Simone Weil, The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (trans. Mary McCarthy):
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it. The human race is not divided up, in the Iliad, into conquered persons, slaves, suppliants, on the one hand, and conquerors and chiefs on the other. In this poem there is not a single man who does not at one time or another have to bow his neck to force. The common soldier in the Iliad is free and has the right to bear arms; nevertheless he is subject to the indignity of orders and abuse:
But whenever he came upon a commoner shouting out,
he struck him with his scepter and spoke sharply:
“Good for nothing! Be still and listen to your betters.
You are weak and cowardly and unwarlike,
You count for nothing, neither in battle nor in council.”
Thersites pays dear for the perfectly reasonable comments he makes, comments not at all different, moreover, from those made by Achilles:
He hit him with his scepter on back and shoulders,
so that he doubled over, and a great tear welled up,
And a bloody welt appeared on his back
Under the golden scepter. Frightened, he sat down,
Wiping away his tears, bewildered and in pain.
Troubled though they were, the others laughed long at him.
Achilles himself, that proud hero, the undefeated, is shown us at the outset of the poem, weeping with humiliation and helpless grief – the woman he wanted for his bride has been taken from under his nose, and he has not dared to oppose it:
. . . But Achilles
Weeping, sat apart from his companions,
By the white-capped waves, staring over the boundless ocean.
What has happened is that Agamemnon has deliberately humiliated Achilles, to show that he himself is the master:
… So you will learn
That I am greater than you, and anyone else will hesitate
To treat me as an equal and set himself against me.
But a few days pass and now the supreme commander is weeping in his turn. He must humble himself, he must plead, and have, moreover, the added misery of doing it all in vain.
In the same way, there is not a single one of the combatants who is spared the shameful experience of fear. The heroes quake like everybody else. It only needs a challenge from Hector to throw the whole Greek force into consternation – except for Achilles and his men, and they did not happen to be present.
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Catullus: Quod vides perisse perditum ducas: “That which you see to have perished, you should consider lost.”
Rory: “I’m ready to wallow now”: Nunc paro in miseria morari.
Often when I’m in need of comfort or a romantic escape, I turn to poems in Roman elegist Catullus’ anthology. One night, as I gleefully hunted down definitions for unknown words, searching for verbs and their subjects while drawing from years of grammar and vocab knowledge to put the pieces together, I realized that elements of Catullus’ writing were present in another of my favorite works: Gilmore Girls.
Over the next few days, I started seeing Catullus in every cultural product I consumed—books, shows, and even songs. I was pleasantly shocked by all these coincidences, but, in the end, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised: some scholars such as Paul Allen Miller have even argued that Catullus invented romantic love as we know it in the Western tradition, and he certainly created some of love’s most common tropes—ones we still see all around us (Miller 1).
Gilmore Girls and Catullus’ poetry both feature themes of pining after a lost lover. In his eighth poem, Catullus depicts a lover who struggles to let go of his ex, Lesbia, and calls himself miserable, “Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire, / et quod vides perisse perditum ducas.” (“Miserable Catullus, cease to be a fool, and consider lost that which you see has perished,” Cat. 8.1–2). Consistently repeating the fact that she is gone, Catullus implies, in a way, that she would be dead without him.
As a pathetic, yet ineffectual, way to build himself up, he asks her “Quae tibi manet vita?” (“What life remains for you?” Cat. 8.15). Talk about male entitlement! Similarly, in season 1 of Gilmore Girls, the main character, Rory, struggles after breaking up with her boyfriend, curls up with a tub of ice cream, and tells her mother, “I’m ready to wallow now” (Gilmore Girls Season 1, Episode 17). Like Catullus, she prefers to pity herself and wallow in sadness rather than move on after her breakup. Her instinct to hold on to a lost love is no different from that of the lovers written about centuries ago by Catullus.
After I connected Gilmore Girls to Catullus 8, I noticed the same themes of lost love in the crime drama, White Collar, which centers around the life of convicted felon turned FBI consultant Neal Caffrey. After Neal’s girlfriend, Kate, dies, his wannabe-girlfriend, Alex, urges him to move on, saying “Kate’s gone. The rest of us are still here” (White Collar Season 2, Episode 3). Alex advises him to live in reality, rather than chase after Kate’s memory trying to figure out how she died. Although it comes from a different point of view, Alex’s guidance also echoes Catullus’ advice to himself. In Catullus 8, the poet realizes he has to stop chasing the past (“nec quae fugit sectare,” Cat. 8.10) because what’s done is done (“et quod vides perisse perditum ducas,” Cat. 8.2).
One morning, I found myself re-reading the end of Little Women at breakfast, and I was reminded of the joyful feeling of love displayed in Catullus 107. Catullus writes to Lesbia, expressing delight that she loves him: “Quare hoc est gratum nobis quoque carius auro / quod te restituis, Lesbia, mi cupido,” (“wherefore this is pleasing to us, and also dearer than gold, the fact that you restore yourself, Lesbia, to me in my longing” Catullus 3–4). Catullus then declares that nothing in life is greater than Lesbia’s love, thereby asserting that affection trumps all—even gold! (Not all of Catullus’ romantic poems are so sad and self-pitying.) Similarly, in Little Women, Mr. Bhaer asks Jo to marry him, and when she says yes, he is overjoyed that Jo loves him and that they will spend the rest of their lives together. Though he can provide no great shelter for her, their love is complete and more valuable to her than any extravagant home another could supply. Thus, both works showcase the joy of love, prioritizing romantic contentment over material possessions. The themes present in Catullus’ poetry were even more widespread than I had imagined!
In fact, it didn’t stop with Jo and Mr. Bhaer; later that day, listening to Olivia O’Brien’s “hate u, love u” on the subway, I heard echoes of Catullus again—this time, Catullus 85. O’Brien sings, “I hate you, I love you, I hate that I love you … I hate that I want you.” Her conflicting emotions, typical of teenage love, echo Catullus 85, where he claims that he both loves and hates, but doesn’t know why: “Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. / Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior” (“I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask. I don’t know, but I sense that it is happening, and I am tortured,” Cat. 85.1–2). Catullus’ use of odi, “hate,” and amo, “love”—adjacent verbs with contrasting meanings—reflects the excruciating conflict between his feelings.
Additionally, the verbs are indicative, rendering his emotions tangible and concrete, thereby enhancing the emotional unrest he is experiencing: Catullus must really feel his feelings! In “hate u, love u,” Olivia O’Brien describes the exact same mingling of powerful, opposite emotions—she even juxtaposes the two verbs just like Catullus, and in the same order (“hate u, love u”). I sure wouldn’t have thought twice if Catullus had written this modern pop song!
The Sparrow of Lesbia by Guillaume Charles Brun, 1860
Through studying Catullus and other classic works, I’ve found that modern media offers fresh spins and different takes on old ideas and characters. From pining over a lost lover to the conflicting emotions of love and hate, and even the joy one receives from love, Catullus displays repeated themes that cover the full spectrum of love. Catullus, a neoteric poet from the first century BCE, crafted poems that were both lighthearted and anguished—and explored ideas about romance that still resonate today in the tropes of modern works. While I knew that studying Classics could help me better understand the past, it is clear that ancient Roman texts can also provide insight into ourselves and how we navigate modern society; and, in the case of Catullus specifically, how to handle love in all its forms.
As someone who has never been in love, I’m fascinated by media, both ancient and modern, that has romance as its focus. Whether it’s Gilmore Girls or Catullus 107, I relish the joy I experience immersing myself in others’ experiences, placing myself in the space of the main character, and wondering what I would do in their shoes. I revel in experiencing the “what ifs?” from the safety of my own bed, lights out, snuggled under the covers. Who wouldn’t want that?
Riya Juneja is a high school senior at Friends Seminary in NYC interested in Classics. Having taken Latin for six years now, her research interests lie in finding parallels between the ancient and modern worlds. In addition to loving Latin, she’s a proud Mathlete who also loves science and theater!
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Chp. 5):
Indeed, the very first acknowledgment (as far as I am aware) of the attraction of mutilated bodies occurs in a founding description of mental conflict. It is a passage in The Republic, Book IV, where Plato’s Socrates describes how our reason may be overwhelmed by an unworthy desire, which drives the self to become angry with a part of its nature. Plato has been developing a tripartite theory of mental function, consisting of reason, anger or indignation, and appetite or desire – anticipating the Freudian scheme of superego, ego, and id (with the difference that Plato puts reason on top and conscience, represented by indignation, in the middle). In the course of this argument, to illustrate how one may yield, even if reluctantly, to repulsive attractions, Socrates relates a story he heard about Leontius, son of Aglaion:
On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground, with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to turn away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes wide, he ran up to the bodies and cried, “There you are, curse you, feast yourselves on this lovely sight.”
Declining to choose the more common example of an inappropriate or unlawful sexual passion as his illustration of the struggle between reason and desire, Plato appears to take for granted that we also have an appetite for sights of degradation and pain and mutilation.
Surely the undertow of this despised impulse must also be taken into account when discussing the effect of atrocity in pictures.
“I was recently explaining to you that I am in sight of my old age—but now I fear that I have put old age behind me! There is some different word better fit to these years, or at least to this body, since old age seems to be a tired time, not a broken one. Count me among the weary and those just touching the end.
Despite all this, I still am grateful to myself, with you to witness it. For I do not sense harm to my mind from age even though I feel it in my body. Only my weaknesses—and their tools—have become senile. My mind is vigorous and it rejoices that it depends upon the body for little. It has disposed of the greater portion of its burden. It celebrates and argues with me about old age. It says that this is its flowering. Let’s believe it, let it enjoy its own good.
My mind commands that I enter into contemplation and I think about what debt I owe to wisdom for this tranquility and modesty of ways and what portion is due to my age. It asks that I think about what I am incapable of doing in contrast to what I do not wish to do, whether I am happy because I don’t want something or I don’t want something because I lack the ability to pursue it.
For, what complaint is there or what problem is it if something which was supposed to end has ended? “But,” you interject, “it is the worst inconvenience to wear out, to be diminished, or, if I can say it properly, to dissolve. For we are not suddenly struck down and dead, we are picked away at! Each individual day subtracts something from our strength!”
But, look, is there a better way to end than to drift off to your proper exit as nature itself releases you? There is nothing too bad in a sudden strike which takes life away immediately, but this way is easy, to be led off slowly.”
Modo dicebam tibi, in conspectu esse me senectutis; iam vereor, ne senectutem post me reliquerim. Aliud iam his annis, certe huic corpori, vocabulum convenit, quoniam quidem senectus lassae aetatis, non fractae, nomen est; inter decrepitos me numera et extrema tangentis.
Gratias tamen mihi apud te ago; non sentio in animo aetatis iniuriam, cum sentiam in corpore. Tantum vitia et vitiorum ministeria senuerunt; viget animus et gaudet non multum sibi esse cum corpore. Magnam partem oneris sui posuit. Exultat et mihi facit controversiam de senectute. Hunc ait esse florem suum. Credamus illi; bono suo utatur. Ire in cogitationem iubet et dispicere, quid ex hac tranquillitate ac modestia morum sapientiae debeam, quid aetati, et diligenter excutere, quae non possim facere, quae nolim †prodesse habiturus ad qui si nolim quidquid non posse me gaudeo.† Quae enim querella est, quod incommodum, si quidquid debebat desinere, defecit? “Incommodum summum est,” inquis, “minui et deperire et, ut proprie dicam, liquescere. Non enim subito inpulsi ac prostrati sumus; carpimur. Singuli dies aliquid subtrahunt viribus.”
Ecquis exitus est melior quam in finem suum natura solvente dilabi? Non quia aliquid mali est ictus et e vita repentinus excessus, sed quia lenis haec est via, subduci.
“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” said Diana, Princess of Wales, and batted her eyes. That was 1995.
Deianeira, wife of Heracles, had to contend with similar, some years earlier:
Sophocles, Trachiniae 531-551.
Friends, while the stranger is inside
Taking leave of the captive women,
I’ve tiptoed outside
To tell you what my hands have done
And what’s being done to me.
You’ll come together in pitying me.
Like a sailor I’ve taken on board a heavy load,
Cargo humiliating for my heart—
A girl, but not still chaste. She’s his lover,
That’s my suspicion.
So now two women wait under one blanket,
As if one body, for my husband’s embrace.
This is how Heracles, the man they call trustworthy
and noble, thanks me for keeping his house all this time.
I don’t know how to be angry with the man
When this sickness so assails him.
And yet, what wife could share her house,
Share her marriage itself, with this woman?
I see her youth strutting and my own fading;
And we know the eye turns away
From the flower it once fondly plucked.
This frightens me.
Heracles may be called my husband
But he’ll be the younger woman’s man.
Aeneas Tacticus, Fragments LI: on the Sending of Messages”
“People who plan to work with traitors need to know how to send messages. Send them like this. Have a man be sent openly carrying some note about other matters. Have a different letter be secretly placed under the sole of the sandals of the person carrying the first message. Sew it between the layers and have it inscribed on tin to be safeguarded against mud and water.
Once the messenger has arrived to his destination and he has rested for the night, let the intended recipient remove the stitches from the sandals, take the message out, write a response secretly, and send the messenger back once he has written some public message to carry openly. In this way, not even the messenger will know what he carries.”
Petrarch, Invective Against a Man of High Rank (33-34):
The human race lives for a few. Nay, and these few for whom the whole human race is said to live are not more frightening to the people than the people are to them. Thus, almost no one is free. Everywhere there is servitude, the prison, the noose, unless some rare person somehow dissolves the knots of the world with the aid of some heavenly virtue.
Just turn your attention wherever you’d like: no place is free of tyranny. Wherever there are no tyrants, the people tyrannize. When you seem to have escaped the iron fist of one, you fall into the tyranny of the many, unless you can show me some place ruled by a just and merciful king. If you can do that, I will move my home there and migrate with all of my luggage. Neither my love of my country, nor the charm and nobility of Italy will keep me here. I will go to India, to China, to the remotest reaches of Africa just to find this place and this king.
But the search is in vain – these things exist nowhere. Thanks to our age. Since it has made everything almost equal, it has spared us the work of trying to find somewhere better. To merchants examining grain, it is enough to take up a fistful, examine it, and judge the whole heap from that. One needn’t go skim the farthest coasts or pentrate to the remotest lands. Languages, clothing, and appearances are all different, but desires, minds, and customs are so similar wherever you go that those lines from Juvenal never seem more truly spoken:
To one who wishes to know the ways of all the human race
One house alone should do the trick.
Even when there were no people, you could still find tyrants.
Humanum paucis vivit genus; quin et hi pauci quibus humanum genus vivere dicitur, non formidolosiores populis quam populi illis sunt. Ita fere nullus est liber; undique servitus et carcer et laquei, nisi fortasse rarus aliquis rerum nodos adiuta celitus animi virtute discusserit.
Verte te quocunque terrarum libet: nullus tyrannide locus vacat; ubi enim tyranni desunt, tyrannizant populi; atque ita ubi unum evasisse videare, in multos incideris, nisi forsan iusto mitique rege regnatum locum aliquem michi ostenderis. Quod cum feceris, eo larem illico transferam, cumque omnibus sarcinulis commigrabo. Non me amor patrie, non decor ac nobilitas Italie retinebit; ibo ad Indos ac Seres et ultimos hominum Garamantes, ut hunc locum inveniam et hunc regem.
Sed frustra queritur quod nusquam est. Gratias etati nostre, que cum cunta pene paria fecerit, hunc nobis eripuit laborem. Frumenta mercantibus satis modicum pugno excipere, illud examinant, inde notitiam totius capiunt acervi. Non est opus oras ultimas rimari et terrarum abdita penetrare: lingue, habitus, vultusque alii, vota, animi, moresque adeo similes, quocunque perveneris, ut nunquam verius fuisse videatur illud Satyrici ubi ait:
“Alexander fell into a deep sleep while sitting near his friend. The story is that the snake his mother raised appeared to him while he was sleeping carrying a root in its mouth and somehow revealing the name of the place where the root grew nearby.
The snake claimed that the root had so much power that it could easily heal Ptolomaeus. Once Alexander woke up, he told his friends the dream and sent people to find the root. When it was found, it didn’t cure only Ptolomaeus, but many of the soldiers who had been wounded by the same type of arrow.”
Alexander assidens somno est consopitus. Tum secundum quietem visus ei dicitur draco is, quem mater Olympias alebat, radiculam ore ferre et simul dicere, quo illa loci nasceretur (neque is longe aberat ab eo loco), eius autem esse vim tantam, ut Ptolomaeum facile sanaret. Cum Alexander experrectus narrasset amicis somnium, emissi sunt, qui illam radiculam quaererent; qua inventa et Ptolomaeus sanatus dicitur et multi milites, qui erant eodem genere teli vulnerati.
