According to this, the opinions of the crew’s members would be reflecting an essentialist vision of the dancer’s black body as expressive of recurring traits that intrinsically belong to a modern archetypal idea of slave, even if the ancient rebel was, in reality, a native from Thrace, in the south-east of the Balkans.111 And yet Acosta offered a radically different idea of Spartacus. For a number of reasons, the performance of the Cuban dancer implied inevitable associations that related to

Figure 8.1 Carlos Acosta in the role of Spartacus, Bolshoi Ballet at London Coliseum, August 2007. © Nigel Norrington / ArenaPAL . 121

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broader forms of violence inscribed in the bodies of black individuals across the centuries: the chained arms of Spartacus, the objectivization of his gladiatorial body as a commodity for the Romans’ divertissements, and his spectacular death at the hands of an organized military squadron were all actions that read differently when performed by a dancer of colour, particularly because of their conspicuous visibility.112 In this new version of the ballet, the (marked) black body of the protagonist prevented the subject from being perceived as ‘a universal story of rebellion’, as the Soviet project was originally sold, and not every member of the audience could identify with his cause. In this vein, Acosta reformulated the story of the ancient slave and opened up a new dimension in the narrative of the production as it conceptualized different forms of embodied violence by means of his own personal performance, thus providing the audience with other ways of reading Grigorovich’s ballet. As considered in the previous sections, the discourse of racial oppression has permeated the modern reception of Spartacus in every media and art form, especially through the introduction of Draba as the instigator of the rebellion in Hollywood’s 1960 production. In line with this precedent, the now-iconic performance of Carlos Acosta has managed to revitalize the weight of blackness in the story of the rebel and transfer the significance of this racial identity from a subsidiary character to the main role. Thanks to his reputation as an international star, Acosta had the ability to use the Bolshoi’s Spartacus as an empowering vehicle for solidifying his position at the forefront of twenty-first-century global ballet. Still, the image of a black Spartacus onstage entails a series of problematic aspects that expose the necessity to keep questioning the underlying structures that define the status of the black body in the two largely Eurocentric and white fields of ballet and ancient classical tradition.113 The 2007 Spartacus was produced for an audience of mostly white spectators with Acosta as the only black performer in the ensemble. Moreover, in order to accentuate the distinctiveness of his dancing with regard to the otherwise homogeneous corps de ballet, the Cuban dancer carried out a strategic performance of the subjugated body that reinscribed him in a racialized narrative of otherness and created an impression of ‘genuineness’ that somehow justified his casting in the role of the fighter.114 To most of the critics, the sole performance of the Cuban dancer sufficed to ‘bring emotional veracity’ to the story115 and to ‘restore the ballet’s credibility’116 with a more ‘convincing’ embodiment of the leader-slave. In line with these opinions, one of the reviewers even claimed that the ‘highly charged image of a black man in chains reinvented the work for a new generation’ and surely the acting of Acosta reinforced such sense of transformation.117 Be that as it may, it is necessary to count with more than just one individual to activate real changes in the social body the way Spartacus sought to ensure.118

Conclusions The analysis of Spartacus (1956–68) and its most recent choreographies proves to be of great relevance when we try to understand how the methodologies of classical reception 122

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studies and dance studies converge in an inquiry of memory and re-enactment through ballet’s repertoire, where the life element and the dancers’ bodies acquire a special resonance over the fixed constrictions of a choreography or a written text. Classical tradition is about preserving material, just like classical reception is about rewriting. Thus, when comparing the revival of Yakobson’s Spartacus at the Mariinsky (2010) with that of Grigorovich at the Bolshoi (2007), one may consider, above all, what kind of violence are we experiencing through Carlos Acosta’s performance of slavery and what violence when we see white dancers who still have to wear blackface make-up: it is corporeality versus document, embodied memory versus archival material, agency versus detachment. The story of Spartacus is a story of mobilization and will only be significant if it continues to be on the move.

Acknowledgements This chapter has been carried out within the Research Project Marginalia Classica Hodierna. Tradición y recepción clásica en la cultura de masas contemporánea (FFI 201566942-P; MINECO /FEDER ). I thank Irene Berti for her continuous help as well as Sarah Olsen and Lester Tomé for their insightful comments and proofreading.

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CHAPTER 9 IOCASTE’S DAUGHTERS IN MODERNITY: ANITA BERBER AND VALESKA GERT Nicole Haitzinger

This chapter will primarily engage with the topos of stage deaths in modernity. By way of a prologue, I will briefly discuss the metaphysical theorization of death in Plato and Aristotle, as well as sketching the historically parallel mise-en-scène of death in the theatre of Antiquity, referring to the French historian Nicole Loraux’s perspective as developed in Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman.1 These remarks will serve as reference points for a narrower channelling, first to Martin Heidegger’s radical philosophical conception of death as conducted in Being and Time (1927), which evades any reference to the beyond, and second to the mise-en-scène of stage death in modernity as an emancipatory act. In the sense of a tragic way of killing oneself, this is exemplified by Anita Berber’s Cocain [Cocaine] (1922) and Valeska Gert’s Der Tod [Death] (1922).

The presence of metaphysical death in (philosophical) life The theorization of death in the philosophy of Antiquity – and especially in Plato – is performed by metaphysics. It is this theorization that the sciences and arts of European modernity will refer to through various stages of transformation, ranging from implementation, borrowing, assimilation and substitution to destruction.2 While it will not be possible to engage with these modalities in a detailed manner within the current frame, I wish to at least sketch Plato’s thoughtful figure in terms of the topos of the body and death: for ‘those who are really philosophers’,3 dying and ‘death has less terror’,4 as Socrates argues in Phaedo, for the philosopher has accommodated himself throughout his life ‘to live as closely as possible to death’.5 This argumentation is based on the division of body and soul. While the body is visibly made up of parts, changeable and destructible, the soul is considered to resemble the non-divisible that is ultimately (probably) immortal.6 In the course of life, however, the soul becomes ‘permeated by the corporeal’, hence through the ‘continual intimacy and habituation over a long period’ the body is ‘implanted and made to grow up as a part of it’.7 It is only after death that the two become irrevocably separated.8 By means of an intellectual distancing and an ethical attitude, this separation is, as it were, a priori exercised in the practice of philosophy. The metaphysical disposition and the relational devaluation of the physical that accompanies it are taken up by Aristotle, albeit in the form of an argumentative affirmation of the unity of body and soul. As part of this constellation, the soul is given the leading function. The faculty of reason is thus thought 125

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to enter the body from the outside and to become immortal when leaving the body-soul unit.9

The absence of physical death on the stage of classical theatre With its frequent staging of death, the theatre stands in conflict (or competition) with the tendency towards the rejection of the body that is found in the philosophy of the time.10 To put it differently: the tragedies of Antiquity would not be thinkable without the precise articulation and mise-en-scène of stage deaths. The body that dies as a result of an immediate or mediated act of violence becomes a decisive instance in the production of Phobos and Eleos. We know that, according to the given theatrical conventions, immediate physical acts of violence (scenes of dying, violent killings) in the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus (just as with those of Sophocles and Euripides) were not directly embodied by the actors but relegated to occurring behind the scenes, hence removed from direct view.11 The act of dying is concealed, yet mediated linguistically by means of the messenger’s report. Visibility is reserved for the corpse carried on stage. We can, for instance, observe various different ways of killing a woman on stage.12 Greek tragedy knows different forms of death, of which three seem significant: hanging; suicide by means of the sword; and sacrificial death. All three evoke a performative liminal state of presence and absence. While in modernity, self-poisoning carries connotations of female suicide, Antiquity viewed a woman hanging herself as the most ‘feminine’ of deaths. It is a form of death which works with emblems (veils, belt, cords) and which, according to the ancient Greek imagination, closes all body orifices at once. In Antiquity, hanging corresponds to the fall. The person hanging herself hovers in the state of the in-between; she jumps into her death. Jumping and falling constitute oppositional momenta of movement which can only be distinguished from one another in terms of their directionality. The second possibility of dying that is invisibly staged in Greek tragedy is death by means of the blade or the sword – a bloody death, one that is considered ‘masculine’.13 The Greek word sphagē denotes the slaughter that is part of the sacrifice, but also a wound and the blood emanating from it. It is also used for a sacrifice presented to the community, the state, the ‘fatherland’. I would like to exemplify two tragic stage deaths that differ from each other almost entirely, the resonances of which can be experienced in Anita Berber’s and Valeska Gert’s embodiment of dying in dance modernity: Iocaste’s hanging in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Iocaste’s suicide by cutting her throat in Euripides’ Phoenician Women. This is about one character from myth, whose death in the Attic theatre is, not by chance, profiled differently within drama. Let us remember Homer’s epic scene in the Odyssey, which can be understood as an important point of reference for both ancient playwrights or, as Athenaeus beautifully expressed it, as ‘slices of fish taken from the great banquets of Homer’:14 126

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And I saw the mother of Oedipodes, beautiful Epicaste, who did a monstrous thing in the ignorance of her mind, wedding her own son; and he, when he had slain his own father, wedded her; and soon the gods made these things known among men. Nevertheless, in lovely Thebes, suffering woes, he ruled over the Cadmeans by the dire designs of the gods; but she went down to the house of Hades, the strong warder, making fast a deadly noose from the high ceiling, caught by her own grief; but for him she left behind countless woes, all that a mother’s Furies bring to pass.15 As Oedipus’ wife, Sophocles’ Iocaste decides and acts at the first opportunity. Before the decisive scene where a herald announces her death, she repeatedly tries to prevent the impregnable misfortune of the dynastic and myth-bound house. Iocaste’s incestuous doubling-up as wife and mother becomes more evident in the course of the action. In dialogic replies, she thus tries to prevent Oedipus again and again from the realization, which she remembers more clearly: ‘I would look neither this way nor that on account of a prophecy’;16 ‘Let these words go for nothing and not be remembered!’;17 ‘I beg you, do not search this out, if you care for your own life! My anguish is enough’;18 and ‘Ill-fated one, may you never find out who you are.’19 While she fails in this matter, she also fails in her function as a wife. Finally, the herald briefly announces: ‘the august Iocaste is dead’,20 before her offstage conceptualized death becomes an imagined on-stage death purely mediated by words: It was by her own hand. [. . .] When in her passion she passed through the door, she sped directly to her bridal bed, tearing her hair with fingers of both hands. And when she entered she slammed shut both panels of the door, calling on Laius, now long a corpse, remembering their love-making long ago, which had brought him death, leaving her to bring forth a progeny accursed by one that was his own; and she wept over the bed where in double misery she had brought forth a husband by her husband and children by her child. And how after that she perished is more than I know; [. . .] There we saw the woman hanging, her neck tied in a twisted noose. And when he [Oedipus] saw her, with a fearful roar, poor man, he untied the knot from which she hung.21 Sophocles attributes to Iocaste the role of former bride and wife by sentencing her to be hanged in accordance with convention. This is evoked by both words and deeds, be it the bridal bed inside the house, the hair being torn out or the call on Laius and the memory of the begetting union which disregarded Apollo’s divine law – still regarded as scandalous nowadays – or the tears that flowed onto the bed, the site of the incestuous unions (and procreations). All this results in a noose, with which Iocaste hangs herself from the frame of the marital bed. Sophocles proves consequent when Oedipus unties the knot, more as husband than as son. In Phoenician Women, Euripides describes Iocaste’s death in an entirely different way – Nicole Loraux draws attention to this fundamental distinction in the conception of the figure in Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman. His Iocaste does not hang herself – she survives 127

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the incestual revelation, only committing suicide after her sons Eteocles and Polyneikes violently kill each other in the battle of Thebes. Right from the introductory monologue, Iocaste is marked as Oedipus’s mother: ‘My son somehow or other managed to learn her song’s [the Sphinx] meaning, took the scepter of this country as his prize, and thus, poor man, unwittingly married his mother, and his mother too was unaware that she was sleeping with her son.’22 Iocaste addresses Oedipus as ‘the old man blind’.23 Her main concern is to avoid Oedipus’ curse, which predicts the mutual bellicose killing of their sons Eteocles and Polyneikes. As the Attic theatre audience (and we) know from the myth, the art of persuasion must fail. In Phoenician Women, the Greek tragic ways of dying – the contrast between noose and sword  – are privileged to mothers and fathers, and are radically brought to the limits of the possible in a game of reversal. Even though a man never actually hangs himself in Greek tragedy, Iocaste considers it in her speech: ‘[Oedipus] rushes now to the sword of self-slaughter, now to nooses hung from the rafters, lamenting the curse on his sons. With continual cries of woe he hides himself in the dark’:24 suicide by sword or the noose from the rafters? These are the options for a lamenting Oedipus in the darkness, whose cries of suffering recall archaic mourning rites, not by chance usually attributed to women. However, Iocaste and her daughter Antigone go to the battlefield to prevent the incestuous sons’/brothers’ mutual slaughter by insisting and begging them: Jocasta [. . .] come with me. Antigone Where shall I go, leaving my maiden chamber? Jocasta To the battlefield.25 At the beginning of the tragedy, Antigone repeatedly calls on Artemis for support in the battle for Thebes,26 whereas Polyneikes addresses Hera and Eteocles Pallas Athene – not by chance the names of three goddesses with military associations. In Euripides, the battle for Thebes results in the great narrative surrounding the brothers and their armies, but its outcome depends greatly on divine grace. After all, it is Ares, the god of war, who grants the Theban forces victory, under the command of Eteocles (despite his death); in return, he demands the (self-) sacrifice of Creon’s son and Antigone’s cousin Menoikes as a ‘sacrificial animal for the city’,27 as repayment for an old sacrilege of Cadmus as founder of the city – ‘avenging the death of earthborn snake’.28 The death scene of the brothers and that of Iocaste are linked by the motif of breathing, as the threshold between birth and death: Both thus together [Eteocles and Polyneikes] breathed out the last of their unblessed lives. And seeing this the mother, in a fit of passion, snatched up a sword from the corpses and did a dreadful deed. She thrust the iron blade through the middle of her throat and now lies dead among her beloved sons, embracing them both in her arms.29 In a martial manner, Iocaste seizes her sons’ iron sword and thrusts it through her throat. In the midst of the tragic events, gender roles become mixed when Iocaste 128

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takes her sons’ sword to kill herself, somewhat appropriating the male-coded capacity of acting, while Oedipus considers hanging himself.30 Through the staging of tragically ‘inverted’ stage deaths in the space of the theatre, a varying gender order becomes imaginable; however, only under certain historical and cultural conditions. Nevertheless, the throat is always the most vulnerable, woundable point of women; it is here that the body is closed in hanging or opened and bleeding when the cycle of breathing is cut off.

Heidegger’s philosophy and the presence of death in life In the 1920s, the disappearance of the afterlife  – which had progressively manifested itself since early European modernity  – was formulated31 in Heidegger’s philosophy through a radical inversion of the idea of death in terms of an ‘existential project of an authentic Being-toward-Death’:32 dying, however, is to hold good as the title of a way of being, in which Being-There is Being-Towards-Death. In contrast with ancient Greek philosophy  – especially that of Plato and Aristotle  – and with the many subsequent variants present within early modern constructions and forms of reception, the analysis of death in Being and Time (1927) concentrates exclusively on the mortal world.33 Heidegger’s destruction and inversion of thanatology can ultimately only be understood within the reference system of his intimate and critical reading of classical philosophy.34 The indeterminacy of one’s Being now exists in every moment of life; Being-TowardsDeath and Being-Towards-Being-There become indivisibly intertwined. For Heidegger, ‘death is Dasein’s ownmost possibility’,35 ‘the condition of the possibility of being’36 and, in the utmost sense, a ‘phenomenon of life’.37 Dying is a ‘phenomenon to be understood existentially’.38 In close proximity to the composition and publication in 1927 of Being and Time, two Weimar Republic dancers and actresses, Anita Berber and Valeska Gert, occupied themselves with the mise-en-scène of stage death. The affinities between philosophy and theatre in central European modernity may be evident, yet little consideration has been given to the similarities of conceptions of death within performance practice and Heidegger. How is death staged in modernity exactly, and which references to cultural practices, social orders (and more specifically philosophy) can be recognized? My thesis is that modernity reverses the ancient relation between invisibility and visibility, absence and presence; it presents extended acts of dying while the corpse becomes visible only for a moment – if at all.

Modernity and the presence of physical death in dance Due to the scandals surrounding her life, her bisexuality and her apparent naked dancing, Anita Berber (1899–1928) is considered an icon of modernity; yet her performative acts have only found widespread scholarly attention (in dance studies) relatively recently.39 129

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During the First World War, she received acting training from Maria Moissi and dance training from Rita Sacchetto. Berber found early success with her performances in the Berlin variété shows.40 In November 1922, she showed a series of seven dances under the title of Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy, conceived in collaboration with her life and artistic partner at the time, Sebastian Droste, in Vienna. Among these, I would like to suggest that the solo Cocain radically stages death in modernity, and does so in Heidegger’s sense of a ‘thrownness into death’.41 Berber was a cocaine-user, so the solo performance was founded on bodily experience; she exhibits the quick, euphoric effect as much as she does the overdosing and proximity to the experience of death. Parallel to their self-produced film Modern Dances (unfortunately now lost), in 1923 Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste published a book entitled Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy with the Vienna-based publishers Gloriette.42 This may be understood as an attempt at poeticizing their dances. The texts are framed by ‘graphic intuitions by Anita Berber’, so-called ‘photographic images from the studio d’Ora’ and decorative designs and figurines accompanying the dances by the architect Harry Täuber. Anita Berber’s text Cocain testifies to an existentially conceived stage death that attempts to dissolve the borders between the experience of art and death, as well as to prioritize the indeterminate. Walls Table Shadows and cats Green eyes Many eyes Millions of eyes The woman Nervously fluttering desire [. . .] The shadow Oh – the leap over the shadow The shadow tortures The shadow agonizes It devours me this shadow What does this shadow want Cocaine Scream Animals Blood Alcohol Pain Much pain And the eyes [. . .] 130

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This shadow This horrifically great shadow43 We can catch a glimpse of the movement motifs and artistic signature of Cocain from the description of her Czech artistic colleague Joe Jenčík, who drafted the following text, which testifies to his competence in dance and knowledge of staging practices in modern dance: Curtain. On the floor an exposed body in an empty space [. . .] Everything dead. Top, bottom, right and left, probably also in the motionless figure itself [. . .] Probably the first intense hit of the fatal poison paralysing the body. [. . .] Hardly visible twitches in the various body parts [. . .] convulsions [. . .] With some swaying, the body sits up. Or rather: it forms a strange knot of flesh with two indescribable slits instead of eyes and a bloodied wound as mouth [. . .] The dancer comes to her feet impersonally [. . .] She is probably the puppet of a cruel ceasefire between the poison and the pumping heart [. . .] Scream around the mouth [. . .] The dancer’s body is thrown to the ground in a huge cascade [. . .] All this is executed through a technique of natural steps and unsought-for poses. The Attitudes in this dance are tragically fragmented and the Arabesques demonically extended. The twists of the body around its own axis, incredibly slow, as in slow motion. [. . .] The jerky jumps [. . .] always end in a plastic Port de bras, dreamed of by sculptors. The counter-movements of the head are unexpected, almost unbearable for balance. Leg positions: especially the great fourth position.44 The body concept underlying all this is a mechanical, abstract one – that is, emptied of any gesture that would be rhetorically codified or articulate gestures; it is no coincidence that Jenčík speaks of a puppet. In the seven-minute solo, Berber collages different states in relation to the drug; these are not chronologically arranged (overdose, desire for the hit, euphoria, depression). Microscopic movements through the sudden tensing or relaxation of the musculature and contractions through a specific regulation of energy form significant movement motifs to embody death-like moments. The euphoria of intoxication is marked by a leitmotif of modern dance, namely a swaying movement repeatedly stopped. The body’s twists around its own axis are also significant for this state, in which depression shines through in the form of a small-scale dying. To speak with Heidegger’s terminology, death ‘stands’ as ‘the condition of the possibility of the respective Being-There’; ‘Being-There’ as a ‘Being-Towards-the-End’ seems – and this is my perspectivization – to be embodied in Berber’s performative acts. Berber’s solo is not without form. This is attested by her precision in modelling an ex-static corporeality (in the concrete and metaphorical sense), specifically through the aforementioned technique of steps, the arabesques expanding into space, the ‘unsought poses’ and the structurally designed repetitions of significant movement motifs. Jenčík names the fourth great position as her signature movement: a position in which the legs are crossed over, the right or left foot positioned so that its heel is placed precisely in 131

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front of the toes of the other foot. The engagement with force and time determines the performance; in this respect, special significance is given to the coordination of the limbs in relation to the leitmotif of a crossing-over. The photograph accompanying Kokain (Fig. 9.1), as devised in the Vienna studio of Madame d’Ora, stages Anita Berber as a figure between life and death.45 The simultaneity of absence and presence is marked primarily by the curtain that leaves the cocaine-user exposed, yet not entirely so. The breasts are uncovered, as are the arms, which are stretched over the head and crossed over behind it; they render apparent the fragility of the female body that is destroyed by the cocaine overdose. The oppositional principle in the modelling of corporeality is marked by the way the head is slightly bent downwards and the left hip slightly pushed forward; this is visually emphasized by the crossed-over straps of the upper part of the costume, beginning shortly underneath the breasts

Figure 9.1 Anita Berber in Kokain. Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste, Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase, Gloriette-Verlag Wien, 1923. Bild Nummer XI , public domain.

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Figure 9.2 Figurine for Kokain, sketch by Harry Täuber. Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste, Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase, Gloriette-Verlag Wien, 1923.

(Fig. 9.2). Berber embodies the possibility of a Being-Toward-Death in Heidegger’s sense, at once certain and indeterminate. It is not the scandalousness of the naked dances or Berber’s vices, both lived and staged, that resonate at this time, but the underlying scandal of the performance of dying as integral to Being-There – in a period that keeps death pushed out of everyday life as indecent and offensive, that individuates death in Western society, negates and veils its presence.46 The fact that Anita Berber’s scandalousness lies not in her naked dances or her sexual excess, but in the radical quality of her performative display of dying; however, this was not recognized in her contemporary reception. ‘The performance is serious to me. [Anita Berber] [. . .] We do the dance of death, illness, pregnancy, syphilis, madness, dying, infirmity, suicide, and no one takes us seriously. They only stare at our veils to see if they can look underneath, the pigs.’47 133

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The writer Klaus Mann articulated with precision the sociocultural dimension of the reception that was characteristic of the period in his obituary for Anita Berber from 1930. Yet there is a logic to her gruesome end that renders pity insignificant. [. . .] Certainly that which is time-conditioned, indeed that which is sociological in this life history, is important and interesting: how a Germany devoured by the fever of inflation celebrates, pays for, enthrones the exhibitionism of this genius woman while at the same time the bourgeois way of life, still-strong behind the fever, declares death to her immorality. She was creature and victim of a profiteers’ glory. One could write her story as an accusation against the period and its society.48 Mann’s equation of art and life – an equation that would determine Anita Berber’s reception in the twentieth century  – fails to recognize the division of the two orders indispensable to Berber. It is no accident that she speaks of how ‘The performance is serious to me.’ Valeska Gert, avant-garde dancer, actress and film-maker (1892–1978) can be understood as Anita Berber’s contemporary, in a far-reaching sense. In specific ways, each looks for the unheard-of in dance, to be evoked through the ‘unvarnished’ presentation of death.49 Death is released, to speak through Heidegger, ‘from the Illusions of the [generic] “they” ’50 and is radically related to the paradoxical figure of the stage. In her three-minute solo Der Tod [Death] (1922), Gert embodies a dying on stage in the same year as Anita Berber, and she does so, as she claims, in a single movement: ‘I died in a single movement. I did a movement from bottom to top and died within this movement.’51

The film Just for Fun The two film fragments still extant – the first filmed by Suse Byk in 1925, the second Valeska Gert’s own reconstruction of her death movement for Volker Schlöndorff ’s film Just for Fun from 1977 – both focus on her face and arms: 1925, the mouth is widely opened to form a soundless scream, the head thrown back, the eyes turned, half-closed; 1977, in Gert’s reconstruction of her staged death, we can also see the significant ‘single’ movement of dying. With an arrangement that is simultaneously rhetorical, iconic and performatively gesture-based, the arms are conducted through a clenching of the fists from underneath, across the torso and the face, then with further force upwards above the head; finally, they are lowered with decreasing force. The high level of variability in the expense and distribution of energy is regulated by breath. In the course of a few moments, the distribution of energy as part of the motoric activity changes from a sudden burst to a near-void; this corresponds to changes between heavy and shallow breathing. The modulation of the musculature changes from counter-tensions to inertness. The mise-en-scène is reminiscent of the death of the character Katerina Ivanovna in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment.52 In Mein Weg [My 134

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Way], Valeska Gert mentions the nineteenth-century author, who was able to articulate with perhaps unmatched precision a phenomenology of modern dying, as a reference to the ‘shaping of vice’ through dance.53 Moreover, codified stage gestures of dying seem sedimented in her groaning, her panting breath, her clenched fists  – these appear, however, as a collapse of form. This collapse is articulated in Valeska Gert’s detailed movement description concerning Death: This is how I did death: wearing a long black shirt, I am stood on a brightly lit podium. My body gradually tenses, the struggle begins, the hands clench into a fist, more and more firmly, the shoulders become hunched, the face contorted from pain and agony. Pain becomes unbearable, the mouth is widely opened to form a soundless scream. I bend the head back, shoulders, arms, hands, the whole body is stiffened. I try to resist. Pointless. For several seconds, I am stood motionless, a pillar of pain. Then slowly life fades from my body, very slowly it releases its tension. The pain cedes, the mouth becomes softer, the shoulders fall, the arms become limp, as do the hands. [. . .] the body falls quickly, the head of a doll. Over. Gone. I am dead. Dead silence. No one in the audience dares to breathe. I am dead.54 According to a ‘one-minute-rate’, dying is shown through the specific regulation of energy.55 It is not to be understood as metaphysical in this respect; in her own words, she ‘hurls’ her existential Being onto the scene.56 In terms of body technique and movement analysis, she conceives of a stage-I that oscillates by means of ecstasy and eccentricity (from a position of stasis, far removed from stabilizing gravity) between animal and puppet. Gert embodies a merely possible death: she dies while standing.57 This is further attested by the seemingly paradoxical statement from her autobiography, ‘I am dead’. Death, to borrow Heidegger’s terminology, is staged as the ‘ownmost’, ‘authentic’, ‘existential’, ‘certain’ and finally ‘indefinite’ possibility.58 If philosophy claims that it is an exercise in dying,59 then we might ascribe to the theatre the experience of dying. In European modernity, dancers have significantly contributed to this experience. As exemplified in terms of Heidegger’s philosophy, as well as Berber’s and Gert’s productions, the underworld and the beyond cease to exist as being central to classical conceptions of death. This marks a radical break, not only with ancient but also premodern era conceptions of death. The dancers discussed here destroy the metaphysics of death, presenting the final violent act of a ‘Being-in-the-world’ as a ‘thrownness’ into the world, and expose the displacement of death in modernity by way of a radical and emancipatory demonstration of death. A specific (corporeal) knowledge concerning the repertoire of rhetorical death gestures in European modernity60 seems implicitly present: first via the principle of opposition, as sedimented in the motif of crossing over, then by reference to the throat. This reference manifests itself in Anita Berber’s Cocain through direct touch, and in Valeska Gert’s Der Tod through the stertorous breath and the conduction of movement via the throat. To return to the introductory remarks, in ancient tragedy the throat was clearly considered to be the most 135

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vulnerable point of the woman’s body. It is here that breath and life, dying and death intersect: ‘whether in hanging or sphagē, suicide, murder of sacrifice: it seems women need to die at the gorge and only the gorge’, while male bodies have a multiplicity of possible points for wounding that may be given to violent death (such as the forehead, temple, chest, lungs, navel, heel, flank, liver. . .).61 Berber’s and Gert’s throat references can be claimed as ‘tacit knowledge’ concerning the tragic manners of killing a woman in ancient tragedy. However, even if gender difference is an important aspect in Greek thought, the difference between the sexes does not play the same role on Olympus, in theatre and in the world of mortals. The implications of power of the Olympian martial goddesses (Hera, Pallas Athene, Artemis) are not to be underestimated in the modelling of tragic heroines. Goddess-like, female figures wholeheartedly go into battle on stage. In the conception of tragic stage deaths, the dichotomy of sexes can be inverted temporarily: Iocaste represents this reversal paradigmatically. If one abstracts stage death in terms of the figure of thought resonances of the tragic, then Anita Berber and Valeska Gert perform as two modern daughters of Iocaste. I am not referring to Electra and Antigone in terms of narration. Both versions of their tragic deaths appear to be decipherable – the hanging in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and the death by sword in Euripides’ Phoenician Women. In Cocain, Anita Berber presents herself wearing a corset with ribbons crossed beneath her breasts: a possible metaphor for a noose made out of these ribbons? Berber dies in a female way: petrified, twitching, with an outrageous cry, while Gert’s death takes place in a more masculine manner, namely in a singular movement while standing. Both stage deaths present a scandalous gesture: Iocaste’s daughters transform the act of dying from invisibility into visibility within modernity.

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CHAPTER 10 DARK TERRITORIES OF THE SOUL: MARTHA GRAHAM’S CLYTEMNESTRA Ainize González García

J’ai tué cet homme avec un couteau, dans une baignoire, avec l’aide de mon misérable amant qui ne parvenait même pas à lui tenir les pieds.1 Marguerite Yourcenar, ‘Clytemnestre ou le crime’ (1936) The aim of this chapter is to study the presence of violence in Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra (1958), a dance drama. Aside from analysing the relationship between dance, painting and myth, this work aspires to explore the capacity of abstraction to represent human violence.2 In 1922, American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham caught her first glimpse of a series of modern paintings exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago. The paintings, from Chagall, Matisse and, in particular, Kandinsky, made her realize that certain artists understood art in the same way that she did; for this reason, Graham called them her ancestors.3 Standing before a work from Kandinsky, she told herself that one day she would make this, that she would create dance pieces akin to this painting. But how was she to achieve this? How would she translate painting into dance? Movement might be one of the clues, perhaps the most important, but concepts like masses of colour, and more specifically dynamic masses of colour throughout the space, would also need to be taken into consideration. But are we speaking of abstraction at all? The abstraction and its signifier; or the visual and the musical sense of abstraction, in Kandinsky’s case. For Graham, the visual and the musical were of great importance, and the presence of the body truly imperative. The body in Graham’s work could be seen as the equivalent of the colourful shapes in Kandinsky’s paintings. The relevance of the body in Graham’s work is obvious, but also interesting. It should be noted that in the historical avant-garde, mimetic sense of painting is dissolving – bodies, like a still life in decadence, will deform, fragment and violently fall to pieces. As in Pablo Picasso’s work, for example, fractured bodies that are, in some way, like dynamic, geometric or organic colourful shapes that insinuate a mechanical sense of movement. This is also true of some of Sonia Delaunay’s and Sophie Taeuber’s works, for instance. However, within this aseptic sense of movement there is a kind of tension between the mechanical and the erotic. ‘Perhaps you might call [my work] painting with movement. It has colour, it has continuance of line, it has shock, and it should have vibrancy.’4 In Graham’s words, there is, above all, movement, lines and colour; but there is also shock and vibrancy. This is the true meaning of moving abstract colour shapes. However, what about the body? What 137

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about the human body and its expression? Unlike in painting, Graham needs the body to shape the movement.5 In her works, the body – deformed, fragmented, ripped to pieces – is surfacing from beneath the abstract shapes, as if the body were still an evocation, a lamentation, almost a resistance. Within Graham’s dance, or more specifically in her Clytemnestra (1958), is the body self-sufficient, or does it need a literary element or narration to achieve meaning? According to Kandinsky, in abstract painting ‘the form is self-sufficient but it is not the colour, the colour needs the form to mean’.6 The Russian-born German expressionist was the founder of Der Blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider] in Munich during the years between 1911 and 1914.7 The painter founded this artistic group with other Russian emigrants such as Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, along with native German artists like Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter and August Macke. Essentially, the painters of this artistic group abandoned the sentimental pathos of expressionists to start a more spiritual exploration. The final result: abstraction. In 1910, one year before Der Blaue Reiter was founded, Kandinsky wrote his seminal book Concerning Spiritual in Art.8 One of the main ideas of his text is that the psychic effect of colours9 causes a mental vibration that simultaneously has a direct influence on the soul. Theoretical painters like Kandinsky did not use the term ‘space’ within their artistic theories, at least not in a specifically theoretical manner. However, although he did not explicitly think in terms of space, space was indeed in the background of his work.10 How is this the case? Does it have something to do with composition? With the vacuum of the canvas? Or with the empty space of the stage, as well? Deep down, there is also an interest in movement. This is an inner movement, of course, a spiritual and abstract sense of movement, as one might suppose. Incidentally, Kandinsky’s thoughts on dance11 can be seen as an example of his particular way of understanding movement: In the search for more subtle expression, modern reformers have looked to the past. Isadora Duncan forged a link between Greek dancing and the future. In this she is working parallel to those painters who are looking for inspiration in the primitives [. . .]. The same law, utilization of pure motion, which is the principal element of dance, applies to painting too. Conventional beauty must go, and the literary element, ‘story-telling’ or ‘anecdote’, must be abandoned. [. . .]. The dance of the future, today on a level with music and painting, will help to realize stage composition, the first form of monumental art [. . .]. Reading pictorial composition everyone will understand the threefold effect of the inner movement (stage composition).12 Essentially, for Kandinsky there is no difference between his painting’s violent shapes of colour – precise lines – and the lines that are drawn by pure motion. Therefore, the composition of the painting is an inner movement, as is the stage composition. For an artform like dance, the relationship between the space and the dancer is important. In 138

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Graham’s work, and thus in her Clytemnestra, the stage composition is more than an inner movement. In her dance pieces, the interaction between the different elements of composition – the dancers and the stage’s architecture(s) or sculpture(s) – has a lot to do with choreographic movement. However, stage composition in Graham’s work is also a space, and almost a volume. This concept of volume is interesting. Graham’s dance movements could be abstractions, but could this also be said of her body? Or of Clytemnestra’s set? The American dancer and film artist Yvonne Rainer mentions duality when she speaks about props, objects and the body: ‘I love the duality of props, or objects: their usefulness and obstructiveness in relation to the human body. Also, the duality of the body: the body as a moving, thinking, decision-making entity and the body as an inert entity, object-like [. . .] the human being can be treated as an object, dealt with as an entity without feeling or desire’.13 Rainer’s depiction of duality describes a sense of dance that is more sculptural than pictorial. Actually, it is not pictorial at all:14 Kandinsky’s interest in theatre is all about painting. In fact, the two-dimensionality of the stage – a relief stage15 – erases the threedimensional sensation, that is to say, the space. Objects are hidden under abstract forms, and words are reduced to sounds, causing them to somehow lose meaning. Violence and dehumanization start to invade reality and its representations within his first abstract paintings, while objects begin to be masked by dynamic and vehement splashes of colour. Kandinsky was crying out for an interior expression to art, in a symbolist and mystical way. Violence and dehumanization are both present in Graham’s work, and Clytemnestra is no exception. This is not only achieved via the dancers’ movements; in Graham’s work, as in Kandinsky’s, there is a tension between materialism and the spiritual. In Kandinsky – at least for his paintings of 1911–14 – his violent methods of drawing, his attempts to hide reality under intense colour shapes, results in a dehumanized image of the world. In Graham’s work, human violence produces a dehumanized image of the world. More precisely, it achieves this with the human body, with the dancer’s body. The dancer’s body is like a perfect sound box that externalizes the consequences of living in a dehumanized world. In some ways, Graham is trying to make the spiritual visible, through the recognizable that Kandinsky was trying to hide. The question is this: is abstraction able to represent human violence? The paintings that Martha Graham saw in Chicago were examples of Kandinsky’s lyrical period – we speak here of the decade from 1910 onwards. Afterwards, this lyrical sense was replaced by pure lines, which were painted in a very accurate manner. In short, it could be said that the reality and imprecise shapes of Kandinsky’s early work left space for the non-material sense of reality, and also of human spirituality. In other words, as Cor Blok states, where there is no imitation, it is possible to see the spiritual in art.16 So, in the paintings that Graham saw, did Kandinsky paint imprecise shapes of reality? Yes, he did. Actually, in some of his works the reality  – as well as the landscape  – is represented by dynamic bodies of colour that occupy all the space on the canvas. This could be interpreted as a fauve reminiscence. 139

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In the œuvre Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons) (1913), there are many sinuous lines and saturated colours, and in the lower right section, two cannons; two cannons, in a painting from 1913 (seen on the cover of this volume). In the exhibition’s catalogue, there is an explanation of the picture, which reads: ‘This was not painted as an impression of war, but the atmosphere was so charged with war at the time it was painted, that the artist must have unconsciously introduced the feeling.’17 And perhaps Arthur Jerome Eddy was right: in 1913, Kandinsky wrote a letter to the lawyer and collector from Chicago – who organized the collection for the exhibition – in which the painter specified that ‘the presence of the cannons in the picture could probably be explained by the constant war talk that has been going on, throughout the year. But I did not intend to give a representation of war;18 to do so would have required different pictorial means; besides, such tasks do not interest me – at least not just now.’19 As one might suppose, Kandinsky was more concerned with the effects that the picture’s colours, shapes and lines would have on the souls of its viewers. In any case, the beginning of the Great War was near – 28 July 1914 – and Kandinsky’s art was already starting to be devoted to pure abstraction. Kandinsky was not the only one dealing with abstraction at that time. A mimetic representation of reality was not an option for other avant-garde artists, such as the Dadaist artists20 or Joan Miró, for example. The Constellations series from Miró – which were started in Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1940, and completed in Majorca and Mont-roig (Catalonia) in 1941 – is an ideal example (in this case influenced by the Second World War, not the First). In this series, the viewer can see sinuous figures and electrifying lines, as if they were notes arranged on a pentagram. Nine of them were painted, as André Breton recalls, ‘being beneath the skies of Varengeville-sur-Mer, in the very special atmosphere of what is commonly called “the Phony War” ’.21 Somehow the war, or more specifically the two World Wars, are in the background of this artistic inclination towards abstraction. We are speaking here of the twentieth century, the modern utopia of avant-garde art. We are also speaking of the spirit of modern times: the wars, the post-war fascisms, the artistic disruptions, the isms, the violence, the fear, the fury, the anguish, the nausea (as Sartre would put it), even the paranoia – when I say paranoia, I am thinking of McCarthyism and the Cold War. De facto, this is Martha Graham’s America. More specifically, this is the America of Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra. After the First World War, the spirit of Expressionism makes its presence felt within the German arts scene. Dance, painting, sculpture or cinema – a growing art form at that time  – paint irrational, disturbed and tortured characters. Anxiety is represented by means of violent dynamics of colours and shapes. Terror is represented by means of light and shadow. Madness is represented by means of bodies, clothes and sets (or architecture, in cinema).22 The sinister is represented through expressions and movements. In German expressionism, dread seems to appear from artistic spaces to shroud viewers in a phantasmagorical atmosphere. Lotte H. Eisner wonders: ‘Le singulier plaisir qu’éprouvent les Allemands à évoquer l’horreur est-il le fait, outre de certaines tendances sadiques, de l’excessif et très germanique désir de se soumettre à une discipline?’23 140

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Martha Graham’s dance is truly expressive. And perhaps, in some ways, it is also truly expressionist.24 Her solo piece Lamentation (1930) was inspired by a sculpture from the German expressionist Ernst Barlach, although given the colours and shapes that she creates while dancing, abstraction is always in the background of her work. Despite the influence of Kandinsky’s writings on dance in Mary Wigman’s work,25 it could be said that  – to draw a parallel with painting once more  – Wigman is to painters like Oskar Kokoschka or Emil Nolde what Graham is to Kandinsky. In short, Graham left the magical and mystical pathos of German expressionists to start a more spiritual exploration, one that resulted in the abstract movement of the subconscious. According to this, movement, or expression, must be a consequence of inner meaning, while the inner meaning should not be a consequence of the movement.26 In other words, in the works of expressionists such as Wigman, viewers can see the violence, the demoniac women,27 the sinister madness of the world, on the surface  – a notorious fact. For this purpose, the masks28 that she experiments with are truly useful, as a means of representing the expression of the dancer’s face and the expressive movements of the dancer’s body. Expressionist characters, spaces, volumes or bodies  – whether in painting, sculpture, cinema or dance  – are a kind of medium, tools to evoke chaos and irrationality. Wigman’s absolute dance29 concept also scrutinizes the capacity of energy, time and space to achieve a dance that is not subordinated to music.30 Up to a point, Wigman is drawing on insights from both expressionism and Dada. This is undeniably a kind of duality, similar to that mentioned by Rainer. Graham’s dance invites the viewer to look within themselves, deep inside the origin of movement. There is a desire to find the essence of human beings, and more concretely the essence of women, at the origin, at the very beginning. Could this origin be found in myth? In the myth of an iconic representation? It is no coincidence that myths are fertile territory for Graham. Hans Blumenberg, in his Work on Myth, argues that the original myth has no interest for us – we are far more interested in the varied and transformed myth, the result of its reception. Although he mentions the varied and transformed myth, to him myth must be diachronic, not anachronistic. For Blumenberg, the force of the myth lies in its iconic capacity, which is to say that in order to achieve an alternative explanation for myth, our perspective of time has to be erased. Blumenberg believes that in order to perceive the genuine contribution of myth, it must be described according to its terminus a quo. This means an ahistorical experience of the myth.31 Georges Didi-Huberman defines Art History as essentially anachronistic. The French philosopher and art historian reflects that when we are in front of images, in front of art works, we are truly confronted with time (‘toujours, devant l’image, nous sommes devant du temps’).32 If, to Blumenberg, myth is a thought that is intrinsic to us, then to DidiHuberman art works based on myths are a sequence of time, the sequence of all times. In this case, artwork is thus permeable to the various stretches of time that weave throughout its representation. According to George Steiner, ‘it has been one of the notable discoveries of the modern temper that the ancient myths can be read in the light of psychoanalysis and anthropology’;33 this is also true in Graham’s case. In Steiner’s words, by manipulating the 141

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values of myths, one can bring out from within their archaic lineaments shadows of psychic repression and blood ritual. But, he concludes, ‘the use of the classic fables toward the modern ideology requires an acute awareness of the great changes in meaning and intonation’.34 As with the case with Didi-Huberman, Steiner’s proposal is a historical or ‘archaeological’ interpretation of the myth and its reception: a mythology which ‘crystallizes sediments – accumulated over great stretches of time’.35 Didi-Huberman is thinking about images,36 and Steiner about language. To Graham, both are important, as we will see. So is movement, of course. Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra is a three-act dance drama based on Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Her Clytemnestra is an interpretation of the famous passage of hate, rage and revenge from the doomed House of Atreus. This theme was previously explored in her Cave of the Heart (1946), originally called Serpent Heart, where Medea, mad with hatred, devours her own entrails in a tragic and terrifying solo. I use the words hate and vengeance when speaking of Clytemnestra, not insanity – an important distinction. For the American experimental filmmaker and dancer Maya Deren, ‘myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter’,37 and this could also be true of Graham. She achieves this through the representation of an oneiric or subconscious reality. In Graham’s piece, Clytemnestra confronts key figures in her life, such as Helen, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Iphigenia and Orestes. The rest of the dance performs the three parts of the Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, The Eumenides).38 Graham’s Clytemnestra starts and ends in the underworld, and she is already dead when the piece begins. She has been murdered by Orestes, and has herself murdered Agamemnon and his mistress, Cassandra. The story is told through flashbacks, with all the events occurring in her mind, through the random order of her memory. As if in a dream, she recalls her entire life. She is showing her story to the audience, through her eyes, through her own perspective. At the end, she achieves a form of tragic redemption, or tragic self-redemption. She accepts being dishonoured in Hades, and finally achieves self-understanding.39 Clytemnestra’s rebirth serves as an epilogue. She is a disruption of the social order; by achieving this self-understanding, she is emphasizing this disruption. In accordance with Richard Kostelanetz, Martha Graham’s choreographies seek ‘to emphasize sharp organic movement, colour, contrast, sensuousness, and ambiguous symbols’,40 and it must be said that Clytemnestra is no exception. But in what sense could Clytemnestra be seen as an ambiguous symbol? Graham describes Clytemnestra as an angry, wild, wicked woman,41 although she also describes her as both good and bad. ‘She is elemental’,42 she concludes. Graham left her own essence on the characters she portrayed, her inner meaning, so to speak. She often choreographed heroic or antiheroic figures such as Ariadne, Joan of Arc, Judith, Phaedra, Jocasta and Clytemnestra. It has even been said that she was the first tragic actress of dance. Graham performed determined, visceral, savage women. Indeed, for Graham, wasn’t dance an essentially feminine art form? Some critics have noted that Graham was in a state of extreme emotional crisis when she performed Clytemnestra. The Catalan writer Montserrat Roig describes Clytemnestra 142

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as one of the most reviled of tragic women.43 Graham’s dance technique is based on breathing; for her, the pulse of life. The liberation of the inspiration and the contraction of the expiration is an action of incessant contrast and constant struggle. Her work emerges from this tension, which stems from the pelvis.44 Graham’s dance style – strong and clear movements, the presence of the torso, the ‘weight with which she herself moved’45 (to use Cunningham’s words), and the power of her body’s movements – all suit the theatrical sense of Clytemnestra. For her part, a character such as Clytemnestra also suits Graham’s dance style. The sculptor Isamu Noguchi, the set designer for many of Graham’s pieces, has described mythology as ‘Martha’s language’.46 Graham dances the mythology with her body and, as Noguchi assures us,47 it was painful for her to relinquish her body’s movements to other bodies. Noguchi’s reflection makes sense because for Graham, dancing was like a walk around the inside of her body. Was Graham walking around her interior when she performed Clytemnestra? ‘The action, or rather vision, is a projection of Clytemnestra’s mind’,48 says Anna Kisselgoff. Ernestine Stodelle adds: ‘In terms of dance, Clytemnestra is such an observation.’49 From an artistic point of view, it does not really matter why Clytemnestra kills her husband. It does not really matter where her rage against Agamemnon stems from. At least, it is not really important to me. What really matters is how she faces her life, how she assumes her rage and the violence of her act. Clytemnestra’s hands are covered in blood. She is performing a story of pain, of vengeance, of murder, but Graham’s dance, her movements, are not only violently dramatic but also truly plastic, truly beautiful. The tortured bodies turn the subtle and motionless clothes into energetic, colour-filled shapes. These colourful costumes and props – Clytemnestra’s ‘triumphal cape’50 is used metaphorically, and is much more than a costume – draw abstract, plastic compositions across the stage’s space; in frozen images of movement, they are like bi-dimensional shapes of colour. Is a lyrical evocation of abstraction, a lyrical echo of Kandinsky’s painting? After Graham’s Clytemnestra premiered in 1958, the New York Times described the piece in a review as ‘a timeless ritual, in which the artist searches through the archaic mind, for the remote psychological roots of human savagery and its conquest’.51 It is true: Graham’s Clytemnestra demands an emotional response from its audience, not a moral judgement. According to this, it could be said that the piece is not a tragedy but a dramatic approach to myth. In fact, in Roland Barthes’s opinion, psychology and obviously psychoanalysis are really anti-tragic strengths.52 In this sense, Graham’s Clytemnestra may be interpreted as a session of Jungian psychoanalysis. Graham’s extensive work includes territories such as introspection, dances inspired by Antiquity, social criticism,53 and an interest in arts such as poetry, music, sculpture and painting. She was also interested in Freud’s subconscious, and above all in the psychoanalysis of Jung, which brought her to explore what she called ‘dark territories of soul’. According to this idea, the movements of the dancers, as well as the clothing and the stylized sets, are intended to materialize all these concerns. Clytemnestra is certainly an ambitious work, and for many critics it is the culmination of her mythological series. 143

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All the elements of the piece – music, settings, costumes – are part of the drama, and emphasize the act that is central to it: the crime committed by Clytemnestra. Painting has nothing to do with dance, was Georgia O’Keeffe’s answer when Graham asked the painter to let her use one of ‘her sensual flower paintings’ as a backdrop for a new piece. In the dancer’s words, ‘from that point on, I have tried to avoid a painting or a backdrop of any kind’.54 However, she did not avoid using sculptures and objects as part of her dances. Sculptures and objects have more to do with space, with volume, with mass, and even with motion and movement. In a sense, they can be movable bodies. In 1932, the sculptor Alexander Calder made his first sculptures with movement.55 The coloured elements of his mobiles changed position through their interaction with the elements of the space, such as air or light. To a certain extent, the coloured metal pieces create a dance in dialogue with the shadows of their own reflection. Calder collaborated with Graham in 1935 and 1936. The sculptor made the pieces for Panorama (1935) and the set for Horizons (1936). When speaking of the Horizons set, Graham said: ‘he created a set of mobiles and stabiles, which had to be manipulated from the sides, by two dancers. This was new for the dance and we wanted to make clear to the audience the role of the dancers as opposed to the role of the set’.56 Her desire to point out these differences between dancers and sets is in contrast to Rainer’s depiction of the body’s duality.

