Program News

Featured Interview - Mary Lefkowitz

Key: ML: comments by Mary Lefkowitz; TeachGreece: questions by Barbara Harrison

	Mary Lefkowitz.

TeachGreece: What makes Greece such a tireless adventure for you? (In other words, what keeps you interested in learning and teaching about Greece?)

ML: What first drew me to Greek was studying Latin, and I liked Latin because it showed me the structure of language.

Greek was even more interesting because it preserved aspects of other ways of thinking about time. But then as I began to be able to read Greek, I discovered that Greek literature addresses the essential issues in life.

TeachGreece: In your talks in The Examined Life program, you have revealed a special affection for the beauty of the language of the Iliad and other texts. You seem drawn to the texts in a personal kind of way. Do you have any favorite passages in the epics or plays or lyric poems that you return to time and again for their beauty or wisdom or the solace they give you? I hope I’m not being irreverent to ask if you believe in the gods.

	“It’s hard to understand Greek history if you haven’t been to Greece.”

ML: I often turn to Book 24 of the Iliad and a number of passages in the odes of the fifth-century poet Pindar, and also Virgil’s Aeneid—the most Greek of all Roman poems. No, I don’t believe in the gods, but I think it makes more sense to imagine a world being controlled by gods who do not particularly care for most humans, than to suppose that there is one god who cares for all of us.

TeachGreece: I’m aware that you and your husband Hugh Lloyd-Jones make frequent trips to Greece. I would appreciate it if you would comment on the impact of travel on your understanding of Greece, and the importance of travel for teachers who are teaching Greece in their classrooms.

ML: It’s hard to understand Greek history if you haven’t been to Greece. You need to see how far different places are from one another, because of the mountainous terrain, and how the sea was the best way of getting from one place to another. I also think it’s hard to understand the effect of architecture from pictures. That’s why you need to see the Parthenon, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, etc.

TeachGreece: What do you think is the most persuasive reason for including the teaching of Greece in the curriculum of our nation’s schools?

ML: We still have much to learn from their understanding of human experience, the limitations of our knowledge, and of our powers of achievement.

TeachGreece: When did you realize that you wanted to devote yourself to studying and teaching the classics? Was there a teacher who had a special impact on your interest?

	“…seeing the Parthenon for the first time was one of the most exciting moments in my life.”

ML: I had some excellent teachers, both at school and during my undergraduate years at Wellesley. I went to Europe in 1951 after my sophomore year in high school, and saw as many Roman ruins as I could. Four years later I went to the summer program of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens—seeing the Parthenon for the first time was one of the most exciting moments in my life.

TeachGreece: I would appreciate your take on the forgetfulness of humans for their limitations as mortals—especially for the concept of hubris, seen not only in antiquity but in our contemporary world. Is hubris simply arrogance?

ML: Hubris means insolence, supposing that we have real power and knowledge; as the ancient Greeks saw it, moments of excellence were gifts from the gods. Humans never fail to be aware of the limitations of their knowledge.

TeachGreece: Northrop Frye, literary scholar, stated that without an understanding of the Orpheus myth it’s impossible to understand the literature of western civilization. Do you agree that the Orpheus myth is at the core of our understanding of our cultural tradition? Is there another myth that you believe is central?

ML: I wouldn’t single out Orpheus, though it does get at an essential feature of human weakness—a failure of concentration just at the last minute, just when you need it most. But there are many other important myths. I couldn’t single out just one.

TeachGreece: I would appreciate it if you would comment on the vitality of the gods and religion in the everyday lives of the ancient Greeks.

ML: Religion was central to ancient Greek life, and all forces beyond human control could be explained by it. As Thales said, “the world is full of gods.” There were small shrines everywhere, and if you could get yourself into right relationship with them your life might be better; but as Homer has Achilles say, humans have the possibility of good mixed with bad in their lives, or all bad. All good is a possibility only for the gods.

TeachGreece: Please help us to understand the view of virtue and justice of the Bronze Age Greeks, the Homeric heroes, in particular.

ML: I think we need to separate Mycenae and the Bronze Age from Homer, who appears to be describing a later period. Since no literature survives from the Bronze Age, we don’t know what they thought. Homer believed that justice would come eventually, though the gods are on a different time table from short-lived mortals. The story of the Iliad shows that “the plan of Zeus was accomplished”— Troy had to fall because they did not return his daughter Helen to Menelaus.

