On March 23, I attended Eva Hoffman’s lecture called “Mobility and Exchange: Framing a Global Mediterranean”. Throughout her hour-long talk, she discussed cultural mobility, art archeology, and the role that the Mediterranean played in both categories. I am most interested when Hoffman said “mobility and exchange are at the heart of global history”. Upon reflection, I remembered all the different times I went to art museums with family and friends. The art museums were sectioned off by artists, geographical regions, and time periods. Although it never came to mind before this lecture, I am now left wondering about the interconnections between the different artists, geographical regions and time periods. One of the major separating categories in art is the distinction between East and West. However, in Hoffman’s lecture, she took the time to show works of art that contradict this distinction. She showed how Syrian glass was traded and shipped to other countries and empires in and beyond the Mediterranean. There is a unique history to the movement and mobility of ancient artwork because it had the ability to cross social, political, and physical boundaries. More specifically, Hoffman talked about The Eleanor Vase, which is currently being held at the Louvre Art Museum in Paris, France. This vase was passed between Muslims and Christians at a noble wedding. The trading of expensive artwork was common between wealthy and noble individuals. 

Although I enjoyed the broad topics of this lecture, I did find some of the specific information to be slightly dry. My family loves going to different art museums for hours, but I like to move more quickly through art museums while still admiring the artwork and history. I believe the topic of Eva Hoffman’s lecture was very interesting, and many people did enjoy every part of her presentation. However, there were moments when I forgot the overall message because she began talking about the specific stitchwork pattern on a specific piece of art. Despite the in-depth analysis of a vase or cloth, I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture, and I learned a lot. Most importantly, I continued to think about the broad topic of the talk after I left.   

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This afternoon, I attended the poetry reading of “The Eleusinian Mysteries”, a reworking of the ancient Greek myth of Hades’ abduction of Persephone written and recently published by a Haverford alum. As a lover of Greek mythology, I found both this topic and in particular the reworking of this myth into modern poetry and reimagined with Persephone as protagonist, especially interest. This book (in gross oversimplification) retells the story of Persephone’s abduction by and forced marriage to Hades from (supposedly) her perspective, reimagines her interactions with Orpheus in both poetic metaphor and plot impact, and then narrates her rise from victim to villain, as she seeks the demise of both Hades and Demeter, the overthrow of Zeus, and seems to pursue divine world domination. In the words of the author, the book reads as “erotic mythology fan fiction”, interested particularly with perversion and post-Soviet Russia as well as laced with continual references to infrastructure. The poet also mentioned being “obsessed” with the idea of person as place, pointing to how Hades refers to both the name of the god and the Greek underworld as a place as well as other instances of name/place confusion/conflation/consistency in Greek mythology including Tartarus (both the hole where the Titans were thrown and the name of an individual Titan) and Gaia, the Titan of the Earth and the Earth as a physical entity/location itself (the poet also alludes to a similar Zeus/sky person/place dynamic but less directly so in the later poems of the book). While largely focused on Greek mythology, the book reaches far beyond the world of mythical Greece, both with an entire section focused on a couple living in post-Soviet Russia and consistent allusions to Soviet and post-Soviet Russia throughout the book and in the titles of the poems that make up the book, including a direct reference to Ancient Rome with one poem titled “Carthage Must Be Destroyed”. I found this interlocational and intertemporal approach particularly compelling given our discussion of Momentum in class today, as this work and other interpretations and/or reworkings of classical mythology serve as a kind of momentum both ancient and modern, carrying ancient advice, warnings and calls for remembrance into the modern world and adapting those lessons, hopes, and memories into culturally, politically, and emotionally relevant stories for the present.

Today I attended a classics colloquium at Bryn Mawr entitled “Wisdom and Friendship in Cicero’s De amicitia.” The speaker, Katharina Volk, spoke about how the ideas of wisdom, friendship, and virtue connected to one another and how they were interpreted by different ancient peoples.

Volk stated that erudite pursuits were part of life for most Roman senators. However, as much as they engaged in philosophy, they would not call themselves “philosophers,” for this title was typically applied to Greeks. As we have learned about in class this year, Romans cared deeply about appearing unique from the rest of the Mediterranean and differentiating themselves from the Greeks.

De amicitia, the focus of the talk, was a dialogue written by Cicero that included participation mainly from Gaius Laelius, as well as Gaius Fannius and Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Cicero chose Laelius to speak because of his wisdom. Laelius was even given the cognomen “sapiens,” which denoted general political wisdom. 

However wise he appeared, Laelius wished to be remembered for friendship with the late Scipio Africanus instead. Volk labels this behavior as “urbane modesty” that was consistent with his character, or persona.

Cicero desired to create a uniquely Roman sphere of production, and his selection of Laelius made this possible. Laelius openly resented Greek schools of thought, despite not naming any individuals or schools in particular. In De amicitia, Laelius challenges Stoic conceptions of friendship by stating that only good people can be friends. In this way, he argues that friendship and virtue are intrinsically connected. Moreover, he asserts that the Stoic definition of virtue is too strict and virtually impossible to achieve.

Laelius also argues against the Stoic rejection of emotion. Volk spoke about how the Stoics traditionally warned against friendship due to how it can cause mental anxiety. Laelius responded to this by admitting that he had been mourning the death of Scipio (which had recently occurred). In Laelius’ view, the wise person and the virtuous person were one in the same.

I found it surprising that Laelius was the center of the colloquium. I expected that it would pertain more to Cicero than anyone else, considering that he authored De amicitia. The talk was really interesting, and there were lots of takeaways to be had about friendship, wisdom, and virtue in ancient Rome and Greece.

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The Nurse Antigone zoom reading was presented to honor nurses all over the world through the lens of Sophocles’s play, Antigone. The webinar detailed a group of actors, nurses, and other volunteers acting out Antigone. Afterwards, the organizers of the play held a discussion period where some of the readers, many of them nurses, gave their thoughts about the play and what they took away from the experience. Nurses from New York Presbyterian and representatives from John’s Hopkins were also given time to discuss what they took away from the play and how it related to their experiences during the pandemic. This was a great webinar to attend as I was able to listen to a rendition of Antigone and hear about the experiences of nurses during the pandemic. Many of the nurses involved in the webinar were able to relate to the play on a personal experience, as they compared the actions of several characters in the play, to their actions during the pandemic. Many of the nurses had to do whatever it took to save patients during the pandemic, even if they knew they would face consequences for their actions. Their actions compared to the actions of Antigone, as she realized that she needed to properly bury and honor her brother, even though she knew she was not allowed to. Her conscious would eat her alive if she had not and resulted in “moral injury”, this is similar to nurses in the pandemic who suffered moral injury, as the pandemic took a toll on them. Within the play, the chorus could be seen as nurses in the pandemic, as the chorus had the knowledge and answers to avert tragedy, just as nurses have the expertise to combat tragedy in the real world. People do not listen to the chorus, just as they do not listen to nurses a lot of the time. One nurse reflected on his experiences in dealing with conflict during the pandemic as he really had to think and understand what his patients were going through in order to connect them and help them in the best ways possibles. I enjoyed hearing about this because it gave me a first-hand perspective on how difficult it was for nurses to work during the pandemic. Not just physically, but mentally, nurses were exhausted and were doing everything they could to save people, even if it meant they might get in trouble and face disciplinary action. Antigone’s action in the play are a direct parallel to the nurses who did and continue to stand up to the inequities in health care. These inequities were very prevalent during the pandemic, and nurses spoke up about these inequities in order to get everyone the help they deserved and needed.