Figure 10.1 Clytemnestra; Martha Graham Production, set design by Isamu Noguchi, 1958. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/ARS , New York and DACS , London 2019. Photograph by Martha Swope. ©The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

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In the words of Isamu Noguchi, the dancer was interested in capturing the realm of myth – Greek or Hebraic – in dream space.57 Clytemnestra’s set, designed by Noguchi, was formed with sculptural elements that Graham moved and organized in her own way. In Noguchi’s words: In Clytemnestra, there is a curtain which flies in from above. It is the cloak of Agamemnon – the golden cloak. I did various things like that. I did elements of the other props, but she combined them in her own way – the way she moves things around, and combines them, is extraordinary. I also made a seat, of course, the woman’s place. She was a queen and during a while, she was also the king.58 ‘Athena’s throne’,59 as Graham called it. The ambivalence of Clytemnestra – being both queen and king at the same time, essentially a male–female ambivalence – is interesting. In Mark Franco’s words: ‘Whereas O’Keeffe withdrew from sexual identity, opting for an androgynous relationship to her work, Graham occasionally inflected her movement with masculinised and/or mechanized traits.’60 Maya Deren’s Meditation on Violence (1948) is rather like a dialogue between the camera and the performer’s – Chao Li Chi’s – movements. Deren places the camera in the middle of her reflection. By dancing the camera, she accentuates the presence of the space, the plastic capacity of shadows, the movement and the violence. Deren explains: ‘The camera can create dance, movement and action which transcends geography and takes place anywhere and everywhere; it can also, as in this film, be the meditating mind turned inwards upon the idea of movement, and this idea, being an abstraction, takes place nowhere or as it were, in the very center of space.’61 Merely by using a mechanized abstract movement, the camera is dancing with violence. Is abstraction capable of representing human violence? In Graham’s Clytemnestra, the anguish and determination, the sense of violence, rage and death, is palpable, not only as a mimetic appearance of movement, as is often portrayed by the figures on Greek vases that inspired Isadora Duncan, but also in a more abstract way. Is the revenge of the Queen of Mycenae truly the central theme of Graham’s Clytemnestra, or just an excuse? From what perspective does Graham interpret Clytemnestra? Is she just trying to recreate Agamemnon’s murder as the surgical description of an implacable act of violence? Graham reads Clytemnestra from her contemporaneity.62 She is not thinking of whether she is reading myth from a diachronic or anachronistic point of view. Nor is she making a socio-historical portrait of, nor even a judgement on the role of women in Athenian society. As Graham reflects: ‘Myth & legends are the dreams of nations [. . .] they are like a pane of glass thru which the past is visible’.63 Consequently, they are like a pane of glass through which one’s reflection is also visible, as if the glass were also a mirror. Merce Cunningham affirms that the subject of each of Graham’s dances ‘was something that could have been expressed in words, as indeed it was in the program note’.64 Her Clytemnestra could thus be interpreted as embodied words that, perhaps, are impossible to reduce into senseless sounds, as Kandinsky calls for. Where, then, is 145

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abstraction’s capacity to express the inner meaning? The echoes of Aeschylus’ words are present in Graham’s mimetic Clytemnestra. Still, she does in some sense deconstruct the narration, to put it in postmodern terms. Graham uses many literary sources in her dance pieces.65 She does not abandon ‘the literary element, the story-telling or anecdote’ mentioned by Kandinsky. Graham is particularly interested in characters, and the psychology of their actions. In some ways, Graham reveals through dance the marks that Clytemnestra’s actions make upon her soul, and her mind, which the dancer’s body transforms into movement. In a sense, Clytemnestra is a useful tool for achieving the spiritual sense of abstract movement. In this way, the body here is not an inner body, as Rainer has suggested. Or perhaps it is also an inner body: the line between transcendentalism and senselessness is not so broad. Perhaps the body is thus another object on the stage, just as the abstract paintings of Delaunay or Piet Mondrian were understood to be objects in themselves. That is to say, the painting is an object that is as real as any other object in reality. In War Theme (1941), an œuvre by Barbara Morgan from a collaborative project with William Carlos Williams,66 Morgan uses Graham to symbolize war’s destructive nature. Graham’s body itself becomes a metaphor. Actually, as Barbara Kruger’s work advertises, the body is a battleground.67 Graham looks for the origin of violence, rage and revenge in the archetypal conditions of the psyche. On the one hand, there is violence; on the other, there is eternal vengeance.68 The twentieth century was one of violence, but then so is the entirety of history. A few years before her death in 1991, Graham said: ‘We don’t bury the flesh in the fields [. . .] but I have to cope, with the act of sacrifice today. It is a curious lust for blood that goes back thousands of years.’69 Returning to the world of art, Martha Graham is the paradigm of American Modern Dance, in the same way that abstract expressionist artists are the paradigm of American modern painting. Some art historians and critics have established links between Graham and abstract expressionist painters, for example Stephen Polcari. The reason for this could lie in the abstraction, the unconscious that hides behind abstract forms, which may even account for the interest in Jungian psychoanalysis. Abstract expressionist artists used automatism, myth and surrealistic biomorphism in their works, as did Graham, in some form. The source of their abstract forms is somewhat more complex than this, although these links with the avant-garde tradition do exist, even if they were determined to claim their own artistic essence, as well as their creative independence. In short, abstract expressionist artists were the perfect example of how New York had already stolen the idea of Modern Art from Paris. They were modern, in the same way that Graham was. As art historian Serge Guilbaut explains,70 the abstract expressionist, or more accurately the School of New York, was a highly complex state operation, the origin of which could have been a desire to find and build Americanity as a collective myth.71 As Andrea Caffi wrote in the article On Mythology, published in 1947 in the Possibilities review, for this group of artists ‘myth was the way to re-establish communication with the public. Myth was supposed to enable the artist to escape the ideological regimentation against which the radical left was battling in the early days of the Cold War’.72 146

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For Mark Rothko, an abstract expressionist painter, ‘myths are eternal symbols, upon which, we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas. They are symbols of man’s primitive fears and motivations, no matter in which land or what time, changing only in detail but never in substance, be they Greek, Aztec, Icelandic or Egyptian.’73 Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb also believe that ‘myth and primitive art could be used to express contemporary anxieties’.74 In this sense, Guilbaut concludes that ‘their attitude was in itself a myth, the myth of the noble savage, of the return to the womb’.75 From this perspective, the individual claim of Abstract Expressionism contrasts with Breton’s claim to a collective creation of myth in his ‘Political Position of Surrealism’ of 1935. According to Breton’s explanations, myth would appear to be Marxism, or a utopia of collective creation. Be that as it may, it is clear that the concept of myth, and art, cannot be entirely abstracted from its historical context. Nor can the artist. In the months of crisis before and during the Second World War, Graham reflected that: ‘You do not realize how the headlines, that make daily history, affect the muscles of the human body.’76 The second half of the twentieth century (more or less) contained both post-war psychosis and the paranoia of McCarthyism and the Cold War. As I have discussed above, this is Martha Graham’s America, the America of her Clytemnestra. In this United States of anguish and paranoia, and even earlier, in the United States of the 1940s, psychological introspection is very important – specifically psychoanalysis, the Jungian variety.77 In 1944 Robert Motherwell, one of the most relevant painters from The School of New York, explained in a letter he sent to his friend William Baziotes that there were only two possibilities: go to Paris, or remain in America and be psychoanalysed.78 Although he depicts the future in America as hopeless, due to the success of Jungian psychoanalysis, the question seems easy to answer. Given the importance of Jungian psychoanalysis in Graham’s work, it could be said that Graham is laying Clytemnestra down on the psychoanalyst’s couch.79 Rothko mentioned primitive men when speaking about myth, and he used the correct word, ‘men’. This is important: Abstract Expressionism was essentially a masculine movement, with very strong personalities, as is the case with Jackson Pollock.80 This is even more the case with Picasso81 who embodied a very particular image of the artist: the genius. Is there an equivalent for women? Far from the concept of women as objects to be described, or painted, for example; the choice to walk around the inside of her body, as mentioned before, is not an arbitrary one. This attitude defines Graham as an observer, as an eye actively viewing inside and outside herself in order to create her dances. For Martha Graham, dance is a perfect equilibrium between the corporal and the spiritual. In the middle, there is a sense of gravity; the attraction of the floor, the weight of the body. Although she is interested in what is beneath the form, there is also a sense of the body as a volume, as a sculpture, as a movable shape, which occupies a space and establishes a relationship with it; in essence, Graham is dramatizing the space. After all, the red splash of Kandinsky’s painting led Graham to Clytemnestra. Through her, through Clytemnestra’s spirit, Graham gives meaning to the abstract movements of dance. Graham digs into Clytemnestra. But, in the end, she is digging into the tragic, the dramatic, of human existence. 147

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CHAPTER 11 SI VIS LUDUM PARA BELLUM : VIOLENCE AND WAR AS THE PREDOMINANT LANGUAGE OF ANTIQUITY IN VIDEO GAMES David Serrano Lozano

Introduction Some years ago, three friends and I were spending a rather unproductive Saturday afternoon playing different video games, including two titles whose content was set in Antiquity: Rome: Total War II (The Creative Assembly, 2013) and Ryse: Son of Rome (Crytek, 2013). At one point, one of my friends, an intelligent computer expert, asked me how it could be possible for ancient demography to maintain balance in a time so full of wars and slaughter, when even public shows implied people’s deaths. The answer to such a question obviously implied an explanation of the historical accuracy of video games and the complexities of the ancient world, but I couldn’t help thinking that the question offered an interesting example of the extent to which the language of video games can create an image with strongly associated concepts and content. The very same player who consciously accepted that games such as Call of Duty (Infinity Ward, 2003–16) or Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar Games, 1997–2013) are nothing but a fictional, epic or even distorted representation of our current reality, nonetheless unconsciously assumed that the ancient world was marked by death and violence as an everyday act, based on the message of video games. Beyond simply reflecting an isolated case, new examples would show me how this anecdote is indicative of a specific feature of Antiquity as displayed in the video-game format. The tendency to set violent contents of various forms in the ancient world has helped to build a perception in which violence is not only the main, but virtually the only way of articulating content that is linked to the classical world, especially in such a powerful media of cultural expression as video games.

The evolution of games: a history of violence? Within the field of classical reception and historical games studies, it is almost unnecessary to state that in current times, the video-game industry has found a fruitful setting for many of its products in ancient contexts. This tendency dates back to almost the very beginning of the industry, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the first two generations of consoles appeared,1 and certain early games resorted to incorporating the

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‘ancient element’ for their setting (Hamurabi, Doug Dyment, 1968/1973), albeit within their strictly text-based format. In the mid-1980s, when the industry rebounded2 with the so-called ‘third generation’ of consoles3 and the PC revolution, the visual impact of the interface became an increasingly important factor in defining narrative and commercial standards. Since Antiquity offered a popular, pre-established set of visual and cultural codes that could be re-employed with a very simple set of visual tools (Legionnaire, Chris Crawford–Avalon Hill, 1982; The Return of Heracles, Stuart Smith–Quality Software, 1983; Legions of Death, Lothlorien, 1986), this would be a determining factor in its inclusion. This practice extended into the 1990s, alongside progressive improvements in technical and visual possibilities (Civilization, MicroProse, 1991; Walls of Rome, Mindcraft, 1993; SPQR : The Empire’s Darkest Hour, CyberSites, 1996). The threshold of the twenty-first century, which heralded the sixth generation of consoles (also known as the 128-bit age), along with the 3D rendering and graphic processor revolution,4 implied a significant rise in the use of Antiquity in the plots, aesthetics and environments of video games. Nevertheless, this phenomenon was not exclusively linked to the internal evolution of the video-game industry, but also to the revival of Antiquity as cinematographic scenery that had occurred since the year 2000 with the release of Gladiator (Ridley Scott).5 Films and video games have always enjoyed a rather close commercial and thematic relationship, albeit an unequal one.6 The adaptation of movies into a digital format has been a constant in the video-game industry from a very early stage (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Atari, 1982; Top Gun, Konami, 1988; Jurassic Park, Ocean Software–BlueSky Software–Sega, 1983), while film adaptations of game titles are a much more recent phenomenon, and one that has never stood out because of commercial success (Super Mario Bros., Rocky Morton–Annabel Jankel, 1993; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Mike Newell, 2010; Assassin’s Creed, Justin Kurzel, 2016).7 Throughout their evolution, video games set in Antiquity have experienced the same broad set of changes as any other genre: the development of greater or lesser agency on the player’s part,8 platforms, engines, the game’s display of history,9 fandom,10 modifications,11 etc. However, there is a common factor that runs through the entire range of different games that portray the ancient world. Regardless of the kind of platform, engine, narrative12 or interactive lexia displayed,13 the use of violence as a leitmotif exists as a transversal characteristic that affects both the narrative and ludic scales equally. Some obvious and manifold examples of this feature can be found in the classic warand-conquer format displayed on a map, as well as in the re-enactment of battles at ground level that are generally included in the category of ‘God games’14 (Annals of Rome, Level 9 Computing, 1986; Cohort: Fighting for Rome, Impressions Games, 1991; Rome: Total War, The Creative Assembly, 2004). An important example is the entirety of the first- or third-person genre of games that recreate gladiatorial-style fights, a particularly popular genre following the release of Gladiator15 (Gladius, LucasArts, 2003; Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, Acclaim Studios, 2003; Ryse: Son of Rome, Crytek, 2013), or the more or less fictional epic plots and theatres of war, exercises that are closer to 152

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historical re-enactment than recreation16 (Praetorians, Pyro Studios, 2003; Imperivm III , FX Interactive, 2005; Glory of the Roman Empire, Haemimont Games, 2006). Likewise, violence is an essential element within the realistic or fantasy references to ancient mythology environments, distinguished by the presence of principal characters with the features of classical heroes or demigods17 (Kid Icarus, Nintendo, 1986; Wrath of the Gods, Luminaria, 1994; God of War, SCE –Bluepoint Games, 2005). In the perception of video-game developers and in the players’ collective consciousness, Antiquity thus essentially implies dynamics of tension, conflict or chaos, whether as a scenery, an abstract concept or simply a physical environment. An analysis of any somewhat comprehensive list of titles18 will show that players’ interaction with the ancient past or the ludonarrative display is almost entirely articulated through the use of violence as a principal tool. The main genres where we find exceptions to this is that of 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate), real-time strategy (RTS ) and turn-based strategy (TBS ) games (see series such as Caesar, Impressions Games, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2006; Imperium Civitas, Haemimont Games, 2006, 2008, 2009; or Civilization, MicroProse–Activision–Firaxis Games, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2016). These are probably the main examples of where violence doesn’t occupy the main role of games’ (inter)activity. Building, diplomacy or religion tend to play a more active part in the narrative and dynamic of this kind of game. However, violence is far from absent, since military activities (such as sieges, the training or housing of troops, etc.) can, and must, be displayed in order to fulfil the aims established by games developers. To a lesser extent, the economic element, especially in a commercial or purchasing sense, occasionally structures the dynamic of games set in Antiquity.19 However, this is never the prevailing dynamic, but merely a background or complementary element to the concept of strength, which turns out to be the main development tool, especially in the sense of warlike displays of strength.20 One of the clearest cases of predominantly non-violent dynamics in a video game set in Antiquity would be the 1992 title Rome: ad 92 (Firstlight, 1992), also known as Rome: Pathway to Power. In this game the main character, Hector, a slave living in Pompeii, must escape from the city the very day of Vesuvius’ eruption and flee to Rome, where he must then manage to develop a career in politics, economics and social strategy. Of course, military exploits or gladiatorial fights eventually play their part in order to achieve the game’s final aim, but it is notable how these actions do not play a leading role, nor are they particularly highlighted. While Rome: ad 92 could be seen as an interesting, isolated exception, the case of a saga such as the Ankh series, also known as the ‘Egyptian Trilogy’ (Ankh, 2005; Ankh: Heart of Osiris, 2007; Ankh: Battle of the Gods, 2009, all developed by Deck13 Interactive) is rather more understandable. In this point-and-click 3D saga, Assil, the son of an architect from ancient Cairo, disturbs the remains of a mummy during a party night in a pyramid. As a consequence, he falls victim to a terrible curse, and in order to free himself from it he must solve a series of riddles that take him on adventures throughout ancient Egypt. There is an almost non-existent level of violence throughout the plot, whose development is based on the interaction between characters, logic games and so on. This, 153

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together with the game’s aesthetics and language, places the Ankh saga within the children’s, comic or even educational genre of games, the so-called ‘serious games’.21 This last case turns out to be especially interesting considering how the naïve narrative and aesthetic of the Ankh series includes (or leads to) the use of other specific topics as semantic codes, namely the employment of mysterious and eschatological features. These are typically associated with the ancient Egyptian environments displayed in video games (as is the case with the Cyro Interactive Entertainment–Kheops Studio series Egypt: 1156 b.c. : Tomb of the Pharaoh, 1999; Egypt 2: The Heliopolis Prophecy, 2000; and Egypt 3: The Egyptian Prophecy, 2004; or Mytheon: Egypt Pack, Petroglyph Games, 2016). The very same kind of association with ancient contexts can be identified in how Greece is displayed  – it is almost exclusively identified with mythological environments, characters and plots, and characterized by the interaction between humans and Gods (see Phelios, Namco, 1990; Wrath of the Gods; or the action-adventure hack-and-slash series God of War).22 In the same way, the ancient Roman past is predominantly identified with warlike experiences and shows, such as gladiatorial fights and chariot racing (Circus Maximus: Chariot Wars, Kodiak Interactive, 2002; Gladius; Rome: Total War). This kind of bias can to some extent be traced back to previous contemporary cultural representations of the ancient world, especially cinema and TV, which are based on well-known and studied relationships with the visual and narrative contents of video games.23 The employment of violence we refer to is placed beyond such topical features. This means an almost constant pattern in the ludonarrative through which Antiquity is (dis)played. On a greater or lesser scale, violence eventually seems to be an unavoidable semantic tool for building an authentic24 experience of Antiquity in video games. A rather illustrative case would be the construction, representation and use of the ‘barbarian’ in the ancient worlds of video games. This category is mostly employed in order to identify characters or groups marked by the most basic features of figures deemed to be true enemies,25 such as primitivism, obscurity and hostility (Civilization series; Praetorians; Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion, The Creative Assembly, 2006). ‘Natives’ or ‘barbarians’ thus eventually play the part of providing an acceptable character for a casus belli, with whom the only chance of interaction is for military conflict in order to literally remove them from the game map. The narrative possibilities offered by alternative or relativistic perceptions of the enemy, or simply the treatment of the figure of ‘the other’, are obviously manifold. However, the most notable ‘alternative’ to this black-and-white dynamic of interaction has so far consisted of placing the player in the ‘barbarian’ position, exchanging the foe for the protagonist (see the Haemimont Imperivm series, or Creative Assembly’s Total War), merely swapping roles rather than developing an alternative ludonarrative or perception (Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion, and Total War: Attila, Creative Assembly, 2015). Although diplomatic channels, cultural phenomena or certain other levels of reality may all play their part (economy, art, technology etc.), they always tend to be subsumed, 154

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to one extent or another, by a thread of warlike tension or violence. These in turn provide elements that articulate certain scenarios: the characteristic aesthetics that identify peoples, groups or eventually military sides, as well as technological or economic elements that lead to level upgrades, usually implying a greater lethal capacity or strength (an archetypical example is the Civilization series, 1991–2016). On a more mechanical and ludological level, these violent interactions represent the majority of the range of actions that players can undertake in order to progress through games set in Antiquity. An intentional attempt to avoid this sort of practice on the player’s part eventually implies a forced or artificial game progression against the patterns established by developers’ framing narrative,26 along the lines of ‘subversive gaming’.27 In doing so, at the end of the game it turns out to be difficult or simply impossible for the player to avoid executing violent acts in a video game that is set in Antiquity, whether they are warlike, individual or even sportive.

Why violence? This simple casuistic analysis makes clear that the combination of Antiquity and nonviolent contents is not considered to be a potentially successful proposal in the digital entertainment industry. Even some of the titles belonging to the aforementioned exceptions, such as CivCity: Rome (Firaxis Games–Firefly Studios, 2006), demand a warlike component in order to fulfil ultimate goals, stressing the perception of the ancient world as an implicitly conflictive stage. It is obvious that, as commercial products and cultural expressions, video games tend to deal with a specific range of plots selected and designed to appeal to the greatest number of consumers possible within their target public. It goes without saying that violence, through its many different expressions, usually plays a dominant role in the games’ content, and the use of violence is obviously not exclusive to games set in Antiquity.28 Several games set in contemporary environments, as well as in fantasy or science-fiction ones, have proven to be able to display a wider range of narrative and interactive resources than purely conflictive action, such as logic challenges, exploration, background plots or long-term tasks.29 However, when it comes to developing real or fantasy environments set in Antiquity, these kinds of resources virtually disappear, making any search for alternative tools to violent action almost fruitless in games, aside from the infantile or educational genres. An epitome of this phenomenon can be seen when contemporary violence is projected onto ancient environments as if they were compatible, implying a coherent or functional relationship, as with any other contemporary background. Although many instances of this practice can be found,30 I would like to call attention to two particularly notable cases. The first is Serious Sam (Croteam, 2001), a classic first-person-shooter saga31 in which its eponymous main character travels around various sci-fi environments, which from a visual perspective are clearly linked with ancient Egypt or the Middle East. In these environments, he employs every kind of fire and fictitious weapon to kill hordes of 155

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creatures of every kind, while running through Egyptian-style pyramids or Mesopotamian-ish cities, among other settings. A second and more recent example is from the PC game Darkest of Days (8monkey Labs, 2009). In this title, the main character, Alexander Morris, a Union soldier from the American Civil War, is trained in modern warfare tactics in order to time travel and kill a series of individuals at various historical moments. He thus takes part in the battles of his own time as well as both World Wars, but also undertakes a mission in Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79, which includes shooting Roman legionaries in order to achieve his final goal. It is remarkable that, among all the different environments, the only one not set in the context of a war from the nineteenth or twentieth centuries is this ancient (Roman) stage, although it is analogously displayed as being chaotic and violent. After a gaming experience with such titles, a feeling of transposition occurs for the player, between the environment and interaction.32 Thus, Antiquity is implicitly associated with violence, as if it were a consubstantial feature of this age through its display.

A cultural and commercial phenomenon? What possible explanation(s) can be posed for such a marked and seemingly arbitrary phenomenon? From the perspective of classical reception, we can consider two possible root causes. The first has a commercial and cultural nature: as previously mentioned, a series of features in the reception of the ancient world that have been directly inherited from cinema and TV can be identified in video games. This‘complex and multidimensional relationship’33 could provide a basis for interpreting the strong link between Antiquity in video games and violence as a pre-established standard in the audiovisual industry,34 through a previous exercise of interpretation and reception of the ancient past. Thus, video games set in this past would have been developed for an audience whose perception of Antiquity was already strongly marked by violent content, which video games would then intentionally revamp.35 Thus, for video games set in Antiquity to be marketable products, fitting the taste of contemporary consumers, they should appeal to a pre-existing set of cultural codes in popular culture relating to the ancient past. These codes would not come from the audience’s familiarity with academic history or archaeology, but from its reception through mass media (such as cinema, TV, literature, art). In this way, video games would strengthen and subsequently modify the popular perceptions and reception of Antiquity within their own narrative and semantic structure, instead of fostering a brand-new set of visual, narrative or topic codes. Among the principal topics associated with peplum as a genre (action, mystery, megalomania),36 only a few have proved to be functional in their projection into the language of video games. These are precisely those that feature violent content, such as those already mentioned: gladiators, battles, strategy, mythology from a creepy/ mysterious perspective, and so on. The main reason for this selective filter lies in the 156

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substantial basic difference between the products’ relationship with their consumers. Movie spectators are passive agents, allowing a greater creative range of liberty in the creators’ hands; the work of video game developers, however, is essentially shaped by the audience’s acceptance, and its translation into economic terms. In the case of video games, spectators are also players, and thus take a more active part in determining the game’s eventual development, both ludic and, to some extent, narrative.37 This demands the presence of functional dynamics of interaction with the audience as a character, lacking any sort of previous script or rehearsal, but merely an introduction to the game patterns in the form of a (voluntary) tutorial. A game’s design must thus count on a set of codes and tools that are easily identifiable and usable by the player. Otherwise, it will simply not work, either as a ludic or an entertainment experience, and subsequently as a commercial product. Together with the common elements of games with regard to technological development at certain moments (8-bits, Scumm engine, 3D environments etc.), the constant need for a fluent interactive language with players may be one reason for the presence of so many similar narrative and interactive tools within the games set during the same periods (e.g. checkpoints, character menus, final bosses etc.). The recurrent use of analogous environments, engines and/or features helps to, among other goals, encourage the player to learn an entirely new world as he or she plays it, aside from certain techniques and lexia. Thus, a certain range of ‘universal’ interactive and narrative codes are established between the player and the game, which are applicable to any kind of context and environment (historical, futuristic, fantasy). Experience demonstrates that considering the functionality and appeal of these interactive features is far more important – and profitable – than considering the weight of historical accuracy. Thus considered, Antiquity’s role in games development is by no means as central as it often is in novels or academic literature. It is true that a growing concern for visual ‘authenticity’ has developed, thanks to the improvement of design technologies and, to some extent, thanks to the influence of communities of players online (also known as fandoms). However, this concern for ‘realism’ is closer to the concept of authenticity than to academic historical ‘accuracy’.38 In narrative terms, the ancient past works as a parahistoric alibi rather than a specific historical context: it is employed or recreated, rather than re-enacted.39 This condition is not substantially different from that of any other historical context in video games40 and actually sets history in an analogous role to that of fantasy or science-fiction worlds: as scenery/surface texture with a range of characteristic rules and features (aesthetic, characters, technologies etc.), flexible enough to freely design and create within. In commercial terms, usability is essential; specifically, that players learn how to interact with the game from the beginning in an intuitive and fluent way. This functional interaction with the player counts for considerably more than almost any other component of historical accuracy.41 If we consider a game that is set two millennia ago, the circumstances and environments in which a developer can count on most of the audience to be comfortable or familiar with from the very beginning are rather specific: gladiatorial fights (whether as a gladiator in a first- or third-person game [Gladiator: 157

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Sword of Vengeance] or building your own gladiatorial school [Gladius]), warlike environments (as an individual soldier [Ryse: Son of Rome] or commanding an entire military scenario [Rome: Total War]) or individual heroes carrying out epic adventures against evil creatures (series such as God of War, or Hero of Sparta).

A matter of (cultural) historical distance? A second possible explanation for this violence-link phenomenon may be associated with the chronological and historical distance between the ancient world and contemporary players. The gap between these two may be too deep to feature new, complex content in video games (politics, popular culture etc.) and be compatible and functional with such a dynamic interaction as that between game and player, while simultaneously maintaining the rhythm of a ludic game (and not an audiovisual educational tool or ‘serious game’). Ultimately, violence implies a simplification of the codes of action and interaction, so that the historical gap becomes a minor issue when action is limited to warlike theatres or individual conflicts, an analogy that makes a scenario easily understandable to the modern player. When a more complex game is developed, based on interaction through elements such as plot twists, combined threads or logic tricks, it becomes necessary to appeal to a cultural structure that is more familiar to a larger audience. Complexity is thus increasingly more necessary, because an excessive lack of complexity in an environment that is culturally closer can easily lead to a lack of authenticity – not realism – and thus compromise the game’s potential success. Video games with such complex or elaborate features are thus unfailingly set in contemporary contexts (see sagas such as Broken Sword, Revolution Software, 1996– 2013; Grand Theft Auto; or Metal Gear). A possible exception that may go against this pattern is Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games, 2010), a third-person action sandbox game set in a Far West–style environment. Though its historical scenery is located in the context of the second half of the nineteenth century, it must be noted that this game can afford a wide range of complex, entangled plots and narrative or interactive resources precisely because it doesn’t appeal to a strictly set of historical references. The Far West context deployed in the game is not an attempt to recreate the historical context of the United States’ expansion, but rather a recreation of the fictitious and evocative world already created by mass media, specifically 1960s/1970s genre of ‘spaghetti westerns’. Thus, the game counts on a set of codes, clichés or topics that are already comprehensible to the audience through a previous narrative creation. This conceptual baggage of cowboys, sheriffs, cattle thieves and taverns is one that the game can use in order to develop a more complex narrative and interactive dynamics, supported by the existence of a common cultural place with its own established patterns – not by history, but by its reception through cinema. Without the presence of this compatibility between players’ cultural codes and games’ interactive tools, they could risk breaking the fluidity of the dialogue between game and player – the very first principle of gaming. Conflict and violent actions would simply 158

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bridge the gap between contemporary players and the world of two thousand years ago, setting codes of action which the former can easily apply (fight, strategy, combat) and which can be framed within the latter. Ubisoft’s recreation of Ptolemaic Egypt c. 49 bc in Assassin’s Creed: Origins (2017) represents one of the most recent  – and in some respects most interesting  – titles concerning the issue under discussion. Assassin’s Creed’s combination of sandbox, historical environments and extended storylines theoretically offered a suitable context for a more complex approach to Antiquity in video games. The title has long been praised for its ‘painstaking’ level of accuracy,42 leading to the development of a ‘tour mode’ as ‘an educational complement to the ludic experience of the game’.43 The merits of this title, in its approach to ancient historical realities, are undeniable. This is especially notable in its portrayal of details about certain aspects of Egyptian history, and how it builds these into its framing narrative and framing controls. Nevertheless, as part of a long, complex and prestigious saga, this instalment (together with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Ubisoft Quebec, 2018) inherits several distinctive characteristics from the Assassin’s Creed series. These include a main character with outstanding warrior skills whose missions and exploits constitute the principal chain of framing controls. Thus, violence once again represents the dominant narrative and interactive component, mainly as individual or collective fights (brawls, ambushes, gladiatorial or naval battles, etc.). Even beyond this inheritance from this title’s series, a considerable amount of its historical components are displayed away from the most immediate layers of perception on the player’s part. Several components that concern large- or small-scale historical contexts (politics, religion, society, culture) can only be apprehended after an intentional exercise of ‘exploration’ by players, not in an evident, visual or marked way during the main ludonarrative process. This implies certain actions, such as reading the manifold texts spread throughout the game’s map (letters, notes, tablets, stelae), tracking the relationships and threads that link certain secondary characters, or carrying out a more or less systematic exploration of certain historical locations. Given that these are parallel to the game and not strictly necessary for the main ludonarrative action, these game possibilities can be (to some extent easily) skipped by a regular player, thus defining a bias in the portrayal of Antiquity. The overall result is an astonishingly visual array (pyramids, desert, temples, villages) within which war/fighting nonetheless defines the main course of action, while all other aspects (trade, literature, religion) are relegated to a secondary, background or even supporting activity. The efforts of the developers of Assassin’s Creed: Origins to approach their action saga from historical sources is evident. The eventual result, returning once again to the use of violence as a main ludonarrative tool, could thus be interpreted as the result of the unbalanced tension between a video-game narrative and interactive possibilities on the one hand, and the limits established by its context of development and exhibition (distribution, market research, potential target audience) on the other. This tension would imply the two aforementioned possible explanations for the predominant use of violence in video games set in Antiquity – violence, as the main force of action, would be 159

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the common element that permits a bridging of the historical gap, in combination with the demands for usability of video games as a consumer product. In conclusion, it can be stated that video games, as one of the most influential multimedia products in the contemporary world, are strengthening and developing a new way of perceiving and conceiving of the ancient world. Within this, violence, through various different expressions, is the main language of (inter)action, and has eventually gone beyond the limits of interactivity, impregnating the very concept of Antiquity in players’ perception. Thus, the ancient world is being redefined (or highlighted) as an environment that is substantially difficult to conceive from a non-violent perspective, to the extent that actions such as war, fighting or slaughter may become the standard courses of action in how players perceive ancient history. Whether due to its nature as a commercial product or the need to bridge the historical gap when approaching the player, the new topics developed through this language of mass distribution have evolved from those that were constructed through cinema, TV or literature, and count on a common element: tension, conflict and violence as the main narrative and interactive resource.

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CHAPTER 12 WAGING TOTAL WAR PLAYING ATTILA : A VIDEO GAME’S TAKE ON THE MIGRATION PERIOD Fabian Schulz

The World Nomad Games, which strive for the revival and preservation of the cultural heritage of nomadic civilizations, have been held every other year since 2014.1 According to the organizers, this culture is particularly precious because ‘Nomadic civilizations coexist harmoniously with nature . . . Nomads were not warlike, contrary to stereotypes; instead, they spent their free time playing different games of physical and intellectual nature.’ Surprisingly, martial arts feature prominently among the disciplines, which also include horseback-archery.2 The modern-day reality of threatened nomads and the image of their peaceful culture stand in sharp contrast to the past, when they were often a real threat and considered to be violent. In Late Antiquity, for example, the Hunnic horseback-archers were feared throughout Europe and blamed for much of its destruction. This image persists today, particularly in popular culture, including comics, movies and video games. Total War: Attila (TWA ) is a PC game developed by Creative Assembly, a British video game developer, released in 2015. Peter Stewart, the writer,3 announced the game in the Developer’s Blog, writing: Attila is the scourge of God, born to bring fire and death down on the old world. Those who do not bow before him, those who do not proffer him gold and tribute, are swept away in hellish fire. Those who do placate him do so only temporarily. There is no salvation, there is no saviour. There is only Attila, atop his steed, with the Hunnic horde at his back, and he will see civilisation burn. This world is over.4 A similarly apocalyptic tone was struck in the official announcement trailer, entitled ‘Your World Will Burn’, where Attila prophesizes his coming in the first person.5 The game received positive reviews from both fans and critics.6 Many praised the complex characters and army management system, the pacing of siege battles and the stunning music and sound effects, as well as the themes, considered by many to have accurately reflected the era.7 However, some criticized the game for its frustrating internal and external politics – an issue addressed in successive patches. Judging from the titles of several reviews, it was the game’s violent side that particularly impressed many critics. According to VentureBeat, ‘Total War: Attila will bring out the barbarian in 161

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you’, while according to New Statesman, ‘rampaging across Europe as the Huns is the most fun you can have’.8 This chapter examines the depiction of violence in TWA . It is impossible to go into detail in this brief space about the complexities of violence. Suffice to say that violence has a variety of subjects, such as individuals or collectives, and different objects, such as animated beings or things. Enacting and suffering violence are actions, which are represented very differently within different media.9 While all cultures shun violence, they have different ideas about what constitutes a violent act. Attitudes towards violence are not only culturally specific, they may also change over time. In TWA , the player acts as an individual, his faction as a collective; the theme of smoke and blood already foreshadows that violence will be directed against both objects and humans. The video game’s depiction of violence is rooted in modern attitudes and images of Antiquity, which are far removed from the ancient texts and their social context.10 Although video games have an increasing impact on popular culture and are often set in the past, they have been largely ignored by reception studies.11 But this is now changing, as a growing number of conferences and collective volumes attest.12 For historians, the potential that games hold for portraying alternate histories is particularly interesting,13 as is their depiction of wars and bloodshed. According to Christian Rollinger, war and violence dominate the image of Antiquity in video games.14 Apparently, it is the corporal and interpersonal aspect of ancient violence (which is often hand-to-hand) that fascinates, whereas modern killing is mostly done at a distance, and often heavily mechanized (as in the case of drones).15 Technological advantages certainly existed in Antiquity, but not to the level of the asymmetries seen in modern warfare. However, not all games set in Antiquity are violent. For instance, in the Caesar titles, the civil aspect is more pronounced than that of the military.16 There is even a Sims game set in the Middle Ages.17 Although TWA adds to the number of games that display a violent (Late) Antiquity, this is only partly due to its setting; it also derives from the series to which the game belongs. According to game-theorists, so-called ludologists, games have two structures: the scenario, characters and narrative are the shell; the set of rules form the core.18 Scholars often chose to examine either the one or the other structure depending on their topic. For example, Jean Coert, who is interested in the representation of the ancient Germans or Germanenbild, focuses on the shell.19 However, this chapter does both; the question of violence provides for an opportunity to bridge both structures. In this chapter, I want to examine, first, how the game represents the Huns and the Migration Period. To this aim, the scenario will be checked against popular images of the period and the scholarly consensus. The goal is not simply to detect inaccuracies, but to ascertain what mattered instead. Obviously, the question of reception is not straightforward: it would be an oversimplification to compare the game itself to an ancient source, without accounting for its indirect reception via different forms of media. Second, I would like to examine the gameplay features that involve violence. How do the Hunnic, Germanic and Roman acts of conquest and destruction translate into game mechanics? How does the game stage the fear felt by those who are subjugated? Because gamers have an agency, which 162

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should be taken into account, I would also like to consider how free the player is to adopt or refrain from a violent style of play. Before diving into the game, I will start off by talking about the Total War series and strategy games in general, because one should not forget that franchises have particular traditions and genres have particular modes of representation. This knowledge will enable us to distinguish inherited and conventional elements from original and new ideas in TWA , which may be inspired by the scenario. In order to answer these questions I will not only consider the game itself from my point of view, but also the promotional materials and documentation provided by the company, reviews by journalists and the opinions of the fan base. This will enable us to see what the developers wanted to achieve and how the game was actually received by its audience. I will also compare TWA to games outside the series, because alternative approaches may highlight design choices best.