TeachGreece: In your recent book Greek Gods, Human Lives, what differentiates your interpretations of the ancient Greek Gods from the approaches of such writers as Thomas Bullfinch, Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves, and Joseph Campbell?

ML: I take the gods seriously, and do not write about them condescendingly.

TeachGreece: In this same book you refer to the Iliad as “the most important Greek religious text”. Please explain to readers why you call the Iliad a religious text.

ML: There were no canonical texts like the Bible, and the Iliad was the most popular text throughout antiquity. Children studied it in school (boys mostly, but some girls), though only the elite were educated, and about 5-10 % of the population was literate.

TeachGreece: Please comment on the role of women in antiquity. Do you have a favorite heroine? Who do you think is the most misunderstood heroine? Medea? Antigone? Clytemnestra? What do you make of the Pandora myth?

ML: I don’t have a favorite heroine, and all have been misunderstood—perhaps Medea most of all, because she is often portrayed as emotional, even hysterical. In Euripides’ drama she is cold and calculating, and she gets away with murder because she is the granddaughter of a god.

TeachGreece: Of the many recurring themes in Greek literature such as sophrosyne, aidos, atê, philoxenia, others, which do you think that 21st century citizens and leaders would be wise to revisit?

ML: Top on my list is Atê —that certainly applies to our intervention in Iraq (and Vietnam).

Freedom and Responsibility
By Mary Lefkowitz

Radcliffe College Panel Discussion

It is not often that a classicist is called upon to make a pronouncement about problems in today’s world. Why would someone who spends her time studying the past have anything worthwhile to say about the present? But we classicists do not study ancient texts simply because they are there, we study them because these texts can still speak to us. The ancient Greeks had a word for what I want to talk about today, and it was atê, the delusion that leads to destruction. As the ancient Greeks saw it, all human beings are affected by atê, most often at the very moment when they think they are doing the right thing. To put it another way, to be human is to be deluded, to view one’s surroundings through a mist without being aware that there is a mist. Only a god can see the whole picture.

The screenwriter for the film Troy left out the gods from their version of the story. But in Homer’s account in the Iliad of the wrath of Achilles, everything depends upon these same gods. When Achilles gets angry with Agamemnon, he can hurt Agamemnon and the other Greeks because his mother Thetis is a goddess. She had helped Zeus in the past and so Zeus now reciprocates by favoring the Trojans, at least for a few days. Achilles refuses to fight and believes that in that way he is getting even with Agamemnon. But he does not realize that there will be consequences to his anger that he does not foresee. His decision to withdraw from the battlefield will cause the death of his closest friend, Patroclus, and will soon lead to his own death, before the walls of Troy. He is victim of atê, of not understanding fully the consequences of his desires.

In antiquity educated Greeks and (later) Romans, boys and also some girls, learned about atê from the Iliad, which they studied and memorized and copied out at school. In the fifth century B.C. Athenian audiences learned about the consequences of atê from the dramas that were performed each year at state expense during the festival of the god Dionysus. Our versions of the same stories, like the film Troy, show us that war is violent and that rulers can be selfish and corrupt. But it might be even more helpful if someone reminded us, all of us, all the time, about the limitations of mortal knowledge.

After we attacked Iraq, and no weapons of mass destruction were found, I couldn’t help thinking of how in 415 B.C. the Athenian democracy sent an expedition to conquer the city-states in Sicily. Then they changed their minds and recalled one of their most effective generals; they sent reinforcements, but in the end the expedition failed and the Athenian soldiers were killed or captured. The loss of men and money eventually ensured that Athens lost her long war with Sparta. Hearing the dramas every year didn’t keep the Athenians from making terrible mistakes, but it did at least enable them to understand that they had made a mistake. We have a witness: the Athenian general Thucydides, who wrote a history of the Peloponnesian war. He deliberately places his narrative of the expedition to Sicily just after his account of how Athens, at the height of its powers, quashed a rebellion in the city-state of Melos, by capturing the town, killing its men, and enslaving its women and children.

When something goes wrong today (and we can all think of plenty of examples), we blame our leaders, and work to elect different people. But in most cases we are acting on the basis of superficial knowledge and our own willingness to persuade ourselves that this time the person we are prepared to support will know just what he or she is doing. But who can lead us well unless he recognizes the extent of his human limitations? And what man in our society can confess he is at a loss without seeming weak?

