Mann – Roman Revolutions

Spartacus (1960) Reflection

By Mann | April 22, 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

Besides hearing references throughout my life to the famous “I’m Spartacus!” scene from the movies, I have never actually watched a movie about the life of Spartacus. Spartacus being a familiar name and movie, I chose to watch Spartacus, the movie from 1960. The movie begins in a time of corruption in ancient Rome where slaves were forced to endure tough and laborious tasks along with incredible abuse. Spartacus is a slave who is very rebellious and rather disobedient. He is purchased by a business man who sends him to gladiatorial school where he continues to be abused. He forms a relationship with Varinia, a woman slave who is also subject to abuses as due to her destitute position and expectation of sexual favors. Crassus purchases Varinia to use her for entertainment. Spartacus is then forced to fight three other men in a show for Crassus and his counterparts. One of the men in the fight, spares Spartacus’s life and tries to attack the wealthy Romans in the crowd, however, he is killed by Crassus and a guard. Soon after, Varinia is taken away by Crassus and Spartacus kills Marcellus, which begins a fight between the guards and the gladiators. The gladiators win this fight and escape to the rural countryside. Spartacus is made a leader of the army of slaves and many join their group along their journey to leave Italy. Varinia ends up escaping from Crassus and joins the slave army where she becomes impregnated by Spartacus and ultimately becomes his wife. During this, there is political turmoil in the Roman Senate as they unable to beat the rebel army even after sending multiple armies to defeat them. There is strife between Crassus and Gracchus who are fighting for power in the Senate. Julius Caesar is employed by Gracchus to command the military to defeat Spartacus, but when he finds out that Gracchus tried to bribe people to help rid Italy of Spartacus, Caesar sides with Crassus. A Senate Consultum Ultimum is passed to give Crassus ultimate power and Spartucus’s slave army ends up surrounded by Crassus’s forces. This is when the famous “I’m Spartacus” scene happens when every member of the rebel army identifies as Spartacus to protect his true identity. All of the members of the army are sentenced to crucifixion by Crassus. Crassus finds Varinia, but she rejects him causing him to retaliate by making Spartacus and fight Antonius to death. However, he makes the rule that the survivor of the fight will be crucified. Spartacus wins the fight and is then crucified. I thought that this movie was a good representation of the violence that plagued ancient Roman society and the political turmoil that constantly played a major role in the senate. My friend watched the movie with me and she admits that she is not the most knowledgeable about ancient Rome, but she decided that she certainly would not have wanted to live in that time.

Venus Frozen in Time

By Mann | April 20, 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

In this piece, the ancient Roman goddess Venus is crouched while being surrounded by roses and myrtle. In ancient times, these flowers were used to symbolize love, sex, beauty, and fertility – the constructs that Venus represented. Venus was in many ways the counterpart to the Greek goddess Aphrodite except she held far greater power. This drawing embodies the idea of Venus being frozen in ancient times with few worshippers existing nowadays.

Gender, Transformation, and Change in Ancient Manuscripts

By Mann | January 30, 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

I attended a classics lecture at Bryn Mawr College, “The Grammar of Sanctity” with speaker Charlie Kuper in which he discussed his work examining gender in the Greek, Latin, and Syriac versions of the “Life of Euphrosyne Who Was Called Smaragdus.” The story itself is about a girl named Euphrosyne who was raised by her single father in ancient Greece. She decided to leave home in pursuit of becoming a monk and living at a monastery. In order to do so, she disguised herself as a man and changed her name to Smaragdus (the Greek word for emerald). Her gender transformation worked to fool the priest into allowing her to stay at the monastery, but quickly the other monks began to lust after Smaragdus and she was sent elsewhere so that she could not affect the monks in such an ungodly way. Smaragdus fell ill and found her father to whom she admits that she is his daughter. She passed away and was buried at the monastery as a saint. Charlie Kuper works to analyze this story through ancient manuscripts specifically to look at the way in which Euphrosyne’s gender pronouns change throughout the story. He has been studying 13 ancient manuscripts that tell this story in the languages of Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Armenian. Within the manuscripts, the pronouns for Euphrosyne differ and often change from she/her to he/him when the saint changes their name to Smaragdus. The saint’s gender also changes back and forth quickly between lines. The way in which the gender pronouns change is dependent on the scribe’s interpretation of the work. For example, in one of the Greek manuscripts, the scribe changed the pronouns of Euphrosyne when she changed her name and filled the text with messages of transformation, appearance, and change, in order to elicit the idea that “the body may change, but the soul does not.” Kuper discussed that ancient Greek and Latin scholars were very interested in pronouns and gender, which is interesting because it is often thought that age-old ideas about gender were limited to the gender binary that many are pushing against today with the idea that gender is a spectrum. I brought my friend, Jordan Denaver, to the talk and afterwards we discussed how and why Kuper’s work could have an impact on society. We discussed that this kind of examination of ancient works helps to rethink queer identities in ancient times, which could maybe translate to more open ideas about gender, transformation, and breaking rigid binaries that are ingrained in society today.