Greek Myths

Greece is back on the front pages and a tragedy again, where is Midas and his golden touch?

When I was a little girl I was handed The Bible Stories, The Arabian Nights and The Greek Myths. It was obvious to me that I was a Greek. In Latin class all the stories started “erat olim in Graecia” Once upon a time in Greece.

As an adult I looked forward to visiting the monuments and the shrines I had only seen in history books or in the case of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum ripped from Praxiteles’ frieze and carted off for “:safekeeping “ in a northern clime, or the Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo ensconced in the Louvre.

I lied to Elliot and told him that the Mediterranean would be like a lake in March. No stories of Ulysses taking ten years to return home on storm tossed seas. We were drawn to the Shrine at Delphi to see the Omphalos of the ancient world where the Oracle sitting on a three legged stool predicted the fate of Oedipus. We visited Corinth and stood on the bema where St Paul preached to the unruly crowds. It was said that in ancient Corinth one could hear a dozen tongues spoken in the agora. One could see a neolithic shrine still here 6000 years later or the Corinth Canal where British airmen had jumped to their death hoping to escape from German occupied Greece.

The most exciting if unplanned and unpleasant was our stay in Athens. The first day or two were fine, even though a general strike had been announced. By Friday the strikers were full to the brim with ouzo and antipathy, many “Americans go home” chants. We went about our tourist business in all innocence., We had no idea what a general strike meant. Our bus downtown stopped running and we learned of another a few blocks further from the hotel. We arrived at the Binacki Museum. They let us in and locked the door behind us which was comforting, sort of entering a safe womb. When we had finished viewing the fabulous gold we left the museum..and they locked the doors behind us which was less than comforting. The street was eerily empty although one could hear the strikers in the distance and see the gray painted school bus full of gray uniformed soldiers. Then they tear gassed us. Our friend the professor knew we were being tear gassed because he had been at Kent State. Then it was bedlam, no buses no transport at all. A taxi pulled up and I got in with another couple. We were six and I assumed another cab would come and take the remaining three. The cabs only held three passengers. I had the passport. Elliot arrived at the hotel three hours later much the worse for wear. No passport, no Greek language he walked back to the hotel through the street fires and tear gas. When he arrived he was furious I had deserted him in his three hours of need.

Paris in the Springtime

Yvonne and David are going to Paris next week. He for a business meeting she because she lucked out on the dates of Spring vacation and was "added on". Poor child I have been bombarding her with ancient tips and information probably none of it age appropriate for that matter century appropriate.

When Marianna and I rented the apartment in the fifth arondissement several years ago we glimpsed the lights of the Eiffel tower from the restaurant we ate in the first night of our stay. It was reminiscent of the first time we had seen the lights from our balcony when we came to Paris as green teenagers to spend our junior year.

We lived in the eighteenth in a very residential pre-World War II building. The elevator was to be used to go up. Walk down the five flights please. The hall lights were on a timer and one raced from floor to floor to push the button to illuminate the stairwell to descend further.

We lived with the family Mullander: Madame, Monsieur, Grand Pere, the daughter and son-in-law just returned from North Africa and Bruno who was four years old. If anyone spoke English they kept it to themselves. Our major communication difficulty was with Bruno as we had no vocabulary suitable for dealing with a four year old. Although we did exclaim at dinner on the wonderful carrion we had just eaten. Most of our vocabulary came from Verlaine and Beaudelaire. Grandpere had traveled in the States at the turn of the century and had carried a gun with him for fear of the redskins and the gangsters. He always asked us about our war, the Korean war, as if we were in control, or even knowledgeable.

Madame was a wonderful cook. I sent home recipes for the exotic lunches she made for us. My mother resented this thoroughly. Madame opened each spice tin in turn so we could smell and learn the French name. We had wine with every meal Bruno also had wine watered by more than half. Monsieur Mullander was an insomniac given to painting things like the toilet seat in the middle of the night. Each morning we went off to school at 4 rue de Chatreuse for lessons in grammar and reading and writing proper French. We translated Churchill into French, De Gaulle into English. We returned after lunch for culture lectures. As soon as the light went off for the slides I fell asleep so I missed much of the culture.

On days when there were no lectures we had a map and instructions on exploring Paris century by century starting on the Ile de la Cite an expanding each week into a larger concentric circle. These adventures are for another day.

Ancient Greek Women

The course I am taking in Greek drama has taken over my life. My heroine Joan of Arc is so straight forward, pious and innocent compared to these twisted agonized souls. Where Joan killed reluctantly for a holy cause, the Greeks commit matricide, murder and mayhem. The Bible differentiates between killing and murder. The commandment really says thou shalt not murder.

Clytemnestra waits ten years for Agamemnon to return victorious from Troy. She has already filled his place in her bed with Aegisthus. Agamemnon returns and violating all the rules of Greek hospitality she welcomes him to the house slays him and Cassandra his new wife and expects to live happily ever after. A cursed family, and the family Atreus is cursed, never lives on without revenge. Electra daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra mourns her father's death to the point of psychosis waiting only for the return of her brother Orestes to kill their mother and her paramour. Of course Agamemnon is not without guilt having killed his daughter Iphigenia in order to insure a good wind for the voyage to conquer Troy. Oh the collateral damage of the great wars.