So I would pick atê as a major world problem. It is an even more acute problem now than in the past, because there are so many billions more of people in the world, and our power to destroy each other is so much greater than in the past. Perhaps the only thing we can do about atê is to recognize that it exists, and to try to act accordingly. I mean that we should try to be less certain than we usually are. Can we really be sure (despite our confident claims to the contrary) that we have found the cure or solution for the many troubles that are plaguing our world?

I am not asking for humility so much as for understanding and reflection. The ancient Greeks did not believe that their gods had created humankind or that they cared for humankind in the aggregate. Rather, it was the responsibility of individual human beings to try to do the best we could with such information as the gods were prepared to give us and with such limited intelligence as we have. Trying to know, being willing to ask hard questions of oneself and others is not a sign of weakness but part of the solution. The ancient Greeks had the Iliad and their dramas. If only our popular culture, our films and our television, were prepared repeatedly to remind us of how little we actually know.

The Examined Life: Greek Studies in the Schools (ExL/Newton) Embarks on National Initiative

As part of a broad initiative to establish programs in other regions of the nation, The Examined Life program (Exl/Newton), is working both independently and with Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS). Currently CHS is trying out technology that will make graduate course lectures available in locations where access to resources is minimal.

The first designated site is Memphis, TN where CHS’s outreach director Kenneth Morrell teaches at Rhodes College. Professor Morrell’s efforts include recruiting the participation of Memphis teachers to participate in an ExL/Memphis program that will replicate the model ExL/Newton program.

In October 2006, ExL/Newton team members, including Barbara Harrison, program director, Ann Koloski-Ostrow, course professor, and Connie Carven, teacher specialist, met at CHS in Washington, DC to discuss the initiative.

ExL Administrative Team Members Travel to Memphis, TN

At the annual meeting of the Southern Section of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South held in Memphis, Tennessee November 1-4, 2006,
Ann Koloski-Ostrow and Judith Malone-Neville presented papers on The Examined Life: Greek Studies in the Schools.

Professor Koloski-Ostrow, Chair of the Classics Department at Brandeis and Project Humanist for The Examined Life, spoke about the collaboration among classical scholars in the Boston area in giving presentations to public, charter, and private school teachers in a year-long graduate course at Brandeis University. She gave examples of the topics included in the course and of the high-quality scholarly work performed by the teachers.

Professor Koloski-Ostrow emphasized the importance of the 13 day study tour in Greece as an integral component of The Examined Life program.

Judith Malone Neville, former assistant superintendent of the Newton Public Schools and chief ExL project administrator, gave a brief history of the genesis and funding sources of The Examined Life which to date has involved over 160 teachers and administrators from urban and suburban school districts in rigorous academic work and curriculum development.

As a member of the first cohort of Greek Fellows, Judith Malone-Neville related how meaningful the personal experience of being in situ on the Acropolis and in Delphi is to an understanding of Greek literature and to speaking authentically in the classroom.

In addition to attending the conference, she joined Sam Findley of Rhodes College, in visiting a local high school in efforts to recruit the first cohort of Memphis teachers to the program. Judith Malone-Neville, PhD

Magna Graecia Seminar and Tour Score High Marks

In the spring 2006, several Greek Fellows attended a five-session seminar designed to meet their increasing need for further study. Organized by Professor Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, and featuring guest lecturer MIT Professor Steven Ostrow, the seminar culminated in a study tour of Greek colonies in southern Italy.

Titled Magna Graecia: Greeks Bearing Gifts . . . into Greek and Roman Italy, the seminar examined a substantial body of Roman literary works to gain greater appreciation of the enduring contribution of the Greeks to the Roman literary and artistic traditions, and to appreciate how the Romans built upon and transformed that Greek tradition.

The seminar culminated a study tour from August 14-19, 2006 (based at the Villa Vergiliana at Cumae, Italy). Greek Fellows explored the archaeology, art, and architecture of Magna Graecia (Naples and the Greek colony of Paestum in southern Italy) and several Roman sites in Campania (with special focus on Pompeii and Roman villa sites on the Bay of Naples).