The scenario of TWA The success of Shogun in 2000 laid the foundations for the Total War series, which now consists of more than a dozen games and spin-off titles. These all share a common theme: the player controls a certain nation or group of people, guiding them through an allotted period of time until they reach a particular goal – usually domination. The titles all combine turn-based strategy with real-time tactics, namely building an empire and fighting battles. Accordingly, the game has two layers. On the world map, the player improves settlements and moves armies (depending on the instalment, a turn lasts either half a year or a full year), while on the battlefield the player controls units. Gameplay is thus balanced between macro- and micromanagement, between time to ponder and pressure of time. At both levels, the camera may be rotated freely and zoomed in and out in order to change the perspective. Until 2015, all of the series’ games were set in the past, with each title focusing on a particular era. For example, there were Medieval War and Rome, which each spawned a sequel. Rome I (2004) was supplemented by an expansion pack entitled Barbarian Invasion, making it the spiritual ancestor of Attila. In fact, Shogun I and Medieval I had already featured invasion expansion packs. Historical accuracy is generally important to the developers, but gameplay comes first.20 Aside from introducing a new scenario and, of course, better graphics, each entry introduces new gameplay features, which may be taken over, abandoned or readopted in later titles. So, what does Attila add to the mix? Attila’s prologue campaign, the Gothic War – which serves as a tutorial – begins in ad 370 and culminates in 378 with the battle of Adrianople, in which the Goths defeated the Romans and killed their emperor. The Grand Campaign is set between 395 and 450, i.e. between the final division of the empire and around the time of Attila’s death (453). Ten ‘factions’ are playable upon launch – classified as Eastern, Barbarian, Nomadic and Roman – each with their own traits, unit roster and agenda.21 While the Huns are present from the outset, their leader and title character only appears in the middle of the campaign at around 420, which some players considered to be too late,22 although he did indeed come of age at that time. This discrepancy between player expectations and actual 163

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game content is interesting. Apparently, the notorious figure of Attila provided for a new and exciting label to set the game apart. In fact Attila is the first title in the series to be named after a person. This marketing strategy did not go unnoticed by certain commenters who mocked the game as Barbarian Invasion 2.23 Aside from the campaigns, there are nine ‘historical battles’, starting with Adrianople. Several downloadable contents (DLCs) have added new campaigns and factions.24 While Rome I was heavily criticized by the community for its lack of historical accuracy (there were, for example, the infamous head-hurlers),25 this was not the case with Attila. There are nevertheless some modifications (mods) that aim to make it more accurate, particularly in the case of military equipment and names.26 However, modern historians would criticize the fact that the factions are essentialist entities. For example, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths are playable from the start, even though the groups that in the sixth century came to be known as Visigoths and Ostrogoths only formed during the fifth century.27 This essentialist representation of history is obviously not limited to TWA or the series, but is rather widespread. The most blatant example is the Civilization series, where modern nation-states and their leaders are projected back to the Stone Age. The essentialization of national identities obviously goes well beyond video games.

The migration period in scholarship and popular culture The era of barbaric invasions would appear to be the ideal scenario for the Total War series. The migration period, which eventually brought to an end the western Roman Empire, has for a long time been associated with words like ‘decline and fall’ and described as an ‘age of violence and fear’.28 This characterization is in line with much of the source record. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, scholars began to question this image by deconstructing Roman stereotypes and narratives while highlighting other reasons for change.29 Instead, they stressed the continuities of this transitional period between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. There is a new trend in recent scholarship, however, that (once again) stresses these violent disruptions.30 When addressing a broader public, scholars often perpetuate the image of a violent Attila who spread terror.31 Michel Rouche even calls the Huns ‘5th century Frankensteins’.32 However, scholarship has shown that Attila was a subtle diplomat who could refrain from violence33 and has exposed the double standards of the Romans, who considered their own violence against barbarians as legitimate and barbarian violence against themselves as excessive.34 While the scholarly image is nuanced and subject to change, the popular image is more stable across various media, and distinctly negative. In the 1954 movie Attila, Anthony Quinn plays the bloodthirsty leader.35 At the beginning of this century, two TV series aired with almost the same title: (Ancient) Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire.36 In comics, Attila is the epitome of sex, violence and barbarism.37 This is the tradition that TWA appears to follow, as demonstrated in the aforementioned announcement material. This image persists when beginning the game and choosing a faction: the start screen is dipped in flames. There is a different video introduction for every faction that highlights their 164

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combat style and culture; yet the narrator always begins with the same line, ‘The air was filled with smoke and blood’, which is intended to denote a shared setting. Taken literally, the line makes you wonder: how can the air be filled with blood? With blood’s scent, sure, but with blood? The imagery, meanwhile, calls to mind scenes of wounding or killing in slow motion, which are curiously absent from Attila’s real-time battles but common in games like The Witcher 3 and in movies like Zack Snyder’s 300, which the audience will probably recognize. It is on this background knowledge that the developers seem to draw. Surprisingly, in-game texts are more nuanced. The description of the Hunnic faction carefully differentiates between image and reality: The aura of terror surrounding the Huns is so great that their enemies are barely able to conceive that they are also human beings. To the Romans they are misshapen, self-mutilating ogres living an almost symbiotic existence with their horses – sleeping, making love and devouring raw meat, all in the saddle. In truth, the Huns’ equine expertise is what makes them such formidable foes. In battle, their combination of exceptional mobility and ranged attacks is devastating, while the speed with which their entire nation can cover ground allows them to descend upon their foes without warning. [My italics.]38 Likewise, the faction description of the western Roman Empire quite accurately stresses the internal reasons for its vulnerability: Since the division of the Empire the flaws besetting the West have rapidly become apparent. There is neither the manpower nor the gold needed for an effective army, leaving it unable to deal with the many displaced barbarians pouring across Rome’s borders ahead of the Hunnic horde. Roman Emperors have become increasingly fragile – many have been manipulated by generals or deposed by their meddling Eastern counterparts.39 So, while there is an attempt to balance internal and external factors and to distinguish between image and reality, it is quite limited.

TWA’s Huns – masters of violence? From the announcement material, one would expect the Huns to be the most violent faction. When playing the game, however, they don’t feel so different. Obviously, they are the attackers, the invading force, which in order to win has to plunder and destroy. The Romans (particularly the western forces) are on the defensive at first, but having successfully repelled the attack may resort to using the same tactics against their neighbours. In Total War: Rome Barbarian Invasion, the factions were already on equal terms,40 so the Huns are not necessarily more violent than other factions. For example, they don’t trigger the blood and burning effects any more often than other factions do. Furthermore, there is no human 165

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sacrifice or impalement, practices with which they were often associated.41 Yet while the factions are mostly on equal terms, there are certain incentives and requirements that encourage the player to adopt an aggressive style when playing as the Huns. While the objectives of other factions require them to ‘loot or sack’ a certain number of settlements, the objectives of the Huns require them to ‘raze or sack’. This razing is rewarded: their faction traits award bonuses when engaging in multiple wars and razing settlements. Furthermore, unlike the other factions, the Huns can never settle.

Hordes and the Hunnic nature The official game guide states that ‘for Barbarian and Nomadic factions, new horde mechanics have been implemented to represent the great migrations of the age’.42 This feature, which is actually not so new,43 got critics excited.44 A horde is essentially an army with the ability to form an encampment anywhere it chooses. Once encamped, a horde may construct and upgrade buildings to improve its economy, food production and recruitment options. Foreign cities present in the same region will suffer penalties. At any time, the horde may switch to its ‘army stance’ and move on to find more fertile lands. A horde may also settle within a conquered city, but then the entire faction loses its horde abilities. It is thus either settled or on the move, with no in between stages possible. However, there is one exception: ‘The only horde-capable faction that may never choose to become settled is the Huns. It’s just not in their nature!’ This comment about the Hunnic nature sounds a lot like Ammianus Marcellinus, according to whom: They are never protected by any buildings, but they avoid these like tombs [. . .] For not even a hut thatched with reed can be found among them. But roaming at large amid the mountains and woods, they learn from the cradle to endure cold, hunger and thirst. When away from their homes they never enter a house unless compelled by extreme necessity; for they think they are not safe when staying under a roof.45 This description is full of ethnographic tropes and exaggerations. When the Roman ambassador Priscus visited Attila’s base in Wallachia, he was stunned by the number of beautiful houses.46 The case of the Arabs, who invaded the Roman Empire two centuries later, shows that nomadic tribes were not only able to settle, but even to build empires. In this respect, the game thus limits the possibility of alternate history in favour of essentialism. The same is true for the Romans and Sassanians, who conversely don’t have the ability to migrate.

(New) violent gameplay features Although city management, political intrigue and diplomacy are important, TWA predominantly revolves around war. This is a Total War game, after all. Consequently, much of the game’s violent features are in line with the series and the genre. There are 166

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different modes of violence: the player (or rather his faction) both suffers and exerts violence. During battle, the player tells his soldiers who to attack and how, although he doesn’t pull the trigger, as with first-person shooters. These acts and their consequences are represented by various forms of media – words, numbers, sounds, images and animations. The medium depends on the layer where the violent acts are being staged. On the campaign map, the representation is more symbolic – hence the reports in the event messages. The representation of battles is more realistic and mostly animated. However, there are also numbers within the battle view, and animations on the world map, such as duels between pawns and the razing animation, which I will speak of later. The Blood & Burning DLC, which draws heavily on previous Blood DLCs, raises the age requirement from sixteen to eighteen years, and adds blood and gore effects such as limb-removals and decapitations to the battles.47 When users complained that these animations were too soft and rarely triggered,48 Creative Assembly addressed the issue in a hotfix that promised ‘buckets more claret’ (blood).49 Players who remained unsatisfied resorted to the Radious Blood Mod, a game modification developed by prominent modder Radious.50 TWA also introduces a number of new features,51 some of which are meant to represent the spirit of the era and, unsurprisingly, often involve violence. Indeed, some of these features are missing from the following Total War title.52 János Gáspár, the project leader of Attila53 stated that ‘to really bring the period to life, we’re building on these foundations with many new strategic features [. . .] such as advanced street-fighting, civilians, complete settlement destruction and dynamic fire that can rage across a city as armies clash’.54 These new features were heavily anticipated by fans55 and much appreciated by reviewers. To quote IGN : ‘Total War: Attila has stepped forward into a new era of Total War games, an era of bloodthirsty hordes ravaging the land as they please – with no cities to babysit, Attila truly brings meaning to the phrase “Total War”.’56 Scorched Earth (campaign map) Scorched Earth features already in the prologue campaign, where the Visigoths – while fleeing the Huns – are forced to burn their homes. Apart from destroying their own settlement, players can also destroy the settlement of an opponent. Whenever the player captures a settlement, the ‘settlement captured’ menu pops up with the following options: raze, loot, occupy or sack. While picking sack results in cries (a sound effect), razing comes with both sound and animation,57 of which the developers are particularly proud. Writer Peter Stewart stated: my favourite new fire-based feature of Attila [. . .] is the Scorched Earth policy [. . .] this ‘Raze’ option is designed to entirely obliterate a region [. . .] destroying all of the buildings and reducing the entire settlement to a smoking pile of rubble. This isn’t just a notion we added for fun (although, genuinely it is – look at that praxis wave!), but rather a pragmatic tool in your arsenal against your advancing enemies [. . .] All apocalyptic visions should look this cool.58 167

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Fans were also amazed. According to Sun Jetzu, ‘it looked like a nuke hit it’.59 This comparison to the detonation of a nuclear warhead is rather accurate. In fact, the concentric wave of fire is reminiscent of the games in the Civilization series, where nuking cities was always an option and similarly represented.60 Apparently, there is a visual trope concerning how the destruction of a city is supposed to look. TWA follows this trope, despite being set in Late Antiquity where destroying a city most certainly did not involve a giant explosion. Scorched earth and pillaging were certainly characteristic features of fifth-century wars. The Roman literary and epigraphic texts go to great lengths to lament the destruction wrought by the barbarians. The Roman ambassador Priscus famously described how their diplomatic mission to the court of Attila took them through devastated land.61 Obviously, the Romans employed similar tactics against the Persians.62 Dynamic fires and civilians (battles) The real-time battle equivalent of the raze mechanism is the use of dynamic fires, a new (or returning?) feature.63 Journalists were highly impressed; to quote Hardcore Gamer: you can light the whole battlefield on fire [. . .] burn cover around your enemies, set the battlements of cities ablaze [. . .]. Fire can create temporary barricades, funnelling enemy troops into choke points and scaring ambushers out of hiding. It can also tear down walls given time, opening the door for invading forces to sweep in and destroy. These fire mechanics could have been a cheap gimmick, but they open up a number of new strategic avenues, and they help to give Attila the apocalyptic atmosphere that its title character deserves.64 The aforementioned Blood & Burning DLC adds new burning and burn-to-death animations for both soldiers and civilians. Any faction may trigger these effects by using incendiary ammunition. In the wars of the fifth and sixth centuries, incendiary projectiles were indeed used by various belligerent parties, though this did not constitute anything new.65 Thus apart from the scenario, their implementation in TWA might also be due to the increased processing power that today’s PCs provide. Another new aspect is the inclusion of civilians. Civilians are non-player characters who walk the city or farm the hinterland. When the enemy approaches, they may fight or flee and hide in buildings, which serve as a shelter until set ablaze. Fans liked this feature a lot, because to them it improved the realism and therefore the immersion.66 Consequently, there are modifications that enlarge the numbers of civilians.67 Even before launch, the fan base discussed this new addition. When one fan proposed that children should be included to enhance realism, another opposed the idea as inappropriate.68 This dispute highlights that the display of violence is closely tied to our norms concerning what is acceptable, and what is not. 168

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The civilians, who were meant to make the game more realistic, in one case had rather the opposite effect.69 In a battle video, captured by a player using the game’s replay option, the king is attacked by two female peasants while giving a battle speech to his troops. Surprisingly, his men don’t come to help him; instead, the king slays the peasants with his own sword, without interrupting his speech. In fact, the strike coincides with him encouraging his men to ‘take these walls [. . .] and take their lives’. This instant, where a scripted event (the emperor’s speech to his troops) collides with the artificial intelligence (civilian attacking, soldier defending), involuntarily creates a satirical scene.70 The ruler, who usually orders others to commit violence, exerts violence first-hand. By showing how it is done, he proves his ruthlessness by example. His words and deeds align. The video was posted on YouTube and soon received more than 100,000 views. Among the top comments is ‘Did you see him repressing me?!’, a quotation from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, the 1975 British comedy film. In the scene referenced the protagonist, King Arthur, confronts a peasant who doesn’t accept his authority and even rejects monarchy in general. When his arguments and threats fail to silence the peasant, who constantly complains about repression, King Arthur walks away, frustrated. This action stands in sharp contrast to that of the king in the Total War clip: by resorting to violence, the latter succeeds where the former fails. Decimatio (campaign map) Aside from these explicitly violent features, there are new implicit forms as well. The ‘decimate’ mechanism in turn-based mode is one example. When an army’s loyalty is critically low due to attrition, hitting the decimate button on the campaign screen will increase their integrity while decreasing their numbers. There is no sound or animation involved, but during the next turn a short report is given in the event messages. This is only partially what fans had hoped for – they had indeed requested the inclusion of the decimatio, a punishment which some Roman generals imposed on mutineers and deserters, but had wished that ‘there should be an epic cinematic where we get to watch it happen’.71 So while the developers listened to the fan base and introduced the feature, they opted for a less-explicit mode of representation. This restraint probably also stems from moral concerns. Like rape and murder, executing deserters belongs to the ugly face of war. The inclusion of the decimatio feature proved controversial among other players, who rightly noted that this form of punishment had already fallen into disuse.72 What is even more debatable (and has been rightly questioned) is the fact that it is not only the Romans who can use the decimatio, but every faction. While these generalizations are common in strategy games to balance out the factions, other design choices are easy to imagine. For example, in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, an influential strategy game from 2004, the different factions deal with loyalty differently; only the Romanesque Imperial Guard uses executions to restore morale. So there must be another reason. In TWA, a Romanonly decimatio would probably have blurred their difference to the bloodthirsty Huns. The comparison of the two games highlights a second difference: while the decimatio in 169

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Attila is part of the turn-based layer, the executions in Dawn of War are part of the realtime battles. This is likely due to the different setting: the former game is set in the historical past and the latter in a dystopian future, where displaying the ugly face of war is more acceptable.

Conclusion The Migration Period and Attila the Hun provide Total War: Attila with a dramatic scenario and a notorious title character. The marketing and design were largely successful, and most critics and fans perceived the game as adequately reflecting the era. However, the idea that the Roman Empire was brought down by violent barbarians like the devilish Attila, on which the game’s marketing drew, owes a debt to popular culture. Scholarship stresses internal reasons for change, and debunks the Roman stereotypes. Within the game, there are some attempts to depict a more balanced picture, for example in the faction descriptions, and despite the martial representation of Attila in the announcement material, the in-game Huns are broadly similar to the other factions. Still, certain incentives and inhibitions call for a more aggressive playing style, such as bonuses for plundering and the fact that the Huns are not allowed to settle. This stems from essentialist ideas about the Hunnic nature, which apply to all factions. Surprisingly the Roman decimatio is granted to every faction, while there is no Hunnic impalement. From a developer’s perspective, violent acts (the fury) and their consequences (the fear) are the game mechanics, which create new tactical options and enhance the realism, although colliding game mechanics may also create situations that produce new meaning and are unintentionally comical. For most players, these violent acts are fun, contributing to their immersion. Contrary to what you might expect, players have a broad range of choices when it comes to violence, even when playing as the Huns: to be less or more violent in their playing style; distant or closer camera angles (individual soldiers vs bird’s eye view); skipping the real-time battles, or making them bloodier by installing modifications or downloadable content. They can even choose to ignore the objectives of their faction, wholly or in part, to pursue their own goals. Certain new violent features are claimed to be inspired by the historical setting, but may rather coincide with an increase in computing power, which is creating new possibilities. As the ‘decimate’ mechanism and ‘raze’ animations illustrate, gameplay and visual tropes take precedence over historicity. Furthermore, there are moral issues at stake: the introduction of civilians is meant to make the game more realistic and authentic, but children are not included, as killing them would be inappropriate. Here, realism is limited by moral concerns. These same concerns are responsible for the indirect representation of the execution of traitors. There are honourable and shameful acts of violence, according to modern standards, which account for the explicit depiction of the former, and the implicit depiction (or even omission) of the latter.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra for organizing the stimulating conference in Turin and for editing this volume. Christian Rollinger has kindly read and commented on the manuscript; in the conceptual stage, discussions with Hans-Peter Nill also proved helpful.

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CHAPTER 13 SEXY GORY ROME: JUXTAPOSITIONS OF SEX AND VIOLENCE IN COMIC BOOK REPRESENTATIONS OF ANCIENT ROME Luis Unceta Gómez

Rome: sex and violence From a modern standpoint, Greece and (particularly) Rome were licentious societies; nudity was a natural part of life, there were plenty of shows with erotic content, and sexual acts or organs were often displayed on everyday objects.1 It is therefore not surprising that a large number of receptions of ancient Rome have adopted a strongly eroticized character, emphasizing certain sexual traits, either for their own sake or in contrast to Christianity’s chastity, moral rectitude and self-restraint. This discourse has been a constant in Western society ever since the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the eighteenth century and the creation of the ‘Gabinetto Segreto’.2 However, the idea of lasciviousness in ancient Rome can be traced back ‘at least as far as the second century ad ’, according to Blanshard,3 and may be considered a Christian mechanism for denigrating paganism by associating it with sin, and sexual sin in particular. By way of this construction, classical Antiquity has been utilized either as an alibi for representing erotic nudity,4 or as a suitable scenario for portraying all kinds of sexual acts, including the most depraved and morally reprehensible, from the perspective of each era.5 The idea of Roman licentiousness became established early on. A wellknown example is I modi or De omnibus Veneris Schematibus, a renowned erotic book created in the early sixteenth century by Italian engraver Marcantonio Raimondi, who took inspiration from the designs of Giulio Romano. During the late modern period, cinema has also partaken in this tradition, even if the medium does not usually portray representations of explicit sex. From their early days, films have taken an interest in Roman sexual deviation and excess,6 bestowing emblematic value on the orgy,7 a group sexual encounter that was never as frequent among Romans as is portrayed in cinema.8 Excesses of all kinds, including eating, have found a perfect venue in representations of Roman Antiquity, with rather recognizable features. All these considerations legitimize the definition of ancient Rome in terms of a ‘pornotopia’,9 something which is fully justified in the modern meaning of the words orgy and bacchanal. A simple image search on the internet suffices to illustrate this point. These conceptions also continue to be present in other kinds of modern entertainment, such as thematic disco sessions or so-called ‘toga parties’.10 Nonetheless, as Nisbet has noted, due to the Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code, ancient Rome ‘lost its frisson of decadence and taboo; it became a 173

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generic mid-twentieth-century coding for soft-focus naughtiness’. Thus, according to his perspective, we inherited a softened, domesticated Rome, ‘a mass-culture Rome which is forever assuring us of its sensual wickedness, but which is never even permitted explicitly to clarify the pleasures supposedly on offer, still less display them for us and invite us to join in’.11 For this reason, Nisbet continues, contemporary pornography gains no advantage in alluding to ancient Rome: The classical pornotopias of contemporary hardcore find no advantage in any such allusion. Rome no longer promises sexual pleasure in mass culture, and so these films (which are in any case revealingly few in number) deliver strictly contemporary sexual pleasures. Rome no longer warns its consumers of the wages of sin – but this old moral trajectory, long since put aside by mainstream culture, was in any case irrelevant to the narrative priorities of a genre predicated on immersion in the moment and unconcerned with character, plot and consequence.12 Although it strays a little from this thesis, it must be noted that while Rome has not produced much in the way of pornographic cinema13 (likely due to the utilitarian nature of the latter), the discourse of Rome’s hypersexualization reveals all of its pornotopian potential in certain moderately successful mainstream productions. A prime example is the controversial Caligula (1979),14 with its images of absolute depravity.15 In its wake, several series from private American channels, which can get around taboos like nudity and softcore sex, are also quite illustrative in this regard.16 In all these cases, the well-established wickedness associated with a Roman setting facilitates passing over certain moral questions that would have to be addressed if sexuality were exposed within other contexts. Within these recreations, the hypersexualized description of Rome has been combined with the violence and aggressiveness traditionally ascribed to this civilization as an imperialist power. Highly significant in this regard is the institutionalization of violence in the form of gladiatorial games, which had a significant role in Roman public life and politics, and widespread popular acceptance.17 As with the case of sexuality, violence and gladiatorial games were frequent themes in household decor.18 Finally, the marked virility of Roman society considered sexuality as a form of domination and a mechanism to underscore abusive power relations. In this way, sex and violence ultimately functioned as complementary dimensions, if not actually merged into a single activity. As manifestations of this blend, two realities take on emblematic value: rape,19 inextricably linked to imperialism and slavery;20 and the eroticization of the gladiatorial games, something that peplum films have made use of throughout their history, in a more or less evident manner.21 Nevertheless, cinema is not the only contemporary medium that has thoroughly exploited this conception of ancient Rome. Comics ‘for adults’ Although comics have traditionally carried a stigma and been held in low repute, largely due to their persecution beginning in the 1940s,22 the publication of Classics and Comics23 174

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(along with its sequel, Son of Classics and Comics24) has come to legitimize the study of comics from the viewpoint of classical reception, given that the medium offers a rich view of contemporary reinterpretations of Graeco-Roman Antiquity. There is a stable and widespread prejudice that regards comics as a shallow medium only fit for childhood audiences. However, this idea is contradicted by today’s ample market of ‘adult comics’, a euphemism often used to refer to erotic or pornographic titles, which surged in popularity during the 1960s and especially 1970s.25 Although it is difficult to establish generalities, within this genre there are a remarkable number of works set in classical Antiquity, with both mythological and historical themes, especially those that feature ancient Rome as their scenario. The Imperial period is preferred,26 which is conceived of as an especially sexually charged era. In fact, there is no need to turn to adult comics to confirm this perception. With a significant and obvious debt to peplum films, comics set in ancient Rome include doses of eroticism in their narrations, especially in their European output, though this is not the case in American productions. An obvious example of this contrast can be seen in the series Murena (writer Jean Dufaux, artists Philippe Delaby / Théo Caneschi [since 2013]; Dargaud, 1997–2017), where nudes have been censured in the translations for the United States.27 At the same time, even the American productions set in Rome and ‘approved for all audiences’ have also displayed (and even taken to its ultimate consequences) the representation of a violent and cruel Empire. In fact, in this study I will defend the idea that the comic is the most appropriate and suitable medium to represent the amalgam of violence and sex strongly associated with ancient Rome. This affirmation is based on two oppositions. The first point of contrast is mainstream cinema set in ancient Rome, especially that produced in the United States, which for the most part resists any explicit representations of sexuality and nudity (even prosthetic), while being less scrupulous about explicitly representing violence. The second is pornographic cinema, where, as Nisbet contends,28 Rome does not contribute any functional signifier – as one might expect in a genre that aspires to represent reality, a hyperreality, with no need for any alibi, and where the emphasis on close-up shots blurs the background, making it irrelevant. Quite the opposite – pornographic cinema must avoid extreme violence (at least in its legal manifestations). By contrast, comics are a medium with a tendency towards more permeability between genres, enabling it to take the two elements within this combination to their logical extremes, and thus offering an explicit and precise portrait of this popular culture ideological construct of ancient Rome. In order to illustrate and defend this idea, this study analyses certain recent comics that recreate Apuleius’ novel The Golden Ass, as well as the historical figures of Julius Caesar, Caligula and Messalina.

The Golden Ass Apuleius’ novel, The Golden Ass, has the honour of having two published adaptations in the format of erotic comic. The older version, Les sorcières de Thessalie (Glénat, volume 1, 1985; volume 2, 1986), is a free version from the hand of Georges Pichard (1920–2003), 175

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a French author who specialized in this genre. The second is a rewriting by Milo Manara (1945–), a well-known Italian cartoonist also specialized in the erotic genre; it bears the title La métamorphose de Lucius or L’âne d’or (Les Humanoïdes Associés; 1999). Even though the source chosen for adaptation is not surprising, given the ample presence of sexuality in the work, both authors give notorious emphasis to this sexuality, which is not as ubiquitous within Apuleius’ novel. The first adaptation is more pertinent to this study, as it takes particular advantage of the crudity in the Latin tale. Manara, by contrast, employs a more refined eroticism; while he doesn’t avoid explicit representations, he makes much less use of violent elements than the French author. This can be clearly seen by comparing their respective representations of the magician Pamphile’s punishment of her maid Photis for being attracted to Lucius, the main character (a scene included by Pichard29 and imitated by Manara30). In any case, Manara’s work also includes interesting scenes, such as his representation of one of the most salacious episodes of the Latin novel, the zoophilic scene31 (which nonetheless is not as shocking as it could be, although neither is the original Latin32), as well as a curious visual overlap between violence and sex that is possible within the language of comics. Towards the end of the comic, a dialogue is established between two large panels placed on facing pages that share both format and location (from the opposite perspective). Even though these represent two consecutive moments, because of their placement and their shared scene, they are read concurrently and become overlapped. Thus, a gladiator fight becomes identified with (and even blends into) an erotic spectacle, taking the form of mythological allegory, which occurs afterwards (Figs 13.1 and 13.2). In Pichard’s work, by contrast, the blend of sex and violence is more blatant. First, it should be noted that while the representation of male genitals is almost completely absent, women are constantly shown with bare breasts, in marked contrast to both the iconographic representation of women and the dress code of Greek and Roman societies.33 Even though this procedure may appear strange (not to mention the architecture, which differs from popular images of the ancient city), Pichard strives to involve his readers from the very first panel. Here, a member of a group of thieves remarks: ‘My wife, who is a sorceress, has assured me that in an unfortunately distant future, jurists would recognize our merits and provide us with the security that we all dream of.’34 In this way, readers are invited to find enjoyment in a society that, while distant, offers useful stimuli for the contemporary consumer. As previously noted, this work stands out for its use of the most sordid, violent and gory aspects of the original novel, which are combined with sexualized representations of women – a constant object of desire, but often an active subject in the creation of suffering. A very eloquent example of this approach is the narration of one of the initial episodes that introduces the reader into the world of magic where this story takes place. Apuleius’ text does not lack scabrous details, including a scene with a humiliating urolagnia or ‘golden shower’, but it refrains from combining these with any sexual elements: 176

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And with this she [Meroe] bent Socrates’ head to one side and plunged her sword down through the left side of his neck all the way up to the hilt. Then she placed a leather bottle to the wound, carefully collecting the spout of blood so that not a single drop appeared anywhere. I saw all this with my very own eyes. Next, so as not to deviate, I suppose, from the ritual of sacrificing a victim, she inserted her right hand through that wound all the way down to his insides, felt around for my poor comrade’s heart, and pulled it out; at this he emitted a sound from that throat slashed open by the weapon’s stroke, or rather poured out an inarticulate squeal through the wound and gurgled forth his life’s breath. Panthia staunched the wound at its widest opening with her sponge, saying, ‘Listen, o sponge, born in the sea, take care to travel back through a river.’ After these words they left him; and both of them removed my cot, spread their feet, and squatted over my face, discharging their bladders until they had drenched me in the liquid of their filthy urine.35 Pichard’s representation of the scene, by contrast, offers a clearly erotic dimension: the witches are depicted naked and, after their misdeeds, they engage in sexual activity.36

Julius Caesar Though not particularly representative, a comic devoted to Julius Caesar deserves some attention, since it offers a good illustration of the violence/sex blend. The sexually charged Italian series Il bordello (Ediperiodici) devoted its fourth issue (1988) to this figure, humorously named Culio Cesare, who is featured in an episode entitled ‘Un cazzus belli’, a play on words with the near-homophones in Italian, cazzo [‘dick’], and the Latin casus, in the expression casus belli ‘a case of war’, in other words, an act or event that justifies the start of a war. The title marks the tone of this fumetto, which comically portrays the conquest of Gaul in pornographic fashion. Culio Cesare’s virility is underscored by the size of his attributes – a prerequisite for leadership, according to the narrative – and his capacity for conquest, both in war and romance.37 In Italy, the humorous and transgressive effect of a work with these characteristics is undoubtedly magnified by the contrast between the impact of Caesar’s work on the educational system of this country (hence associated with childhood memories) and the crudity of its treatment of sex. Imperialism in this context translates into terms of sexual domination, which can be voluntarily admitted and even enjoyed by women (as is the case with the wife of a Gallic infiltrator into Cesare’s ranks, who dies of pleasure);38 in the case of men, however, large doses of violence are involved. In a confrontation clearly inspired by The Adventures of Asterix, in his conflict with the Helvetians Culio Cesare must face Guglielmo Pall – a deformation of William Tell, bringing to mind the Italian palle [‘bollocks’] – who is ultimately taken captive. Culio Cesare rapes a woman in front of his army, before sodomizing the enemy, as the supreme manifestation of domination and humiliation. While the woman enjoys it, for the man it is a most humiliating, violent and painful ordeal.39 177

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Figure 13.1 Milo Manara, La métamorphose de Lucius (52) © Manara/Les Humanoïdes Associés.

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Figure 13.2 Milo Manara, La métamorphose de Lucius (53) © Manara/Les Humanoïdes Associés.

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Caligula Far more representative of the dual amalgam analysed here are two imperial characters: Caligula and Messalina. In their respective incarnations of perversion, each leans more towards one of its components (Caligula more towards violence, Messalina more towards unbridled sexuality), yet these two characters have proven to be the most suitable for representations of this discourse, and together form a duet of Roman immorality in popular culture. The image of Caligula as a total degenerate originated in Antiquity itself. Suetonius’ portrait of the emperor, with his propensity towards cruelty and vice, quickly converted him into the paradigm of amoral tyranny, with murderous inclinations and sexual excess.40 His many personifications in different popular culture media41 have tended to explain his corrupt behaviour as the nearly inevitable result of absolute power,42 even if there was never any attempt at rehabilitation.43 This message is repeatedly underscored in the controversial film Caligula, a movie that crossed the normally ironclad limits between pornography and mainstream cinema, justifying this transgression with its aspiration to create an accurate account of the historic figure. The cultural prestige of Rome thus provided an intellectual alibi for certain pornographic scenes that, as has been reported on many occasions, were included without the director’s consent. The film also seeks to offer an explicit representation of the emperor’s cruelty and violence. Of the many scenes that can be mentioned, especially cruel is one that shows a machine with rotating blades that slices off the heads of certain convicts buried up to their necks, while Caligula looks on in glee. Regardless of the negative criticism received, and its apparent lack of influence on later mainstream representations of ancient Rome,44 it cannot be denied that Caligula marks a fundamental milestone in the hypersexualization of the image of the mad emperor. Moreover, it certainly left a clear influence on comics. This is reflected in Caligula by Michel Duveaux (1993, L’Écho des Savanes / Albin Michel), who reproduces entire scenes from the film, intensifying both the sexualization and violence of certain images, while also taking inspiration from Les Nuits cruelles de Caligula by Jimmy Toro (1982, Edilau).45 However, the most extreme expression to date of the frenzied excesses of absolute power and Caligula’s deviant sexuality is found in David Lapham’s disturbing work, with drawings by German Nobile. With their series Caligula (six issues, 2011–12, Avatar Press) and Caligula Heart of Rome (six issues, 2012–13, Avatar Press), these authors have modernized the image of the emperor, attributing to him current psychiatric concepts: thus they equate his behaviour to that of a serial killer, a form of murderer with a huge impact on popular culture, and include in his behaviour a thirst for power and sexual compulsion. The protagonist and narrator of the story, Junius, is a young olive grower who swears vengeance for the brutal rape and death of his mother at the hands of Caligula. To this end, he travels to Rome and manages to infiltrate the imperial palace, where he ends up becoming an inseparable companion to the emperor, his chronicler and even one of his lovers. His cohabitation with this personification of evil plunges Junius into unstoppable moral degradation. In Caligula and Caligula Heart of Rome, categorized within the genre 180

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of historical horror, the authors emphasize aberrations attributed to the emperor, as well as including a number of supernatural elements (amplified in the second series).46 These explain, for example, Caligula’s indestructibility and his constant need to commit crimes. The epithet monster is no longer metaphorical, it becomes a ‘reality’. While the gory images are sometimes rather shocking, the sex scenes are not explicit, and there are few frontal nudes – unsurprising, since it comes from an American publisher. Still, on many occasions the most violent acts are somewhat sexually charged, as can be seen for example with the corpse of Junius’ mother47 or in Junius’ flagellation.48 But even more than an eroticization of violence, the series shows a clear tendency towards a violent representation of sexuality, eliminating any form of tenderness and minimizing any possible enjoyment in the passive object. In this sense, there is a striking inversion of the formulation of this blend by Milo Manara. While Caligula does not lack gladiatorial combat scenes in the amphitheatre49 (and its visual codes are even transferred to other forms of public entertainment, such as circus races),50 of greater notoriety than the eroticization of the public spectacle is the transfer of the violent pastime into the private sphere. Thus, when an orgy is celebrated in the great hall of the palace, represented in the usual manner, we also see a cage in which a wild animal tears apart its victim (Fig. 13.3). This decontextualization favours the interpretation of fights with wild animals in the amphitheatre – a typical element in representations of ancient Rome – as a mere manifestation of the emperor’s vileness.

Figure 13.3 Caligula (vol. 1, 22–3) © Lapham / Nobile / Avatar Press, Inc. 181

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Messalina In this review of Roman depravation, we cannot overlook the figure of Valeria Messalina, third wife of Emperor Claudius, who rivals Caligula on the podium of perversion. As in Caligula’s case, the archetype of voracious sexuality and nymphomania that Messalina represents is already well established in the ancient sources.51 The portrait of her offered by Tacitus (Ann. 11) is a discourse of delegitimization whereby the lechery52 of women of the imperial household is an unequivocal sign of the depravity of the Empire, and its illegitimacy. According to Joshel,53 her unrestrained sexuality not only represents a moral value, but also the ‘penetrability’ of the Empire and the incapacity of its men to control it. Since the nineteenth century, her popular representation has been more complicated,54 and her name has taken on a prototypical value in several European languages to refer to a powerful woman of dissolute habits, a woman with too much initiative, who is always perceived as a threat to men.55 Once removed from its original signifying system, her image of perversion within popular culture became conclusively established in the twentieth century through the important influence of Robert Graves’s novels (I, Claudius, 1934; Claudius the God, 1935) and their television adaptations (BBC, 1976). Three more recent receptions serve to illustrate the archetypal nature that this character has come to acquire. The first is Rubén del Rincón’s comic book Mesalina. Originally published in instalments for the underground magazine Kiss Comix, and republished with modifications in 2008 (Glénat), Mesalina is a Spanish comic with pornographic content that tells the story of a licentious young woman who adopts the empress’s name as a pseudonym. By her hand, an author of erotic comics, whom she admires, embarks on an adventure that will lead him to become obsessed with her. While on the surface her character is entirely independent of the historical referent, the connection becomes explicit in two anecdotal but rather eloquent panels. In one of these, she presents her father as autoritario (‘authoritarian’) and augusto (‘august’),56 while in the second, within a setting with elements vaguely reminiscent of the Classical past, the following is said of her: ‘She is beautiful and I have to draw her. . . Messalina . . . She is a Roman empress.’57 Moreover, this character engages with the popular archetype of Messalina in her capacity to dominate and manipulate men through absolute control over her sexuality, whereby she becomes a worthy epigone and acquires an essentialist character. The second reception is more complex and culminates in Snuff (2008), a novel by the American transgressive author Chuck Palahniuk, who sets out to recreate a real event that was in turn inspired by the figure of Messalina. The novel’s main character is Cassie Wright, a porn actress who wants to break the record for continuous sexual acts carried out by a single person. According to ancient sources, Messalina participated in a competition against a well-known prostitute, to determine who was able to have the greater number of consecutive sexual relations. Messalina’s insatiable voracity, of course, gained her the victory:58 ‘Claudius Caesar’s consort Messalina, thinking that this would be a truly regal triumph, selected for a competition in it a certain maid who was the most notorious of the professional prostitutes, and beat her in a twenty-four hours’ match, with a score of twenty-five’.59 182

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This scene is probably the first historical record of a ‘gang bang’. According to the protagonist of Palahniuk’s novel, it was considered thus by Annabel Chong, a porn actress of Chinese origin, primarily known for having filmed The World’s Biggest Gang Bang in 1995, where she had 251 sexual encounters as a form of activism and a call for female autonomy. When conceiving this event, Chong took into account the abovementioned episode of the empress Messalina. And thus it is reported by the protagonist of this novel through the writing of Palahniuk, an author who often makes use of allegedly objective facts in his works:60 ‘The set decorations, the White fluted columns and splashing fountains, a historical re-creation of Messalina’s challenge to Scylla. The fake marble and Roman statues. The World’s Biggest Gangbang. A student in gender studies at the University of Southern California, with a grade point average of 3.7, this film was Chong’s tribute to Valeria Messalina. True fact’.61 The third reception, which summarizes the previous two, is provided by the second part of the film Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013). The protagonist recounts a moment in her childhood when she experienced her first spontaneous orgasm, an instant when she had a vision of two figures that her interlocutor identifies as the Whore of Babylon and Messalina, in what appears to be a blasphemous recreation of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the Mount. In this way, the empress here takes on an allegorical and mythical quality.62 As stated earlier, the figure of Messalina has had a significant impact on popular culture, becoming the main character in quite a number of films,63 as well as comics with historical themes. One of the most enduring examples was the series Messalina (1966– 74),64 by Ruggero Giovannini, which also includes the figure of Caligula.65 This fumetto nero, exclusively for adults, included large doses of eroticism and violence. As Carlà notes in his study of this series,66 the choice of Messalina was obvious and had considerable success. Despite the heavy censorship that still prevailed in Italy at that time, the protagonist’s sexual voracity is quite notorious, and oriented to an exclusively male audience.67 This is substantially different to the purity of the Messalina published in Spain in the midst of the Franco dictatorship (1956, Maga) by Miguel Quesada. In the hardcore erotic line, other titles must be mentioned, such as Messaline Impératrice by Nuncio Fanzino and Jean Arpa (included in the second volume of the collection Les amours de l’Histoire, 1985, Cap), Messaline: Les fêtes du Palatin (Albin Michel, 1987), by the above-referenced Michel Duveaux, and especially the six-volume series Messalina,68 the most definitively pornographic product among those analysed thus far. Its author, Jean-Yves Mitton (1945–), is well known for his specialization in comics set in ancient Rome. Among his productions, Vae victis! occupies an important place (fifteen volumes, scripted by Simon Rocca, 1991–2006, Soleil), as well as Attila . . . mon amour (six volumes, drawings by Franck Bonnet, 1998–2003, Glénat) and Ben Hur (four volumes, 2008–10, Delcourt). Mitton himself justifies the choice of the figure of Messalina for his approach to pornography: Messalina is not an exception, a parenthesis in the History of Rome. She is nothing more than one of its high points. Among all the tyrants who bloodied humanity, 183

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such as Nero, Napoleon, Hitler and so many others, at least she was the most beautiful and the most diabolically erotic. This singularity was well worthy of an X-rated comic, since Messalina on her own classified herself in this category. But after all, these six albums are not a history lesson. I have snuck in behind the scenes and into the orgies that her biographers never described, in order to reveal to you the motivations of this young Roman woman, who on the strength of her ass alone, became the empress of Rome and the greatest whore in the History of humankind.69 For the purposes of this study, several ideas from this text should be noted. The first is that Messalina is considered worthy of a pornographic comic on her own merits; the second is that she is equated with other bloody tyrants, whether ancient like Nero, or modern like Napoleon and Hitler. This comparison leads us to recognize once again the prolific presence of the sex-and-violence blend in representing ancient Rome (although the latter tyrants lack sexual content). The story, which begins during the reign of Caligula, recounts the social and political rise of the empress, paralleled by her growing licentiousness. In this process, where her main weapon is her beauty, Messalina sets aside her childhood innocence to make room for increasingly marked ambition, cruelty and corruption. The starting point, narrated in the first chapter, is her brutal initiation into the temple of Priapus, officiated by Agrippina, where Messalina is deflowered in every possible way by an inhuman and demoniclooking Mephileseth, high priest of this deranged cult.70 Inspired by the historic relationship with Gaius Silius, this Messalina shares a love story with Silius, a former gladiator from Crete, who helps her achieve her objectives, and when Messalina assumes power in Claudius’ absence, he is named emperor. Even though it is highly likely that most modern sexual practices had their analogy in ancient times – with the exception of fisting, ‘probably the only new, post-antique sexual activity, an invention of the late twentieth century’71 – this work indiscriminately transfers all the clichés, formulas and close-ups of recent pornography to Antiquity, often creating contradictions with the sexual prejudices and practices of the Romans (oral sex, for example, was a particularly degrading practice). Nonetheless, its consideration of sexuality as a mechanism of control, domination and power is very appropriate. Violence is equally recurring in Messalina, even though its objective changes as the protagonist evolves. In the first issues, Messalina suffers violence; when she reaches power, she is the one to inflict it on others. For example, in Volume 4,72 she condemns members of the Senate to be slaughtered by animals in the Circus Maximus. The sex/violence blend that is once more produced in the arena is expressed here in the form of erotic excitement during the celebration of this and other gory spectacles, with Messalina going so far as to have sexual relations in the grandstand (Fig. 13.4). This work ultimately offers what might be the consummation of this blend of sex and violence. The scene takes place at the end of the series when, cornered by Claudius, Silius murders his beloved Messalina and then puts an end to his own life – during the sex act itself!73 This finale, where the empress loses the agency that she had been acquiring throughout the series, poses the question of whether this reception of Messalina can be 184

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Figure 13.4 Messalina (Vol. 4, 37) © Mitton, Éditions Ange.

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considered a symbol of female sexual liberation, just as Annabel Chong aspired to. However, at least in this specific incarnation, it seems more likely to be a fulfilment of the desires of the heterosexual male pornography consumer. In contrast to the few pornography productions aimed at a female audience, as in certain hentai manga,74 the crudity, extreme violence and objectification of the woman in these representations seem more oriented to a largely male, heterosexual audience.

Conclusions This study has analysed several examples that justify the consideration of Rome as a violent ‘pornotopia’. Even though, according to Nisbet’s thesis,75 this referent has not found a place in pornographic cinema, the discourse that conflates depravation, cruelty and licentiousness continues to be well established in the popular imagination. Despite today’s ubiquitous association of pornography with cinema, the pornographic genre has many other manifestations in other formats,76 such as comics, as analysed here. And comics are precisely the most suitable format for representing the specific blend of unbridled sexuality and violence that is attributed to ancient Rome in the popular imagination. On another note, it is not surprising that most of these titles are French, since the bande dessinée does not have the same negative connotation as in other countries, and it is more common for adults to consume these products.77 As previously stated, recent mainstream cinema set in Antiquity can more easily show violence than sexuality (which is normally insinuated), while pornographic cinema has no need for the Classical referent and is regulated in terms of showing violence. However, the pornographic comic, less stigmatized than its cinematic counterpart (probably due to its more minority appeal) enjoys optimal conditions for representing a combination of the two. In this context, while not the only example, Rome seems to take on the role of ‘pornotopia’ par excellence. First of all, it offers a cultured, educated alibi – justified by historical accounts – for explicitly presenting violent sexual practices. In addition, the distance offered by a Roman contextualization makes it more tolerable to contemplate the combination of these two basic human drives. Furthermore, pre-Christian times are the ideal setting for this kind of practice, unconditioned by the strict sexual moral code of Christianity. Finally, Roman civilization, while constituting a period from ancient history, makes it possible to include an element of refinement which the contemporary reader can identify with. At the end of the day, Rome continues to be the ideal frame for combining pleasure and pain.

Acknowledgements This study was carried out within the framework of the research project Marginalia Classica Hodierna: Tradición y recepción clásica en la cultura de masas contemporánea (FFI2015-66942-P; MINECO/FEDER).

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CHAPTER 14 ARCHIMEDES AND THE WAR IN ITOSHI IWĀ KI’S EUREKA Giuseppe Galeani

Introduction This chapter fits within the fairly recent research field of the reception of classical Antiquity in comics,1 and more specifically Japanese comics.2 Without entering into details on the history of manga3 – a genre that has seen a constant increase in popularity and sales since the post-war period4 – it will suffice to say that when we discuss manga, we speak of a medium that forms a huge market of approximately four million euros a year.5 Above all, it is a medium whose presence in Japanese culture and society is greater than any other communication medium, so much so that it may be considered as a form of literature that mirrors and interprets reality.6 Within such an important production, which deeply impacts society and is strongly anchored in Japanese history and culture, one shouldn’t forget that (as has been noted by Thiesen7), when a mangaka uses Graeco-Roman material (historical or mythical), it often does so due to a very personal interest, and primarily addresses a public whose concept of the ‘classics’ is entirely different from ours. Moreover, as Pigeat points out,8 although the link between Mediterranean Antiquity and manga is undeniable, it is often realized through, ‘references and cosmetic borrowings’9 – cultural ‘imports’ based on an attraction to the exotic details or, as noted by Scilabra, as a means of representing alterity through classical Western Antiquity.10 Nevertheless, an increased production of graphic novels has been seen since the beginning of the twenty-first century,11 which include not just more or less conscious allusions to ancient Western mythology or history but also, independent of the different categories of public they are written for,12 are ‘direct representations of the classical world’.13 These are set, for example, in ancient Rome, implying a deeper analysis and a much stronger connection to Latin Antiquity for Japanese authors and readers. These manga, which probably arise from the curiosity and attraction of the Japanese people towards Italy and its historical, artistic and cultural heritage,14 offer Western readers a new and stimulating perspective on both the artistic potential and communicative strength of comics, as well as the unlimited capacity of the Classical world to speak to a modern audience. Concerning their narrative construction, these manga can be divided into two groups: (1) narratives in which a wholly invented plot is inserted into a historically plausible reconstruction;15 and (2) reinterpretations of the biographies of ancient historical personalities in light of modernity.16 187

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The most representative work within the first category is undoubtedly Thermae Romae of Mari Yamazaki, which is also justly famous in the Western world due to two movie versions and a cartoon.17 The most interesting production among the manga of the second category, meanwhile, is in our opinion the less well-known Eureka by Itoshi Iwāki, which is the focus of this chapter.

A new Archimedes from Japan Eureka is a comic book, a manga seinen by Itoshi Iwāki,18 published in Japan in 2002.19 It’s clear from the title that the author places at the centre of his plot Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, scientist and inventor. However, far from being a biography realized for didactic purposes, this manga qualifies as a graphic novel focused exclusively on the last years of Archimedes’ life. More specifically, it analyses the role played by the war machines he invented during the siege of Syracuse, led by the consul Claudius Marcellus and his army from 214 to 212 bc . The analysis of Iwāki’s thematic, narrative and graphical choices that we propose in these pages will allow us to carry out not only an examination of the motivations that caused the author to feature Archimedes, but also to offer a useful reflection on the power of the exemplum represented by classical Antiquity among modern authors and readers, regardless of their country of origin. Indeed, our interest in Eureka stems not only from the specific example of a mangaka on the history of Italy (and particularly of ancient Rome20); more specifically, it is due to the original representation of the mathematician that a contemporary Japanese author offers – primarily to his fellow countrymen – in a work of entertainment that seeks to read an episode from ancient Western history in a highly serious, cultured and contemporary way. Eureka opens with a brief but effective representation of the Battle of Cannae (216 bc ), in which the author appears to want to emphasize the violence of the conflict and the huge number of casualties, as well as the political consequences of Hannibal’s victory. After the battle, Hannibal meets Epicydes,21 an exile from Syracuse, and orders him to go to his town in order to influence the people in favour of an agreement with the Carthaginians. On the other side, in Rome, the Senate decides to rely on the experience and military ability of Marcus Claudius Marcellus,22 nicknamed the ‘sword of Rome’, as reported by Posidonius23 and by Iwāki himself. After these introductory pages the story moves to Syracuse where we meet the protagonist of the plot, Damippus, a young Spartan man settled in the Sicilian city, who falls in love with Claudia, a young Roman girl. Due to the success of the proposed alliance with Hannibal proposed by Epicydes, Claudia’s parents are deported to Leontini and the girl, while waiting to reach her family, seeks shelter in the home of a close friend of her father, the great mathematician and inventor, Archimedes, who welcomes Claudia and takes on Damippus as one of his pupils. 188

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Judging from these brief references, it would seem that Iwāki aims to build a historical novel where an entirely fictional plot is created within a framework that is broadly historically correct but not entirely faithful to history. On closer inspection, the narrative operation performed by the Japanese mangaka also appears more complex, particularly if we look at the characters of Damippus and Archimedes. While there is no doubt that Claudia is an entirely fictional character, the same cannot be said for Damippus, on which the ancient sources do tell us something, even if only very fleetingly.24 Livy mentions that Damippus quidam, sent as an envoy from Syracuse to Philip V of Macedonia, was captured by the Romans. During negotiations with Epicydes, who wished to redeem the Spartan citizen, a Roman soldier noticed a weak point in the building system,25 which Marcellus took advantage of in order to invade the Sicilian town with his army.26 Inspired by this brief information, alongside the consequent deduction that Damippus and his capture were the cause (albeit involuntarily) of the surrender of Syracuse, Iwāki takes a historical yet minor figure and reinvents him as the main character of his novel. In fact, in Eureka Damippus causes Syracuse to fall into the hands of the Romans (this time voluntarily), while trying to protect his beloved. The absence of reliable information and sources, often lamented as an insurmountable limit by those who study ancient stories, in Iwāki’s eyes becomes an opportunity to transform Damippus, a minor character from history, into the protagonist of a true Bildungsroman and the proper ‘spokesman’ of the author’s thoughts. Regarding Archimedes, who can be considered Damippus’ ‘wingman’, Iwāki must confront a different problem from that of the construction of Damippus’ character – namely to portray a well-known character from the past who has already featured in a lengthy series of receptions. While I am aware of the impossibility of retracing the long history of Archimedes’ fortunes here, I nonetheless believe it’s necessary to mention the central aspects on which this tradition revolves in order to better understand the choices made by Iwāki. Starting from the most ancient sources, I’ll focus almost exclusively on the role played by Archimedes and his war machines during the siege of the city.

Archimedes at war: a brief history of a tradition The involvement of Archimedes in the defence of Syracuse, and his subsequent death at the end of the siege in 212 bc , are two of the few certain facts relating to the biography of the mathematician,27 although they have been transformed into legendary anecdotes across the centuries, helping to consolidate the mythical image of the scientist and contributing to feeding his legend through to today. This ‘mythical metamorphosis’ – probably the result of ‘tous les traits de sa vie privée, qu’une tradition souvent incertaine nous a conservés, nous sont présentés dans un rapport étroit avec ses recherches scientifiques’28 – has therefore led us to on the one hand celebrate Archimedes as a theorist and a scientist, so fond of his own formulas as to 189

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lose touch with reality, while on the other emphasizing his engineering skill, the protagonist of famous episodes concerning the practical application and technological use of his knowledge. As is well known, the most important sources on this event are the accounts of Polybius,29 Livy30 and Plutarch,31 but it’s likely that the portrait of Archimedes proposed by the author of Parallel Lives that most influenced Iwāki. Within Plutarch’s text, during his description of the siege, there are certain digressions in which the author describes the scientist of Syracuse as predominantly a theorist who places the abstract and intellectual beauty of science above all, and seems entirely uninterested in the practical realization of his theories.32 However, Archimedes is not represented by Plutarch as a man who has any particular disdain for the war, but rather a general disdain for any practical application of his theories; this is because it’s considered ‘ignoble and servile’,33 according to the principle of platonic philosophy that considers any manual activity unworthy of a free man, not only a military man.34 Like Polybius and Livy and the rest of that tradition,35 Plutarch does not question the active participation of Archimedes in war operations36 – even more extraordinary as it took place during his old age37 – as a defensor patriae,38 thanks to the use of the war machines he created.39 During the Middle Ages, the fame of the genius from Syracuse as a military engineer was such that he was considered by the Byzantine historian Giovanni Tzetzes40 (twelfth century) to be the inventor of the burning mirrors; however, the translation from Greek into Latin of the almost complete works of Archimedes by William of Moerbeke also testifies to a very high regard towards Archimedes as one of the great scholars of the exact sciences of Antiquity.41 Even during the Renaissance period, the life and work of the genius from Syracuse aroused enormous interest.42 In 1544, the first printed edition of the opera omnia of Archimedes appeared, which thrust him into the collective imagination as an admirable inventor of war machines, as is testified by the frescos painted by Giulio Parigi in the Sala delle Matematiche at the Uffizi Palace in Florence. During the ensuing centuries, the recognition of the scientific value of Archimedes underwent a phase of fluctuating interest,43 while his myth does not seem to fade away until the beginning of the twentieth century. It’s sufficient to recall the paintings realized by Cherubino Cornienti (Gli specchi ustori di Archimede [Archimedes’ Burning Mirrors], 1850) and Thomas Spence (Archimedes Directing the Defence of Syracuse, 1894), as well as the silent movie Cabiria (1914) by Giovanni Pastrone, whose portraits of Archimedes at war should be seen in light of the typical Italian phenomenon of rediscovery of the great mathematician as a national treasure and a member of the country’s cultural tradition.44 The relationship between science and war in the collective imagery changed decisively during the 1900s, particularly before, during and after the Second World War, as demonstrated by the recovery of Plutarch’s portrait of Archimedes as implemented by the Czech writer Karel Čapek.45 In the short story ‘The Death of Archimedes’, written in 193846 during the spread of Nazi madness, the author uses the figure of Archimedes to question the relationship between science and power and the role of the intellectual in a technologically advanced society. As is well known, this theme became extremely topical 190

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in the years that followed, after the collaboration between the physicist Robert Oppenheimer and the American general Leslie Groves on the ‘Manhattan Project’ that led to the use of nuclear energy for military purposes.47 After witnessing the devastating effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 April 1945) and facing the threat of nuclear war in the second half of the twentieth century (during the Cold War years), public opinion definitively awoke. The student movement that first appeared in the United States in 1964 and consequently spread to Europe in 1968 gave rise to a pacifist conscience that was extremely critical towards the collaboration between science and industry and the use of scientific discoveries – particularly nuclear energy – for war.48 Although it is still possible to find evidence of the older point of view,49 this new ‘pacifist sensitivity’ spread throughout the world. In this environment, the view of Archimedes and his relationship with war was certainly influenced by this movement, as can be seen from the large number of educational biographies aimed at a young audience and disseminated during the second half of the twentieth century, particularly through new mass media like cinema, comics and television. As an example, we suggest viewing an episode of the French animated television series Il était une fois . . . Les Découvreurs [Once Upon a Time . . . the Discoverers] by Albert Barillé in 1994 that was dedicated to Archimedes. The French author tries to explain to his young audience the contrast between peaceful intellectual men and the inventors of war machines by transforming Archimedes into a pacifist who was only forced into fighting to defend his city because the Romans were the ‘bad guys’; for this reason, the Romans are represented with distorted and caricatured somatic features. At the beginning of the new century, the scientific community rediscovered Archimedes thanks to the study and the publication of a previously unpublished palimpsest,50 which helped in understanding and historicizing its scientific contribution.51 However, the legend of Archimedes as a brilliant pacifist and antimilitarist scientist seems to be without end,52 especially in the educational and scholastic contexts. As an example of this trend, I propose a reading of the biographical graphic novel Archimede by Roberto Genovesi and Sergio Toppi.53 Even though the Italian authors seem to suggest a possible psychological conflict within the soul of Archimedes,54 they prefer to give to their young audience a pacifist interpretation of the life and death of the scientist, as told through the words of Cicero55 as he finds the grave of the great mathematician in Syracuse.56

Conclusion In Iwāki’s Eureka, the core of the message that the author wishes to convey is the disagreement of the intellectual towards the ethical dilemma of twentieth-century science. However, no consolatory solution to this conflict is offered to the adult public to whom the work is addressed. We can immediately see this from the lack of interest that Iwāki shows for didactic purpose, as well as the critical rereading of the legendary image of Archimedes that he offers in his original portrait. 191

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In Iwāki’s work, Archimedes is a lonely old man who lives surrounded by his inventions and his fame, but abandoned by his students and isolated from his community. Damippus probably considers him a little crazy; he falls asleep during meals, forgets the names and faces of friends and trails off in the middle of sentences. In fact, Archimedes does not seem to understand why Claudia has asked him for hospitality and seems to understand almost nothing of what is happening outside his own home. Finally, he appears disturbed and confused by the honours paid to him by his citizens immediately after the success of his deadly defensive weapons, which are used by Epicydes without his help. Whereas tradition saw an act of great heroism and attachment to the homeland, the contemporary author instead sees an agonizing dilemma that seems to revolve around the mystery of the human soul. Why do human beings turn their minds to annihilating themselves, when they are capable of brilliant inventions, of poetry and beauty without equal? This is the question that Archimedes appears to ask to us on a page of the book – on which the old man displays a striking lucidity – as he admits to Damippus: ‘I have built many other things, but really I did not want to create those monsters . . . so I’m the head of those monsters. I was well aware of their use . . . I am equally guilty.’57 It is a sequence full of pathos, where the author first shows a picture of the sad, mindful face, before shifting to the wrinkled hands of an old, fragile man, clinging to his stick. Eureka offers a new reading of the episode in question, as well as a bitter reflection on humankind’s thirst for power and the ethical responsibilities of the intellectual towards society. Even if it can also clearly be read and appreciated by a Western audience, Eureka is primarily addressed to Japanese readers, a public who are extremely conscious of the relationship between science and war,58 even if they aren’t entirely familiar with the historical figure of Archimedes. Only when you see it from this perspective is it possible to understand Iwāki’s desire to begin the book with the bodies of the fallen soldiers during the Battle of Cannae, and to close it with a meagre and brief phrase against the backdrop of the Euryalus Fortress, once a symbol of the human genius devoted to war, yet today just a pile of rubble: ‘In time all the eyewitnesses of the event died. Two thousand years have passed since then. . . .’59 The spectacular representations of Archimedes’ machines,60 and even more so the quotation of a famous aphorism by Jean Rostand61 (‘If you kill a man you are a murderer, if you kill half the men you are a hero, if you kill all human beings you are God’)62 should also be interpreted in this way. In an environment painted with such dull colours, which so resembles our world today, Iwāki does not abandon us to despair, but chooses to leave us a glimmer of hope, which he entrusts to young people, to new generations.63 Damippus, who at the beginning of the story seems a happy and carefree young man, during the narrative of the book grows, suffers, invents the mirrors and finally betrays the city that had taken him in; in short, he makes choices, some even questionable, but never without suffering, and guided solely by necessity and love. At the end of the novel, after witnessing the accidental and useless death of Archimedes, the young protagonist refuses Marcellus’ proposal to go with him to Rome to defeat Hannibal, answering: ‘You 192

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are really incredible. But . . . do you not have other things to do?’ This appears to echo the words of Archimedes, those portrayed by Čapek. In Iwāki’s view, Damippus ultimately represents a model for the future: both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time, he grows among joy and suffering, dealing with life’s challenges. Even if he won’t be able to save his world, he will at least save his life, and above all his conscience. His master Archimedes, on the other hand, represents the crisis and defeat of the older generation, an unforgettable and contemporary example of an intellectual man who falls victim to human violence and the self-destructive madness of humankind.

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PART V MAKING RECEPTION: ANCIENT VIOLENCE AND LIVING HISTORY

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CHAPTER 15 FROM ANCIENT VIOLENCE TO MODERN CELEBRATION: COMPLEX RECEPTIONS OF ANCIENT CONQUEST WARS IN LAS GUERRAS C Á NTABRAS FESTIVAL Jonatan Pérez Mostazo

A new way to approach the past: historical festivals As David Lowenthal stated more than three decades ago, the past is a foreign country – a land that is not only remote but inaccessible, and where people often long to travel in search of different opinions, answers and experiences. Historical and archaeological research plays an important role in our approach to the past; however, there have always been alternative attempts to revisit past times, whether by following the nostalgic dream of returning to the past, or by recovering it.1 Although these attempts have existed since at least the nineteenth century, during the last few decades more vivid ways to approach the past have become increasingly popular. More and more people seek to meet the past through subjective, more sensorial experiences, in order to participate in the illusion of living through past historical times first-hand. This is why living history sites, reenactment groups or events, and even evolving 3D virtual reconstructions ‘have mushroomed’ during recent years.2 Vanessa Agnew coined the expression ‘history’s affective turn’ to explain the motivations behind this cultural phenomenon.3 Cornelius Holtorf has also noted the ubiquity of experiences and social practices in the present that evoke a past reality, coining the term ‘time travel’ to refer to them.4 These immersive strategies to approaching the past are usually seen as a useful resource by museums and archaeological sites. At times – stressing the educational vocation of these institutions – personal experience is valorized as an effective means of understanding past contexts, events and ways of life. At others, these kinds of activities are offered with the aim of reaching broader audiences and increasing visitor numbers, as they are considered to be more attractive and entertaining.5 A considerable number of history lovers have decided to engage in re-enactment groups to experience the past with their own bodies, both physically and psychologically, performing a trip back in time as well as one of self-growth, sociability, amusement and historical knowledge.6 The popular entertainment and tourist industries have also found a niche market in the wish to experience times past, which can be seen in the numerous themed spaces and theme parks inspired by historical backgrounds that have emerged in recent decades.7 Until rather recently, live history sites, re-enactment groups and leisure events evoking past times have attracted little attention from the academic world. However, they reach an 197

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increasingly broad audience and probably have a stronger impact on the historical knowledge of broad parts of society than academic research.8 Some of these historical experiences directly refer to classical Antiquity, and play an important role in the popular reception of classical times. This is why I believe classical reception studies should broaden its horizons to include these cultural expressions, as they have done in the past with other mass media and cultural forms, such as cinema, television, music, video games and advertising.9 In recent years, some contributions have been made concerning re-enactment groups inspired by the Roman army, the role of women in re-enactment groups inspired by ancient Rome, and the reception of Antiquity (especially ancient Greece) in theme parks.10 This chapter will focus on another manifestation of ‘history’s affective turn’ or ‘time travel’: historical festivals. These are festive events inspired by historical facts or the past that attempt to reproduce them through popular participation, with the main goal being the enjoyment of participants and visitors. These kinds of events have become popular

Figure 15.1 Las Guerras Cántabras festival poster, 2018. © AGUECAN. 198

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all across Europe during the last few decades, but this chapter will focus on a specific festival that is held every year in the northern Spanish region of Cantabria: Las Guerras Cántabras (Fig. 15.1).

Historical festivals in Spain Historical festivals have grown in popularity within Spain since the beginning of the new millennium. Some of these are rooted in more ancient traditions, such as the popular representations of Christ’s passion during Holy Week, or the commemoration of the medieval Christian conquests that are portrayed in the Moors and Christians parades. Others have only appeared during the last two decades, reanimating medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment or even early twentieth-century times by combining popular participation and period costumes with handicraft markets, music, food, theatre plays and educational workshops. The most relevant among these are part of a nationwide association, the Spanish Association of Historical Festivals and Re-enactment.11 Ancient times are also well represented in these historical festivals, which are usually held in locations where ancient Roman or pre-Roman heritage has a meaningful impact on local identity. In the northern part of Spain, these kinds of festivals usually recall the conquest wars, the struggles between local pre-Roman peoples and Roman imperial armies.12 The Guerras Cántabras festival is one of the most significant historical festivals of this kind. Each of these historical festivals evoking conquest wars must be understood in terms of its own local and regional context, but they do share certain common features. They are celebrated annually, some of them since almost two decades ago at the time of writing, with increasing rates of participation, visitors and popularity. Most of them began as popular initiatives, undertaken by local associations and clubs. Sometimes local institutions were the first promoters, but always with significant participation from civil society. Rapidly becoming a red-letter day in the celebration calendars of their home towns and regions, they received the support of local and regional public institutions, museums and heritage trusts. They have fostered the creation of new cultural and festive associations or re-enactment groups, as well as gaining official public recognition, and are considered ‘Festivals of Touristic Interest’ on a regional or national scale. In the case of Las Guerras Cántabras festival, it was recently designated a Festival of International Touristic Interest by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, the only one of its kind in the Autonomous Region of Cantabria.13 Despite their rapid evolution, their main goals continue to be entertainment, popular participation and community development, even if they usually claim certain educational purposes, and always refer to local or regional identity issues. Although the term ‘historical re-enactment’ is sometimes used to refer to these events,14 there are important differences that distinguish historical festivals from actual historical re-enactments. While ‘authenticity’ and historical accuracy of material culture and behaviour are one of the main concerns among historical re-enactment groups and their participants, this is not the case with historical festivals, which are content to merely look 199

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plausible using the means that average people can afford. Historical re-enactment usually aims to generate new knowledge about the past through personal experience, whereas historical festivals generate a collective historical fantasy for celebration, fun and joy in the community.15 However, actual re-enactment is also represented at most of these historical festivals, as re-enactment groups are invited to carry out workshops and performances. At other times, the organizing associations and institutions look for official consultants – historians or archaeologists – in order to design historical accuracy guidelines or answer questions from participants and performers about clothing or material culture. Despite the increasing presence of historical festivals inspired by ancient conquest wars in the Spanish media (the press, television and the internet), academia and classical reception studies have paid little attention to the phenomenon. Silvia Alfayé aptly interprets these historical festivals as examples of the new wave of affective approaches to an imagined Celtic past, pretexts for popular celebrations and manifestations of lowintensity identities.16 In a paper analysing re-enactment groups that focuses on the Roman army, Jordi Cortadella mentions these events, noting the difference between them and actual re-enactment, but also highlights their potential to develop new spaces and occasions for re-enactment groups and events.17 In 2013, Pablo Alonso González and David González Álvarez made an interesting research contribution on three of these historical festivals located in northern Spain: Las Guerras Cántabras (Cantabria), Astures y Romanos (Castile and León), and Festival Astur-Romano de la Carisa (Asturias).18 This last study clearly showed the stereotypical representations of Roman and indigenous realities and material cultures, noting the importance of regional identities as a motivation for the festivals, as well as analysing the elaboration and transmission of historical discourses within these events. However, some of the interpretations concerning the use and appropriation of classical authors may gain nuance if we consider some of the ideas proposed by classical reception studies.19 According to Alonso González and González Álvarez, the words of classical authors are uncritically adopted within the discourses elaborated and transmitted during the festivals, thus ignoring the interpretations of modern historiography and archaeology. At the same time, the vagueness and lack of precision of those testimonies allow biased uses and manipulations.20 This case study attempts to show a more complex reception of Antiquity in the historical discourses produced and issued within these historical festivals. As will be shown, these ‘time travel’ events are the result of an intricate and diverse web of references that combine classical texts, traditional or modern historiography and contemporary historical assumptions into a present determined by an affective and enjoyable approach to the ancient past and a celebration of local identities.

Cantabria and Antiquity Although historical festivals are part of a global trend, some local factors will help to understand them. This is also the case with Las Guerras Cántabras, which is closely related to the political appropriation of ancient pre-Roman peoples in the northern 200

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region of Spain. Ancient Cantabrians are one of several groups the Romans identified upon arrival to the northern lands of the Iberian Peninsula, before going on to conquer and incorporate them into the Roman Empire after several campaigns between 29 and 19 bc , conventionally known as the Cantabrian Wars. The territory they inhabited is named ‘Cantabria’ in literary and epigraphic text, a term that was recovered centuries later to designate a region within the boundaries of the ancient territory. There was thus no continuity in the use of this term. Starting from the Middle Ages and continuing until the eighteenth century, this part of the Iberian Peninsula was known as La Montaña or Asturias de Santillana and did not have a unified institutional expression. In fact, during the modern era, Cantabria was the name usually given to the current Basque Country, located further east. In 1768, the clergyman Enrique Flórez showed that there was a correspondence between ancient Cantabria and La Montaña. As a result, the ancient term started to be used by local institutions; a ‘province of Cantabria’ was even formed between 1778 and 1801.21 But throughout Spanish contemporary history, since the establishment of provinces in 1833, the official name of the territory was Provincia de Santander within the wider region of Castilla. Cantabria was only established as its official name with the restoration of democracy and the publishing of the Autonomy Statute in 1981, which is the main law within the region.22 With the death of dictator Francisco Franco (1975) and the transition to democracy in Spain, a powerful movement for autonomy began in Cantabria. A clear example of this can be seen in the founding manifest of ADIC, an association created in 1976 to lobby for the interests of the province. The main goal of this association, aside from economic or institutional issues, was defined as ‘the promotion, defence and encouragement of the regional personality and consciousness, of the cultural and historical distinctive features and of the rest Cantabria’s interests’.23 Consequently, a certain vision of the past was at the core of Cantabrian regionalism and pro-autonomy movements from their very beginning. In fact, the Autonomy Statute, finally enacted in 1981, called Cantabria a ‘perfectly defined historical community within Spain’.24 Accordingly, during the decades since then, the commemoration of ancient Cantabrians has been one of the core elements of the historical personality claimed by regional identity, which has also had an impact on official iconography. As an example, the emblem of the regional government, approved in 1984, contains the image of a gigantic stele that dates from the Iron Age, an archaeological remain that has also been widely used in political propaganda, posters, stickers, advertising and touristic merchandising. During the last few years, there has been strong debate over the ‘labarus’, a flag inspired by these gigantic stelae, which is named after an old historiographical myth related to the ancient Cantabrians and their war banners (Fig. 15.2). The polemic flag, widely used in popular culture, has recently been accepted as a symbol of Cantabria by the regional parliament, although not as the official flag. The words used in its defence clearly show the essentialism of some aspects of public opinion: ‘Thousands of years ago a banner, perhaps iconographically different, but iconically the same, served to identify a people proud of their past, present and future. Nowadays, together with the Cantabrian flag, the labarus also defines that people.’25 201

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Figure 15.2 Gigantic stele of Barros, M.V. Gómez CC BY 2.5, and modern Cantabrian labarus, image copyright Wikimedia Commons.

Regional culture and historiography have also produced (widely shared) images of the ancient inhabitants of Cantabria, transforming them into the imaginary ancestors of current Cantabrians. The most popular of these representations of the ancient past depicts heroic, warlike highlanders bravely opposing the powerful Roman army. This is also the case with the book published by Adolf Schulten in 1943, which focused on Cantabrians and Asturians and their wars against Rome,26 as well as the history book Los cántabros, published in 1966 by Joaquín González Echegaray and reprinted several times in 1986, 1993 and 2004.27 The author was without doubt one of the most important figures in regional historiography, ethnography and archaeology throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and was involved in the main cultural initiatives and institutions of the region. He was also publicly engaged with the autonomist movement, being himself one of the founders of ADIC. Since the 1980s, books, conferences and expositions about ancient Cantabrians and the Cantabrian Wars have been fairly common. In recent years, several websites and blogs devoted to ancient Cantabria have also appeared, and the local press have even shown an interest in some of the more relevant historiographical controversies.28 Protohistorical times and peoples have also inspired the visual and performing arts, for example public statues, posters, comic books and even a film screened in 1980.29 It is within this cultural framework that we must understand Las Guerras Cántabras festival.

Las Guerras Cántabras Festival: war as the main topic Las Guerras Cántabras (The Cantabrian Wars) has been held every year since 2001 in the town of Los Corrales de Buelna (Cantabria).30 It is organized by a non-profit cultural association, AGUECAN, and receives support from both private and public institutions. Several local groups also take part in the festival. There are thirteen Cantabrian tribes and thirteen Roman groups, some of whom are legionaries, while others are civilians. 202

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Each of them has between thirty and ninety members, and it is estimated that more than 2,000 people were directly involved in the event in 2018, in a town of only 11,000 inhabitants. During the same year, there were an estimated 20,000 visitors to the event.31 The most significant activities take place during the last two weekends of August, with a few cultural activities held on weekdays. There are two main areas: one of them, the ‘fest camp’, where Cantabrian and Roman groups build their hut or barracks and participants and visitors can eat, drink and enjoy the nightlife; the other is the Circus Maximus, where theatre plays are performed. There is also a street market between both areas, as well as a large parade that goes through the town on the final Sunday. Our analysis will focus on the theatre plays performed by amateur actresses and actors in the Circo Máximo during weekend nights. The videos recorded during the years 2014 and 2015, published on the internet, have been the raw material for our analysis, as well as a personal visit to the event in 2016.32 As with many of these historical festivals, ancient war is the main topic, as is clear from the name Las Guerras Cántabras, which evokes the conquest campaigns held between 29 and 19 bc . Consequently, war also plays a principal role in the theatre plays that we analyse here. The remainder of the plays are related to the festival’s own development – for example, opening and closing ceremonies. They also represent wouldbe ancient Cantabrian customs and rituals such as weddings, burials and initiation rites, as well as scenes from everyday Roman life, populated by patricians, gladiators, tradesmen and slaves. This prominence of war in relation to ancient Cantabria is primarily determined by classical sources. Most of the existing ancient written sources mention Cantabria or Cantabrians in the context of war, predominantly concerning the Cantabrian Wars. In addition, most of the information concerning Cantabrians – the writings of Florus, Cassius Dio and Orosius – is focused on the conquest campaigns that took place under the government of Augustus. Some of the best known and most widely read authors from the list, such as Horace, Strabo and Suetonius, also present the Cantabrians as being at war against the Romans.33 The remaining references are mostly related to geographical issues, and thus not so useful for the construction of narratives; ethnographic data are the least frequent ones.34 This vision of an ancient indigenous community closely related to a conquest war is not an exception – there are certain factors that can explain this, both for Cantabrians and other barbarian peoples. First, there is the Romanocentric and elitist scope of Roman historiography from the early annalistic tradition onwards, as Rome and its elites attracted the most attention from Roman historians. They usually recorded the public affairs of the Roman aristocracy, often while leading wars against foreign enemies, portraying them as moral examples, principals in the glorious deeds that led to the Roman imperial expansion. Other peoples and lands, meanwhile, were usually only mentioned if they intersected with Roman history, whether as enemies or allies, being conquered or attacking the boundaries of the Empire.35 For the peoples who were in contact with Rome a long time before the conquest, the information that has been transmitted is broader and more nuanced. But in the case of the Cantabrians (and other 203

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communities), first contact and war began almost simultaneously, which is why they only appear in the sources as rebellious and warlike peoples.36 Florus, Orosius and Cassius Dio are no exception to this rule. Florus wished to show the greatness of the Roman Empire, and to do so he summarized the wars that the Romans carried out.37 Cassius Dio, meanwhile, follows the annalistic tradition, principally describing the deeds carried out by Roman elites: political and urban affairs in the city of Rome and military campaigns on the borders of the Empire. The Cantabrian Wars are among the latter.38 The second reason is that ancient rhetorical ideas had a great influence on the prominence of war in ancient historiography. In fact, Greeks and Romans did not consider historiography to be a scientific or philosophical matter, but rather a literary one. Accordingly, the means of narrating the facts was as important as the facts themselves, and ancient historians remained attached to rhetorical conventions when composing their works. At the same time, these historiographical texts usually offer paradigmatic characters and deeds, moral and political or militaristic exempla that was often intended to be used as raw material in scholastic rhetorical composition or public oratory.39 In the case of the information surrounding the Cantabrian Wars, both Florus’ and Orosius’ works are strongly rhetorical in nature. According to ancient rhetorical conventions, emotional disturbance was an effective means of convincing a listener or reader. This may explain why dramatic war scenes are so frequent within the works of both authors. Florus often describes cruel scenes, in which iron, fire and acts of widespread annihilation are common. Orosius wished to prove that the Christian era was better than those that came before, which were full of war, suffering, pain and natural disasters. Only in the time of the coming of Christ did God wish Augustus to build a universal peace to receive his son. Conquest episodes against the Cantabrians can thus be understood as part of this pathetic view of war within both authors’ work.40 The third reason is that ancient classical sources often reflect a certain image of the barbarians that helped Greeks and Romans to define themselves. At times these images were entirely opposed to their civilized way of life, but at others, they were a source of admiration.41 Strabo’s text is an example of this – when the geographer describes the inhabitants of Iberia, there is a passage where he focuses on the most curious and surprising information, probably wishing to characterize these peoples as savage, while at the same time pandering to the tastes of his contemporary readers for extraordinary and bizarre facts.42 It is at this moment that he presents some of the episodes relating to the Cantabrians and their behaviour during the war, which he considers both courageous and savage. He mentions people singing while they are crucified, and the collective suicide of women and children, among other examples of braveness and ferocity. In a previous passage, the Greek geographer also provides other ethnographical descriptions about the northern highlanders of Iberia, including Cantabrians.43 However, they do not play a central part in the plays that take place during Las Guerras Cántabras festival, which prefer to represent would-be customs and rituals inspired by the popular image of ancient Celts.44 Traditional and modern historiography, frequently linked to a philological approach to the past, has to a certain extent inherited some of the aspects I have described. 204

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Accordingly, Cantabrians continue to be linked to their brave opposition to Rome and a warlike character in traditional historiographical narrations. During the nineteenth century, European national historiographies usually encountered their first glorious deeds in the wars opposing Rome, the first expressions of a defence of national identity against an external menace. Spanish national historiography also found plenty of these fights, conflicts and conquest campaigns within classical texts and their previous historiography, conveniently rereading them as examples of the courage and patriotism of the so-called ancient Spaniards.45 The Cantabrian Wars were not merely one of these brave deeds, they were also the last of them. Consequently, the makers of national Spanish history (such as Modesto Lafuente, the leading Spanish historian throughout most of the century) viewed Cantabrians as the last defenders of Spanish independence, the final representatives of ‘two centuries of heroic and constant war’.46 During the twentieth century, the conquest wars held between 29 and 19 bc continued to have an important presence within academic historiography. The German historian Adolf Schulten dedicated an important section of his book about ancient Cantabrians and Asturians to analysing the events, scenarios and participants of that conflict, which he considered ‘one of the many independence wars undertaken by small groups of people to defend their freedom against an overbearing nation who attacked them with no other reason than the will to put them under their power’.47 Joaquín González Echegaray also devoted an important part of his academic work to studying this conquest war. In Los cántabros he calls it ‘The Great War’, the principal deed of a people characterized by ‘their essentially warlike character, their foolish resistance to Roman domination and their deep-rooted love for independence’.48 Since the 1980s, academia has expanded its interest in ancient Cantabrian past, favouring more ethnographical, sociological or linguistic issues through the analysis of new sources, for example epigraphic and archaeological.49 However, nowadays the Cantabrian Wars continue to be an important topic for academic research, and a rather significant part of archaeological research is devoted to defining the episodes, strategies and places of the conflict.50 Consequently, popular imagination and its expressions, whether influenced by classical sources or by traditional and modern historiography, continue to consider the Cantabrian Wars as the defining event in Cantabria’s ancient past.

Episodes and characters During Las Guerras Cántabras festival, several episodes from the Cantabrian Wars are performed, structured around a number of principal characters. For this reason, a challenge is present: to take the classical historiographical, ethnographical or rhetorical sources, as well as the narratives and descriptions contained in history books, and adapt them to an entirely different literary genre, that of theatre. In fact, none of the ancient testimonies provides a coherent and complete vision of the war. Modern historiography may show us a more logical and chronological sequence, but none of these is suitable for performance and thus must be adapted in an original way. 205

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One example of this sort of adaptation is related to the opening and closing of the Gates of Janus. In ancient times, this temple remained open while Rome was involved in any war, while its gates were closed when no Roman army was fighting. We know that Augustus used this act for propaganda purposes – the first time he closed the Gates was to proclaim peace after the victory of Actium in 29 bc . He then opened them when departing to Hispania to lead the war against the Cantabrians and Asturians, and closed them one more time when he considered that war to be over, in 25 bc . There was a third closure, but the date is unclear.51 Orosius offers a new meaning for the closure of the Gates, stating that it announces the universal peace that preceded Christ’s birth. In fact, he mentions the Gates of Janus at the beginning and the end of his narration of the conquest campaign against the Cantabrians and Asturians.52 In the context of the festival performances, the event has taken on a new meaning, as it marks the beginning and end of two different wars and two different weekends. This is why the narrator mentions the opening and closing of the Gates during the plays, at the beginning and the end of the first and last war scene of each weekend. But there are also two specific acts as part of the opening and closing ceremonies, performed in a reconstructed Janus temple located between the Roman and Cantabrian camps, where the gates are actually opened and closed. The general schedule of the plays, across two weekends, is also well adapted to the conventional organization of war episodes against the Cantabrians in modern historiography. The Cantabrian Wars are generally divided into three stages or time periods: the war of prolegomena between 29 and 27 bc ; the main campaigns in 26 and 25 bc ; and the final stages from 24 to 19 bc .53 However, two moments garner the most attention: ‘The First War’ or ‘Augustus’ War’ (26–25 bc ) and ‘The Second War’ or ‘Agrippa’s War’ (19 bc ).54 Las Guerras Cántabras devotes each of the two weekends to performing one of these two different moments from the conquest. The other episodes are sometimes mentioned by the narrator or by the characters during the plays, but they are not part of the performance, and are generally ignored. On the first weekend, named the First War in festival programmes, performances start with Augustus’ arrival at Segisama, near Cantabria, and finish with his departure for Tarraco. Accordingly, Augustus’ presence is a key point in this so-called First War. In the case of ancient sources, the participation of Augustus determined the transmission of the information surrounding the Cantabrian Wars. Florus and Orosius begin their narrations with the arrival of the emperor, ignoring the previous campaigns mentioned by Cassius Dio. In addition, although other generals are mentioned, the princeps is the main subject of the war deeds in both classical texts.55 We also know that Augustus wrote an autobiography that finished with the Cantabrian Wars.56 In fact, certain information was only transmitted as part of Augustus’ biographical anecdotes. This is the case with Suetonius’ references to Cantabria, wisely used in the Las Guerras Cántabras plays to illustrate Augustus’ life and personality.57 Therefore, it may be concluded that Augustus’ presence was a key fact in ancient testimonies, and if he had not led the campaign of 26 bc with a clearly propagandistic purpose, the information available about these struggles would likely have been much more concise.58 This fact also determines the prominence of the princeps during the first weekend of the festival. 206

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The Cantabrian character who opposes Augustus is Corocotta, a historiographically problematic figure. Cassius Dio mentions an Iberian bandit named Corocata. Augustus was upset by his robberies and decided to offer a reward for his imprisonment; Corocata himself then showed up before Augustus, and the princeps gave him the money. Cassius Dio tells this story to demonstrate Augustus’ virtue.59 It was the German historian Adolf Schulten who made Corocotta a Cantabrian war leader, an indigenous chief treated as a bandit by the Romans, but perhaps as important as other local commanders like Viriatus in Lusitania, Vercingetorix in Gallia, Arminius in Germania, Bato in Illyricum and Decebalus in Dacia.60 This image of Corocotta as a Cantabrian leader rapidly spread though the popular imagination, and his appearance before Augustus is one of the major acts of the festival since its first staging. On this occasion, Corocotta is a brave Cantabrian leader who risks his life to claim the reward in order to buy wheat for his people; the war is about to start, and he knows hard times are coming (Fig. 15.3). There is an interesting element in the encounter between these two leaders during the plays: the debate surrounding the reasons for the war. Augustus states that the Cantabrian attacks on their neighbours were unacceptable to Rome. Almost every classical author writing on the Cantabrian wars speaks of the looting of the Cantabrians as the main trigger for the war.61 This may be a reality, or it may be a propagandistic idea officially promoted by Augustus to justify the attack according to Roman bellum iustum doctrine. Within the play, Corocotta answers that this comment may work in Rome, but not in Cantabria, where they knew that the war was a result of the emperor’s personal interest.

Figure 15.3 Corocotta before Augustus ©AGUECAN. 207

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After the civil wars, he wanted to lead an external war against a barbaric people to promote his image and compare himself to other important men of Roman history, such as Caesar. This answer is not based on any classical text referring to the Cantabrian Wars, but is rather a modern historiographical hypothesis.62 On Saturday night, the main fight scene between the Romans and the Cantabrians is performed. Classical texts mention several warlike episodes, which modern research places in the context of Augustus’ campaigns in 26 bc . Florus and Orosius both refer to a battle beneath the walls of Bergida/Attica, the flight of the Cantabrians to Vindius/ Vinnius Mountain, and the siege and capture of a fortified place named Aracelium/ Racilium.63 Modern historiography agrees that Caius Antistius Vetus, who was legatus Augusti propraetore in Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis province from 27 to 24 bc , accompanied Augustus in these moments.64 The Las Guerras Cántabras plays do not refer to any of the episodes described in the ancient texts, although the names of those places are sometimes mentioned. There is no desire to be faithful to classical sources, but rather to show exciting and spectacular scenes. The performance is varied every year in order to demonstrate different war strategies, such as the fights between cavalry and infantry, ambushes, duels, sieges and open field battles. Corocotta leads the Cantabrians, while Caius Antistius Vetus takes the place of Augustus to command the Roman troops (Fig. 15.4). On Sunday, the end of the war is represented by Augustus’ departure to Tarraco and the delegation of authority to Antistius – the last act of the so-called First War.

Figure 15.4 Caius Antistius Vetus leading Roman troops ©AGUECAN.

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The Second War is performed during the second weekend. This recalls Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa’s campaign in Cantabria in 19 bc . Only one classical author refers to this episode: Cassius Dio. He relates how Cantabrian slaves killed their owner and escaped to Cantabria to start a new rebellion. Agrippa was chosen to command this new war, and despite the great difficulties he faced from his own army and his enemies, he eventually succeeded. Even so, he refused to celebrate the triumph in Rome. According to Cassius Dio, other commanders had asked for triumphs in relation to much easier tasks. On the contrary, Agrippa is shown as a model of good behaviour under a monarchic regime, never looking out for his own interests and promotion, only the greatness of Rome and his emperor. His deeds during the Cantabrian war were a clear example of this.65 Agrippa is thus the principal Roman character during the second weekend of the festival, as he is during the passage of Cassius Dio. In fact, he is also an important character within the local imagination, as a statue in his honour stands at a roundabout near the festival camp. The erection of the monument in 2007 was justified by the importance of his character to the region’s history. However, several people complained in the local press about the honour conferred to an enemy of the Cantabrian people. In opposition to Agrippa there is an invented character, Badón, leader of the rebel slaves, who was introduced in 2012 as part of a revamp of the theatre plays. This stage of the war is portrayed as one of extermination by some modern historians, and the definitive war against the Cantabrian people. Terms like ‘carnage’ and ‘genocide’ were even used in the local press to complain about the erection of Agrippa’s statue.66 It is true that, in the words of Cassius Dio, Agrippa ‘destroyed nearly all of the enemies who were of military age, deprived the rest of their arms, and forced them to come down from their fortresses and live on the plains’,67 which shows the brutality of the war. However, other testimonies also speak of the drastic measures and situations during previous stages of the war. According to Cassius Dio, Lucius Aelius Lamia cut off the hands of every prisoner, and Orosius mentions that almost all of the Cantabrians who were besieged in Vindius Mountain starved to death.68 Both of these authors, as well as Florus, appear to refer to the same scene of collective suicide of the Cantabrians as taking place on the Medulius Mountain while Caius Furnius led the Roman troops, probably in 22 bc .69 Regional historiography has usually stressed how difficult this last campaign was. Some modern historians have set the dramatic scenes described by Strabo within this time period, where the Cantabrians sing while they die crucified and women and children commit suicide and kill their relatives.70 Strabo give no clue as to the contextualization of those scenes, other than to mention that they occurred during the Cantabrian Wars.71 They may be more likely to fit within the episode of the Medulius Mountain collective suicide than in Agrippa’s campaign, as Cassius Dio offers no mention of any suicidal episode. Nevertheless, regional historiography receives a double effect from this association. First, it draws a dramatic and spectacular end for the ‘Great War’. Second, it suggests annihilation as the only means of avoiding further Cantabrian rebellion. According to González Echegaray, prior to the final campaign of 19 bc , ‘the fierce spirit of that people remained untamed yet, and it was necessary to destroy it as the only way if peace was wanted’.72 Perhaps looking for an epic scene of sacrifice for the 209

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community, or perhaps wishing to enact a spectacular ending, the Las Guerras Cántabras war-plays also end with the dramatic scene of crucified prisoners singing, and the women, the elderly and children committing suicide. However, a different outcome of the war is proposed for the would-be unbeaten Cantabrians. According to all classical sources, the Cantabrians were defeated without a doubt. However, in the story performed during the festival, a group of rebel slaves survives. They appear during the last moments of the play, finding all their people dead, including their leader Badón. Nevertheless, they do not lose hope, and decide to escape to the Vindius mountains to continue fighting. Their last words are: ‘Everybody should know. We are Cantabrians. And Cantabrians are still alive, forever alive. [. . .] Forever free. Freedom!’ A passionate message from ancient ancestors to their postmodern descendants.

Conclusions Academia should not underestimate the potential of historical festivals and other ‘time travel’ events as a powerful context for the creation and diffusion of historical discourses through more innovative and meaningful media. Las Guerras Cántabras shows the complex interactions that occur within these events. On the one hand, it would appear to be a local manifestation of a global trend, one related to the affective turn of new approaches to the past; however, it is also a new means of celebrating and socializing a regional identity that aims to root itself in a remote past, dating back to Antiquity. Referring to the reception and use of classical texts for the construction of historical narratives, the examples given in this text show that these modern, popular discourses relate to ancient testimonies in a complex and dialogic way. We can no longer state that classical literary sources are adopted uncritically, that they are entirely manipulated, or that historiography plays no role in these collective representations of the past. Classical authors continue to determine the narratives that are constructed around the ancient Cantabrians. They are the source of not only data, names and places, but also seek to impose their agendas discreetly, highlighting the relevant topics, moments and characters. As for modern historiography, it is the necessary lens through which classical authors are read and interpreted. Although the most critical and up-to-date historiography may be ignored, some works produced by academia during the twentieth century appear to be an essential step in the chain of reception. These preliminary conclusions should not lessen any potential analysis of these kinds of experiences and social practices, which evoke Antiquity in a popular, collective and festive way. Instead, they may serve as a trigger for new questions and discussions. The absence (or minimal influence) of updated historical and archaeological research on the historical narratives constructed and issued within Las Guerras Cántabras highlights the distance and the lack of communication that still exists between popular cultural phenomena and current scholarship. In the case of the Cantabrians, the historiography of the twentieth century created and propped up certain images of the past, which still serve as a reference for the majority of public opinion. The critical 210

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revision of these historical narratives undertaken in recent decades by academia has not reached the broader public who participate and feel connected to the ancient history of their supposed ancestors. At the same time, the minimal attention that scholars have paid to historical festivals – as complex ways to receive, understand and experience the ancient past – has demonstrated the other perspective. The relevance of classical texts to the shaping of the ancient Cantabrians (as well as their opposition to Roman armies) in Las Guerras Cántabras also opens up new debates and discussions. As we have seen, the ancient Cantabrians who fought the Romans are widely seen as the first representatives of a would-be 2,000-year-old community, and thus play an important role in regional identity. Through Las Guerras Cántabras, this regional identity has developed a new way to be expressed, socialized and experienced, allowing a more affective approach to the ancient past through personal and collective experiences, generating closer links to the history of their alleged ancestors in the process. As a consequence, there is still much to say about the influence that ancient literary conventions, ethnography or ideologies have on the identity discourses of current Cantabrians, as well as certain other modern groups. Finally, from a more general perspective, the principal role of war and violence in these diverse ‘time travel’ experiences and social practices leads us to a relevant topic, which is discussed throughout this book: to what point do representations of war and violence continue to play a significant role in our current understanding of our past, our leisure time and our collective identities? Even if they do evoke a remote past – partly received though ancient texts and material remains, partly mediatized by historiography – historical festivals are nonetheless a collective and popular expression of our more up-to-date present.

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CHAPTER 16 DRAWING RECEPTION Maria G. Castello and Fabio Ruotolo

This article is the product of a conversation between two very different professional figures on the subject of graphic art, and describes the experience of a practitioner of reception with a background in classical studies. Maria G. Castello is researcher in Roman History at the University of Turin; Fabio Ruotolo is a renowned Italian cartoonist and graphic artist with a classical background: he studied classical archaeology in the same university. The occasion for the meeting was the fifth Imagines Conference The Fear and the Fury: Ancient Violence in Modern Imagination, held in Turin in 2016:1 Maria G. Castello commissioned Fabio Ruotolo to design the official poster of the conference (Fig. 16.1). Although occasionally ancient elements do appear in his works, before now Ruotolo had never drawn something that had to do specifically with the ancient world and its reception: when he created the image used for the poster he did not have a theoretical reflection on the subject behind him, his relationship with Antiquity was more a kind of subconscious reminiscence. He was asked to create in complete freedom an image that had to do with violence and which linked the ancient world with the modern one: the author proposed the figure of two soldiers – an ancient and a contemporary one – looking at each other through a mirror. In view of a well-established tradition of reception studies – of which the chapters of this volume are also an expression – and of works by artists who have long reflected on how to reread and represent the past, this conversation expresses not only Ruotolo’s relationship with classical heritage, but also how he came to create his work. It is therefore the reflection of an artist who recounts his first encounter with the elaboration of a work of reception of the ancient world. From the dialogue emerge, albeit obviously in an embryonic way, many of those elements that theoretical studies on reception have deepened: the persistence of the stereotype in the representation of the past, the affective turn, the inevitable presence of the artist’s cultural background. It is therefore a sort of concrete confirmation narrated first-hand by the voice of the artist who created the work. To give space to both members of the team – the designer and the academic – we decided to present the content in the form of an interview; of course, both contributors should be considered authors. MGC Do you still ‘frequent’ the classics now that you’ve finished your classical studies? How is your relationship with your classical education? FR I still love to visit museums and archaeological sites (I visited the necropolis of Populonia very recently, for instance) and am still very interested in ancient history. The 213

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Figure 16.1 Fabio Ruotolo, Lo specchio del tempo [The Mirror of Time] © Fabio Ruotolo. passion for Antiquity is still alive, even if I have chosen a completely different job, away from the academic world. MGC In general, do you think that there is a link between classics and comics in Italy? I’m thinking not only of comics that are entirely dedicated to Antiquity or set in Antiquity like the famous French or Franco-Belgian comics (Asterix, Alix l’intrépide, Murena), or 214

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those that elaborate an episode of ancient history like Frank Miller’s 300, but also of comics or graphic novels from other subjects that include more or less explicit references to Antiquity. FR It very much depends on the subject. It happens, sometimes even without thinking, that your classical education surfaces in the details, for instance in drawing architecture . . . MGC You told me, for instance, that in Jack e il fagiolo magico you added some architectonical elements . . . FR Yes. In this case these elements are not even really related to the plot, because the story is set in England, so they are apparently out of context. There is a scene in which you can see the crepidoma of a classical temple in the background, with the base of a Doric column. MGC Did you draw it because it was functional to the story, or is it a purely decorative element? FR It’s a sort of reminiscence, a kind of ‘subconscious presence’. I would say that there are also technical reasons for using some elements instead of others. When you draw, you should always use all your knowledge: my teacher always told me, as you are familiar with ancient architecture or vases or classical statues, you should use this ability and make it your special sign. MGC You are familiar with the archaeological drawing style. When you add these elements, do you pay attention to the details? How accurate are these ancient elements? Or do you just draw ‘at a glance’? FR Generally I try to make an accurate reproduction. I’m now working on a new project, a comic set in the American West, and in one of the first scenes there is the office of a designer, which I am planning to draw as a sort of neoclassical room full of elements reminiscent of Graeco-Roman antiquities, a mix of different classicisms with Greek statues and marble busts. MGC Have you been inspired by the American Classicism from around the 1800s? FR Yes. The Founding Fathers of the American Republic were imbued with classical culture. You can see some examples of this classical American architecture in the Capitol building, or the somewhat later Library of Congress. MGC Have you researched this architecture yourself? FR Yes. When I have the idea for an object or an architectonic piece, I research on the internet looking for examples and inspiring details. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I reproduce a specific work of art in all its detail. I can choose to mix or combine more, for example. 215

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MGC

How important are these historical references?

FR They are very important. Today, visual arts (especially cinema and comics) pay more attention to the representation of historical settings. The possibility of using the internet for research has obviously revolutionized the access people have to these images and the documentation, but it has also radically changed the expectations of the public. In the past you had to go to the library to research, or work from memory. To be accurate meant spending hours and hours just to be able to learn what to draw. Today, with just one click you have all images you want! On the other hand, the audience is also better informed. MGC You may be right, even if it sounds a little surprising. The audience is not necessarily more cultivated, as comics are aimed at a very mixed public (they always have been); however, a superficial knowledge of classical Antiquity is widespread, at least in Italy, because classical culture still plays an important role in primary and low secondary school education. And everybody who has the curiosity to check the accuracy of the details in a comic or in a movie can do so easily on the internet. In terms of cinema, however, one has the feeling that historical precision is not the most important thing. It seems more important to recreate an atmosphere, to show something evocative which the public can associate with Greek or Roman civilizations, regardless of how correct the reconstruction is according to academic standards . . . FR Yes, in a certain way this is also true for comics. But you must maintain a certain level of realism to be credible. The materials, the dresses, must be the right ones. You cannot take a Greek statue and dress it in tails or jeans, unless of course your intention is to create a surrealistic piece of art. But if you want a female Greek statue to be taken as a female Greek statue, it needs to wear something reminiscent of a peplos and to look like it’s made of marble. You can of course combine a Hellenistic head with a classical body, as these are details only experts will notice. Or you can take the hair from one Roman statue and the position of the arms or legs from another. You can combine more than one inspiration; usually, the final statue I draw does not exist, but the individual elements may very well be accurate reproductions of existing antiquities. The mixture that I produce is nonetheless a credible one, because in the collective imagination it recalls a Greek (or a Roman) statue. MGC Let’s turn to ancient violence and the modern world. Where did you find your inspiration for the poster you created for the Imagines conference (Fig. 16.1)? FR In the beginning, I didn’t have a very clear idea of how to create this connection between the present and the past . . . MGC You prepared many sketches, some of which are very cinematographic. FR My original idea was to draw actors on a cinematographic set, dressed as soldiers. I was thinking of something funny, humorous, but it didn’t work so well. In the end I 216

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decided on a Greek soldier who looks in a mirror to see an American soldier. The main idea behind the image is that it doesn’t matter if the wars are modern or ancient: war is always war. So, from a certain perspective, modern wars mirror the ancient ones. I wanted to suggest the idea that in an armed conflict, nothing ever really changes because the reasons and the consequences of wars are always the same. MGC How did you draw the soldiers? The modern soldier seems to me a little stereotyped . . . FR Yes, of course he is. If you work with graphic arts, stereotypes are very important. We need these to give an iconographic reference to the public. Readers need to recognize the image, which has to speak to everybody, not only to the experts . . . so it needs to conform (at least partially) to the image of the soldier that the average reader has in his mind. This goes for modern as well as ancient subjects. MGC This is very interesting. In the academic world, it is normal to criticize cinematic Antiquity (and generally the reproduction of antiquity in mass media) for its lack of precision and its use of stereotypes . . . FR Well, the use of stereotypes doesn’t necessary mean that you cannot be accurate in the reproduction of the details, although attention to the details is, of course, also a question of the drawing style you use. But the general image you draw must reflect some mental picture in order to speak directly to the public. Of course an entirely invented image, without any plausibility, would also not be credible; this is especially true today, because everybody can check everything in two minutes on the internet. In this frame there is room for your creativity and invention as well as for historical accuracy – in the attention to the details. I believe that if you want to reproduce a historical figure or set your story in a historical period, you must do the research. It doesn’t matter how fictional your story will be. MGC So, stereotypes are important because they allow the reader to understand immediately. FR Yes. This is very important, because graphic artists communicate through images. It would not work if the reader had to think about the meaning and function of every image. The characters would lose credibility if you first had to discuss who they are, before reading what they say. MGC What about anachronisms? I noticed, for instance, that the typology of the modern soldier you drew is an American soldier with older equipment. It seems like he’s coming out of Platoon . . . FR Indeed, I was inspired by the American soldiers of that time. When I was younger I was fascinated by the conflict in Vietnam. I researched quite a lot about it; I knew everything about the weapons and the military uniform. For my sketch I modernized the soldier a bit – the helmet and the backpack, for instance, are partially inspired by more 217

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recent uniforms, like those from the Gulf War. The gun is the product of many different sources of inspiration. It is assembled with parts from various carbines, so it’s taken from more than one gun. Altogether it’s an imagined weapon, and even though it’s constructed with parts from real guns, all existing and all modern, it does not reproduce a specific, existing gun. For me, reality is just a source of inspiration, but realism is not my aim. Rather, when you work with cartoons, you aim for your images to reach the pictures in the collective imagination, which can stir the emotions of your public. You wish to allude to something that can evoke certain particular images, not to copy reality. As a cartoonist or a graphic designer, you are more interested in plausibility than in reality. MGC This is very interesting. Do you think that for our generation, the prototype of a soldier is the American soldier from the Vietnam war? The soldier from Platoon, rather than the soldier of Kathryn Bigelow? FR I suppose so. I wanted to reproduce the ‘general idea’ of the American soldier. My aim was to compare, like in a mirror, two stereotypes: the ancient soldier and the modern soldier. I think the American soldier is ‘the soldier’ par excellence in the common imagination, and in my mind the American soldier is still the one who fought in Vietnam. I think, at least for people of my generation, the images of the Vietnam war have a kind of stereotyped quality. For years and years they have been everywhere, in the news, in the public debate, in the films and books on this and on other wars. MGC For the ancient soldier, your choice is less obvious . . . why did you choose the Greek soldier and not the Roman? I would have thought the stereotype of the ancient soldier was closer to the Roman than to the Greek one. . .? FR Yes, you are right, I chose a Greek soldier. The armour, the sword and the helmet (inspired by the Corinthian type) in particular are more reminiscent of a Greek hoplite than a Roman legionnaire. MGC The helmet appears to be the famous helmet of Pericles . . . again a stereotype! But why a Greek and not a Roman, as would seem to be more obvious? Is this the result of your personal archaeological background, your greater familiarity with the Greek than with the Roman world? FR Yes, most likely. I didn’t realize this. But you are right, when we think of a typical ancient warrior, the first image you form in your mind is more a Roman soldier, or at least a mix, like those you so often see in peplum films. But I suppose films like 300 have changed the image of the ancient warrior in the collective imagination a great deal. In particular, the iconography, the naked bodies (always associated with Antiquity!) and the mixture of muscular superheroes with ancient armour quickly became very popular following the success of the film.

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CHAPTER 17 REENACTING SOLDIERS AND DRESSING ROMAN WOMEN: AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIELLE FIORE Carla Scilabra and Danielle Fiore

Re-enactments – the restaging of historical events, famous battles or everyday life – are very much in fashion, and fascinate spectators and participants alike. Where does the appeal of these events come from? Is it warlike enactments in particular that attract visitors? And does this still retain any connection to history? Re-enactors are in no doubt – in the words of one participant, Military re-enactment is a kind of ‘interactive history teaching’ for the participants as well as for the audience. But contrary to history textbooks or movies, reenactment tries to offer first-hand experiences [. . .]. If you, in fact, ever wanted to know how soldiers experienced the Second World War, then come along and watch the restaging of these historical events or living history on the topic.1 Having fun is also an important element, one that is often emphasized on the home pages of re-enactment groups.2 But is it really possible to experience what a Roman soldier experienced? Is a mock battle, even if fought with authentic-looking weapons, really able to communicate the personal experience of people who lived in such a different time, who were subject to different impulses, and who had different expectations, ideals, desires and needs? Part of the attraction may be the sense of identity that history gives to people, especially at a time when globalization appears to have destroyed local traditions and when political and/or economical superstructures blur the borders between states. Some form of more-or-less conscious nationalism is surely present in many of the events connected with Celtic, Viking or medieval real-life history, as well as the re-enactment of battles against the Roman invaders. Andrew Curry, recounting his experience of visiting the Wolin Slavonic and Viking Festival in Poland, wrote: Polish participants I talked to told me that to be called Vikings is almost an insult. Instead they are proudly Slavonic. (To the untrained eye the line between the Vikings and the contemporaneous proto-Slavic culture seem to amount to minor differences in cuff width, shield shape and helmet design.) In the Lithuanian camp I got a mini-lecture on the fierce Curanians, a warrior tribe that dominated the eastern Baltic between ad 500 and 1200. And naturally, the Danes I met had their own take: ‘the Vikings are one of the world’s forgotten high cultures.’3 219

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Similarly, re-enactments of Napoleonic campaigns and life in Victorian England surely attract a great deal of those who are nostalgic for the good old days of Empire.4 Is the re-enactment of military episodes thus a dangerous (in both the physical and the political sense) form of fun? This chapter is the product of a conversation between two different professional figures whose shared background is represented by their classical studies. Carla Scilabra is a Classical archaeologist who specializes in the Archaeology of Identity; Danielle Fiore graduated in Ancient History and is now an Italian fashion designer and historical model, who specializes in creating costumes for the re-enactment of historical events and costume celebrations. Danielle sews her own dresses, after analysing period fashion in detail, and follows – as far as is possible – historically accurate cuts, techniques and materials. This has become a full-time job at her atelier Il Fiore Nero, where she produces and sells dresses for other re-enactors. With her experience in the world of re-enactment, Danielle Fiore is able to provide a different and more concrete perspective on the issues that involve the reception of Classics in modern media. In her creative process, we can notice the active involvement of her clients: indeed, their degree of identification with the characters they play doesn’t stop at the way they want their outfits to be made, but involves also the way they actually live them in first person. Once again, several elements highlighted by the theoretical studies on reception show up through this chat: stereotypes, affective turn, but also ethnical and geographical influences that affect the choice of re-enacted characters and historical contexts. Again, practical confirmation was found for theoretical reflection. We believe that this chapter will profit from the twin perspective of a former history student who is very active in the field of re-enactment and historical modelling and an archaeologist experienced in material culture, who is able to perceive the concreteness of the past. To enhance this perspective and give each of them a more direct voice, we will utilize an interview format. CS Let’s start with some technical details about your work in the costuming world. How did you develop this interest in costuming? DF I began to be interested in historical fashion when I was a child, and loved to design corsets, gowns and circular skirts, which is very different from what I do now! This interest became a job by chance: I was invited to participate in a fashion event, but I had nothing to wear. So I decided to create and sew my own dress. I had already participated in historical re-enactments, but until then I had used rented costumes. As soon as I started to use a sewing machine I discovered that I loved to sew, and that I had talent. I never expected it, but it quickly became my profession. Historical sewing takes time and practice – you never stop learning. CS How do you conduct your research? Which sources do you use to create historically accurate costumes?

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DF I use, as much as possible, sources from the period. For the modern period it’s easy, because we have photos and museum collections of the originals. For Antiquity and the Middle Ages, things are more difficult and often you need to interpret and use your imagination for the missing details. I use paintings and frescos a lot. Luckily, there are also some good secondary bibliographies on this subject.5 CS You often work on commission. What do people look for in historical garments? And how stereotyped are the requests for dresses from your customers? DF It depends. Many have done their own research and have quite a detailed idea of what they want. But of course the majority have only a very vague idea of historical fashion. But it’s important to also consider the purpose of the dress they want me to create. For instance, if they ask for a carnival costume, this is an entirely different thing from a historical re-enactment. Carnival dresses are loosely inspired by historical fashion, while a ‘living history’ approach is, of course, different. If the costume is planned for a reenactment then it should be accurately researched and reconstructed. I usually reconstruct the costumes to be as faithful to the originals as possible. In the case of personalized requests, it’s always important to know for which event the costumes are intended. CS

Do you think these stereotypes derive from visual media?

DF Yes, movies and TV series strongly shape the collective imagination about historical periods and how life looked in a certain epoch. Many of these series do not particularly care about historical accuracy, especially when it comes to details like the colour of the dresses or the style of the hair. But there are also series that pay a great deal of attention to the costumes and fashion details, like Outlander, for example, which has very beautiful costumes. CS Does the fact that you create your own costumes help you to stay in character and identify with the figures you portray? How is the creation process linked with the reenactment? DF Creating my costumes is a form of time travelling, because I need to study the ancient technology. It’s unbelievable how much a costume can tell you about the period in which it was created! Choosing the right fabrics and working on a costume, especially when I’m making it by hand, makes me feel something of the atmosphere of the time I’m trying to re-enact. CS And what about re-enactors, generally speaking? How do people live these events (as re-enactors and as spectators)? Do they really feel immersed in a different epoch? Do they ‘time travel’ too? What happens to you when you wear the garments and the hairstyle of a woman of ancient Rome? DF This a complex question. I think most of the people find it easier to identify with re-enactments from the twentieth century, because it’s a period that’s still very close to 221

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our own. More distant periods are more difficult to recreate; you need more imagination to identify with figures from a distant epoch. But ultimately, re-enactment is also a matter of study, and the degree to which you identify with the object of your re-enactment also depends on this. When we re-enactors approach a specific period, we must first analyse many ‘real-life’ aspects, like clothing or make-up; portraying a character (who may be an upper-, middle- or lower-class man or woman) means analysing the world he or she lived in. Movements – such as the way you walk, your posture, how to move your hands – are also important. They not only contribute to the authenticity of the entire representation, they are also, in a certain way, imposed by the garments you wear – with a Roman toga or the armour of a legionary, some movements are simply impossible! I think wearing the proper costume helps a lot in ‘feeling’ history, identifying with the historical figures. Historical costumes can help one to understand the material life, how life was in a certain period. If you try to wear a Roman toga (six metres of linen or wool around the chest, shoulders, waist and part of the arm!) you will immediately understand why senators always look so severe when they are portrayed in statues or reconstructed in films! For me, getting fully dressed up in my ancient Roman clothing allows me to ‘touch’ the past with my own hands.6 CS Talking about re-enactment, what do you think about people who take part in such events? What brings them to develop an interest in it? DF It’s difficult to say. People have always participated in re-enactments for very different reasons, and still do. For some it is just a game, a means of escaping reality, an opportunity to go camping and get drunk, or a sort of fun hobby. For some others it may be a political statement or a question of cultural identity. For others it is a fascinating way to engage with history – it’s a window onto a world you know about from books but will never be able to truly be a part of. CS What about violence-related themes? Do you have an idea of their weight in the world of re-enactment? I mean, do you think that re-enactors are particularly interested in subjects like battles, military life and so on? DF Well, it sure has a huge weight, and the aspect of violence in the world of reenactment is undoubtedly best interpreted in the military sphere. As for the ancient world (and not only), the military groups are the majority. Indeed, the Roman world is mostly seen and understood by the public through the work of military re-enactors. When we are asked to re-enact the Roman world, for instance, the first thing everybody thinks of is the military life. People surely also appreciate everyday civil life, but mostly they want to see the legionaries. CS This is really interesting! But how do these re-enactments work? Are there groups that specialize in this kind of events? And how do these events take place? DF There are groups who only deal with teaching and those who instead combine teaching with the practical aspect by staging battles, recreating camps – I mean real castra 222

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– training and, of course, performing the daily life of soldiers. Behind this work there is a long study and a careful preparation regarding the armours and the military supplies: among them there are also useful medical tools that are used to make people understand how Roman legionaries could act during or after a battle, precisely by recreating or staging surgery. The weapons used are in most cases faithful reproductions of ancient originals (although there are also armours and accessories specially designed for scenographic purposes and consequently not effective if ‘used’): truth to be told, it is not so rare that some performer reports scratches during a battle or a demonstration. This applies to both sides: the research and the need to faithfully reproduce the battles also affects the opponents of Rome, especially if we talk about the groups that specialize in the Celtic, Samnite or Carthaginian world. In this regard, I would also like to mention the existence of ancient Greek military groups here in Italy, always moved by educational or popular purposes. CS So, I see that staging the military life can be seen as a double process. On one side we have the re-enactors who live this process in first person, literally putting themselves in ancient Romans’ shoes; on the other side we have the groups’ audiences, which find themselves immersed in a historical experience though substantially remaining spectators. Do you think that this has a didactic intent, or is it more like a spectacularization of the past? DF It depends on the single event. Speaking of the scenographic aspect, there are also events that have military Rome as their leitmotif but that are especially studied and set up to meet the general public and its needs. I am thinking, for example, of the Grands Jeux Romains of Nîmes: here battles, gladiatorial fights, chariot races and much more are inspired by specific historical figures that change every year (this year they will be dedicated to Caesar and the conquest of Gaul, while some years ago, for example, it was Boudicca’s turn). CS What about women in these contexts? Is military re-enactment a world that only concerns male performers and, consequently, a form of reception that represents only the male part of ancient society? DF When it comes to the military world, the female figure remains a little on the sidelines. There are obviously female figures in military camps or events, but the more widespread tendency is to recreate the elite; therefore, it is really rare, if not impossible, to find performers staging wives or women following legionaries. There are however several women active as gladiators, although they are absolutely a minority compared to the classic matrons. CS

Generally speaking, how widespread are military re-enactments?

DF Napoleonic groups are beloved in France and England, but I know that there are also some Italian groups. First World War re-enactors are widespread all across Europe, I believe. The physical setting is important for re-enactors, not only when it comes to military history. Re-enactment events are usually connected with a specific place or 223

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historical event; so, there are a lot of Roman legions in the area around Hadrian’s Wall, for instance, and Roman civil life in the Villae rusticae all around Europe. In Italy you will find more Celtic groups in regions with a Celtic past and a lot of medieval groups in cities with visible medieval remains. Famous battles are usually re-enacted on the historical site (or close to it – sometimes battle sites are no longer accessible, as the topography of the area has changed). But this connection with the territory and its traditions is not always obvious and not even always present – in the United States, there are a lot of Roman Legionnaires, for instance, probably more groups than in Italy, where Roman legions are not a particularly popular subject. CS Going back to the reconstruction of battles, and more generally, of the military world, did you notice in your experience a link between the subject of the re-enactment and where it takes place? Or more generally, are there countries in which re-enactment is more popular? And why? DF In France, Belgium and England, the re-enactment of Roman life is very popular, especially the reconstruction of military life on the outer posts of the Roman Empire, on the limes. In these countries, of course, the subject is also free from the unavoidable association with Fascism, which is a huge problem in Italy. But you can also find Celtic groups, a lot from the Middle Ages and some Vikings. As far as I know, Americans love to re-enact their own past – I mean the past of the United States of course, like the Civil War or the War of Independence. But there are also some groups that are interested in classical Antiquity – I know some re-enactors from Georgia who make great Romans! Roman Legionnaires are also a beloved subject in Eastern Europe, for example in Poland. CS I wouldn’t have thought that Roman re-enactment could encounter such troubles in Italy; can you explain it better? DF In Italy, Roman Antiquity (and particularly its iconography) is, in the popular mind, still strongly connected to Fascism, especially with the symbolism of Fascism. In a reconstruction of Roman fasces, most people will not see the insignia of the Republican magistrates, but they will immediately recognize the fasci littori, an important symbol from fascist iconography. There is still a lot of misunderstanding and fear of being misinterpreted. For instance, last summer my group was asked to re-enact the day of a Roman legionnaire in a didactic workshop of a summer camp for children and young adults. The first thing the educators told us was: be careful, don’t do anything like the Roman salute, otherwise we will have a huge problem with the parents . . . CS Now that we have traced an overview of the diffusion of such events, I have a question that involves your experience as a dressmaker. How accurate are the costumes reconstructed by military groups? DF It depends a lot on the single groups and on the periods represented. Fans of the Napoleonic campaigns are usually extremely well informed about everything concerning the army, from the strategies to the shape of the buttons on the uniform. I also know 224

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some groups of re-enactors who specialize in the First World War who are really demanding about the uniforms and weapons. They do not admit everybody, of course, only those with sufficiently specialized knowledge and perfectly reconstructed costumes. Napoleonic re-enactment groups are famous for being extremely accurate and studying every detail before presenting their figures to the public. Of course, they also have much better sources for their reconstruction than those who re-enact Roman life . . . CS I have a last question about two phenomena that, to an outsider, can look the same. I know that some groups meet to reconstruct historical battles. Is that world connected to re-enactment, or is it something quite different? DF It is a widespread world. I think, for example, at the Napoleonic campaigns: when they met recently for the European Meeting there were more than 2,000 people. The huge difference is that in re-enactments, battles are usually mock battles. On the other side, there is the Battle of Nations for instance, in which medieval knights really fight with medieval weapons. But it’s a real combat sport with different classes of competitors, a winner and a lot of injuries. It’s different from a re-enactment, even if historical accuracy in the reconstruction of weapons, armour and costumes is very important. But in a re-enactment you usually play a sort of theatrical game, you do not really fight.

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NOTES

Chapter 1 1.

The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction

The movies (The Hunger Games, dir. Gary Ross, 2012; Catching Fire, dir. Francis Lawrence, 2013; and Mockingjay (Parts 1 and 2), dir. Francis Lawrence, 2014–15) were a huge box-office success, grossing over $694 million worldwide. Suzanne Collins’s novels (published between 2008 and 2010), which inspired the theatrical version, have been bestsellers for years with millions of copies sold, and have been translated into approximately fifty languages.

2.

Rothe 2011: 93–4; Gili 2005: 170. See also Woodmansee 1988–89: 207–8.

3.

Zimmermann 2013: 11. See Soph., OT 1300–5: ‘Woe, woe, you unlucky man! I cannot even look at you, though there is much I desire to ask, much I wish to learn, much that draws my sorrowful gaze: you make me shudder!’

4.

August., Conf. 6.8.13 (I follow the translation of Fagan 2011, 291–2, with some modifications). On this extraordinary passage see also Lugaresi 2008: 565–76 and Fagan 2011: 1–2.

5.

On violence as spectacle there is a wide range of publication, see for instance recently Bakogianni and Hope 2015 (with comprehensive bibliography). On gladiators and the fascination with violence, see Fagan 2011. A (critical) summary of different psychological explanations concerning the appeal of watching violence can be found in Zillmann 1998: 182–91. On the display of Otherness as entertainment, see Rothe 2011: 78–82.

6.

Sontag 2003: 49–50.

7.

Rothe 2011: 94.

8.

Ancient exceptions, like the critique against killing animals in Orphism and Pythagorism, always remained an elitist phenomenon, with little impact on mainstream thinking.

9.

On violence as a culturally and historically determined category, see also Blok 2000: 26–7. On the different perspectives of offender and victim, see Pinker 2011: 488–95, who underlines how perpetrators usually feel they are on the right side and perceive their violence as perfectly legitimate.

10. Bakogianni 2015: 6. 11. Riess 2012: 387. 12. On the different perceptions of violence in Antiquity, see also Riess 2012: 384–7. 13. Riess 2016: 1; for some examples of interpretations from a cross-cultural perspective, see Aijmer and Abbink 2000. 14. Wiswede 2004: 203. 15. Corradi 2009: 86; Rammstedt 2011: 252. 16. Gili 2005: 169. See also Hahn 2006. 17. Pinker 2011: 508–69 identifies and classifies five forms of violence (‘five inner demons’): predatory or instrumental violence, dominance, revenge, sadism and ideology. 18. Riches 1991: 286. See also Riches 1986: 3–5.

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Notes to pp. 3–6 19. Riches 1991: 292. 20. Abbink 2000: xi. 21. Pinker 2011: xxi, optimistically states: Believe it or not – and I know most people do not – violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence. The decline, to be sure, has not been smooth; it has not brought violence down to zero; and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is an unmistakable development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children. 22. Zimmermann 2013: 29–35. On violence in the past and on the ‘violent quality’ of Antiquity, see Pinker 2011: 1–17. 23. For an overview of ancient crimes, see Krause 2004. 24. On capital punishment in the ancient world, see Cantarella 2005. For the methods of the death penalty in classical Greece see Carlà-Uhink 2020. 25. For an overview of violent images in Greek art, see recently the catalogue of an interesting art exhibition in Basel: van der Meijden 2016. 26. Riess 2012: 5. 27. I thank Filippo Carlà-Uhink for the useful discussion on this subject. 28. Chaniotis 2017. 29. On emotions in antiquity see also Chaniotis 2012 and 2013; on rage in particular, see Harris 2001. 30. Anthropologists have listed a number of ‘human universals’, which they believe can be found in any culture (Brown 1991). Emotions appear to be universal: all people seem to feel joy, anger or disgust, although their expression and the situations that give rise to them can be quite divergent. Cultures are also able to be in a dialogue, no matter how different they are: so, for instance, a modern Western person can appreciate and understand (with some effort) the philosophy of Confucius, even if the gap between modern Western societies and ancient Asian cultures is surely a deep one. This would not be possible if human psychology was wholly determined by cultural contexts (see also Fagan 2011: 41–7). 31. Benton 2002: 42. 32. Fagan 2011: 241–3 (with bibliography). See also Zillmann 1998 and Bakogianni, Chapter 5 in this volume. 33. Fagan 2014: 472–3; Bakogianni 2015: 9. 34. Sontag 2003: 99: ‘this is not happening to me, I’m not ill, I’m not dying, I’m not trapped in a war’. 35. Gili 2005: 172–6. 36. Ibid.: 184–6. 37. Rome (HBO 2005–07), 300 (Zack Snyder 2006), 300: Rise of an Empire (Noam Murro 2014); Spartacus (Starz 2010–13) are a few examples of movies in which brutality is ubiquitous. For video games, see Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance (Acclaim Studios, 2003); Ryse: Son of Rome (Crytek, 2013). 38. See also Bakogianni 2015: 9–10. 39. On the distance of the Classical past, and particularly of myth, as a mean of ‘de-semantizing’ violence, see also Carlà and Freitag 2015b. 40. Bakogianni 2018: 156. I wish to thank Anastasia Bakogianni for allowing me to read her article before publication, and for sharing with me her knowledge of ancient war. 228

Notes to pp. 6–17 41. Zimmermann 2013: 55. 42. On the applicability of social psychology to the study of history, see Fagan 2011: 39–48. 43. See for instance: Michelakis and Wyke 2013; Carlà 2014a; Rogers and Stevens 2015; Janka and Stierstorfer 2017; Rogers and Stevens 2019; Fletcher and Umurhan 2019; Rollinger 2020.

Chapter 2 Ancient War and Modern Art: Some Remarks on Historical Painting from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 1.

To learn more about the impact of Keegan’s work on films, as well as the precedents of Keegan’s perspective, see Oskar Aguado (Chapter 4 in this volume).

2.

Bakogianni and Hope 2015a; Ambühl 2016.

3.

Bakogianni 2015a: 5.

4.

Peter Burke has also insisted on the new representation of war after the Second World War, when the old heroism was cast aside and replaced with new, alternative perspectives (Burke 2001: 190).

5.

Ambühl 2016. As a specific case study, Rood has recently examined the reception of Xenophon’s Anabasis in the modern United States, concluding that the Anabasis has been an important part of the culture of American militarism (Rood 2010: 4). Furthermore, episodes and heroes from ancient wars have played a fundamental role in European nation-building processes, as we can see throughout the recent volume edited by Fögen and Warren (2016); on the topic see also De Francesco 2017.

6.

Pliny, HN 35; Mitnick 1993; Scharf 2000; García 2009.

7.

See https://web.archive.org/web/20170110085959/http://www.newsday.com/long-island/mortk%C3%BCnstler-feted-as-painting-s-unveiled-1.3412384. See also https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes. com/2011/12/23/a-famous-painting-meets-its-more-factual-match. The artist’s official website: www.mortkunstler.com.

8.

Cyrino 2005a: 141; Galinsky 2010: 405.

9.

Ayres 1993: 17.

10. In the audio on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the painting is considered an ‘iconic mythological painting’ despite acknowledge of its various inaccuracies. See https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11417. 11. We know of earlier classicist paintings by West: Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus; The Departure of Regulus; The Oath of Hannibal. 12. Cited in Mitnick 1993: 31. 13. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses on art, Discourse IV (Royal Academy, December 1771), 77. See https://archive.org/stream/sirjoshuareynold00reynuoft/sirjoshuareynold00reynuoft_djvu.txt. The original edition is Sir Joshua Reynold’s Discourses, edited with notes and a historical and biographical introduction by Edward Gilpin Johnson, Chicago 1891; the quote is on p. 103. On the argumentation by Reynolds, see Blanc 2015 (vol. I: 411–15); Mitnick 1993: 31; Cannon-Brookes 1991: 15. On Alexander: Curt. 1.2; on Agesilaus: Plut. Ages. 2. See also McAuley (Chapter 3 in this volume). 14. Mitnick 1993: 29. 15. See, very recently, Lifschitz and Squire 2017 (non vidi).

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Notes to pp. 17–20 16. An old English version of Lessing’s text: ‘A review of the reasons here alleged for the moderation observed by the sculptor of the Laocoon, in the expression of bodily pain, shows them to lie wholly in the peculiar object of his art and its necessary limitations’ (Lessing 1887: 20); cf. Lessing 1974: 28 (Schranken and Bedürfnisse in original German). 17. Mehigan 2005: 6; Silk, Gildenhard and Barrow 2014: 113. For Lessing, sculpture and painting are based on the older pre-eminence of the visual mode and are thus more limited in their capacity to express complex concepts (Mehigan 2005: 7). 18. As an example of the famous later sentence Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (Hor., Carm. 3.2.13). 19. Scholl 1984: 70–2. 20. This is Aristotle’s full reasoning: (Poet. 1451a.35). What we have mentioned already makes it even more clear that a poet’s objective is not to tell what actually happened but rather what could and would happen, either probably or inevitably. The difference between a historian and a poet is not that one writes in prose and the other in verse (1451b.1) – indeed, the writings of Herodotus could be put into verse and yet would still be a form of history, whether written in metre or not. The real difference is that one tells what happened and the other what might have happened. For this reason, poetry is something more scientific and serious (φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον) than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts. By a ‘general truth’ I mean the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say, either probably or necessarily. 21. Sontag 1992: 158. 22. Reyero 1989: 109; Duplá 2013. 23. On Sagunt: Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 21.7–15; on Numantia: App., Hisp. 89–98; Florus 1.34 [2,18]; Vell. Pat. 2.1.3–4; Cic., Off. 1.11; Oros. 5.7; another case of ‘Spanish’ heroism was that of Astapa, destroyed by the Romans, whose inhabitants preferred suicide over surrender (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 28.22–3). On the role of ancient wars in the building process of national identity in contemporary forms of reception like living history, see Pérez Mostazo (Chapter 15 in this volume). 24. Concerning the paintings on Numantia, see Duplá 2013; concerning those on Sagunt, Duplá 2018. As a sign of the popularity and significance of Alejo Vera’s work, the painting was selected as the symbol of the province of Soria in a monumental square built in Sevilla for the Ibero-American Exhibition in 1929; we also find it as the cover of a recent book on Spanish historiography, significantly entitled The Histories (in plural) of Spain (Álvarez Junco 2013). On the modern reception of ancient Numantia in Spain see also Gracia-Alonso 2017 and Castillo 2018. 25. On these three paintings, see Díez 1992: 270–3, 184–7 and 330–5 respectively. 26. ‘[P]ervades the social fabric’, in Scholl’s term (1984: 59). 27. The painting, an early one from this artist, is typical of his temperamental romanticism, at a time when academicism was still dominant; the exaggerated figure of the young man in the foreground was in fact intended as a manifestation of his mastery of human anatomy (Díez 1992: 186). 28. Scholl 1984: 81. As a court painter and frequent visitor of foreign monarchies, Rubens also acted as a cunning diplomat in search of general peace in Europe. This painting is also known as The Horrors of War. McGrath (2016: 35) points out that Statius’ Thebaid and Lucretius’ De rerum natura influenced this scene.

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Notes to pp. 20–24 29. Nieto 2002: 320; Sontag 2003: 36. Bozal (1984: 170) insists on terror as the dominant concept in Goya’s works on war, which present conflict as an entirely negative phenomenon. 30. I do not know if one of Goya’s engravings in the series Disasters of War (no. 39: ‘¡Grande hazaña! ¡Con muertos!’ [‘Heroic Feat! Against the Dead!’) was the direct inspiration for the ‘tree of death’ we see in Zack Snyder’s film 300 (2006). The director best described it in relation to his philosophy for the film: ‘Every slash, impalement, and decapitation should be rendered as a thing of beauty. It’s war transformed into art’ (https://filmschoolrejects.com/300-theother-effect-on-pop-culture). No comment. 31. A conference on ‘Classics and the Great War in an Age of Empire’ was held in November 2014 at Cambridge University and a new one on ‘The Old Lie: Classics and the Great War’ at the Università di Bologna, Italy, in March 2018. 32. Bakogianni 2015a: 6. 33. Bastian 2015; Winkler 2016: 210–14. From very early times, Kiefer was interested in revising German history and culture, particularly undermining the distortions that the Nazi regime cultivated; see his Heroic Symbol IV [Heroisches Sinnbild IV ] from 1970, alluding to two artists, Arno Breker and Josef Thorak, warmly glorified by the Nazi Ministry of propaganda (Hoerschelmann 2016: 58). 34. For a brief historical account, see Bastian 2015; Martin Winkler has recently studied the entire story of Arminius-Hermann and his reception within German history and culture (Winkler 2016). 35. See the painting at https://www.artsy.net/artwork/anselm-kiefer-varus. 36. The title of an apology for Catholicism published in 1924 by the Jesuit father Bernhard Jansen (Rosenthal 1987: 51; Hoerschelmann 2016: 73). 37. We can see a version from 1982 exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: https:// www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/the-collection/works/the-paths-of-world-wisdomhermanns-battle. 38. The complete list of portraits: Jean Paul, Horst Wessel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Walter Flex, Ludmilla Assing, Heinrich von Kleist, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Heinrich von Kleist, Helmuth von Moltke and Jakob Böhme, Gebhard von Bücher, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Immanuel Kant, Hermann, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Joseph von Eichendorff, Stefan George, Ludwig Uhland, Alfred von Schlieffen, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Jean Paul, Mathias Claudius, Gottfrief Keller, Wiprecht von Groitzsch, Albrecht von Roon, Queen Louise of Prussia, Martin Heidegger, Albert Leo Schlagetter, August Hofmann von Fallersleben (the author of the Lied der Deutschen [Song of the Germans]), Carl Maria von Weber, Joseph von Eichendorff and Carl Schurz. ‘I choose these personages because power has abused them’, explained Kiefer (Rosenthal 1987: 55). 39. Rosenthal 1987: 51. 40. Hoerschelmann 2016: 73; Rosenthal 1987: 49–51; Krebs 2010. 41. Rosenthal 1987: 56. Martin Winkler writes on Kiefer and Arminius in a chapter entitled ‘Against Ideology: History Exorcised’ (2016: 219). 42. Including statements in the exhibition such as: ‘There isn’t anything to the paintings’ (cited in Priwitzer 2014: 231). 43. See https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/the-collection/works/nine-discourses-on-commodus. 44. Cullinan 2009; Giménez 2008: 54. 45. He has a number of works inspired by ancient history or mythology: The Triumph of Galatea (1961), Leda and the Swan (1962), School of Athens (1964), Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the

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Notes to pp. 24–28 Shores of Asia Minor (1994). In fact, in the recent volume on Cy Twombly, edited by Thierry Greub, the paper by Priwitzer is included in a section, ‘Antiquity as Inspiration’, which presents different collaborations on Twombly and Sumer and the Sumerians, Egypt, Achilles at Troy, the Cnidian Venus, the Hellenistic Pastoral and the poetry of Theocritus. ‘Cy Twombly: Rewriting History’, a lecture delivered by N. Cullinan at the American Academy in Rome in 2015, is available at https://livestream.com/accounts/7688224/events/4523111/videos/ 105042919. Recently, in the context of the reception of Xenophon’s work in American political and military history, Rood has analysed the later series ‘Anabasis’ by Cy Twombly (1980–83) (Rood 2010: 222–7). Weitmann 2004 deals also with Twombly and Antiquity but, focused mainly in Greek history and mythology, the work on Commodus is not mentioned. 46. Priwitzer 2014: 233. A brief summary of Commodus’ biography and the problems connected to the ancient sources is in Priwitzer (2014: 233–5) and Gorrie 2012; on Commodus and violence, see Timonen 2000. A bust of the emperor was also at the gallery Leo Castelli during the first public exhibition of the series in New York in 1963. In popular culture, Commodus was introduced to earlier generations through films such as The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann 1964); younger audiences know him from Gladiator (Ridley Scott 2000). He is always presented as the sinister and cruel opponent of the hero – first Livius and later Maximus, both first generals of the Empire who were hated and envied by the emperor. 47. Priwitzer 2014: 242–9. The difficulties associated with the interpretation of images were pointed out by Peter Burke (2001: 18). 48. Paintings including Death of Pompey and Ides of March, both from 1962; Cullinan 2009: 101; Priwitzer 2014: 240. 49. In 1995, Jean Baudrillard, writing about the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, spoke of our condition of ‘otage de l’intoxication des media’ (Baudrillard 1991: 12); years later, in 2006, also on the new media and the war, he coined the term ‘porn war’ (cited in Bakogianni 2015a: 7). 50. Sontag 2003; Zimmermann 2013: 39. 51. Zubero Beascoechea 2016: 92; Moeller 2006. 52. ‘Spectacle is employed as a weapon to denounce war rather than to support or glorify it’ (Bakogianni 2015a: 19, on Cacoyannis’ adaptations of Euripides’ tragedies). 53. Silk, Gildenhard and Barrow 2014: 399. 54. An important guide to this active answer is the text or title provided by the artist in order to prevent the dangers inherent to the ‘aphony of the images’. Susan Sontag has written about this problem, valorizing the brief texts which Goya included in his series of engravings The Disasters of War (Sontag 2003: 37).

Chapter 3

Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais of Athens

1.

The Thais discussed here is Thais [1] in der neue Pauly (Badian 2006) and see also the entry ‘Thais, Mistress of Ptolemy I’ in Bennett 2011. On Thais’ reception, see Ravazzolo 2009 (non vidi because it is no longer in print and I have been unable to yet find it).

2.

The ancient accounts of Arr., Anab.3.18.11–12; Diod. Sic. 17.72.1–6; Curt. 5.7.11; Plut., Alex. 38.1–8. Thais is first mentioned in Cleitarchus via Athenaeus 13.576D–E = FGrH IIB 137, Fr. 11.

3.

For a recapitulation of the ages-old debate around the destruction of Persepolis, see most recently Mousavi 2012: 57–72, and the previous contributions of Balcer 1978; Borza 1972; Bloedow 1995; Hammond 1992; among many others.

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Notes to pp. 28–32 4.

On the longer historiographical history of the event and ancient accounts of it, see McAuley 2018b. See Hammond 1992: 360–3 for his analysis of an ‘official’ version of events, refuted by Bloedow and Loube 1997: 349–52.

5.

See McAuley 2018b.

6.

This synthesis clearly emerges when the passages of Diod. Sic. 17.72.1–6, Curt. 5.7.11, and Plut., Alex. 38.1–8 are compared against one another. It is evident that each author was following an original account with less detail, and then adding certain elements and comments to this otherwise bare account of the evening.

7.

See again Bloedow and Loube 1997: 349–52 and their arguments in favour of the historicity of this ‘vulgate’ version of events.

8.

Diod. Sic. 17.72.2 μία τῶν παρουσῶν γυναικῶν

9.

Diod. Sic. 17.72.4: τοῦ βασιλέως συνεξαρθέντος τοῖς λόγοις

10. Diod. Sic. 17.72.6: αὕτη δὲ μετὰ τὸν βασιλέα πρώτη τὴν δᾷδα καιομένην ἠκόντισεν εἰς τὰ βασίλεια· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ταὐτὰ πραξάντων ταχὺ πᾶς ὁ περὶ τὰ βασίλεια τόπος κατεφλέχθη διὰ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς φλογὸς καὶ τὸ πάντων παραδοξότατον, τὸ Ξέρξου τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως γενόμενον ἀσέβημα περὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν τῶν Ἀθηναίων μία γυνὴ πολῖτις τῶν ἀδικηθέντων ἐν παιδιᾷ πολλοῖς ὕστερον ἔτεσι μετῆλθε τοῖς αὐτοῖς πάθεσιν. 11. Plut., Alex. 38.1: εὐδοκιμοῦσα μάλιστα, and see 38.2 for her discussion of her own hardships: ἔφη γάρ ὧν πεπόνηκε πεπλανημένη τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀπολαμβάνειν χάριν ἐκείνης τῆς ἡμέρας ἐντρυφῶσα τοῖς ὑπερηφάνοις Περσῶν βασιλείοις ἔτι δ᾽ ἂν ἥδιον ὑποπρῆσαι κωμάσασα τὸν Ξέρξου τοῦ κατακαύσαντος τὰς Ἀθήνας οἶκον, αὐτὴ τὸ πῦρ ἅψασα τοῦ βασιλέως ὁρῶντος, ὡς ἂν λόγος ἔχῃ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ὅτι τῶν ναυμάχων καὶ πεζομάχων ἐκείνων στρατηγῶν τὰ μετὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου γύναια μείζονα δίκην ἐπέθηκε Πέρσαις ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος. 12. Plut., Alex. 38.3, note the passive voice of the verbs relating to Alexander: ἅμα δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ κρότου καὶ θορύβου γενομένου καὶ παρακελεύσεως τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ἐπισπασθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ ἀναπηδήσας ἔχων στέφανον καὶ λαμπάδα προῆγεν. 13. Curt. 5.7.2: non quidem quas violari nefas esset. 14. Curt. 5.7.8: Hunc exitum habuit regia totius Orientis, unde tot gentes antea iura petebant, patria tot regum, unicus quondam Graeciae terror, molita mille navium classem et exercitus, quibus Europa inundata est, contabulato mari molibus perfossisque montibus, in quorum specus fretum inmissum est. 15. Ath., Deipnosophistae 576E. 16. See again McAuley 2018b. 17. Strinati 2001: 3–8 for the biographical and artistic background of Carracci, and see also Terzaghi 2007; Bohn 2004; and Chilvers 2009: 112–14. 18. Strinati 2001: 8–11, with the quotation on their ideological ambitions from Hunt 1908, and his other entries on Agostino and Annibale Carracci. 19. The drawing is currently not on view in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, William Nelson Cromwell Fund 1975.55.1. Original size 21.1 × 14 cm, held in London until 1973 and then purchased by the National Gallery of Art in 1975. For high resolution images see the gallery’s site at: https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.55424.html. 20. The original canvas is held in the Palazzo Francia in Bologna but a high resolution image is available on https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alessandro_e_Taide_incendiano_Persepoli_-_ Ludovico_Carracci.jpg. The painting must have been fairly popular in Bologna and likely elsewhere, as there are several Bolognese drawings and copies of the original – Genus Bononiae accession numbers 4987, 8786, 7973 and 8006.

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Notes to pp. 33–39 21. Marlowe 1616. 22. Lines 1265–1305 according to the 1616 Quarto of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, edited by Dyce, now available open-access on Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg. org/files/811/811-h/811-h.htm. This is Act IV, Scene I according to modern divisions of the play. The stage directions create a very vivid picture of the scene: ‘Enter at one door the Emperor Alexander, at the other Darius. They meet. Darius is thrown down; Alexander kills him, takes off his crown, and offering to go out, his paramour meets him. He embraceth her and sets Darius’ crown upon her head.’ For further studies of the literary and social context of Marlowe, see the excellent edited volume of Bartels and Smith 2013, and on Faustus itself see Kostic 2013: 18–36. 23. I follow the text of the poem from 1875 put together by Palgrave, now available open-access on WikiSource at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Alexander%27s_Feast. On the background of the work: Smith 1978. See also my more detailed discussion of this particular piece in McAuley 2018b. 24. Taken from ‘A DISCOURSE Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 10, 1771, by the President’, available at: https://www. gutenberg.org/files/2176/2176-h/2176-h.htm. 25. Ibid., in the same paragraph. 26. Thais of Athens with Tourch, 1781 by Joshua Reynolds, held by Waddesdon Manor, accession number 2556. For a full description and bibliography, see Plock 2011. The painting was first displayed as no. 10 in the Royal Academic Exhibition in London in 1781, and in the British Institute Exhibition in 1817 as no. 78. 27. Northcote 1817: 2.119. See also 118–22. 28. Saturday Review of Politics, 4 July 1857: 10. 29. Northcote 1817: 2.119. 30. Plock 2011. 31. Ibid. 32. The pagination used in describing Yefremov’s 1972 novel is taken from the PDF of Kuroshkepova’s translation published by Smashwords and CreateSpace in 2011. 33. Yefremov 2011: 5–15. 34. In 1933 W.W. Tarn first published his notion of ‘Alexander the Great and Unity of Mankind’, according to which Alexander was an early humanist and advocate of goodwill among different cultures in Antiquity. Following Tarn’s logic Alexander sought to create a benevolent new society that was a fusion of east and west rather than the domination of one by the other. This notion of Alexander as a proto-humanist has long since lost favour in contemporary scholarship, but still remains prominent in the broader cultural realm. See Tarn 1933. 35. Yefremov 2011: 241. 36. Ibid.: 340–66. 37. Speculation on Thais’ dances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDj-UT47HeU. 38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4F5xPUJwu8. 39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL N F K 2hN L 0&list=P LT I KdK V l_tW Y xeB1qxNVeCR0Jgrku_eT. 40. These fascinating depictions of Thais are easily accessible on Google Images, though often with no attribution of specific authorship – hence the lack of detailed citation here.

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Notes to pp. 43–45

Chapter 4 Screening the Face of Roman Battle: Violence Through the Eyes of Soldiers in Film 1.

McCall 2014: 185.

2.

Keegan, as I will explain in more depth later, proposed analysing battles through the reconstruction of soldiers’ experience ‘at the point of maximum danger’. According to Garrity (2012), ‘The Face of Battle brought war down from the abstract heights of history [. . .] to the sights (horrible), smells (god-awful), sounds (often deafening), and raw emotion experienced by those actually engaged in combat’.

3.

McCall 2014: x.

4.

Recently Quesada Sanz (2016a, 2016b) has analysed the adoption of Keegan’s approach by some historical fiction writers who have focused on ancient military history.

5.

See the filmography at the end of the chapter.

6.

Recently, Morillo and Pavkovic (2018: 43) has underlined the importance of Keegan’s masterpiece to the development of the Military History as field of study.

7.

Keegan 1976: 70–5.

8.

It was first published posthumously in 1880. I have used the Spanish edition: Ardant du Picq 1988.

9.

Goldsworthy 1996: 6.

10. I will return to this in the next section. 11. Marshall 2000: 149. 12. Ibid.: 50. This statement has been harshly criticized; see Chambers 2003, footnote 3. Regrettably, in a more recent article against the ‘Marshall Paradigm’, the author recognized that ‘the ratio of fire continues to attract supporters’ (Engen 2011: 47). 13. Goldsworthy 1996: 6. 14. Keegan 1976: 297–8. 15. Hanson 2000: xx. 16. This was a very refreshing work and has been quoted many times by those who have tried to apply this approach to Roman battles. For a negative view, see Wheeler 1998: particularly 647–8. For other negative critiques on that book and, in a more general way, on the ‘face of battle approach’, see Wheeler 2001. 17. Goldsworthy 1996: 10. 18. Ibid.: 175. 19. Ibid.: Chapters 5 and, particularly, 6. 20. Ibid.: 250. 21. Ibid.: 244. 22. Ibid.: 283–4. 23. Quesada Sanz 2016a: 329–30. See also Phang 2011: 119–21. 24. Sabin 1996, 2000; Zhmodikov 2000; Quesada Sanz 2003. 25. Anders 2015a. 26. McCall 2001: 83–99; Lendon 2005: 172–315; McDonnell 2006; Riggsby 2006: 83–105; Phang 2008; Anders 2015b.

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Notes to pp. 45–47 27. Culham 1989; Sierra 2011: 139–41. 28. Gilliver 1996. 29. Lee 1996; Ureche 2014. 30. Gillver 2007; Coulston 2013. 31. Koon 2011. 32. Daly 2002: 156–202. 33. Sabin 2000: 2. 34. Quesada Sanz 2016b: 27–8. 35. Among others Hanson 1999, 2001 (which includes a chapter on the Battle of Cannae: 99–134), 2003; 2010. For a negative view on Hanson’s influential notion of a ‘Western way of war’ see Lynn 2003; Sidebottom 2004: 1–15 and 112–30; Antela-Bernárdez 2011. For his part, Quesada Sanz 2001 values the contribution of Hanson’s first works positively but finds the arguments in The Soul of Battle (Hanson 1999) to be simplistic and Manichaean. In this regard, is quite interesting Ambühl’s (2016) collective volume on interactions and tensions between representations of war in classical and modern culture. She points out the lack of research about the ‘role of the emotions in experiencing ancient war’ and also acknowledge that ‘the specific quality of sensory impressions in ancient battles and their fictional representations in literature and other media have not yet been studied in depth’ (Ambühl 2016: v–vi). 36. A pioneering book, and perhaps the most famous, was Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (Shay 1994), which aimed to use the Iliad therapeutically with war veterans. Although a reviewer of the book noted, ‘Shay occasionally seems to confuse Homer’s literally true psychological portrait of war and soldiers with a similarly true historical portrait’ (Goetsch 1994), Shay – who is a clinical psychiatrist – was fully aware that his reading of the Iliad was personal and that without the work of classical scholars he could not have done his own (1994: xx). Aside from the sequel to the book (Shay 2002), there has been a flourishing academic literature on the topic, sometimes with a problematic reading of the Greek sources: Tritle 2000; Tatum 2003; Retief and Cilliers 2005; Cosmopoulos 2007; Molloy and Grossman 2007; Crowley 2012; Meineck and Konstan 2014; Caston and Weineck (2016). More recently, in December 2018, a workshop entitled ‘Combat Stress and the Pre-modern Word’ took place in Manchester Metropolitan University. See: https://thepolyphony. org/2019/03/05/combat-stress-in-the-pre-modern-world-workshop-review/. 37. Chrissanthos 2007. 38. Ibid.: 234. 39. Ibid.: 234–5. 40. Vid. Chrissanthos 1997, 2001 and 2008. 41. Chrissanthos 2007: 246–9. 42. Melchior 2011: 212. 43. Ibid.: 222. 44. Ibid.: 223. 45. On this topic, see also Bakogianni (Chapter 5 in this volume), who focuses on the experience of returning soldiers and their difficulties in reintegrating into their societies. 46. As for the novels see Quesada Sanz 2016a: 346. On films see McCall 2014: vii–ix. 47. Lane Fox 2004: 31. 48. Il. 14, 293., cit. in Quesada Sanz 2016a: 335. 236

Notes to pp. 47–49 49. Hemingway 1969: 13. 50. Sánchez Zapatero 2012: 354; Orwin 2012: 123–7. 51. Benet 2006: 20–9. 52. Ibid.: 31–2. Likewise, the novel on which the film was based – Im Westen nichts Neues (1929) written by Erich Maria Remarque – describes the German soldiers’ extreme physical and mental stress during the war. 53. However, according to Morillo and Pavkovic (2006: 6), John Keegan was ‘one of the most successful academic historians to reach the mass market’. Indeed, when Keegan died in 2012, internationally well-known newspapers like The Guardian and the New York Times published obituaries referring to him as a ‘historian who put a face on war’: vid. Binder 2012; van der Vat 2012. 54. Quesada Sanz 2016a, 2016b. 55. See Westwell 2006: 95–100. As a more general trend in cinema, it could be interesting to remember that after the 1970s and 1980s many movies of different genres – including war movies – have focused on personal emotions and feelings, and individual responses. 56. Slocum 2006: 7. See also Westwell 2006: 57–83 for a sociopolitical subtext of those films. 57. The reconstruction of the US landings on Omaha Beach during the first twenty-three minutes has been defined ‘as Hollywood’s most grimly realistic and historically accurate depiction of World War II battlefield’ (quoted in Chapman 2008: 21. See also Montero-Díaz and Fernández-Ramírez 2015). According to Rosenstone (2012: xv), Saving Private Ryan: ‘allows us to experience the chaos, confusion, and bloodiness of battle.’ Keegan himself commented on the film that it shows the emotions of fighting ‘not only fear, which is paramount and pervasive, but also the exultation of combat and the terrible rage that can grip men suddenly released from terror in the face of an enemy who lays down his arms too late’ (cit. in Chapman 2008: 23). 58. Gómez Valero 2017 proposes that director Christopher Nolan pursues a similar goal as Keegan when it comes to representing the evacuation from the point of view and psyche of its protagonist. 59. At the same time, many of those films have shown a heroic and epic view of war, using battle scenes to also represent the courage, bravery and willingness of those – predominantly the main characters – who gladly give their lives for their fatherland. In those cases, the fear and hard conditions experienced in battle by some characters could be understood as a way of transmitting the idea that the effort and the sacrifice of those who do not fear to die is even more relevant and glorious. There is no doubt that Horace’s old lie is still alive and kicking in cinema as a mirror of American – and others – society. 60. Keegan 1976: 62. It is necessary to clarify that Keegan talks about historical essays, while this piece of research is focused on films. 61. Goldsworthy 1996: 283. 62. For a cinematic depiction after 1945 of Rome as a totalitarian and oppressive power, see Winkler 1998. On the battle scenes and Roman legions in Kubrick’s Spartacus see McCall 2014: 98–103. 63. Indeed, in a souvenir programme book for the film there was a text entitled ‘Training + Tactics = Battle Success’ in which we are assured that the Romans were strong because they fought in ‘robot formation’ (Winkler 2007a: 127). 64. Theodorakopoulos 2010: 74. 65. This was included in later, remastered versions.

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Notes to pp. 49–51 66. Wyke 1997a: 18–22; Wyke 1999. 67. However, it is important to note that silent films were always accompanied by musical pieces that would probably emphasize the drama during the battle scenes. 68. Wyke 1997a: 20–2; Caprotti 2009; Pucci 2014. 69. There is some similarity between this sequence and the account of Julius Cesar in Gallic War of the defeat of the Nervii, which Keegan defines as a ‘battle piece’ (1978: 63–4). 70. Martin Winkler defines it as ‘the most intelligent of all Roman epics’ (1995: 139). 71. Theodorakopoulos 2010: 86. 72. A brief recompilation of the authors who defend this idea can be found in Elliott 2015a: 4–5. See the entire introduction for the issues with claims like ‘the return of a genre’ or ‘the return of the epics’: 1–13. 73. Theodorakopoulos 2010: 7. At the same time, the heritage of the 1950s and 1960s Roman Epics is present in many topics of the film: Winkler 2004. 74. Duplá 2011: 105–6. 75. Among recent productions, the brutality and extreme violence of battles, as well as a filthy image of warfare, are more evident and more strongly emphasized. Along with that, in the case of some recent productions, the hyperrealistic depiction of violence, with extremely gory scenes, surpass any attempt to show warfare realistically. In such cases, when the blood spatters are portrayed purely as a spectacle and without any attempt to criticize the horrors of war, these sequences can be defined as a ‘pornography of violence’ (Keegan 1976: 29; Quesada Sanz 2016a: 330). Nonetheless, the success of this hyperrealistic style among viewers is undeniable, and for this reason directors have used it generously. In addition, we must understand the growth of graphic violence in the wider context of violence in media, with a similar aesthetic in video games and in graphic novels, among others. 76. Ridley Scott, DVD commentary. 77. David Franzoni, DVD bonus content: ‘The Heat of Battle: Production Journals’. 78. In fact, many authors have noticed the similarity between this battle and the initial battle sequence of Saving Private Ryan (Cyrino 2005b: 132; Junkelmann 2004: 35–6, 195–6; Masiá 2013: 37–8) Cinematographer John Mathieson and director Ridley Scott had previously recognized the influence of that film, even in the cinematographic techniques used (Bankston 2000a: 36; 2000b: 50). 79. Robert Jones, DVD bonus content: ‘Interviews’. 80. Michael Fassbender, the actor who was cast as Quintus in the film, recognizes that although it is not the most important idea of the film ‘you can always make modern-day parallels, to the occupation in Iraq’ (cit. in Pierce, 2009: 142). 81. Quesada Sanz 2016a: 330. 82. For example, Neil Marshall, comparing Centurion with Gladiator and 300, said that his film ‘is much more dirty, brutal and realistic’ (cit. in Cooper 2009: 23). On the relationship between the use of special effects and the epic’s sense of spectacle and verisimilitude, see Elliott 2015b. 83. Theodorakopoulos 2010: 115. 84. Ridley Scott, DVD commentary. 85. Lindner (2015: 159–60) considers the modern horror movie Dog Soldiers to be Centurion’s main intertextual reference as ‘both films tell the story of a group of soldiers, cut off behind the enemy lines, trapped and annihilated.’ M. Lindner also finds a reference to Platoon in the aforementioned pessimistic monologue by Quintus Dias’.

238

Notes to pp. 51–58 86. Paul Hyett, DVD bonus content: ‘Guts & Gore’. He also adds: ‘We’ve got to cut throats, arm chops, decapitations, head slicing, arrows in necks, axes in necks, people being burned . . . there is a lot of gore.’ 87. DVD bonus content: ‘The Spoils of War Revealed: Visual Effects’. 88. Goldsworthy, 1996; Sabin 2000. 89. On the various inaccuracies in this sense, see McCall 2014: passim. 90. Sabin 2000: 10. 91. Brice 2008: 66–7. 92. Jonathan Stamp, DVD commentary for episode 1: ‘The Stolen Eagle’. 93. In this case, there are no DVD commentaries by the historical consultant on the accuracy of this particular scene. 94. Brice 2008: 65–6. 95. DVD bonus content: ‘The Battle of Philippi’. 96. Kevin Macdonald, DVD commentary. 97. McCall 2014: 118. 98. Ibid.: 141. 99. This account is quite similar to the description from Chrissanthos of the many different factors which traumatized the average soldier, both in ancient and contemporary times (2007: 227). 100. Keegan 1976: 303. 101. It is true that some analogies between Ancient Rome and the United States in movies have been established throughout the twentieth century (see Malamud 2009: 186–228), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) being a paradigmatic example; on that topic see Winkler 1995: 140–2; Harty 2015: 42–7. On the parallels between Rome and the United States in recent movies see Cyrino 2005b; Malamud 2009: 253–6; Harty 2015: 47–53; Wetmore 2018; McAuley 2018a; Davies 2019. Those last three works include some interesting ideas about the reception of Roman soldiers in recent films, which are rather close to my own conclusions.

Chapter 5 Performing Violence and War Trauma: Ajax on the Silver Screen 1.

Knippschild 2013: 320.

2.

Bakogianni 2015: 1–10.

3.

On this trend see Hall (2004: 18–22).

4.

For example, for a reassessment of the reception of the Troades, see Mills (2010: 164–6) and Bakogianni (2015: 291–3).

5.

Konstan 2014: 8.

6.

Bakogianni 2015: 7–8.

7.

Baudrillard 1995: 68.

8.

Patton 1995: 10.

9.

Monoson 2014: 140.

10. In the Odyssey Ajax’s ghost famously refuses to even talk to Odysseus (11.543–67), so deeply ingrained is his θύμος (deep anger / wrath, 566).

239

Notes to pp. 58–60 11. Treu 2017: 60–6; Cole 2019. 12. Wertenbaker 2013: 16. 13. For details see: http://theaterofwar.com/projects/theater-of-war/overview and https://www. aquilatheatre.com/applied-theatre/. 14. Doerries 2015: 8. 15. https://theaterofwar.com/projects/theater-of-war. On the project’s work with Ajax see also Powers 2018: 179–88. 16. Using classical literature as a therapeutic tool for veterans of modern conflicts is not a new phenomenon. Jonathan Shay’s groundbreaking study Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994) saw parallels between the Iliad and the stories of the Vietnam veterans he was treating. 17. Doerries 2015: 68. 18. http://www.combatstress.org.uk/medical-professionals/what-is-ptsd/. Symptoms include: flashbacks, bad dreams, bad thoughts, feeling emotionally numb, guilt, depression, worry, showing no interest in activities one enjoyed in the past, having trouble remembering the traumatic event, feelings of helplessness, dwelling on the unfairness of the situation, distrust, viewing the world as malevolent, no hope for the future, alienation, no sense of identification with others (terminal uniqueness), difficulty returning into normal life and lack of attachments / broken attachments. Another pertinent symptom for our discussion is hypervigilance, the subject is easily startled, is constantly on edge, experiences sleep problems and can become aggressive in both thought and deed. 19. Melchior 2011: 209, 211. 20. Bakogianni 2018: 156–7 and Cole 2019: 160. 21. Treu 2017: 66–9. 22. On the theoretical and methodological implications of this approach, see Bakogianni and Apostol 2018: 1–6. 23. McSweeney 2017: 5–6. 24. Lawrence and Jewett 2017: 31. 25. The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to include PTSD is DSM-III published in 1980: https://web.archive.org/web/20180203001946/https://www. ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/ptsd-overview.asp. 26. On the links between PTSD in veterans and suicides, see Rozanov and Carli (2012). 27. Shay 1994: 169. 28. Melchior 2011: 209. See also Aguado (Chapter 4 in this volume, especially 46). 29. See Johanna Hanink’s call to arms for research that engages with ‘how the ancient past is visibly interwoven in the fabric of the present moment’. 30. For a more in depth discussion see Treu 2017: 66–7. 31. Hedges 2002: 3. 32. Holmes 2003: 400: ‘A few men grow so used to the rough fabric of war that nothing else sits comfortably upon them.’ 33. Loraux argues that Sophocles’ Ajax commits suicide in the ‘manner of a warrior’ and stresses the key role played by the sword, an instrument of war. Loraux 1987: 12.

240

Notes to pp. 60–64 34. There are of course exceptions, notably the antiheroic protagonists in Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Platoon (1986). More recently, films like In the Valley of Elah (2007), Stop-Loss (2008), The Messenger (2009), Green Zone (2010) and Lone Survivor (2013) have problematized the role of American troops in recent conflicts and focused more on the negative aspects of war and its impact on soldiers. 35. Kosonen 2015: 26. 36. Aaron 2014: 76. 37. The Hollywood remake of the Danish movie Brødre (2004): http://www.imdb.com/title/ tt0386342/. 38. Hogan 1991: 178. 39. Vayos Liapis argues the Ajax was performed at the smaller Lenaea festival (2015: 154–8). I find his hypothesis persuasive as staging such a disturbing portrayal of an Athenian cultic hero before an audience largely composed of Athenian citizens seems less risky than attempting something this unusual during the City Dionysia when the polis of Athens put itself on display for citizens and foreigners alike. 40. Harris 2013: 10; Padel 1995: 36–7. 41. Finglass 2012: 66. 42. Most 2013: 406–7. 43. Kyle 2007: 10. 44. Most 2013: 405–6. 45. http://anthemmagazine.com/qa-with-alice-winocour/. 46. This particular PTSD symptom is also highlighted in American Sniper (2014), where its potential for triggering violent episodes is demonstrated. Bakogianni 2018: 157–9. 47. Sound design by Nicolas Becker, score by Gesaffelstein. 48. http://virtual-nihilist.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/disorder-maryland-movie-review.html. 49. MacEwen 2006: 314–15. 50. https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/69-editions/retrospective/2015/actualites/articles/uncertain-regard-maryland-interview-with-alice-winocour. 51. http://anthemmagazine.com/qa-with-alice-winocour/. 52. At Cannes Film Festival it was submitted under its French title of Maryland (the name of the villa). 53. Shay 2002: 149. 54. Shay 1994: 169. 55. Shay 2002: 149. 56. Konstan 2013: 438 57. Ibid.: 432. 58. For a discussion on whether this is possible, see Belfiore 2000: 201–16. 59. Garrison 1991: 24. 60. Shay 1994: 179, ‘Thoughts of suicide are common symptoms of combat PTSD.’ 61. Doerries 2015: 98. 62. The question of how Ajax’s suicide was staged (or not) is ongoing. For an informative and thought-provoking evaluation of the evidence from multiple perspectives, see Most and Ozbek’s collection on the topic (2015). 63. The fact that Ajax dies alone is symbolic of the loss of his ties to the community, Garvie 2015: 39. 241

Notes to pp. 64–68 64. There is strong evidence to suggest a link between PTSD and suicide. In the case of war veterans, especially at risk are those who were wounded multiple times and/or feel guilty about their actions in combat: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/related/suicide_ptsd.asp. Isolation from friends and family is another contributing factor. The results of a study by Brigham Young University researchers suggests a link between feelings of loneliness and suicide: http://time.com/3747784/loneliness-mortality/. 65. For the Homeric echoes in Brothers see Daugherty 2018: 37–8. 66. Holmes 2003: 254–69. 67. It is useful to compare this scene to Vincent’s more sustained aural symptoms in Disorder. Coupled with distorted visuals, this has become shorthand for portraying the symptoms of PTSD on screen. 68. There are, of course, exceptions. In Thank You for Your Service (2017) a veteran commits suicide on screen. On learning that his fiancée (Kate Lyn Sheil) has left him and taken all his money, Billy Waller (Joe Cole) commits suicide at the bank where she works – a deeply shocking but brief scene that highlights the plight of the other returning soldiers. I could not include the movie in my discussion because I only had the opportunity of a single viewing. 69. Most and Ozbek 2015: 19. 70. Mackay 2010: 243–53; Catoni 2015; Moignard 2015: 17–31. 71. https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.as px?objectId=398728&partId=1. 72. The depiction of suicide in cinema is becoming more common, Kosonen 2015: 26, n. 1 73. Belfiore 2000: 104. 74. Michelakis 2010: 102. 75. Belfiore 2000: 114; Naiden 2015: 90–1. 76. Naiden 2015: 85. See also Sealey 2006 on the practice of putting inanimate objects on trial in Athenian law. 77. Symonds 2008: 2. 78. For example, McLaughlin 2011; Wertenbaker 2013; Doerries 2015. 79. Another point of comparison to Disorder: this is also standard filming practice for portraying PTSD on screen. 80. Saїd 2013: 368. 81. Grossman and DeGaetano are convinced that there is ‘compelling evidence’ demonstrating the link between watching violence and committing violence (2014: 37–68), whereas Staiger argues that there is no ‘simple equation between images of violence and actions by individuals’ (2005: 173). 82. Quoted in Gjelsvik 2013: 245. 83. Symonds 2008: 1. 84. Fagan 2011: 244. 85. In my own teaching practice I have sought to draw my students’ attention to this phenomenon as a means of problematizing it. 86. Grossman and DeGaetano 2014: 37–68. 87. Ibid.: 167–8. 88. Staiger 2005: 173. 89. Raney 2011: 19–20. 242

Notes to pp. 69–73 90. Ibid.: 19. The popularity of revenge stories on stage and screen testifies to its appeal for audiences. 91. Lee and Shapiro 2014: 159. 92. The title of Green’s 2015 book, which offers detailed accounts of returning soldiers’ struggles with PTSD. 93. Other recent examples, include the documentary Thank You for Your Service (2015) and the movie of the same title (2017): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2352196/ and http://www.imdb. com/title/tt2776878/ respectively. 94. I adopted this approach by analysing American Sniper (2014) from a classical perspective; Bakogianni 2018. 95. Capra 2015: 133. 96. Segal finds that the ending of the play offers ‘an emotionally satisfying closure’ (1996: 161). Cf. MacEwen who argues that there is no resolution at the end of Ajax (2006: 318–20). 97. Fagan and Trundle 2010: 1. 98. Studies analysing the oral histories of veterans reveal a link between social rejection and PTSD. ‘The failure of society to welcome veterans back and rejection of their service for socio-political reasons can be highly destructive for psychological well-being. Social rejection is implicated in the development and/or maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and social anxiety’. Social rejection is a contemporary phenomenon and an important difference to how soldiers were treated in ancient Greece and Rome. Hopner 2014: 145. 99. Hartigan 2009: 101. 100. Melchior 2011: 223. On this subject see also Aguado (Chapter 4 in this volume). 101. For example, in the popular BBC series Peaky Blinders (2013–) the violence and moral desensitization of its eponymous protagonists and their followers is largely explained and at least in part excused as the result of their experiences in the trenches of the First World War. The leader of the gang, Tommy Shelby, is a typical example of the long-term effects of PTSD as he has undergone a drastic personality change after his distinguished service as a sapper. He returns home haunted, disillusioned and determined to forge his own criminal path to wealth and power.

Chapter 6 External and Internal Violence Within the Myth of Iphigenia: Staging Myth Today 1.

Translation by the author, MB.

2.

The term ‘overwrite’ is used here intentionally, as a metaphor close to its Computer Science meaning: destroying old data by recording new.

3.

The term ‘index’ I took from Jacek Wachowski’s analysis of drama’s reception (Wachowski 1993). He described the unchangeable core of a myth/plot as an ‘index’, while all its following adaptations he defined in terms of ‘incidents’.

4.

Alongside Euripides’s drama Iphigenia in Aulis (1891) the character of Iphigenia in the situation of her sacrifice is recalled in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1926). She also becomes a figure in the drama Iphigenia at Tauris by Euripides; however, the plot of this play concerns her future life after sacrifice and she represents the demonic transformation of a victim into an executioner. Nonetheless, Euripides created this drama with the aesthetics of a tragicomedy. A study of this play and its adaptation by Grzegorzewska goes far beyond the purpose of this chapter. To consult the comprehensive analysis of the two Euripidean dramas and their stage transformations by Grzegorzewska, see Budzowska 2018. 243

Notes to pp. 74–82 5.

Girard 1986: 15.

6.

Ibid.: 12.

7.

Ibid.

8.

Ibid.: 15.

9.

Ibid.: 16.

10. Blondell 2015: x. 11. See Girard 1986: 52: ‘This type of causality precedes and somewhat heralds that of science.’ 12. See Kitto 2003: 93: ‘Anarchy and despotism are the extremes that meet – in moral and political violence; for despotism is the violence of the one or the few, anarchy the violence of the many.’ 13. Lengauer 1994: 98. 14. See n2. 15. Mieszek 2010, trans. MB. 16. In Greek theatre of the classical period, the poets ‘wrote’ their dramatic versions of myths directly on stage. They prepared only a script of ideas and then directed its adaptation on stage. See: sch. rec. Tzetzae, Ra. 1259: ‘Both comic and tragic poets were directors of their own works during Dionysia [. . .]’ (trans. MB). 17. ‘The loss is punting over the happiness. Somebody who does not feel a danger is an idiot. At the intersection of happiness and unhappiness lies the loss, and tragedy is the reverse of happiness. [. . .] I see myself as a catastrophic playwright.’ (Mieszek 2010, trans. MB). 18. Grzegorzewska 2008: 32. Grzegorzewska’s drama Iphigenia was not published. The text was included in the performance’s booklet. In this chapter, all quotes from this text are my translations. 19. Ibid. 20. In Euripides’ drama, Iphigenia at Tauris, Iphigenia, after her transferral (by Artemis) from Aulis’ altar to the Taurians’ land, becomes Artemis’ priestess, who is obliged to ritually sacrifice all foreigners who visit the shore of Toas’ kingdom. The transformation from Iphigenia in Aulis to Iphigenia in Tauris shows the process of transfiguration from the image of human victim sacrificed at an altar to the image of priestess-executioner sacrificing humans at an altar. Significantly, in both cases the altar is dedicated to the same goddess, Artemis. 21. Grzegorzewska 2008: 43, emphasis mine. 22. Ibid.: 37. 23. Ibid.: 44. 24. Ibid.: 43. 25. The issue is still appallingly presented in the world, as evidenced by the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded in 2018 to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad ‘for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict’. See https://www.nobelprize.org/ prizes/peace/2018/press-release/. 26. Grzegorzewska 2008: 44. 27. Ibid.: 52–3. 28. Ibid.: 36–7, emphasis in original. 29. In ancient Greece, male friendship often suggested physical closeness and brotherhood intertwined with erotic love, carried out in the context of a master–student behavioural mimesis. The phenomenon of an aristocratic pederasty, accomplished mainly in the spiritual space, was conceptualized by Plato and elevated to the space of philosophy of Eros considered 244

Notes to pp. 82–88 from the perspective of friendship and the path of the arete. However, in Antiquity, the issue of the physical dimension of such relationships already arose. To simplify, there was an opposition between two different points of view. In his Symposium (180c–185c), Plato indicates that this kind of Eros can be accomplished in both spaces – spiritual and physical – with the proviso that the spiritual path always comes first; while Xenophon, in his Symposium (8.28–31), suggests that it should be always limited to the spiritual brotherhood. The Platonic approach was consonant with the common thinking about homosexuality in classical Athens (also expressed in Aeschines’ oration against Timarchus). See Foucault 1990; Dover 1989. To read more about the case of Achilles’ and Patroclus’ relationship, consult the chapter ‘Comrades in Love’ by Marco Fantuzzi in his book Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies (Fantuzzi 2012: 187–265). 30. Grzegorzewska follows the simple contemporary cliché relating to ‘gayness’, not the previous image(s) of Achilles or Patroclus. Employing the ancient idea of homoeroticism, already described, she subsequently pursues the present stereotypes of visualizing ‘gayness’. Therefore, her Achilles works in the bike repair workshop, far away from any militarily defined manhood, and Patroclus is a ballet dancer. For this latter connotation, see the comprehensive study by Fisher and Shay (2009). For general clichés of ‘gayness’, see: Halperin 2012. 31. Grzegorzewska 2008: 50. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid.: 57, 58. 34. Ibid.: 57–8. 35. Ibid.: 32. 36. Ibid.: 65. 37. Medea is a character from Euripides’ play (Medea, 1991) who, in revenge for her husband Jason’s betrayal, kills their children and leaves him in despair. 38. Grzegorzewska 2008: 41. 39. Mieszek 2010. 40. Grzegorzewska 2008: 34. 41. See Klein 1975: 295–6. 42. Grzegorzewska 2008: 63. 43. Ibid.: 65. 44. Grzegorzewska situates Helen in the group of female rebels considering her fate in the context of escaping a traditional arranged marriage with Menelaus and following her love for Paris. Such an attitude is defined by the director in the framework of resistance against the patriarchal order. Furthermore, Helen is a mythical figure representing female beauty, both desirable for and destructive to masculinity, and as such it provides a broader background for the female opposition to men discussed within Grzegorzewska’s page-and-stage piece of art. See Blondell 2015. 45. Grzegorzewska 2008: 63. 46. Ibid.: 62. 47. See Smith 1993; Taylor 1957. Smith (1993: 144) recalls the European medieval proverb of similar meaning: Audi, vide, tace, si vis vivere in pace and the Yorkshireman’s motto: ‘Hear all, see all, say nowt’. 48. Ibid.: 54. 49. Ibid.: 60. 50. Ibid.: 69. 245

Notes to pp. 89–96 51. Ibid.: 70. 52. Ibid.: 73. 53. Ibid.: 72–4. 54. Ibid.: 74. 55. Mieszek 2010, trans. MB. 56. Grzegorzewska 2008: 77.

Chapter 7

Kseni, the Foreigner: A Brazilian Medea in Action

1.

Euripides 1994: 1251–60. ἰὼ Γᾶ τε καὶ παμφαὴς / ἀκτὶς Ἁλίου, κατίδετ᾽ ἴδετε τὰν / ὀλομέναν γυναῖκα, πρὶν φοινίαν / τέκνοις προσβαλεῖν χέρ᾽ αὐτοκτόνον: / σᾶς γὰρ χρυσέας ἀπὸ γονᾶς / ἔβλαστεν, θεοῦ δ / αἷμα πίτνειν / φόβος ὑπ᾽ ἀνέρων. / ἀλλά νιν, ὦ φάος διογενές, κάτειρ- / γε κατάπαυσον, ἔξελ᾽ οἴκων τάλαι- / ναν φονίαν τ᾽ Ἐρινὺν ὑπαλαστόρων.

2.

See, for instance Rubino and Degregori 2000; Hall, Macintosh and Taplin 2000; Clauss and Johnson (1997); as well as the lack of information on the reception of Medea in Brazil and even in South America.

3.

Coelho 2005, 2008b, 2010, 2013, 2017, 2018.

4.

Less studied than Medea in theatre or cinema is the transposition of this character into opera, the most famous of which is Cherubini’s Medea. For further information, see McDonald 2000, 2008.

5.

This explains, for instance, why scholars have included it in discussions on how Medea has been received within cinema. See, for instance, Winkler (2017: 59–98) who analyses Kseni in his chapter on infanticide, focusing primarily on films by Pasolini, Ripstein and Dassin, or plays that employ a hybrid language.

6.

On the subject, see introductions by Smit 2016 and Hardwick and Stray 2008.

7.

Kitto (1939) was one of the first voices to classify Medea as a tragedy related to private and family problems. This approach continues into the present, in analyses that stress her sexuality or ‘irrational passion’ as being associated with a sort of female nature and family universe to which she is relegated, with no accompanying political perspective.

8.

On this, see also Cancela 2005 and Croce 2006.

9.

See Douxami 2001.

10. Coelho 2008b. 11. Some similarities and differences in this new Medea could reveal how innovative and polemic Agostinho Olavo’s play was in dealing with cultural prejudices, intertwined with themes such as racial otherness, ethnicity and gender issues through the persona of Medea. 12. The myth of Medea was (and still is) a subject that has interested many South American artists. As I wrote regarding this in another context (Coelho 2005) – a piece of information that needs to be updated – the Medea myth has been adapted in Peru (La Selva, by Juan Ríos, 1950), Mexico (Malintzin: Medea Americana, by Jesús Inclán, 1957), Cuba (Medea en el Espejo, by José Triana, 1960) and Argentina (La Frontera, by David Cureses, 1960). It later appeared in Puerto Rico (El Castillo interior de Medea Camuñas, by P. Santaliz, 1984), again in Argentina (Medea de Moquegua, by L.M. Salvaneschi, 1992) and Cuba (Medea, by R. Montenero, 1997), and Chile (Medea Mapuche, by Juan Radrigán, 2000). 13. It is worth mentioning that Oliveira worked with and played for Xenakis and Stravinsky, respectively, both of whom had plays inspired by Greek mythology: Xenakis’ Medea, and 246

Notes to pp. 96–103 Stravinsky’s Oedipus. Iannis Xenakis, a Greek composer, has various pieces that allude to Greek myths. His Medea (Medea Senecae, 1967) is modelled on Seneca’s drama and, rather curiously, is a chorus made for male voices. Stravinsky’s opera Oedipus Rex was performed in 1928, with a libretto by Jean Cocteau. 14. Like Denise Stoklos, Jocy de Oliveira received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (in 2005), one of the factors that facilitated the completion of this opera. It is interesting to note that Oliveira and Stoklos are the two artists most concerned with bringing a political agenda to the reception of Medea in Brazil. 15. Here I am resuming and expanding subjects I discuss elsewhere. See Coelho 2010 and 2013. 16. Oliveira writes in this form within her opera, which mixes Greek (transliterated) with Portuguese, as she does with other languages. She repeats the word pampharmakos a number of times. 17. See on this subject Helen in Odyssey (4. 219–64) controlling pharmakon and the narrative concerning episodes in Troy. 18. Coelho 1992; Boedecker 1991; Cairns 2014. 19. With reference to this subject see Dillon 1997 and Boedecker 1991. For a defence of this view in another context, see Coelho 2004. 20. With reference to the word pharmakon and for a discussion of its use in the context of the fifth century bc , see Coelho 2009; and Graf 1995, 1999. 21. I questioned Oliveira regarding this point, when I spoke to her on 4 October 2008; she responded that this was a line from Euripides that she had consciously decided to appropriate. 22. Coelho 1992. 23. Kitto 1939: 195. 24. Coelho 2013. 25. Lines 92, 103–4, 187–8 and 1342. Concerning the comparison between Medea and animals, see also Morwood (2014: 87) in his re-evaluation of Jason. He also discusses the difficulties in seeing Medea as a sort of monster or supernatural being, a Fury, as Jason and the choir do and, corroborating part of my argument, understands this savage nature as being connected to the fact that she came from a barbarous land, ‘the furthest boundaries of the world’ (lines 550–41). 26. Cairns 2014: 124–5. On the legal aspects of their marriage, see also Giombini 2017, especially 205–8, on Jason and Aegeus’ oaths. 27. Smit 2014: 157, 161. 28. On these Black Medeas, see Wetmore 2003. In Wetmore’s edition there is no reference to the Brazilian black Medea, despite it being published in 1961; see Nascimento 1961. 29. Karamanou 2014: 36–7. See also Hall 1989: 51–3. On Euripedes’ Medea as a political tragedy, see also Wyles 2014. 30. Karamanou 2014: 45. 31. Oliveira 2008: 6. 32. On the comparison, see Coelho 2018. 33. The theme of the exclusion of exiles and immigrants has been presented in a particularly interesting way by the Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos in many of his films, but one in particular drew my attention: Eternity and a Day (1998). His approach is articulated around three key words, one of which is xenitis, a dialectical form of xenos. 34. See Mills 2014. Peter Greenway used and talked about this symbolism in his opera Writing to Vermeer (which I saw at Lincoln Center in 2000). 247

Notes to pp. 107–110

Chapter 8 Choreographies of Violence: Spartacus from the Soviet Ballet to the Global Stage 1.

On the story of Spartacus, see Wiedemann 1981 and Shaw 2001, with bibliography and sources.

2.

On these methodologies, see the introduction of Morris and Giersdorf 2016.

3.

For the relationship between war and spectacle in the ancient world, see Bakogianni and Hope 2015.

4.

A thorough analysis of this topic can be found in Winkler 2007a.

5.

See Mayer 2013.

6.

For a full list of films about Spartacus, see Winkler 2007a: 8, n15. For a study of the recent STARZ TV show, see Augoustakis and Cyrino 2017.

7.

See Wyke 1997a: 45–6.

8.

Ibid.: 54.

9.

See Wyke 1997a; Winkler 2007b; Gunther Kodat 2016.

10. As Winkler (2007b: 162) recalls, this scene was shot by the original director of the project, Anthony Mann. 11. According to Appian (B Civ. 1.14.118), the body of Spartacus was not found after the battle in 71 bc . No other author in Antiquity mentions that he was crucified with his men. 12. See Winkler 2007b: 183–7, Hark 1993: 153; Cyrino 2005a: 113. 13. Hark 1993: 156. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid.: 158. 16. Wyke 1997a: 70. 17. Burgoyne 2008: 85–6. 18. Winkler 2007b: 172. 19. On these magazines that featured photographs of muscular young men and their relationship with Graeco-Roman film genres, see Hark 1993: 151–3. 20. Shaw refers to Spartacus as ‘a paradigm of active resistance to injustice’ among the victims of McCarthyism in the United States (2001: 18). On the engagement of American Communists in the struggle for racial equality, see Wyke 1997a: 68; Hardwick 2003: 37–43; Gunther Kodat 2015: 133–4. 21. Starting with the novel The Gladiator (1831), by Robert Montgomery Bird. In the same vein, the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, whose revolt inspired C.L.R. James and other members of the Civil Rights movement, was known as ‘the Black Spartacus’. See Langerwerf 2011: 353–6 and McConnell 2015. 22. Girgus 2002: 94. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid.: 94–5. 25. O’Brien 2014: 152. 26. On ancient and modern perceptions of race and ethnicity in regard to slavery, see Hall, Alston and McConnell 2011. See also Dench 2005: 222–33. 27. O’Brien 2014: 151. 248

Notes to pp. 111–114 28. Hark 1993: 159. 29. Winkler (2007b: 171) compares Draba to Saint Peter, who was crucified upside down. Despite this formal parallelism, the spectacular exhibition of a black dead body projects a whole different dimension, especially through what Young (2010) analyses as the ‘embodied black experience’. 30. On this, see Rubinsohn 1987; Shaw 2001; Hardwick 2003; DuBois 2010. 31. Marx and Engels 1974: 160. 32. Shaw 2001: 16. On the intersections between the German and Russian traditions, see also Osterkamp 2011. 33. Rubinsohn 1987: 1. 34. As DuBois recalls, the soccer team of the Moscow Sport Circle changed its name into ‘Spartak Moscow’ (2010: 34). 35. Ezrahi 2012: 204. 36. Hardwick 2003: 43–50. 37. He also read Appian and Plutarch. On Giovagnoli’s novel, see Wyke 1997a: 38–41. 38. Searcy 2016: 366. 39. See Yakobson 2001: 105 and Ezrahi 2012: 204–5. 40. Searcy 2016: 368. 41. Others were Shostakovich and Prokofiev. See Robinson 2007: 437–8. 42. Even so, Khachaturian claimed to see the subject as a ‘rebellious call for artistic freedom’. See Gunther Kodat 2015: 129–31. 43. To Searcy (2016: 365) this is ‘perhaps the most fundamental political issue raised by the Spartacus score’. See also Robinson 2007: 436–8. 44. See Ross 2015: 268 and Ezrahi 2012: 206. 45. See Searcy 2016: 376 and Ezrahi 2012: 206–8. 46. The title is commonly translated as ‘Scenes from Roman life’. I prefer the word ‘pictures’ [kartiny] as it conveys notions that relate to the pictorial and cinematic ‘plastique’ of Yakobson’s tableaux vivants. 47. Yakobson 2001: 102. 48. In 1975, Yakobson stated ‘it is impossible for the classical dance to say anything relevant to today; representation is beyond its grasp’. See Ross 1991: 49. 49. Ross 2015: 256. 50. In the second Russian edition of Fokine’s autobiography (1981), the appendix of works that he created in the pre-Diaghilev era includes a ballet called Pictures of the Ancient World [Kartini antichnogo mira], premièred in Saint Petersburg in February 1909. It consisted on four acts that somehow preceded Yakobson’s ‘Pictures’: ‘Dance at the Feast’, ‘The Battle of the Gladiators’, ‘After the Example of the Gods’ and ‘In the Roman Circus’. The third of these acts is also described with the term ‘leaving picture’ [zhivaya kartina]. See Garafola 1989: 383. 51. Yakobson 2001: 107. 52. Ibid.: 126. 53. Ross 2015: 252. 54. Yakobson 2001: 133–6. 55. Ross 2015: 253. 56. Searcy 2016: 383. 57. Yakobson 2001: 119. 249

Notes to pp. 114–118 58. Se Ross 2015: 262–3. On the erotically charged scenes at Crassus’ Feast and ‘the fear that Soviet audiences would be tempted to sympathize more with the seductive enemy than with the steadfast heroism of the revolutionary’, see Ezrahi 2012: 211–12. 59. In his 1962 chronicle, for instance, the British journalist based in Moscow Ralph Parker wrote: ‘It was not until Stalin’s death that this tragedy, extolling a man who challenged autocratic power and raised the banner of freedom, reached the stage’ (1962: 30). 60. Searcy 2016: 383. 61. In his memoirs, Lopukhov defines Spartacus as ‘far from flawless’, but he recognizes the enormous value of the production (1966: 330–1). See Ross 2015: 266–9; Ezrahi 2012: 209; Gunther Kodat 2015: 131. 62. Yakobson 2001: 104. 63. Ezrahi 2012: 210. 64. See Haskell 1962: 560–1 and Searcy 2016: 386–7, who rescues the survey questionnaires that were distributed to the audience in the premiere. 65. Ezrahi 2012: 211. 66. Topping 1962: 31. 67. Terry 1962a. 68. Hughes 1962a. 69. See Terry 1962a and Terry 1962b: C1, respectively. 70. On the problematic designation of the ballet as ‘spectacle’, see Ross 2015: 281–2. 71. Hughes 1962b. 72. Terry 1962b: C3. 73. Moore 1962. 74. Hughes 1962a. 75. Hering 1962: 32. 76. Terry 1962a. 77. Moore 1962. 78. Taub 1983. 79. Hering 1962: 32. 80. See Yakobson 2001: 134; Dobrovol’skaya 1968: 86. He was a retiarius. 81. Ezrahi 2012: 215. 82. See ibid.: 216–19; Gunther Kodat 2015: 145–6; Searcy 2016: 389–90. 83. Yet Gunther Kodat analyses Grigorovich’s elevation of the male figure as a form of subversion against the authority of the Soviet state (2015: 146–50). According to her, ‘Grigorovich’s Spartak queered the Stalinist narrative of Spartacus’ in a moment of ‘criminalized homosexuality’. 84. Searcy 2016: 392. 85. On current discussions about this notion, see Searcy 2016: 388–9. 86. Searcy 2016: 390. 87. Ezrahi 2012: 220–31. On this problematic approach and the consequences of separating art from politics, see Searcy 2016: 396–9. 88. Barnes 1969. 89. Searcy 2016: 395–6. 90. Ibid.: 396. 91. Ezrahi 2012: 229. 250

Notes to pp. 118–122 92. For a full list, see Searcy 2016: 398. 93. First known as ‘Choreographic Miniatures’ (1969), it is now the ‘Saint Petersburg State Academic Leonid Yacobson [sic] Ballet Theatre’. 94. http://yacobsonballet.ru/en/afisha/spartacus. 95. The synopsis included in the Mariinsky’s website suffices to explain the kind of artistic approach: https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/repertoire/ballet/spartacus. 96. Perhaps an indication of Yakobson’s reading of Fast’s novel. On this possibility, see Ross 2015: 263. 97. For casts and pictures see the websites: http://yacobsonballet.ru/en/afisha/spartacus and https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/repertoire/ballet/spartacus. 98. On this aspect, see Searcy 2016: 383–5. Years later, Yakobson would also choreograph a ballet called Ebony Concerto (1971), in which a series of dancers painted in black incarnated distressingly stereotypical racist minstrelsy characters. On this, see Ross 2015: 196–7. 99. See Dixon Gottschild 1996: 81–4 and Manning 2004: 124–7. On the practice of blackface in contemporary society, see Johnson 2012. 100. On the complexities of this politics, see Tomé 2020, who interrogates how notions of cosmopolitanism in ballet are increasingly defined in terms of the multiracial and transnational scope. I thank Lester Tomé for allowing me to read his manuscript as well as for his valuable comments in the preparation of this work. 101. See n99. 102. On the question of black bodies’ performance as historically essentialized, see DeFrantz 1996 and Manning 2004: 180–6. 103. Tomé 2020. 104. On ‘whiteness’ in ballet, see Dixon Gottschild 2003 and Fisher 2016. 105. Interview ‘The Making of Spartacus’ in the 2008 DVD Spartacus: The Bolshoi Ballet, London: Decca. 106. Tomé 2020. 107. Decca DVD, 2008. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. On Acosta’s racialized body and its colonialist status as object of sexual desire, see Tomé 2020. 111. On ‘blackness’ as an anachronistic way of characterizing Otherness, see also Coelho (Chapter 7 in this volume). 112. Young (2010: 11) talks about ‘compulsory visibility’. See also Powers 2015: 601–2. 113. On this, see Wetmore 2003. 114. See Tomé 2020: 303. 115. Crisp 2007. 116. Craine 2007. 117. Jennings 2007. Since 2016, the role has also been performed by the Afro-Cuban dancer Osiel Gouneo, from the Bayerische Staatsoper, who received very similar reviews to those of Acosta’s performance. 118 A couple of years after this paper was originally conceived and written, I discovered a South African adaptation of the ballet, with music by Khachaturian, created and choreographed by Veronica Paeper in 2015, and entitled A Spartacus of Africa. Certainly, it would open up new lines of inquiry in this regard. 251

Notes to pp. 125–128

Chapter 9

Iocaste’s Daughters in Modernity: Anita Berber and Valeska Gert

1.

Loraux 1993.

2.

See also the research results of SFB Transformationen der Antike: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/ projekt/5486176?context. Pl., Phd. 67 E (transl. Bluck 1955). Ibid. Ibid. Pl., Phd. 80 A–B: ‘Then consider, Cebes,’ he said, ‘whether this is our conclusion as a result of all that has been said, that soul is very like that which is divine and deathless and intelligible and uniform and indissoluble and always invariable and constant, while body is very like that which is human and mortal and manifold, incomprehensible to the intelligence, always liable to dissolution, never constant.’ (transl. Bluck, 1955). See also the interpretation of Bordt 2011 and Gehring 2010: especially 24–5. Pl., Phd. 81 C (transl. Bluck 1955). Pl., Phd. 106 E: ‘So when death assails the man, the mortal part of him, it seems, dies, but the deathless part withdraws, and goes away safe and uncorrupted, giving place to death.’ (transl. Bluck 1955). See Bordt 2011: 38. See Van Hooff 1990: 49. ‘In myth there are some women who use the sword, whereas in recorded history they use metal only in exceptional circumstances. Of course, swords simply lie outside their reach in the same way as for slaves, but even domestic tools for stabbing and cutting are used by women only seldom’. This quotation makes clear how (in myth) suicide is staged in tragedy, while in real (non-theatrical) life it often appears differently. It is possible that this quote can be associated with the absence of a visible stage death and illustrates the aspect of the ‘male’ suicide of a woman. See Seidensticker and Vöhler 2006: viii. In the paragraph that follows, I re-sketch the main arguments of Nicole Loraux’s excellent study Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, 1993. I add to her observations some essential aspects regarding corporeality. On suicide by sword, see also Bakogianni (Chapter 5 in this volume), 60 (with n 33), and 64–7. Ath., Deipnosophistae 8.347 D (trans. Sommerstein 2010). Homer, Od. 11. 271–80 (transl. Murray 1919). Soph., OT 856–7 (transl. Lloyd-Jones 1994). Ibid.: 1056–7. Ibid.: 1060. Ibid.: 1068. Ibid.: 1235. Ibid.: 1237–63. Eur., Phoen. 48–50 (transl. Kovacs 2002). Ibid.: 328. Ibid.: 331–6. Ibid.: 1274–6. See Eur., Phoen. 153, 192.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

252

Notes to pp. 128–134 27. 28. 29. 30.

Eur., Phoen. 945 (transl. Kovacs 2002). Ibid.: 934. Ibid.: 1455–9. See Van Hooff 1990: 21: Women are strikingly well represented in the mythical material: there are 7l cases of female suicide against 5l male ones in the world of myth, or, when we count only the number of individuals who according to the tales actually put an end to their lives, we have 56 women and 37 men. That sex ratio is not a reflection of reality. It is more the case that myth is the medium through which the more problematical nature of female existence is handled. So only in this limited sense is Steiner right in ascribing ‘an aura of the feminine’ to ancient sensibility with respect to suicide. Sometimes the mythical woman who kills herself confirms the specific values for which she stands. The life of man is less problematic; that is the reason why male suicide is less represented in mythology.

31. See also Ebeling 1979: 31. 32. Heidegger 1962: § 53. 33. Ibid.: § 49. ‘But our analysis of death remains purely “this-worldly” ’. 34. See also https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/critical-intimacy-interview-gayatri-chakravortyspivak/#, 29 July 2016. 35. Heidegger 1962: § 53. 36. Ibid.: § 53. 37. Ibid.: § 49. 38. Ibid.: § 47. 39. Diagne 2016; Elswit 2009; Foellmer 2006: 183–7. 40. For detailed bibliographic information see Fischer 2014. 41. Heidegger 1962: §52. 42. See Berber and Droste 1923. 43. Berber and Droste 1923: 23–4. 44. Jenčík 2014: 21–4. 45. This photo can also be found in Berber and Droste 1923: XI. 46. See also Ariès 1980. 47. Hildenbrandt 1966: 201. 48. Mann 1930: 46. 49. Gert 1968: 40. In her autobiography Ich bin eine Hexe, Valeska Gert wrote: ‘Ein hageres Mädchen mit Höhlen im Gesicht unter scharf herausspringenden Backenknochen sagte: “Wir wollen das Unerhörte im Tanz.” Das Unerhörte, das wollte ich auch. Was ist das Unerhörte? Es ist Geburt, Liebe, Tod. Niemand hat es bisher gewagt, es ungeschminkt und wahrhaftig darzustellen’. 50. Heidegger 1962: §53. 51. Valeska Gert in the film Just for Fun by Volker Schlöndorff 1977. 52. Dostojewskij 1999: 672–4. ‘Sie geriet immer mehr in ein unruhiges Phantasieren. Mitunter fuhr sie zusammen, ließ ihre Augen rings umherwandern und erkannte alle einen Moment, aber sofort wurde das Bewußtsein wieder von Fieberphantasien abgelöst. Sie atmete röchelnd und nur mühsam; es war, als ob ihr etwas in der Kehle brodelte. [. . .] Sie war in gewaltiger 253

Notes to pp. 134–138 Aufregung und versuchte mit aller Kraft sich aufzurichten. Schließlich begann sie schreiend, mit entsetzlich heißerer Stimme zu singen, aber nach jedem Wort fehlte ihr die Luft und ihre Angst wuchs immer mehr [. . .] Qualvoll Luft holend, fuhr sie zusammen, kam auf einmal zur Besinnung und sah alle wie entsetzt an [. . .] Sie verlor wieder ihre Besinnung; aber diese letzte Bewußtlosigkeit dauerte nicht lange. Ihr blaßgelbes abgemagertes Gesicht fiel hintenüber, der Mund öffnete sich, die Beine streckten sich krampfhaft aus. Sie seufzte tief, tief auf und starb.’ 53. Gert 1931: 15. 54. Gert 1968: 40. 55. Gert 1926: 363. 56. See also Haitzinger 2015a. 57. Hildenbrandt 1928: 128–9. ‘Das Stärkste aber und etwas, was ohne Beispiel in der Geschichte des modernen Tanzes steht, unkopierbar und unüberholbar und mächtig und unvergesslich, das ist ihr Tanz ‘Tod’, [. . .] Sie tut nichts. Sie steht und stirbt.’ 58. Heidegger 1962: § 53. See also Ebeling 1979: 17. 59. See also Montaigne 1976. 60. Regarding the modelling of tragic figures in the European modern era, see also Haitzinger 2015b: 324–48. 61. Loraux 1993: 74–6.

Chapter 10

Dark Territories of the Soul: Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra

1.

Yourcenar 1974: 173–4 © Gallimard.

2.

A video of the dance is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz7mEaHxZus.

3.

De Mille 1956: 84.

4.

Martha Graham, quoted by McCandlish Phillips of The New York Times, reproduced in De Mille 1956: 84.

5.

The presence of the body turns it into an absence in some of Arch Lauterer’s drawings of Graham’s dance pieces, like Immediate Tragedy (1937). In those sketches, Lauterer reduces Graham’s choreographic movements to energetic abstract lines. Somehow, they are abstract sketches of the expression of the horror and tragedy of the Spanish Civil War – Immediate Tragedy, as with Deep Song (1937), is an answer to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, an expression of ‘the anatomy of anguish from tragic events’ (Morgan 1980, unpaginated), as Graham said of Deep Song. In 1926, Kandinsky made four analytical drawings of Gret Palucca’s dances, reducing her movements to energetic schematic lines. Lauterer made them while Graham was dancing, while Kandinsky based his drawings on Charlotte Rudolph’s photographs of Palucca. The photographs and drawings were published in March 1926 in Das Kunstblatt art journal under the title ‘Tanzkurven. Zu den Tänzen der Palucca’ (Kandinsky 1926).

6.

Kandinsky 1947: 29.

7.

On Kandinsky in Munich see Weiss 1982.

8.

The text was written in 1910 and published in 1912.

9.

There are points of correspondence between Kandinsky’s references to colour and J.W. von Goethe’s theory of colours. Nevertheless, according to John Gage, it was after publishing his Spiritual in Art that Kandinsky arrived, by way of the theosophist Rudolf Steiner, to Goethe’s theory (Gage 1999: 207–9).

254

Notes to pp. 138–141 10. See Maderuelo 2008: 42–50. 11. Kandinsky also wrote some theatre pieces, with references to colours in the titles. Even Riesen [Giants] (c. 1909), rewrote and renamed years later as Der Gelbe Klang [The Yellow Sound] (c. 1911–12) and published in Der Blaue Reiter almanac – co-edited by Kandinsky and Marc in Munich in 1912 – was dedicated to modern art and music. He also published a long essay on theatre in this almanac. The total work of art concept was in full swing in Munich at the time. Kandinsky’s theatre pieces are published in Kandinsky 1975. 12. Kandinsky 1947: 71–2. 13. Rainer 1974: 174. 14. The space and objects played an important role in the artistic response to Abstract Expressionism. This is the case with Minimal Art, neo-Dada and Pop Art, for example. 15. Weiss 1982: 56. 16. Blok 1982: 82. 17. Chicago Art Institute 1922: n.p. 18. According to Kandinsky, he had no intention of representing cannons as a specific object: ‘The designation “Cannons”, selected by me for my own use, is not to be conceived as indicating the “contents” of the picture.’: Eddy 1919: 125. See https://www.artic.edu/artworks/8991/ improvisation-no-30-cannons. 19. Eddy 1919: 126. 20. As Fèlix Fanés points out, for the Dadaists, the need to go beyond a world of decadence, which was responsible for an apocalyptic war, found a perfect tool in abstraction. See Fanés 2016: 8–29. 21. On Joan Miró’s Constellations see Breton 2000: 187. 22. Lotte H. Eisner emphasizes the importance of creating anxiety and terror. The diversity of planes is of secondary importance in expressionist film (1965: 26). 23. Ibid.: 69. ‘Is the singular pleasure that the Germans have in evoking horror the consequence, in addition to certain sadistic tendencies, of an excessive and very Germanic desire to submit to discipline?’ 24. On the influences between Modern dance in Germany and the United States see PartschBergsohn 1994. 25. Mary Wigman wrote some texts on dance. See, for example, Wigman 1966 or Wigman 1975. 26. On her dance Lamentation, Graham said that it ‘is a solo piece in which I wear a long tube of material to indicate the tragedy that obsesses the body, the ability to stretch inside your own skin, to witness and test the perimeters and boundaries of grief, which is honourable and universal’ (Graham 1991: 117). 27. Expressionist films are full of demoniac men. I’m using the word demoniac in the same way Eisner uses it, as it was understood by the Greeks and by Goethe. Concerning the nature of supernatural power, see Eisner 1965: 11. As Leopold Ziegler writes in his book Das Heilige Reich der Deutschen (1925) – quoted from the French translation made by Lotte H. Eisner – ‘Il faut qualifier tout simplement de démoniaque ce comportement énigmatique à l’égard de la réalité de ce tout solide et fermé que présente le monde. L’homme allemand, c’est l’homme démoniaque par excellence. Démoniaque semble véritablement l’abîme qui ne peut être comblé, la nostalgie qui ne peut être apaisée, la soif qui ne peut être étanchée’ [‘This enigmatic behaviour towards the solid and closed reality of the world is simply qualified as demonic. The German man is the demonic man par excellence. Demonic truly seems to be the abyss that cannot be filled, the nostalgia that cannot be appeased, the thirst that cannot be quenched’]. Ziegler’s quote is reproduced in Eisner 1965: 7. 255

Notes to pp. 141–143 28. Isa Partsch-Bergsohn points to Japanese Noh theatre’s influence on Wigman’s use of masks (1994: 33). Ana Abad Carlés also finds Noh and kabuki theatre’s influence in Graham. She mentions how Graham uses heroines’ memory to structure the action – as in Noh – and how she places dancers and organizes the way they appear on stage – as in kabuki – Abad Carlés 2012: 296–7. Deborah Jowitt, however, maintains that Noh heroes, unlike Graham, didn’t reenact their stories collectively. She also adds: ‘The ability of a character to move freely from one performance mode to another – narrating, meditating, acting out – is integral to Graham’s structures. The Greeks and Trojans in her Clytemnestra introduce themselves formally before they enter the drama’ (1988: 219). 29. American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham – after he left the Martha Graham Dance Company – developed a truly anti-narrative and self-sufficient dance, taking the neoDada concept of art to the extreme. 30. For Graham, music is important to accentuate the sense of movement. In Clytemnestra, Halim El-Dabh’s music emphasizes the tragic meaning of the movements. 31. Blumenberg 1985: 174–5. 32. Didi-Huberman 2000: 9; ‘always, in front of an image, we are in front of time’. 33. Steiner 1996: 325. 34. Ibid.: 325–6. 35. Ibid.: 323. 36. Didi-Huberman is thinking in images in his Devant le temps: histoire de l’art et anachronisme des images (2000), as in his Le danseur des solitudes he also mentions time in a reference to dance: ‘Danseur ou pas, l’homme danse avec le temps, c’est-à-dire avec les rencontres de temps pluriels’ [‘Dancer or not, man dances with time, that is to say with plural time encounters’] (2006: 171). 37. Deren 2005: 21. 38. Aeschylus 2008. 39. For a more detailed description of the piece’s narrative structure see Foley 2005: 314–15. 40. Kostelanetz 1994: 226. 41. Martha Graham quoted by Ernestine Stodelle in Stodelle 1984: 184. 42. Martha Graham’s quote reproduced in Hering 1974: 50–1. 43. Roig 1991: 87–8. Roig’s only theatre play, the monologue Reivindicació de la senyora Clito Mestres, was edited in 1992. The writer describes her Clytemnestra as a woman of the late twentieth century (1991: 86). 44. Ana Abad Carlés points out that Graham is following François Delsarte and Isadora Duncan in their identification of the pelvic area as the centre of gravity and emotion. That is, Graham attributes to the pelvic area all the technical and emotional power (2012: 286–7). 45. Cunningham 1985: 139. 46. Tracy 1994: 88. 47. Noguchi concludes: ‘Other people couldn’t use it very well because it became Martha’ (Tracy 1994: 88). 48. Anna Kisselgoff ’s words on Graham’s Clytemnestra reproduced in De Mille 1956: 335. 49. Stodelle 1984: 185. 50. Graham 1973: 220. 256

Notes to pp. 143–146 51. Martin 1958. 52. Barthes 1993b: 217. 53. On the political sense of Graham’s dance see, for example, Franko 1995: 38–74 or Colomé y Pujol 2010: 112–27. 54. Graham 1991: 133. 55. Marcel Duchamp baptized them with the name ‘mobiles’. 56. Graham 1991: 166. 57. Tracy 1994: 81. 58. Ibid.: 86. 59. Graham 1973: 358. 60. Franko 1995: 43. 61. Deren 2004: 252. 62. Ana Abad Carlés links Graham’s interest in Greek mythology to her interest in the work of Nietzsche and Jung, especially Jung’s ideas about the collective unconscious and archetypical images. Graham’s desire was to represent women’s souls: Abad Carlés 2012: 295–6. Mark Franko mentions James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890, 1922) and Jane Ellen Harrison’s ‘combined impact’ in Graham (Franko 2012: 113). On the relationship between Joseph Campbell, Jung, Graham and mythology see also Franko 2012: 26, 113. 63. Graham 1973: 12. 64. Cunningham 1985: 139. On a critical interpretation of Graham’s work from the 1960s, see Franko 2012: 111–16. 65. Including the more abstract works like Deep Song (1937), entitled Deep Song in reference to Spanish ‘Cante jondo’. Delfín Colomé y Pujol links the title of Graham’s work’s with Federico García Lorca’s Poema del Cante Jondo – written in 1921 and published in 1931 – translated into English as Poem of Deep Song: Colomé y Pujol 2010: 121. There is also a reference to García Lorca, and Edwin Honig (who translated García Lorca’s poetry into English, and wrote the critical study García Lorca in 1944), in Graham’s ‘preliminary studies for Clytemnestra. Canticle for Innocent Comedians’ (Graham 1973: 209). 66. William Carlos Williams wrote in 1942 the poem War, the Destroyer!, dedicated to Martha Graham. The poem was written to go with Morgan’s photography. The poem (Williams 1991: 43–4) starts as follows: What is war, the destroyer but an appurtenance to the dance? The deadly serious who would have us suppress 67. Barbara Kruger, Untitled [Your body is a battleground] (1989). 68. As Roland Barthes remarks: ‘La tragédie ne l’a pas fait; son histoire n’est qu’une succession de morts et de résurrections glorieuses’ [‘The tragedy did not do it; his story is just a succession of glorious deaths and resurrections’] (1993a: 20). 69. Graham’s quote reproduced in Polcari 2005: 509. 70. See Guilbaut 1983.

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Notes to pp. 146–152 71. On the use of modern dance and, especially on the use of Martha Graham – the ‘grand lady of the dance’ in Henry Kissinger’s words, in a letter to President Gerald Ford, see Croft 2015: 105. And on her Martha Graham Dance Company for political and propagandistic purposes, see Croft 2015: Chapter 3. For example: ‘Graham’s staged depictions of sexual desired allowed the United States to demonstrate that it did not censor its arts, as did the soviets’ (Croft 2015: 107). 72. Guilbaut 1983: 157. 73. Ibid.: 112. 74. Ibid.: 113. 75. Ibid. 76. Graham’s quote reproduced in Polcari 2005: 489. 77. As Dore Ashton explains: ‘The Freudian doctrine was augmented by numerous other viewpoints, including that of Jung, who found a more ready climate than Freud for his aesthetic views in the United States, where there was a puritanical reluctance to grant to libido total creative monopoly’ (1992: 123). 78. Robert Burns Motherwell’s letter to William Baziotes, 6 September 1944, William and Ethel Baziotes papers, 1916–92. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Current copyright status is undetermined. 79. Barthes says, recalling Paul Claudel, that the grave is the fundamental object of Greek drama (‘Claudel définit la tragédie antique: ce long cri devant une tombe mal fermée. La tombe: objet fondamental, centre, cause, ombilic du drame grec’ [‘Claudel defines ancient tragedy as a long cry before a poorly closed grave. The tomb: fundamental object, centre, cause, navel of the Greek drama’], Barthes 1993b: 217). He also affirms that in modern theatre, the bed replaces the tomb (Barthes 1993b: 217). In Graham’s Clytemnestra, when the grave and the tragic are evoked, the psychoanalyst’s couch somehow replaces the tomb. By laying Clytemnestra down, the couch takes on the psychological, psychoanalytical function of myth. 80. The performance Vagina Painting (1965) performed by Shigeko Kubota in the Perpetual Fluxfest (New York 4 July 1965) is understood as a challenge to action painting’s masculine preponderance – that is, the paintbrush as a metaphor for the phallus. 81. His painting Guernica (1937) had a remarkable influence on the artists of The School of New York.

Chapter 11 Si vis ludum para bellum: Violence and War as the Predominant Language of Antiquity in Video Games 1.

Beginning with Magnavox Odyssey and including models such as Atari’s Home Pong, Coleco’s Telstar series or Nintendo’s Color TV-Game series, as well as the Atari 2600 and 5200, Bally Astrocade, Intellivision, Emerson Arcadia 2001 or ColecoVision. For a brief analysis on the history of video games see Malliet and de Meyer 2005.

2.

Herman 2008.

3.

Including SEGA SG-1000 and Mark III (or Master System), Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Atari 7800.

4.

Including Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. 3D rendering and graphic processors such as GeForce, ATI Radeon or DirectX series would prove to be outstanding, marking a future graphics evolution in the industry. On the increasing number of video games set in Antiquity see Lowe 2009: 64–5.

5.

Lowe 2009: 72; Richards 2015.

258

Notes to pp. 152–155 6.

Howells 2002; King and Krzywinska 2002b.

7.

The most celebrated exceptions to the date being Mortal Kombat (Paul W.S. Anderson, 1995), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Simon West, 2001) or Warcraft (Duncan Jones, 2016).

8.

Chapman 2013: 315.

9.

Gardner 2007; Köstlbauer 2014; Chapman 2016: 136–70.

10. Raessens 2005; Huisman and Marckmann 2005. 11. See Ghita and Andrikopoulos 2009 on one of the most celebrated cases that links modding [a fan making modifications to an already famous video game or video game franchise] and classical reception in video games: Rome: Total Realism (Rome: Total Realism Development Team, 2005–10). 12. Neitzel 2005; De Mul 2005; Schwarz 2014. 13. The analytical term lexia comes from Chapman 2016: 123–5: ‘combinable ludic representations of agents, objects, social structures, architecture, processes, actions and concepts’. 14. Schwingeler 2008: 120–4. 15. Lowe 2009: 72–3. Veugen 2011: 48. 16. Uricchio 2005; Rejack 2007; Chapman 2016: 173–230. 17. García Martín and Cadiñanos Martínez 2013, 2015. 18. A personal project, in this sense: https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/1275047/ Antiquity-in-Video-Games. As a work in progress, every new contribution or correction to this compilation is welcomed. 19. Rollinger 2013, 2015. 20. Schut 2007: 221. 21. This category has been profusely employed in fields like heritage (Anderson et al. 2009), education (Mouaheb et al. 2012) and business (Reeves and Read 2009), and even includes specialized publications, such as the International Journal of Serious Games: http://journal. seriousgamessociety.org/. 22. The only exceptions to this pattern would be the display of Alexander the Great’s campaigns (Empire Earth, Stainless Steel Studios, 2001; Rome: Total War: Alexander, The Creative Assembly, 2006) and the more or less distorted images of Sparta (Spartan, Slitherine Strategies, 2004; Spartan: Total Warrior, The Creative Assembly, 2005; Ancient Wars: Sparta, World Forge, 2007; Gameloft series Hero of Sparta, 2008, 2010). These are the only two historically recognizable Greek contexts displayed in mainstream video-games to date. 23. King and Krzywinska 2002a. See also Schulz (Chapter 12 in this volume). 24. Understanding authenticity in historical video games as a trait closer to credibility and acceptation by player than to historical accuracy. On the complex debate around authenticity in historical video games, see Lowe 2009: 76, Hatlen 2013: 189–90, Winnerling 2014; Rollinger 2016: 313–16. 25. Mir and Owens 2013; Bembeneck 2013. 26. The analytical term framing narrative comes from Chapman 2016: 121: ‘discrete, directing, self-contained and often contextually non-specific, pre-scripted, fully formed sections of narrative that emplot and structure the events of the game’s narrative’. 27. Some interesting examples of this practice and its limits have been explored in famous series such as The Sims (Maxis–Edge of Reality) or Grand Theft Auto: https://venturebeat. com/2010/07/14/subversive-gaming/; http://kotaku.com/one-players-quest-to-play-gtaonline-without-violence-1644393866, as well as the YouTube series Grand Theft Auto Pacifist. 259

Notes to pp. 155–161 28. Goldstein 2005. Among the most famous titles due to their violent content are Carmageddon (Stainless Games, 1997–2013), the Manhunt series (Rockstar Games, 2003–07), Bulletstorm (Electronic Arts–Gearbox Publishing, 2011–17) and the Grand Theft Auto series. 29. Some of the most celebrated examples in these can be identified in series such as Metal Gear Solid (Konami–Kojima Productions–Platinum Games, 1987–2015), Shenmue (Sega AM2, 1991–2001), or the famous franchise Final Fantasy (Squaresoft–Square Enix, 1987– 2016). 30. A classic case of this phenomenon is the traps-and-ghosts settings in ancient temples and ruins deployed in titles such as Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb (The Collective Inc., 2003) or the Uncharted saga (Naughty Dog–Bend Studio–Bluepoint Games, 2007–17). 31. Morris 2002; Bryce and Rutter 2002; Chapman 2014. 32. Chapman 2013: 314. Winnerling 2014: 153. 33. King and Krzywinska 2002b: 30. 34. Elia 2011; Lagny 2013: 172; Aguado Cantabrana 2015. 35. Series and movies such as Spartacus: Blood and Sand (Steven S. DeKnight, 2010) and 300 (Zack Snyder, 2007) would imply the very first signs of video games’ extreme, intense and, to some extent, violent visuality. See in this respect Simmons 2011. 36. The term peplum is generically employed here to encompass movies portraying Antiquity in any way. Duplá 1996: 87–90; Llewellyn-Jones 2009: 576; Molina 2008: 192–3; Serrano Lozano 2012: 44–6. 37. Chapman 2012: 42–4. 38. See n 24. 39. Chapman 2016: 180–1. 40. For some works on the Middle Ages in video games, see: Jiménez Alcázar 2009, 2011. 41. A clear example of this is found in Brown 2013. 42. Nielsen 2017. 43. As defined on Ubisoft’s official website https://support.ubi.com/en-GB/Faqs/000031846/ Discovery-Tour-Mode-of-Assassin-s-Creed-Origins-ACO.

Chapter 12 Waging TOTAL WAR Playing ATTILA : A Video Game’s Take on the Migration Period 1.

http://worldnomadgames.com/en/.

2.

http://worldnomadgames.com/en/sport/.

3.

It is Peter Stewart’s first game as writer: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/ developerId,285936/.

4.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Attila_Rides_Out.

5.

https://youtu.be/HYBWG0ko0lM.

6.

Metacritic: Metascore 80 (based on professional reviews) – User Score 7.4. See: https://www. metacritic.com/game/pc/total-war-attila.

7.

Dan Griliopoulos from PC Gamer: ‘Thematically, the game reflects the era well.’ https://www. pcgamer.com/total-war-attila-review/.

260

Notes to pp. 161–164 8.

See http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/16/total-war-attila-will-bring-out-the-barbarian-in-youreview/ and http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/02/total-war-attila-rampagingacrosseurope-huns-most-fun-you-can-have.

9.

Mieth 2006.

10. Drake 2006; Zimmermann 2009. 11. For example, in the Brill’s New Pauly Supplements on reception. See https://referenceworks. brillonline.com/cluster/New%20Pauly%20Online?s.num=0. 12. Thorsen 2012; Kapell and Elliott 2013; Kerschbaumer and Winnerling 2014. 13. Gardner 2007; Schut 2007; Lowe 2009, 2012. 14. Rollinger 2013, which deals with Total War: Rome II ; Rollinger 2016. 15. This aspect was valid until the First World War. Some video games set in contemporary or even future times also prefer a more ‘human’ perspective, with direct contact. 16. Wottge 2011. 17. http://www.ea.com/the-sims-medieval. 18. Mäyrä 2008: 17–18. 19. Coert 2018. 20. Kapell and Elliott 2013: 12 n. 32. 21. http://attila-enc.totalwar.com/. 22. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?681926-Attila-comes-too-late-in-game. 23. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/138219/dont-worry-about-the-title-attila-is-justbarbarian-invasion-2. 24. E.g. the first Campaign Pack, entitled The Last Roman, which focuses on the wars of Justinian I. 25. Ghita and Andrikopoulos 2009. 26. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?2106-Total-War-Attila-HostedModifications. 27. Kulikowski 2007: 111. 28. Edward Gibbon’s influential work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared between 1776 and 1788. The ‘age of violence and fear’ has been questioned by Drake 2006: 2–3 and Fuhrer 2015. 29. In the 1990s the European Science Foundation funded the project ‘The Transformation of the Roman World’. Mathisen 2006, Pohl 2006; Kulikowski 2013. 30. Heather 2005; Ward-Perkins 2005; Borgolte 2006. 31. Rouche 2009; Kelly 2009; Rosen 2016. 32. Rouche 2009: 285. 33. Kelly 2009: 154. 34. Drake 2006; Pohl 2006. Heather 2005: 321 compares Attila favourably to his Roman counterpart. Meier 2015 describes the failed Roman assassination attempt against Attila as being standard practice. 35. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046731/. Storyline: ‘Bleda, tired of war and hungry, bloody campaigns, wants to settle as allies of Rome in peace, his brother Attila believes only in the power of the sword.’ 36. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1221224/ for Rome and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0864944/ for Ancient Rome. 261

Notes to pp. 164–167 37. Goltz 2014. 38. http://attila-enc.totalwar.com/#/faction/att_fact_hunni. The in-game version of this description, displayed when starting the grand campaign as the Huns, is slightly shortened. 39. https://totalwar.fandom.com/wiki/Western_Roman_Empire_(Total_War:_Attila). For the historical background see Potter 2016. 40. Bembeneck: 2013: 85–6. 41. Rouche 2009: 253–95. 42. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/146624/total-war-attila-official-game-guide. 43. The mechanic was actually introduced in Total War: Rome: Barbarian Invasion: http:// attackofthefanboy.com/news/total-war-attila-hordes-migration-gameplay/ and http:// totalwar.wikia.com/wiki/Horde. 44. http://www.ign.com/wikis/total-war-attila/5_Best_Changes_in_Attila. 45. Amm. Marc. 31.2. 46. Laing 2000: 48; Prisc., frg. 2.373 (Blockley). This and other fragments are translated in Gordon 2013. 47. https://youtu.be/O_MMEQMUawA; feuer/.

http://www.totalwar-hq.de/totalwar-attila/dlcs/blut-

48. There are hundreds of negative comments on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/ app/335030/, for example from Rogue Ameba: Been looking forward to this dlc since launch, but at the current state it is not worth almost four dollars. – Blood textures on ground last 10 seconds before fading. – The colour of vomit and animation for vomiting are comical at best. – Blood-soak clothing is nice but does not render at a distance. I did enjoy animations for people burning and their textures, but this dlc is not worth your money until it is patched more. 49. http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Blood_&_Burning_Hotfix. 50. https://youtu.be/NOUfM9Rfhd4. 51. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/144428/new-features-and-details-list; and http:// www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?667838-Attila-Introducing-the-changes%28OP-updated-October-4th. 52. Fans of Total War: Warhammer complained about missing civilians and were disappointed by the lower extent of the cities’ destruction: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/177316/ mod-for-civilians; and https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/175465/disapointed-at-citydestruction-levels/p2. 53. http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,126197/. 54. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/138116/total-war-attila-announced. 55. https://youtu.be/t_s6emkzFMU. ‘Top 5 New Features in Attila Total War’ by Sun Jetzu: ‘1. civilians, 2. dynamic fires, 3. scorched earth . . .’ 56. http://www.ign.com/wikis/total-war-attila/5_Best_Changes_in_Attila. 57. https://youtu.be/ejYlraWPHN8 ‘Sack, Subjugate, Loot, Occupy, or Raze? Post conquest options discussed’. 58. http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Attila_Rides_Out. 59. Sun Jetzu (n55); Berserk Smurf, who linked to Jetzu’s video in Steam, commented: ‘My favourites will probably be religion, scorched earth / city destruction (nukes!) and the Family Tree/Marriages/Offices.’ 262

Notes to pp. 168–173 60. https://youtu.be/MTGNd-so4Rk: ‘Civilization V Nuclear Missiles Destroying Cities’. 61. Prisc., frg. 2.62 (Blockley): ‘When we arrived at Naissus, we found the city empty of people since it had been laid waste by the enemy.’ 62. Sarantis 2013: 26, 41. 63. ‘Fires during sieges is nothing special, it’s been that way since the first Rome.’ https://forums. totalwar.com/discussion/141968/will-attila-have-torches. 64. http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2015/02/13/review-total-war-attila/134408/. 65. Partington 1999: 1–41. 66. Paddy234: ‘The addition of civilians to the battlefield has massively added to the immersion for me, from those fleeing the enemy to those attacking with unbroken loyalty.’ https://forums. totalwar.com/discussion/177316/mod-for-civilians. 67. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/467487070: ‘Sacking cities is much more interesting now.’ 68. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?669329-Lets-talk-Civilians. 69. https://youtu.be/_7bil6Dub6Q: ‘Civilians try to assassinate King while giving Battle Speech! – Total War Attila (Very Funny :P).’ 70. Within TWA, speeches are not so prominent: while there used to be cut-scene battle speeches in earlier Total War titles, since Rome II battle speeches occur at the start of the real-time battles. These are only visible to players who zoom in on their generals. 71. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/55627/decimatio-it-should-be-in-the-game. 72. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/143795/army-management-decimation. ‘Decimation was in disuse by 395 for a long time, so it shouldn’t be there in the game.’ This assessment is right; see Le Bohec 2006, s.v. decimatio.

Chapter 13 Sexy Gory Rome: Juxtapositions of Sex and Violence in Comic Book Representations of Ancient Rome 1.

See Clarke 2014.

2.

Kendrick 1996.

3.

Blanshard 2010: 5.

4.

Wyke 1997b: 59–63; Martínez Oliva 2008. A selection of these images can be viewed on the website The Classical Alibi in Physique Photography: http://www.queer-arts.org/ClassicalAlibi/ index0.html#. For a review of nudity in peplum films, see this entry in the Peplum TV blog: ‘The real PEPLUM X’, http://www.peplumtv.com/p/the-real-peplum-x.html.

5.

On the impact of ancient representations of sexuality on later periods, see Blanshard 2010, 2014; Vout 2013: 204–37; Kaylor 2014; and the volume edited by Fisher and Langlands (2015), among many others.

6.

See Cyrino 2014. As the author points out: [t]here is a long cinematic tradition of using Roman sexual ‘deviance’ on screen to reflect or critique current social attitudes about sexuality, and often these images and narratives can be interpreted as expressions of anxiety about changing sexual mores in contemporary society. Since it is almost always centred on elite or aristocratic characters, Roman sexual ‘deviance’ on screen can also function as an analog for the characters’

263

Notes to pp. 173–174 political rapacity: in this capacity, sexual ‘deviance’ also represents the corruption of power. (Cyrino 2014: 614) 7.

Raucci 2013.

8.

See Blanshard 2010: 49, and 56, where the scholar states: Yet this notion of the orgy designating only group sexual activity is a comparatively recent phenomenon. For most of the history of the orgy, the focus was equally, if not more so, on the orgy as a religious event rather than a sexual one. Orgies were conceived as pagan religious rituals in which sacrifice and magic were just as likely to occur as sex. Here authors were taking their cue from early Christian writers such as Clement of Alexandria who denounced mystery cults with a scattergun of allegations about lewdness, violence, and depravity. For the original meaning of orgia, see Liddell and Scott 1968, s.v. ὄργια and Heinze 2006.

9.

Created in 1966, by Steven Marcus, ‘pornotopia’ is a term designating a ‘fantastic’ world, in which each individual, regardless of gender, is always ready to face sexual challenges. This individual is a type of Nietzsche’s super-human, in the sense that pornography is the area of the strong, powerful human, who manages to wrench himself free from his civilising tutelage by imposing a new subversive culture (Schussler 2013: 858).

10. This type of party was popularized by the film National Lampoon’s Animal House (John Landis, 1978), although they were already common at the time the film was released, as evidenced by a September 1978 issue (20/2) of the newspaper of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law (Williamsburg) Amicus Curiae – available at http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1204&context=newspapers – which publicizes the ‘2nd Annual Toga Party’. 11. Nisbet 2009: 163. According to the author, Rome has already lost all of its symbolic force: ‘The mortal sins of Rome are now mere antiquated kitsch. This did not happen overnight. Naughty pagan Rome had lost its residual fizzle of erotic charge in tandem with 20th century culture’s slow disengagement with the idea of imperial Rome as a meaningful trope in public discourse of morals and government’ (Nisbet 2009: 164). 12. Nisbet 2009: 166. 13. The eroticization of a historical period is not of course exclusive to this age, although in the case of Rome it is certainly much more widespread and richer in nuance. With regard to Prehistory, see Almansa Sánchez 2014. 14. Directed by Tinto Brass and based upon Gore Vidal’s original screenplay. Brass disavowed the film, after the introduction of pornographic scenes in the final cut, by the producer, Bob Guccione. 15. See Rodrigues 2014. 16. Obvious examples are Rome (two seasons, HBO, 2005–07) (see Raucci 2008) and Spartacus (three seasons, Starz, 2010–13) (Strong 2013; Lapeña Marchena 2007: 170–80). 17. Interest in shows that feature violence, after all, is not something exclusive to Roman society. Guttmann 1998 offers a history of this phenomenon and an analysis of its attractions. 18. Brown 1992. 19. Younger 2014: 67–71. 20. Joshel 1992: 113. 21. Raucci 2013. 22. Petersen 2011: 159–62.

264

Notes to pp. 174–181 23. Kovacs and Marshall 2011. 24. Kovacs and Marshall 2016. 25. Filippini 1999: 9–38. 26. Schöps 1999; Aziza 2015. 27. Schmitt-Pitiot 2015. 28. Nisbet 2009. 29. Les sorcières de Thessalie, vol. 1, 21. Following the procedure employed in Kovacs and Marshall (2011: xii), references to comics in this study include the number of the page or pages under discussion, followed (if necessary) by the number of the panel(s) (in reading order). 30. La métamorphose de Lucius, 25. 31. Ibid., 47–51. 32. Curado Ferrera 2007: 6. 33. Even if in Greek iconography, male ‘heroic’ nudity had a positive connotation, in the Roman mind nudity was associated with poverty, a servant’s status or with criminality; for this reason, capital punishment was inflicted after stripping the condemned person of his clothes, as is reflected in the iconography of Christ’s crucifixion; see Blanshard 2010: 24. 34. ‘Ma femme, qui est sorcière, m’affirmé que dans un avenir hélas lointain des juristes reconnaitraient nos mérites et nous donneraient la sécurité dont nous rêvons tous’ (Les sorcières de Thessalie, vol. 1, 2.1). 35. Apul., Met. 1.13; trans. Hanson 1989. 36. Les sorcières de Thessalie, vol. 1, 11.1–3. 37. This aspect had already been addressed by William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, in the novel Venus with Us: A Tale of the Caesar (1932). ‘Augustus’, an episode of Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman (#30, 1999), presents another aggressive rapist Julius Caesar who inflicted a trauma upon Augustus (see Strong 2011). 38. Il bordello, ‘Un cazzus belli’, 48. 39. Il bordello, ‘Un cazzus belli’, 160–6 and 168–9 respectively. 40. Blanshard 2010: 70–2. 41. See Lindner 2013. 42. According to Cyrino (2014: 627), ‘the corruption of the Roman power elite may be the most constant and recurring cinematic element of sexual “deviance” in the screening of the ancient world, one that is easily intensified and escalated as it is adapted to the audience’s changing tastes and expectations for visual and narrative thrills.’ 43. Lindner 2013: 216. 44. Cyrino 2014: 620. 45. Aziza 2015: 209 and n4. 46. Though not alluded to – and apparently not considered necessary – the supernatural element is also present in Suetonius’ account, where he indicates (Calig. 56) that there were ghosts in the house where Caligula lived and ghastly events occurred. Other details of the series, however, like the emperor’s affinity for the green team in the chariot races, the episode of the Gulf of Baiae crossing, or the use of Alexander the Great’s breastplate, reveal some acquaintance with the historical sources. 47. Caligula, vol. 1, 9 features an impressive splash page with the corpse of the mother of the protagonist naked and mutilated after having been raped.

265

Notes to pp. 181–183 48. Caligula, vol. 6, 12.1: Junius is naked and there is a phallic object in his mouth. 49. Caligula, vol. 3, 1–3. 50. Caligula, vol. 2, 4–14. 51. Hidalgo de la Vega 2007. 52. In the Roman mentality, impudicitia is a transgression of the sexuality imposed on women, the opposite of pudicitia, a trait of feminine virtuousness, consisting of reserving sexuality for marriage and procreation. 53. Joshel 1997. 54. Wyke 2002: 321–90. 55. The name of the empress is used antonomastically to define nymphomania by Krafft-Ebing in his treatise Psychopathia Sexualis: ‘woe unto the man who falls into the meshes of such an insatiable Messalina, whose sexual appetites is never appeased’ (Krafft-Ebing 1965: 403). On the history of nymphomania, see Groneman 1994. On ancient nymphs and their connection with modern ‘nymphos’, see Maaskant-Kleibrink 1987. On the successive avatars of the erotic myth of Messalina, see Dominguez Leiva 2014. 56. Mesalina 22.2–3. 57. ‘Es preciosa y tengo que dibujarla . . . Mesalina . . . Es una emperatriz romana’ (Mesalina 16.1). 58. The scenes that represent this challenge in the TV series I, Claudius triggered an interesting controversy in the British press about the moral limits of television (see Wyke 2002: 387). 59. Pliny, HN 10.172; trans. Rackham, 1940. See also Juvenal, Sat. 6.114–32. 60. As McCracken (2016: 45) indicates, ‘[t]he progression from the actual Messalina to the mythic Messalina to Annabel Chong to other sex performers to Cassie Wright by itself illustrates the progression of simulacra toward hyperreality. As such, Palahniuk’s Cassie is the last in a line of many sexual innovators.’ 61. Palahniuk 2011: 95–6. 62. Along these lines, there is also the poem dedicated to Messalina by the controversial Aleister Crowley in Alice, An Adultery (Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, 1905), elevating her to the altars of The Holy Thelemic Church. 63. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s focused particularly on Messalina for softcore peplum films; see Dominguez Leiva 2014: 298–325. 64. A total of 185 issues were published in the two series, to which a third series was added (1972–73, fifty-two volumes). On this series, see Keller 1999: 136–7. 65. Lindner 2013: 213–14. 66. Carlà 2014b. 67. ‘Keine “Frauenpower” also, keine Emanzipation: Die Hauptdarstellerinnen dieser Comics sind rein sexuelle Objekte und jeder soziale oder politische Diskurs fehlt. [. . .] Es gibt keine Revolution; diese Werke sind im Gegenteil eine Bestätigung der reaktionärsten männlischen Stereotypen unter dem Anschein des Bruches derselben’ [‘There is no “women’s power”, no emancipation: the leading feminine roles in these comic books are just sexual objects, and any social or political discourse is missing from them. [. . .] There is not any revolution; on the contrary, these pieces of work are a confirmation of the most reactionary masculine stereotypes under the appearance of breaking them’] (Carlà 2014b: 65). 68. Acte I: Le Temple de Priape (2001); Acte II: Le Sexe et le glaive (2012); Acte III: La Putain de Rome (2012); Acte IV: Des Orgies et des jeux (2013); Acte V: Le Palais des Supplices (2015); Acte VI: Dernier Orgasme (2016); all published by Éditions Ange. 266

Notes to pp. 183–187 69. ‘Messalina n’est pas une exception, une parenthèse dans l’Histoire de Rome. Elle n’est que l’un des points d’orgue. Au moins, comme tous les tyrans qui ensanglantèrent l’humanité comme Néron, Napoléon, Hitler et tant d’autres, fut-elle la plus jolie et la plus diaboliquement érotique. À ce titre, cette particularité méritait bien une BD ‘X’ puisque Messalina s’est classée d’elle-même dans cette catégorie. [. . .] Mais après tout, ces six albums ne sont pas une leçon d’Histoire. Je suis faufilé dans les coulisses et dans les orgies jamais décrites par ses biographes pour découvrir avec vous les motivations de cette jeune romaine qui, par la seule force de son cul, devint impératrice de Rome et la plus grande putain de l’Histoire humaine.’ The text is included on the back cover of all the albums. 70. This and other elements entirely alien to the historical record of ancient sources are borrowed from the novel La Vie amoureuse de Messaline by Maurice Magre (1925), on which see Dominguez Leiva 2014: 277–86. 71. Younger 2014: 86. 72. Messalina, vol. 4, 34–40; see also vol. 4, 14–22. 73. Messalina, vol. 6, 45–6. 74. See Shamoon 2004. 75. Nisbet 2009. 76. Shamoon 2004: 77–8. 77. Petersen 2011: 214–17.

Chapter 14

Archimedes and the War in Itoshi Iwaˉki’s Eureka

1.

On the recent attention of reception studies for comics and graphic novels, see Kovacs 2011; Carlà 2014c.

2.

On this subject, see the contributions of Scilabra 2015, 2018a, 2018b; and of Thiesen 2011, 2016.

3.

For a survey of the bibliography on the subject, see Bouissou 2010: 363–8.

4.

See Bouissou 2010: 67.

5.

Data of 2016, Yukari Fujimoto, Meiji University, Tokyo: http://www.jlgc.org/5-11-2016-2/.

6.

See Zaccagnino and Contrari 2007: 2; Kinsella 2000: 4.

7.

See Thiesen 2011: 62–3.

8.

See Pigeat 2015: 136–7.

9.

See Kovacs 2011: 15.

10. See Scilabra 2015. 11. To mention but a few Japanese comics set in ancient Rome since 1998: Cestus by Shizuya Wazarai (1998); Eureka by Itoshi Iwāki (2001); Waga na wa Nero [My Name Is Nero] by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (2007); Roma teikoku no rekishi [The Roman Empire] by Mimei Sakamoto (2007); Thermae Romae by Mari Yamazaki (2008); Agrippa by Toru Uchimizu (2010); Ad Astra by Mihachi Kagano (2011); Virtus by Gibbon and Hideo Shinanogawa (2011); Cestus 2 by Shizuya Wazarai (2012); Plinius by Mari Yamazaki (2013). 12. My Name Is Nero, Virtus and Agrippa belong to the shounen genre, which is aimed at the young male audience between ten and eighteen years old. The remaining titles belong to seinen, comics written for an adult male audience aged approximately between twenty and forty. In Japanese, the word seinen means ‘young man’; the classification does not imply erotic content, as is the case with the Italian ‘per adulti’ (for adults). 267

Notes to pp. 187–190 13. See Kovacs 2011: 15. 14. See Ducret 2016. 15. Belonging to this typology: Cestus, Thermae Romae, Virtus, Cestus 2. 16. In this category: Eureka, The Roman Empire, My Name Is Nero, Agrippa, Ad Astra, Plinius. 17. See Cardi 2016; Peer 2018. 18. Born in Tokyo in 1960, Iwāki is now considered one of the most solid talents within the Japanese comic scene, who found fame with the horror series Kiseiju (1989). Eureka is the first sign of interest by Iwāki towards the history of the ancient West, consolidated with Historiē, a manga focused on the figure of Hieronymus of Cardia. 19. Eureka was first published by Hakusensha in the magazine Young Animal Arashi, before then appearing in a single tankobon, both in 2002. The Italian edition (RW/Goen) we use as a reference dates to 2015. 20. On the fortune of ancient Rome in contemporary manga, cf. Miyake 2013; Galeani 2016. 21. According to Livy (25.6), Epicydes and Hipparchus, the sons of an exiled Syracusan and a Carthaginian woman, after having distinguished themselves in Hannibal’s army, were sent to Syracuse as envoys and succeeded in persuading the tyrant Hieronymus to renounce his alliance with the Romans. However, after the murder of Hieronymus in Leontini by a military conspiracy (Livy 24.7), the two brothers took advantage of the state of political confusion to seize power and confirm the alliance with Carthage. Cf. Pauly, Wissowa and Kroll (1894–), henceforth RE , VI.1, 155–6. In his narration, Iwāki explicitly charges Epicydes with political murders, while entirely removing the character of Hipparchus. 22. Marcus Claudius Marcellus, after leading the Roman army as consul in their victory against the Insubres in the Battle of Clastidium (222 bc ), was again elected to the consulate in 214 bc in order to counter the presence of Hannibal on the Italian peninsula. Cf. RE , III.2, 2738–55. 23. Cf. FGrH 87 F 41. 24. Cf. Livy, 25, 23.8–9; Plut., Marc. 18.3; RE , IV.2, 2056. 25. This was the so-called Galeagra Tower, which Iwāki shows us as the place where Claudia and Damippus meet each other at the beginning of the volume. 26. According to Plutarch (see above, n8), Marcellus himself is the one who noticed the tower, while Polybius (8.37.1) mentions a deserter, but omits the episode of Damippus. 27. Cf. Schneider 2016: 26–48. 28. ‘[A]ll the traits of his private life, which an often uncertain tradition has preserved, are presented to us in a close relationship with his scientific research’. Cf. Mugler 1970: vii. 29. Polyb. 8.3–9. 30. Livy 24.33, 34.4–13. 31. Plut., Marc.14–19. 32. Ibid.: 14.8. 33. Ibid.: 17.5. 34. Cf. Plut., Quaest. conv. 718 E–F. On the influence of Platonic philosophy in Plutarch’s portrait of Archimedes, cf. Migliorato 2013: 20–2. 35. Cf. in particular Polybius, who calls Archimedes ἀρχιτέκτων and δημιουργός τῶν ἐπινοημάτων (8.7) and offers perhaps the most accurate description of the operation of the war machines (8.3–7); or Livy (24.33–4), who considers the scientist of Syracuse both spectator caeli siderumque and mirabilior inventor ac machinator bellicorum operumque. 268

Notes to pp. 190–191 36. Cf. Plut., Marc. 15. 37. On this the entire tradition is concordant – according to the Byzantine philologist John Tzetzes (Chil. 2.108), which places his date of birth to 287 bc , Archimedes would have died in 212 bc , at the age of 75. 38. This definition, which dates back to Silius Italicus (14.677), testifies to the importance given by the following tradition to the relationship between Archimedes and his homeland. On the fortune and the interpretation of the defence of Syracuse and the death of Archimedes among Latin authors, cf. Jaeger 2008: 75–127. 39. Cf. Canfora 2012: 8: ‘Quando, dopo Canne (216), Annibale appariva sempre più padrone dell’Italia meridionale (Lucania, Bruzio, Taranto) e mentre i Cartaginesi tornavano a metter piede in Sicilia (Lilibeo), la scelta di Siracusa fu di defezionare (213) dal potente alleato in difficoltà. Sembrava che una riscossa del mondo greco fosse incominciata. E per Archimede non vi potevano essere dubbi’ [‘When, after the Battle of Cannae (216), Hannibal appeared to have conquered South Italy (Lucania, Bruttium and Tarentum) and while the Carthaginians set foot again in Sicily (Lilybaeum), Syracuse took the chance of the difficult moment to defect from the powerful ally (213). It seemed that a revolt of the Greek world had begun. And for Archimedes there could be no doubt’]; Migliorato 2013: 16. 40. Cf. Tzetzes, Chil. 2.103–28. 41. On the medieval fortune of Archimedes, cf. Geymonat 2012: 65–6. 42. Cf. Geymonat 2012: 66–7. 43. Cf. Galluzzi 1992: 312; Geymonat 2012: 67; Russo 2013: 444–52. 44. Cf. Micheli 1992: 339–41. 45. Čapek is famous above all else among science-fiction lovers, for the drama in three acts R.U.R., where the word robot appears for the first time. Čapek was a first-rate intellectual who expressed his perplexities and fears towards an increasingly mechanized and militarized society through his works in a caustic and ironic way. 46. The story was later published posthumously in 1945 in the second edition of Apocryphal Tales, a collection of short stories about literary and historical characters. 47. On the controversial figure of Oppenheimer, I suggest reading Pais 2007. 48. For a complete analysis of the period, we recommend reading Berman 1996; Flores and De Bernardi 1998. 49. In particular, we find the animated short Olja, Kolja and Archimedes by Yuriy Prytkov, produced and made in the Soviet Union in 1972, very interesting. The two young protagonists travel through time to find Archimedes and discover his amazing inventions. However, the three are interrupted by the arrival of the villains, the Romans, who are annihilated by war machines, among cheers from Kolja and Olja and the disquieting image of a Roman helmet that slowly drops to the bottom of the sea. 50. Cf. Netz and Noel 2008. Two important signs of the renewed interest in the great mathematician are the important international conferences that took place in Syracuse in 2010 (Cf. Paipetis and Ceccarelli 2010) and at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York in 2013 (Rorres 2017). These meetings, although adopting different methods and approaches, had the important merit of reiterating the importance for the new generations of studying the work and the figure of Archimedes. 51. Cf. Russo 2013: 22, 132. 52. Cf. Jaeger 2017. 269

Notes to pp. 191–198 53. This was first published in Bologna in 2002, and appears together with Il Giornalino, a wellknown Italian magazine for young people. 54. In the first part of the comic book, we see Archimedes celebrating the sight of Roman ships destroyed by his burning mirrors by crying ‘Eureka’; subsequently, he complains about the painful necessity of killing in order to defend his own city. 55. In the last table of the graphic novel, Cicero and his freedman Tiro are represented in front of the tomb of Archimedes that they have finally found. ‘We must keep it forever,’ says Cicero to Tiro, ‘because, beyond time, beyond wars, wisdom is the true heritage of man.’ 56. Cf. Cic., Tusc. 5.23.64–6; Jaeger 2008: 32–47. 57. Cf. Iwāki 2002: 159. 58. On the ‘shadow of the bomb’ in Japanese manga, cf. Bouissou 2010: 187–204; Zaccagnino and Contrari 2007: 5. 59. Iwāki 2002: 258. 60. In order to make the effects of the ‘monsters’ (as they are defined by Archimedes himself) even more shocking, the author spectacularly amplifies the descriptions from ancient sources. 61. A French biologist and philosopher of the twentieth century, he was famous not only for his popular work on the dissemination of scientific knowledge, but also for his pacifist and antimilitarist views and his criticism of the use of atomic energy. Cf. Rostand 2012. 62. Cf. Iwāki 2002: 127. 63. On the figure of the child or teenage hero in Japanese manga, cf. Zaccagnino and Contrari 2007: 5–6.

Chapter 15 From Ancient Violence to Modern Celebration: Complex Receptions of Ancient Conquest Wars in Las Guerras Cántabras Festival 1.

Lowenthal 1985: 3–34. This phrase became popular some decades before, when L.P. Hartley used it in the novel The Go-Between, published in 1953.

2.

Paletschek 2011: 2–3. The Colonial Williamsburg living history museum could be cited as a veteran experience in this field, as it has been active since at least the 1960s.

3.

Agnew 2007.

4.

Holtorf 2009.

5.

Cauvin 2016: 188–95; Goodacre and Baldwin 2002.

6.

McCalman and Pickering 2010; Agnew 2007, 2004.

7.

Carlà 2016.

8.

Paletschek 2011: 3.

9.

For some examples, see papers and reviews in Classical Receptions Journal and Thersites: Journal for Transcultural Presences and Diachronic Identities from Antiquity to Date.

10. Cortadella 2011; Carlà-Uhink and Fiore 2016; Carlà-Uhink 2020; Carlà 2015; Carlà and Freitag 2015a. 11. Original name in Spanish: Asociación Española de Fiestas y Recreaciones Históricas. Their website: https://www.fiestashistoricas.es/.

270

Notes to pp. 198–203 12. For example: Festa do Esquecemento (Xinzo de Limia, Galicia), Arde Lucus (Lugo, Galicia), Festival Astur-Romano de la Carisa (Carabanzos, Asturias), Astures y Romanos (Astorga, Castilla and León), Keltiberoi (Numancia, Castilla and León), Vulcanalia (Segeda, Aragón). 13. Cavia 2019. 14. Recreación histórica is the term used in Spanish for historical re-enactments. 15. Cortadella 2011; Agnew 2007, 2004. 16. Alfayé Villa 2015: 309–11. 17. Cortadella 2011. 18. Alonso González and González Álvarez 2013. 19. Kallendorf 2007; Martindale 2007, 2006. 20. Alonso González and González Álvarez 2013: 319. 21. González Echegaray 1974: 32–3. 22. Suárez Cortina 1995. 23. Alerta 1976.ADIC stands for Asociación por la Defensa de los Intereses de Cantabria [Association for the Defence of the Interests of Cantabria] Website: http://www.adic-cantabria.com/. 24. Estatuto 1982. 25. ‘Hace miles de años un estandarte, quizás diferente en lo gráfico pero igual en lo icónico, sirvió para identificar un pueblo orgulloso de su pasado de su presente y su futuro. Hoy junto con la bandera de Cantabria el lábaro también identifica ese pueblo’ Diario 2016: 1344. 26. Schulten 1943. 27. He had previously published a book using the selfsame wording to describe the Cantabrian Wars (1960). Some years later, he also published a book about the history of Cantabria aimed at the general public (1977). 28. Concerning two museographic expositions: Cantabros 1982; Muñiz Castro and Iglesias Gil 1999. A blog focused on ancient Cantabria: http://www.regiocantabrorum.es/. Controversies about Corocotta in the local press: López Portilla 2008; Lorenzo 2008; Ruiz 2008; San José 2008. 29. Los Cántabros 1980. 30. Official website: https://guerrascantabras.net. 31. Cavia 2018. 32. Videos published on YouTube channels: https://www.youtube.com/user/Hermanosrodrigo and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCfPQ8nfGYAekZpMoPmd-bg. 33. Florus, Epit. 2.33.1–33; Cass. Dio 53.25.2–8; Oros. 6.21.1–11; Hor., Carm. 2.6.1–4; 11.1–5; 3.4.33–6; 8.17–24; 4.14.41–4; Epist. 1.12.25–9; 18.54–7; Strabo, Geog. 3.3.8; 4.17–18; Suet., Aug. 20; 21.1; 29.3; 81.1. 34. Geographical information given, among others, by Strabo, Geog. 3.3.4; 4.6; 10; 12; 20; Pomponius Mela, De chorographia 3.12–15; Pliny, HN 3.21; 27; 4.111; Ptol., Geog. 2.6.6; 51. The main ethnographical descriptions are in Strabo 3.3.7; 4.16–18. 35. Mehl 2014. For a broader characterization of Roman historiography, Mehl 2011; Marincola 2007. 36. Woolf 2014: 17–24. 37. Bessone 1996: 54; Jal 1967: xxxix. 38. Swan 2004: 17–26. 39. Mehl 2011: 18–26; Nicolai 2007. 40. Van Nuffelen 2012: 115–38; Bessone 1996: 56–7.

271

Notes to pp. 203–209 41. Woolf 2014; Adler 2011; Dauge 1981. 42. Strabo, Geog. 3.4.16–18; Almagor 2005; Vliet 2003; Thollard 1987. 43. Strabo, Geog. 3.3.7–8. 44. For a popular image of ancient Celts in the twenty-first century, particularly in Spain, Alfayé Villa 2015. 45. Wulff Alonso 2003: 101–3; Álvarez Junco 2001: 207–9. 46. ‘Dos siglos de heroica e incesante lucha’ (Lafuente 1850: 73). 47. ‘Una de las muchas guerras de independencia que han sostenido pueblos pequeños para defender su libertad contra una nación prepotente que les atacó sin otro motivo que el deseo de sujetarlos a su dominio’ (Schulten 1943: 20–1). 48. ‘Entre los pueblos indígenas que vivían en la Península Ibérica a la llegada de los romanos, uno de los que sobresale es el pueblo cántabro [. . .] por su carácter esencialmente guerrero, su loca resistencia al dominio de Roma y el amor arraigado a la independencia’ (González Echegaray 1966: 11) 49. Peralta Labrador 2000; González Rodríguez 1997. 50. Morillo Cerdán 2008. 51. Griffiths 2013: 6–39; Rich 2009; Salinas de Frías 1998: 155–60. 52. Oros. 6.21.1–11; Merrills 2005: 39–64. 53. Perea Yébenes 2008; González Echegaray 1966; Schulten 1943. 54. Teja 1999. 55. Rich 2009: 150–61; Merrills 2005: 58–9; Jal 1967: xxxix–xli. 56. Suet., Aug. 85.1; Rich 2009. 57. Suet., Aug. 20, 21.1, 29.3, 81.1. 58. Griffiths 2013: 6–39; Rich 2009; Perea Yébenes 2008: 122; Salinas de Frías 1998: 155–60. 59. Cass. Dio 56.43.3. 60. Schulten 1943, 154–5; Marco Simón and Pina Polo 2008: 58–63. 61. Florus, Epit. 2.33.6–9; Oros. 4.21.3; Strabo 3.3.8; Cass. Dio 53.25.2. 62. Perea Yébenes 2008; González Echegaray 1999; Salinas de Frías 1998. 63. Florus, Epit. 2.33.15–20; Oros. 4.21.5. 64. Perea Yébenes 2008: 124–5; González Echegaray 1966: 175–6. 65. Cass. Dio 54.11.1–6; Rich 1990: 18; Harrington 1977: 162. 66. ‘Medias’ 2007; Lavín Bedia 2007; San Gabriel López 2007. 67. Cass. Dio 54.11.5 (trans. Cary and Foster 1917: 312). 68. Cass. Dio 53.29.2; Oros. 4.21.5. 69. Cass. Dio 54.5.2–3; Oros. 4.21.7–8; Florus, Epit. 2.33.20–7. Cassius Dio does not mention the Medulius mountain by name, but he does refer to a collective suicide that occurred in 22 bce during the campaign led by Caius Furnius. Perea Yébenes 2008: 125. 70. González Echegaray 1966: 189–90. 71. Strabo 3.4.17–18. 72. ‘Aun estaba sin domar el espíritu feroz de aquella gente, y era preciso destruirla, como único medio si se quería la paz’ (González Echegaray 1966: 188).

272

Notes to pp. 209–222

Chapter 16 1.

Drawing Reception

http://www.imagines-project.org/torino-2016/.

Chapter 17 Re-Enacting Soldiers and Dressing Roman Women: An Interview with Danielle Fiore 1.

Quoted by Gautschi 2016.

2.

See for instance: http://www.themcs.org/ and https://guerrascantabras.net/.

3.

Curry 2007: 48.

4.

It would be interesting to analyse the different social classes and cultural background of the participants in Napoleonic, medieval, Roman or Viking events (as far as I am aware, this aspect has not yet been studied systematically), although this would exceed the scope of this chapter.

5.

For instance, for Roman clothes and everyday life, the following are very interesting: Carcopino 1939; Croom 2000. On the query for authenticity in re-enacting (from the insider perspective), see also Gapps 2009.

6.

On ‘feeling history’ and the so-called affective turn, see Carlà-Uhink and Fiore 2016, 2017.

273

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INDEX

4X 153 abstract expressionist 146, 147 abstraction 117, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 255n Achilles 10, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 79, 82, 83, 84, 89, 232n, 245n Acosta, Carlos 9, 108, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 251n Aeschylus 10, 75, 126, 142, 146, 243n Afghanistan 9, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 65 Agincourt (battle of, 1415) 44 Agrippa, 206, 209, 267n, 267n Ajax, 8, 9, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 80, 240n, 241n Alexander the Great 8, 17, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 229n, 233n, 234n, 259n, 265n Alypius 1 Ammianus Marcellinus 166 ankh 153, 154 apotympanismos, 3 Apuleius 175, 176 Aquila Theatre 58 Archimedes 7, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 269n, 270n Aristophanes 57 Asturians 202, 205, 206 Athens 2, 27, 28, 30, 37, 38, 39, 57, 70, 241n, 245n Attila 161, 163, 164, 166, 168, 170, 261n Augustine 1 Augustus 22, 203, 204, 206 avant-garde Art 140 Barbarians 74, 154, 164, 165, 168, 170, 204, 207, 208, 265n Battle of Nation 225 Bekmambetow, Timur 56 Bigelow, Kathryn 218 black body 110, 121, 122 Bolshoi Ballet 121 Borodino (battle of, 1812) 47 Britons 52, 53 Caius Antistius Vetus 208 Caius Furnius 209, 273n Calder, Alexander 144

Caligula 175, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 265n Cannae (battle of, 216 bc) 188, 192, 236n, 269n Cantabria 11, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 271n Cantabrians 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211 Čapek, Karel 190, 193, 269n Carracci, Ludovico 31, 32, 33, 34, 39, 233n Cassius Dio 203, 204, 206, 207, 209, 273n Celts 204, 272n Cicero 191, 270n civilians 20, 57, 80, 167, 168, 169, 170, 202, 262n, 263n Clytemnestra 9, 10, 75, 84, 85 Cold War 108, 112, 116, 140, 146, 147, 191 comics 7, 10, 21, 22, 161, 164, 174, 175, 176, 180, 182, 183, 186, 187, 191, 214, 215, 216, 265n, 268n, 266n, 267n comparative literature 59 Cornienti, Cherubino 204 Corocotta 207, 208, 271n corporal punishment 2, 3 crucifixion 3, 107, 265n dance 6, 9, 10, 38, 85, 107, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, 126, 129, 128, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 234n, 249n, 254n, 255n, 256n, 257n, 258n decimatio 49, 169, 170, 263n defixiones 3 Doerries, Bryan 58 drama 10, 47, 55, 57, 59, 61, 64, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 98, 126, 137, 142, 144, 238n, 243n, 244n, 247n, 256n, 258n, 269n Egypt 37, 153, 155, 159, 232n emotions 4, 5, 15, 17, 44, 102, 113, 218, 228n, 236n, 237n Euripides 9, 57, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 85, 90, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 126, 127, 128, 136, 232n, 243n, 244n, 245n, 246n, 247n Flavius Josephus 45 Florus 204, 206 Founding Fathers 215

305

Index Gallone, Carmine 56 Gaugamela (battle of, 331 BC) 47 Genovesi, Roberto 191 Gibbon, Edward 24, 261n gladiators, 4, 9, 110, 114, 119, 156, 203, 223, 227n Graham, Martha 10, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 254n Grands Jeux Romains 223 Greece 28, 45, 48, 57, 65, 76, 82, 154, 173, 198, 228n, 243n, 244n Greeks 6, 29, 30, 37, 38, 45, 46, 60, 74, 75, 79, 204, 255n, 256n Grigorovich, Yuri 9, 108, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 250n Grzegorzewska Antonina 9, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 243n, 244n, 245n, 246n Hannibal 18, 188, 192, 268n Heidegger, Martin 125, 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 231n Hemingway, Ernest 47 Herodianus 24 Homer 47, 60, 126, 236n Horace 47, 203, 237 Huns 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 262n hybris 4, 80 Iphigenia 9, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96, 97, 142, 243n, 244n Iraq 9, 46, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 238n Italy 177, 183, 187, 188, 214, 216, 223, 224, 269n Iwāki, Itoshi 11, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 268n Japan 188 Julius Caesar 24, 45, 175, 177, 182, 208, 223, 265n Kandinsky, Vasily 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 147, 254n, 255n katakremnismos 3 Keegan, John 8, 15, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 55, 229n, 235n, 237n, 238n Khachaturian, Aram 112 Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre 112, 114, 116, 118 Kubrick, Stanley 49, 56, 108, 115, 237n Livy 189, 190, 268n Macdonald, Kevin 53, 56, 239n McLaughlin, Ellen 58, 242n madness 1, 5, 6, 23, 59, 60, 61, 64, 68, 69, 133, 140, 141, 190, 193 Manara, Milo 176, 178, 179, 181 Mane, Tyler 60 manga 186, 187, 188, 268n, 270n Mann, Anthony 56, 232n, 248n Marcus Claudius Marcellus 188, 268n

306

Marcus Flavius Aquila 54 Mark Antony 51 Marlowe, Christopher 33, 234n Marshall, Neil 51, 56, 238n Medea 9, 10, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 142, 245n, 246n, 247n Meineck, Peter 58 Messala 54, 55 Messalina 175, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185 Middle Ages 48, 162, 164, 190, 201, 221, 224, 260n Milestone, Lewis 47 Mitton, Jean-Yves 183, 185, 266n, 267n Moiseyev, Igor 112 myth 8, 9, 22, 60, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 90, 91, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 126, 127, 128, 137, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 190, 201, 228n, 243n, 246n, 252n, 253n, 258n, 266n Ninth Legion 51, 54 Nobile, German 180 Noguchi, Isamu 143, 144, 143, 256n Nolan, Christopher 237n nomads 161 Numantia 8, 18, 19, 20, 230n Octavius 51 Odysseus 58, 61, 63, 239n Oliveira, Jocy de 9, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 246n, 247n Oppenheimer, Robert 191, 269n Orosius 203, 204, 208, 209 painting 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 147, 229n, 230n, 231n, 233n, 234n, 258n Palahniuk, Chuck 182, 183, 266n Parigi, Giulio 190 Pastrone, Giovanni 56, 190 peace 20, 21, 47, 57, 82, 204, 206, 209, 230n, 261n Persepolis 8, 27, 28–31, 33–40, 232n Petersen, Wolfgang 60 Philip V of Macedonia 189 Philippi (battle of, 42 bc) 51–3, 239n Pichard, Georges 175, 176 Picts 51 Plutarch 27–9, 31–4, 39–40, 190, 268n Polybius 190, 268n, 269n Pompeii 16, 153, 156, 173 pornotopia 7, 11, 173, 186, 264n Posidonius 188 Priscus 166, 168 psychoanalysis 141, 143, 146, 147 PTSD 8, 46, 56, 59, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 240n, 241n, 242n, 243n Punic War 18, 45, 48

Index racism 6, 95, 96, 110 rape 3, 169, 174, 180 reception studies 7, 162, 198, 200, 213, 267n revenge 5, 6, 10, 36, 64, 75, 81, 86, 87, 98, 99, 142, 145, 146, 227n, 243n, 245n Reynolds, Joshua 16–18, 27, 34–40, 229n, 234n Rincón, Rubén del 182 Romans 1, 6, 12, 46, 53, 55, 109, 112, 114, 119, 122, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 173, 184, 189, 191, 201, 203, 204, 207, 208, 211, 223, 224, 230n, 237n, 268n, 269n Rome 1, 8, 11, 19, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 55, 56, 57, 108, 109, 111, 113, 118, 153, 173, 174, 175, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 192, 198, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 221, 223, 232n, 237n, 239n, 243n, 261n, 263n, 264n, 267n, 268n Rostand, Jean 192 sacrifice 2, 4, 8, 44, 67, 75, 76, 79, 85, 89, 96, 97, 126, 128, 136, 146, 166, 209, 237n, 243n, 244n, 264n Saguntum 8, 18, 20, 230n Sakamoto, Mimei 267n sandbox 158, 159 science 37, 155, 157, 190, 191, 192, 243n, 244n, 261n scorched earth 167, 168, 262n, 263n Scott, Ridley 50, 51, 56, 152, 232n, 238n sculpture 17, 18, 39, 139, 140, 141, 143, 147, 230n Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1937) 49 sexuality 7, 11, 39–40, 99, 174–6, 180–2, 184, 186, 246n, 263n, 266n slavery 6, 85, 109, 110, 123, 174, 248n Snyder, Zack 165, 228n, 231n, 260n soldiers 22, 30, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 89, 107, 115, 167, 168, 170, 192, 213, 216, 217, 219, 223, 235n, 236n, 237n, 238n, 239n, 241n, 242n, 243n Somme (battle of, 1916) 44 Sophocles 1, 17, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 126, 127, 136, 240n Soviet Union 9, 111, 114, 116, 269n Sparta 81, 259n

Spartacus (gladiator), 9, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 248n, 250n Spartan 188, 189 spectatorship 4, 5, 70 Spence, Thomas Ralph 190 Stendhal 47 Stone, Oliver 47 Strabo 203, 204, 209 Suetonius 22, 180, 203, 206, 265n suicide 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 95, 101, 126, 128, 133, 136, 204, 209, 210, 230n, 240n, 241n, 242n, 252n, 253n, 273n Syracuse 188–91, 268n, 269n TBS 153 testudo 52 Thais of Athens 7, 8, 27–40, 232n, 234n Tolstoy, Lev 47 Toppi, Sergio 191 Trier, Lars von 183 Trojan War 59, 60, 65, 74, 75, 79 Uchimizu, Tooru 267n video games 5, 6, 7, 10, 24, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 198, 228n, 238n, 258n, 259n, 260n, 261n Vietnam War 46, 48, 50, 56, 65, 118, 217, 218, 236n, 240n Vorenus 52 Waterloo (battle of, 1815) 44, 47 Wazarai, Shizuya 267n Wertenbaker, Timberlake 58 Yakobson, Leonid 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 123 Yamazaki, Mari 188, 267n Yefremov, Ivan 37, 38, 39, 40 Yoshikazu, Yasuhiko 267n Zealots 54

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