Hercules and Telephus, National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy
Aristotle, On Marvellous things heard, 86 [=837a]
“People claim that among the Celts there is a drug which they call the “arrow” [toxikon]. They report that it induces so quick a death that the Celts’ hunters, whenever they have shot a deer or some other animal, rush ahead to cut off its flesh before it is penetrated completely by the drug both for the sake of using the meat and so that the animal might not rot.
They also claim that the oak tree’s bark has been found to be an antidote for the poison. But others claim that there is a leaf which that call “raven’s leaf” because they have seen ravens, once they taste the poison mentioned before and start to feel the drug’s effect, rush to this leaf and stop their suffering by eating it.”
“I have a wound from love: from it pours not blood
But tears and a scar will never close it.
I am undone by this evil and not even Makhaon
Could heal me by applying his gentle drugs.
I am Telephos, girl—be my faithful Achilles:
Stop this longing you caused with your beauty.”
Achilles, heal my wounds! (Vase Image: Achilles Heals Patroklos)
A few notes to make this make sense: In the IliadMakhaon is a healer who ministers to the wounded captains. In myth, Telephos, a son of Herakles, is wounded by Achilles’ spear and can only be healed by the man who hurt him. Achilles encounters Telephos at the beginning of the war when the Greeks mistakenly attack Mysia (believing it to be Troy!). He is later healed in exchange for leading the Greeks to Troy.
So, this odd epigram becomes a tad bit odder thanks to knowing the references. It is ascribed to a poet named Macedonius and is in book 5 of The Greek Anthology (the Erotic Epigrams).
All through the Middle Ages uneasy and imperfect memories of Greece and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great conqueror; Hector, the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town on fire; Virgil, the magician; Dame Venus lingering about the hill of Hörsel—these phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost, remained to sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga. Deprived of actual knowledge, imagination transformed what it remembered of the classic age into romance.
The fascination exercised by these dreams of a half-forgotten past over the mediæval fancy expressed itself in the legend of Doctor Faustus. That legend tells us what the men upon the eve of the Revival longed for, and what they dreaded, when they turned their minds towards the past. The secret of enjoyment and the source of strength possessed by the ancients, allured them; but they believed that they could only recover this lost treasure by the suicide of their soul. So great was the temptation that Faustus paid the price. After imbibing all the knowledge of his age, he sold himself to the Devil, in order that his thirst for experience might be quenched, his grasp upon the world be strengthened, and the ennui of his inactivity be soothed. His first use of this dearly-bought power was to make blind Homer sing to him. Amphion tunes his harp in concert with Mephistopheles. Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the spirit in the Middle Ages—its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of imperfect knowledge and irrational dogmatism. That for which Faustus sold his soul, the freedom he acquired by magic, the sense of beauty he gratified through visions, the knowledge he gained by interrogation of demons, was yielded to the world without price at the time of the Renaissance.
Homer, no longer by the intervention of a fiend, but by the labour of the scholar, sang to the new age. The pomp of the empires of the old world was restored in the pages of historians. The indestructible beauty of Greek art, whereof Helen was an emblem, became, through the discovery of classic poetry and sculpture, the possession of the modern world. Mediævalism took this Helen to wife, and their offspring, the Euphorion of Goethe’s drama, is the spirit of the modern world. But how was this effected? By long and toilsome study, by the accumulation of MSS., by the acquisition of dead languages, by the solitary labour of grammarians, by the lectures of itinerant professors, by the scribe, by the printing press, by the self-devotion of magnificent Italy to erudition. In this way the Renaissance realised the dream of the Middle Ages, and the genius of the Italians wrought by solid toil what the myth-making imagination of the Germans had projected in a poem.
“There was a gorgeous talk on Sunday evening, when the conversation drifted again to love.
‘Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in kindred something-or-other’
— said Tommy Dukes. ‘I’d like to know what the tie is…The tie that binds us just now is mental friction on one another. And, apart from that, there’s damned little tie between us. We bust apart, and say spiteful things about one another, like all the other damned intellectuals in the world. Damned everybodies, as far as that goes, for they all do it. Else we bust apart, and cover up the spiteful things we feel against one another by saying false sugaries. It’s a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite. Always has been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits…Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades, and all the other little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree, or Jesus, telling his disciples little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental fireworks. No, there’s something wrong with the mental life, radically. It’s rooted in spite and envy, envy and spite. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit.'”