Participants spoke of Magna Graecia’s direct relationship to the Greek Studies course. Lana Holman, 2005 Greek Fellow, commented: “I never realized how much the Greeks influenced the Romans. To read the Aeneid and compare it to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, to see the artwork at Pompeii that portrayed Greek mythology, to see the statues portraying the Odyssey at the Grotto of Tiberius...all of these experiences deepened my knowledge and understanding of what I learned in Greek Studies. I was left with a new passion and a need to learn more. These experiences have directly influenced my teaching of ancient Greek history to my students. Ann's passion and Steven's passion influenced me and, in turn, influenced and excited my students. I have recently begun working on my Master's Certificate in Classical Studies at Brandeis. I would not have done this had it not been for Greek Studies and Magna Graecia. Magna Graecia is a natural extension of Greek Studies, and I hope both grow and flourish for years to come.”

Greek News at Home and Abroad

Museum Directors Name Titian’s Rape of Europa As Most Prized Masterpiece in Boston Area

The Boston Globe asked Boston area museum directors to name the most important piece of art available to the public. The answer unequivocally was Titian’s “Rape of Europa”—a masterpiece of oil on canvas that hangs in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Inspired by Greek myth, the large canvas features Europa on the back of a bull, her head looking upward, the bull’s head turned toward the viewer. Europa holds a red veil in one hand while holding on to one of the bull’s horns with the other.

International Smugglers Mining Greek Seas for Treasures

Through time Greek shipwrecks have dumped priceless gems into the waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Underwater archaeologists, employed by the Greek government, recently uncovered 30 ancient wrecks and are trying to protect them, but pirates equipped with sophisticated technology are competing with officials.

In the last eight years, Greek fishermen have caught several masterpieces in their nets and have handed over to authorities. One discovery was a statue of Roman emperor Octavius. Other catches may have been smuggled out of Greece

My Life in in Ruins Scheduled To Open in 2008

Star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos, will be featured in My Life in Ruins, a comedy to be shot on the Acropolis and other sites in Greece. The film’s producer is Tom Hanks. Scheduled release date is 2008. It’s rare that the Greek government allows a film to be shot on an historic landmark, but government officials are hoping that like the 2004 Athens Olympics, the film will have a positive influence on tourism. Vardalos who wrote the script will be playing the role of a bedraggled guide escorting tourists to historic sties.

Ancient Theater Discovered

Construction workers in the northern Athens suburb of Menidi have found what archeologists believe is the ancient theater of Acharnae, a 4th centre BCE theater, linked to Dionysos. Further excavation work will determine the validity of the claim. Evidence suggests that the theater is in remarkably good condition and that excavation work will yield many artifacts. Experts have long believed that the modern city of Menidi is built over the ancient city of Acharnae.

Antykythera Mechanism Decoded

Through clever imaging technology, researchers have been able to decipher inscriptions on the Antykythera mechanism revealing the use of the 2,200 year-old device. Made of bronze, and encased in a wooden box, it has 30 gears and was used as an astronomical calculator able to predict eclipses and containing information about the solar system.

The complex geared device, was used as an astronomical calculator, and discovered by divers in the early 1900s in a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek Island of Antykythera.

Greece in the Classroom

Poetry

The following poems were written by fourth graders at the Park School in conjunction with a project on ancient Greek vases Teachers: Ted Wells and David Lawton, Greek Study Fellows.

The Dizzy Vase Poem

With all the different layers of designs,
The vase just sits there without moving.
Twirls and swirls, zigzags and dots
All blend together with orangey-red glazes and dark clay.
I imagine a real vase made 2000 years ago
But all it is, is a sketch on a piece of gray paper, meant for the two-dimensional world

—Nelle

The Story

The story is trapped
Inside the orange clay.
The curving, winding sides
Frame the picture.

The golden apple is lying on the floor
The fable has just begun.
The scowls on the goddesses’ faces
tell the tale.

Aphrodite’s foot is lying on the apple.
Athena’s spear is quivering.
Aphrodite’s girdle is gleaming.
Hera’s crown is wobbling on her head.

Greek lines and small dots decorate
The amazing creation.
The story!

—Taylor                                                                     

Roses

Some flavor lilacs. I prefer the rose.
Its velvet petals sparkle in the light.
Its sharp pricks hurt you in the night,
Yet I still love them.
Some favor lilacs, but I prefer the rose,
Yes, I, Europa, prefer the rose.

—Mabel                                                                     

Art

The following sketches were made by students in Chris Vaillancourt’s classes at the Charles E. Brown Middle School in Newton: