Winter is upon us here in the northern hemisphere. We’re settling in for cold days and long, dark nights. Here’s how the winter season was imagined in late Roman Britain.
This figure comes from a floor mosaic at Chedworth Villa in western Britain. Each corner of the mosaic had a little allegorical figure representing one of the seasons. Winter appears bundled up in warm layers with a hooded cloak, carrying a hare in one hand (the reward of a hunt), and a symbolic leafless branch in the other.
Wishing you a warm, cozy, and cheerful winter season!
Image: Winter from Chedworth dining room floor, photograph by Pasicles via Wikimedia (Chedworth Roman Villa; 4th c. CE; mosaic)
Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.
The Roman writer Vitruvius had some opinions about public art, expressed here in a critique of the city of Alabanda in western Anatolia, modern-day Turkey:
The people of Alabanda are sharp enough when it comes to affairs of state, but they have been found foolish for their mistakes in lesser matters, since the statues in their gymnasium are all arguing lawsuits, but the ones in their forum are holding the discus, running, or playing ball.
Vitruvius, On Architecture 7.5.6
(My own translation)
Vitruvius’ gripe about the statues in Alabanda may seem odd at first. Why is it foolish to have statues of people playing ball in the forum? Why shouldn’t there be statues of people pleading cases in the gymnasium? Vitruvius’ point is that the statues the Alabandans chose for their important public spaces didn’t match the functions of those spaces.
The gymnasium was a place for the men of the city to socialize and spend their leisure time, but above all to exercise and improve their bodies. The forum was a public space that served many functions, but importantly among them it served as a courtroom for trying legal cases. Vitruvius was clearly of the opinion that art in public spaces should mirror the functions of those spaces: statues of lawyers belong in the forum, and statues of people playing sports go in the gymnasium. In his opinion, the Alabandans made the foolish mistake of setting up the right statues in the wrong places.
Vitruvius’ text is a useful indicator that people in antiquity thought about the visual culture around them and had opinions about the appropriateness of particular subjects, themes, or styles for particular spaces. You couldn’t just slap any old statue anywhere you liked; there were rules to be followed, and the Alabandans had failed to follow them.
At the same time, Vitruvius’ remark is also useful evidence that not everyone shared the same opinions. Vitruvius may not have appreciated the Alabandans’ choices for public statuary, but the Alabandans clearly saw no problem with them. Maybe they thought that lawyers arguing in court should be inspired by the vigor of athletes or that people exercising in the gymnasium should be reminded to also improve their minds like the great orators of the past. We don’t know for sure, but it’s good to be reminded not only that people in the past had opinions about the world they lived in, but that those opinions could and did differ. What one person considered an artistic mistake was for someone else a sensible decorating plan.
When we read ancient sources, it is important to remember that they represent one person’s perspective, not necessarily a universal ideal.
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
“Ouroboros Steak is a DIY meal kit for growing gourmet steaks from of one’s own cells. It comes as a starter kit of tools, ingredients and instructions that enable users to culture their own cells into mini steaks, without causing harm to animals.
“Commissioned for the exhibition Designs for Different Futures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the project is a critical commentary on the lab-grown meat industry and critiques the industry’s claims to sustainability.”
Err, what? Art? Product? Gourmet?!?!?!? What the fuck did I just read???
I… just… What?!? I can’t even decide whether the name is clever or artsy-fartsy pseudo-intellectual crap. Or whether the project might be just a boredom-induced crude joke??? If it were, it would be in highly, EXTREMELY poor taste to not take the health implications of cannibalism into account DURING a pandemic. Unless that’s supposed to be a part of the project???
Just can’t fathom this, in any shape, size, or form!
The Villa Farnese is a gorgeous Renaissance palace in central Italy, built in the early 1500s and richly elaborated with sculptures and frescoes. One of the rooms in the villa features a map of the world filling the wall at one end, with detailed maps of the continents on the other walls, under a ceiling decorated with constellations. Standing in this room, the magnates of the villa could see the whole world, as it was known to scientists and cartographers of the day.
The map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Etienne (Li) via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)
Looking at this space, it occurs to me that a room like this would make an excellent setting for a scene in a fantasy or historical story. Many such stories play out over long distances, and knowing how one territory or city relates to the others around it as well as to the shapes of the land can make a huge difference in understanding the stakes and possibilities in play.
Africa, from the map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbèra via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)
In a visual medium like tv or movies, it could be very helpful to have a visual in the background while characters are discussing important movements or plans, but even in text, putting your characters in such a place could give you an opportunity to describe them looking at the map, tracing routes of travel or the borders between nations, and arguing for their plans.
Europe, from the map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Ulrich Mayring via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)
Maps make everything better!
History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.
The sculpture of the death Laocoon and his sons is one of the mot famous works of ancient art. Carved from several pieces of marble that were fitted together with metal pins, it represents a dramatic moment from the legends of the Trojan War. When the Greeks carried out their ruse, pretending to withdraw from Troy but leaving behind a giant wooden horse, the Trojans were skeptical. While some Trojans wanted to bring the horse within their walls, the priest Laocoon warned the Trojans not to trust the Greeks. The god Poseidon, who favored the Greeks, sent a serpent from the sea to kill Laocoon and his sons, which convinced the Trojans to reject Laocoon’s advice and bring the horse behind their walls, unwittingly sealing their city’s doom.
This marble statue, depicting that dramatic mythological moment, has a dramatic history of its own. It was found in pieces in the soil of an Italian vineyard in 1506 and quickly gained attention. One of the first people to see it was the artist Michelangelo. Classical scholars noted that the Roman author Pliny had described with admiration a similar statue of Laocoon, and believed that this work was the very one that had impressed Pliny. The fragments were acquired by Pope Julius II for display in the Vatican palace. Several of the major artistic names of the Italian Renaissance worked on restoring the fragments and carving replacements for parts that were missing, among them not only Michelangelo but Raphael and Bramante.
In some ways, the Laocoon was the perfect sculpture for time in which it was discovered. Interest in relics of Greco-Roman art was growing, and the rich and powerful were starting to regard the acquisition and display of antiquities as a useful mark of status. Among those antiquities, large-scale marble sculpture was the most highly prized. The belief that the Laocoon statue was the very same one that Pliny had praised conferred upon it a special aura of authenticity. It was not just any ancient statue, but an ancient statue with a known origin and history, whose quality was vouched for by one of the great names of Roman literature.
At the same time, while the authentic antiquity of the sculpture was crucial to its value as a collector’s prize, it was also particularly suited to contemporary tastes. The fine delineation of the figures’ musculature in a pose of high emotional drama was perfectly adapted to the interests of artists of the Italian Renaissance. Even though it was a product of pagan Rome, the subject and its execution had resonances for a Christian audience. The agony of Laocoon’s body in a moment of divine intervention made a parallel to the agony of Jesus on the cross. The slithering serpent attending on a moment of fateful choice echoed the tale of Adam and Eve. For a Christian pontiff who was also a powerful political figure and a connoisseur of Classical art, it is hard to imagine a more perfect sculpture.
(The sculpture was so perfect for Julius, in fact, that one scholar has suggested that it was not an actual ancient sculpture but a forgery by Michelangelo himself. The evidence for this idea is weak, however, and it has not found wide acceptance among scholars.)
Yet, as perfectly adapted as the Laocoon sculpture was to the time in which it was discovered, times change, and the sculpture has changed with them. Since the Pope’s artists first reassembled the sculpture pieces and created their own replacements for the missing parts, the Laocoon has not remained the same. Over the past five centuries, artists and restorers have repeatedly gone back to the sculpture and changed it, readjusting the positions and postures of the figures, creating new replacements, and treating the surface. The position and postures of the two smaller figures has been changed. The angle of the main figure’s arm has been revised. Traces of paint were cleaned away to make the marble gleaming white. The Laocoon that we can see today in the Vatican Museums is, in important ways, not the same sculpture that came out of the vineyard soil in 1506.
Whenever we look at an artifact from the past, we must bear in mind that what we are seeing is usually not what the object originally looked like. The Laocoon statue is perhaps an extreme case, given how much attention it has garnered since it was first excavated, but we always remake relics of history to better fit what we in the present think the past should look like. Julius and his artists wanted a complete and glorious masterpiece of Classical art, so they made one out of the pieces from the vineyard. Today we want an instructive and historically accurate piece of sculpture, so we have removed many of the replacement pieces carved by the pope’s artists and rearranged the original pieces in ways that we think are more authentic. Yet since long before 1506, no one has seen what the Laocoon sculpture originally looked like, and no one in the future ever will.
Thoughts for writers
Just as Michelangelo and his fellow sculptors reimagined a relic of the past, whenever we look to the past to inspire our writing, we are always creating our own version of it for our own needs. However much we may seek and value historical accuracy, we are telling stories in and for our own times; they will always reflect what we believe and value about ourselves. This is a strength of fiction and fantasy, not a weakness. The important thing is to be thoughtful and purposeful about how we use and reimagine history when we look to it for inspiration and not let our unexamined, unthinking biases shape how we understand it.
Image: Laocoon and his sons, photograph by Wilfredo Rafael Rodriguez Hernandez via Wikimedia (found at Rome, currently Pio Clementino Museum, Vatican; 1st c. BCE-1st c. CE; marble; believed to be by Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydorus of Rhodes)
History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.
Artist Suzie Grieve harvests materials from the local woodlands and fields in the Lake District, U.K., with a focus on the weeds and invasive species, and weaves baskets out of the fibers. And they are very neat and beautiful:
The twist? Some of her baskets are not just neat and beautiful, and they’re not just small, they’re tiny. T I N Y!
Even if these baskets were of a more typical size, they would be impressive: the careful selection of materials to create stripes from naturally different colors, the planning and placement of patterns to create a pleasing whole, and the high quality of the work.
Then you shrink everything down to mere millimeters and centimeters, and the challenge grows larger. MUCH larger! I’ve done enough small-scale sewing to comprehend some of the challenges involved when scaling down the size of a project.
This is seriously impressive work requiring skill, imagination, and dedication. Kudos!
Cats (or at least most cats) may not like water, but this one might have kept an ancient sailor safe on the waves.
Scaraboid, photograph by The Trustees of the British Museum. Outline illustration and collage by Erik Jensen. (Found Naukratis, currently British Museum; 600-570 BCE; glazed composition) (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
The cat is part of the decoration on the underside of a small talisman found at the site of the ancient city of Naukratis in Egypt. Talismans of this type are called scaraboids because they are similar in shape and size to scarabs, but do not have the traditional scarab markings on their domed top.
The cat is a hieroglyph, one of three on the bottom of the object. Reading from right to left, the feather represents the sound i, the cat represents m (from the Egyptian word for cat, miu), and the sun disc represents n (from the word niut, meaning town or city, which the sun disc sometimes stood for). Put together, these hieroglyphs spell imn, a form of the name of the Egyptian god Amun. Many other scarabs and similar talismans from Naukratis contain forms of the name of Amun.
Amun was an important god in ancient Egypt, at times regarded as the king of the gods. Among his other functions, he was worshiped as a god of air and winds who protected sailors and other travelers on the sea. A talisman of Amun was an appropriate thing for an ancient sailor to carry around.
Naukratis is an interesting place to find a talisman like this. Naukratis was a Greek city founded inside Egypt by permission of the Egyptian kings. It was originally built as a home for Greek mercenaries serving in Egypt, but it quickly became a port for Greek and other foreign merchants who wanted to trade in Egypt. Most of the sailors who came through Naukratis were not Egyptians, yet there seems to have been a thriving trade in Egyptian and Egyptian-themed talismans, many produced in local workshops. It is likely that the intended customer for this scaraboid was not an Egyptian but a visiting Greek.
On one hand, the prominence of the cat on this talisman makes it seem like a bit of tourist kitsch designed to appeal to foreigners. Domestic cats were not yet common in most of the ancient Mediterranean, and Greeks associated them with Egypt. Including a cat in the talisman made it extra Egypt-y for a Greek audience. On the other hand, Naukratis amulets include many different hieroglyphic ways of spelling names of Amun, not all of which use cats or other specifically Egyptian symbols. Even if some pieces were made as tourist souvenirs, there also seems to have been a market for talismans referencing the Egyptian sailors’ god, even in a place where most of the sailors were not Egyptian.
This talisman and others like it are an interesting window into the multicultural world of Naukratis, where Greek sailors hoped for protection from an Egyptian god and cats were good protectors against the dangers of the sea.
History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.
We’ve probably all seen endless examples of stereotypical fantasy Elves: those slim, tall, tranquil, ethereal, Art Nouveau-esque figures that glide effortlessly through a major convocation or battle field carnage alike. The type that for example various Weta artists immortalized for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies.
I’ve been hankering for something slightly different for a while. (At least in depictions of taller Elves; ElfQuest Elves and other Elves smaller in stature already start with some variety.) Here’s what I’ve come across.
Some illustrators make their Elves with non-stereotypical weaponry or gear. Pavel Hristov’s Steppe Elf carries a whopper of an axe and chews on a stalk of grain. There are also tassels hanging from the piece of cloth on his waist; those don’t seem to go with the Elf stereotype.
This Elven marksman explorer by L3monJuic3 has more typical weaponry—bow and arrow—but unlike her, stereotypical Elves are rarely seen carrying backpacks loaded with mundane items like shovels and cauldrons. Elves do typically eat and presumably have other bodily needs, right, even in the more highfalutin high fantasy worlds?
I cannot think off the top of my head any tinkerer nor wanderer type Elves (except for Drizzt Do’Urden in Forgotten Realms), but I don’t consider myself terribly well-read as far as fantasy goes. Anyway, for me these alternative takes were delightful.
Closest to my heart, however, are illustrations of Elves in non-stereotypical environments, especially among birches, in addition to ones showing different body shapes and happy demeanors.
This birchwood Elf by Andrius Matijosius may be a little scruffy-looking, but I love how his cape mimicks birch bark and arrows resemble leaf-topped trunks.
The Gate of Forest Elf Castle by ZAHD&ART also features fall colors. I love this birch-lined alley. A forest of birches with their white trunks lined up always looks so striking.
Moving to physical characteristics. Un Lee’s illustration of an Elf company is marvellous! Lee wanted to create a varied group much like the Dwarves in the Hobbit but with Elves instead.
Besides uniform body shapes, stereotypical Elves come in a fairly narrow range of moods. This portrait of an ancient Elf by eccentric_bee is serene on the surface, yes, but it looks to me that there’s joy underneath that’s often missing in depictions of Elves. Love it!
In Making Stuff we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Amazons, the bold warrior women who figure in Greek myths, are imaginary, but the myths about them likely had their origin in Greek experiences with actual fighting women in the cultures around the shores of the Black Sea. Ethnographic and archaeological evidence shows that women who trained with weapons and fought in battle were known in many of the cultures in the region, and the association of mythic Greek Amazons with horses and bows also matches the realities of life on the Black Sea steppes.
Greek literature and art records numerous Amazon names. Most of these names are Greek, and they are descriptive of relevant Amazon traits, such as Hippolyta (“She who sets the horses loose”), Melanippe (“Black horse”) or Antiope (“She who confronts”). These names may have been simply invented by Greek writers in the same way that fantasy authors today concoct suitable names for their characters. There is evidence, however, that some of the Amazon names recorded in Greek art might be actual names from languages spoken around the Black Sea.
Greek vase fragment via the J. Paul Getty Museum (made Athens, currently Getty Museum, Malibu; c. 510 BCE; glazed pottery; painted by Oltos)
This Greek pottery fragment shows Amazons riding into battle against the Greek hero Heracles (who appears accompanied by the god Hermes on the other side of the cup). We can recognize the riders as Amazons from their clothing and the bowcases they carry. Text in Greek letters surrounds them, although it is painted in a dark color that is difficult to see. Most of the text is fragmentary and hard to reconstruct, but one word seems to be a complete name. The text PKPUPES can be read by the head of the leftmost rider, evidently her name.
“Pkpupes,” at first glance, may look like mere gibberish. It certainly isn’t Greek. Many scholars in the past dismissed this and similar texts as nonsense words written by semi-literate vase painters. Maybe “pkupupes” was just an attempt at an onomatopoeic for the pounding of a horse’s hooves. It may, however, be something more significant.
Dense clusters of hard consonants like “pkp” are a common feature of languages spoken today in the Caucasus Mountains east of the Black Sea. “Pkpupes” is, in fact, fairly easy to read as an attempt to render a name in Circassian, a cluster of closely related languages of the northwestern Caucasus, with the letters of ancient Greek, which did not perfectly match up to the sounds of the original language. English doesn’t have all the right letters to easily represent the sounds of Circassian either, but a reconstructed Circassian name that would be rendered in English something like “Pqp’upush” is perfectly intelligible. This name is composed of several elements, the first referring to the body, the next to covering, and the final one connoting worthiness. Altogether, the name would mean “Worthy to wear armor,” a suitable name for a warrior woman.
Greeks had extensive contact with peoples around the Black Sea. Many Greeks migrated to the region, and people from the area also settled in Greece. The painter of this vase signed his name “Oltos,” which is not a typical Greek name, and he may have been an immigrant himself. He and other ancient vase painters may well have known people who spoke foreign languages or had ancestors from the Black Sea region who could recommend appropriately authentic names for Amazon characters. It may even be that some of the obviously Greek Amazon names like Hippolyta or Antiope were not invented by Greeks but are Greek translations of authentic names, in the same way that the names of many indigenous Americans in recent history have been translated into English, like Sitting Bull or Red Cloud.
The Amazons of Greek myth remain mythical, but we have evidence for some history behind that myth, maybe even the names of some real warrior women from the edges of the world known to the Greeks.
Source
Adrienne Mayor, John Colarusso, and David Saunders, “Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with Amazons and Scythians on Athenian Vases,” Hesperia 83, no. 3 (July-September 2014): 447-93.
History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.
(Note: There’s no captioning, and it’s only in Finnish, but mostly the trailer is non-verbal. In the beginning, the text reads Experience the world’s best-known adventure. At the end, while raising his staff Gandal says You cannot pass!)
Tampere Theatre, Tampere Hall, and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, among others, have worked for four years to create the adaptation. I haven’t heard the reason why the play runs only about two months (Aug 22 to Sept 21, 2024 and Dec 18, 2024 to Jan 11, 2025); you’d think a slightly longer run might be warranted for such a large production. I do know it’s staged at Tampere Hall instead of Tampere Theatre’s own, beautiful historical building because the latter is under renovations. I also know that the production team had to make their own Finnish translation from scratch and that no songs were allowed due to limitations posed by The Tolkien Estate.
The sets and props look fantastic, as does the lighting and video projections. I’m not sure I agree with the Elven costuming, though; their profiles look a little too much like the female Hobbit / villager Hobbit profiles. Otherwise the wardrobe looks fabulous. You can’t tell about the soundscape on the basis of the trailer alone, but I have high hopes. I hope the Hall also works for the adaptation as a performance space.
We can’t wait to see it!
Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.
Co-Geeking 
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