Trickery, cunning and deception are held in great esteem as personified by Odysseus. And yet here is the beginning of Western democracy. Is matricide a worse crime than the murder of a non relative? Is revenging one's father's death more important than living? In the golden age of Greece we have the beginning of a jury system with twelve jurors. The barbaric stands side by side with the civilized. I guess as it still does.

Women in the Middle Ages

One might ask what were the other women doing while Joan was leading an army to success and her doom? Contrary to the image vaunted by the Church of woman as virgin or whore subject to her master, the real women had very active and varied lives. By and large their lives were lived within the confines of their class. Farm women farmed, planted, gathered, fed the animals, raised children and lived the same life as the farmer they had married. They could appear for themselves in court as Joan had. They could refuse to marry an obnoxious suitor, as Joan had. They sheared and carded and wove wool. They raised silk worms and un-wound the cocoons. Silk was much in demand both for sumptuous outer wear and as an undergarment for those knights who could afford it. Silk does not suppurate in a wound so offers protection against gangrene. When their husbands were pressed in to service they had full responsibility for the farm.

The bourgeoise lived in a town in the rising middle class. She might keep shop, and was admitted to a guild if necessary as a widow there being no male to carry on the function. Women were mid-wives, and nurses. To pretend to be a doctor was to invite accusations of sorcery. They sculpted stone, painted portraits and frescoes, played musical instruments, there are even representations of women miners. The wealthier girls were often sent to a nunnery for an education before marriage. Those women could read, write keep books and compose poetry.

The lady of the castle had full responsibility for defending it when the lord was gone. She oversaw the veritable village of people necessary to keep a castle functioning, from the fish in the moat to the geese in the yard. In many circumstances women could inherit. Our most famous example would be Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of two kings, Louis VII of France and Henry II of England mother of two kings, Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland he of the Magna Carta..

Eleanor was heiress to the Aquitaine, one of the richest provinces in all France. When her father was certain he was about to die Eleanor a girl of twelve or so was secreted at night to the most powerful man in France, the King. Eleanor's father knew this would keep her safe from hungry barons. While married to Louis she went with him on Crusade to Jerusaleem. When she left Louis she took the Aquitaine with her. When she married young Henry she made him the most powerful ruler in France as he was both King of England, Duke of Normandy and Brittany and Duke of Auitaine and Anjou. although vassal to the King of France.

One tends to believe that later in time means progress or a better life. This is not necessarily true. One has only to contrast the roaring twenties with the depression thirties. In the Middle Ages unlike the cultures in non Christian lands, baby girls were cherished and taken care of like their male counterparts.

Rehabilitation

Over the thirty years between Joan's condemnation and her trial of rehabilitation treaties were made, alliances refigured battles won and eventually the English were gone everywhere except the pas de Calais which they controlled into the eighteenth century. A new Pope ordered a new Inquisitor to look into the first trial. Witnesses came forth who could not for reasons of safety or politics present themselves earlier.

Both her former colleagues in war, La Hire and Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans testified as to her virtue and prowess. King Charles VII sent a royal letter to the tribunal. Joan's father, her brother, her childhood friends all spoke in her behalf. Clerics who had actually participated in the first trial testified. The Inquisition exonerated Joan and stated she was no longer considered a heretic. They passed over the crime of wearing men's clothing that which had damned her to the pyre. The Church rehabilitated her but it could not unburn her. Sainthood was still 500 years away.

This was the last trial by the Inquisition in France. The populace was so horrified by its lack of justice and ready compliance with the politics of the moment that a trial by the Inquisition never happened again in France. Pity poor Spain where the last trial by the Inquisition took place in 1835. Spain's continuing allegiance to the Inquisition resulted in the loss of its intellectual class and its relegation to the fringes of history for centuries.

Joan, the Maiden

We don't know what Joan looked like. Certainly she bore no resemblance to Ingrid Bergman in feature or in character. Bergman took the part to burnish her much tarnished image as the woman who had run off with Roberto Rossellini although still married to her Swedish doctor husband. Joan was slight in stature more reminiscent of Julie Harris in the Anouilh play about Joan, The Lark. None of her companions ever mentioned a pretty face. It is probably fair to conclude she was not pretty. Probably she was sturdy and sun bronzed. Undoubtedly she could ride a horse as horses were part of farm life in Lorraine. Joan's father was a well-to-do farmer and land owner. She was very religious. Her entire education was learned on the farm and in the church. She could not read or write, but this was not uncommon. Her days and seasons were regulated by the church day and calendar. She began to hear her voices when she was about thirteen. They were accompanied by an aura. She did not see her saints until she was captured and half starved. In the Middle Ages and earlier people heard voices and interpreted them according to their state in life. In the Bible Abraham, Moses and Deborah all heard the voice of God. Jacob wrestled with an angel. No one counted Joan as crazy because she heard voices. However she acted upon what she heard.

The ordinary costume for a girl her age was a loose red dress. By the time Joan arrived in the court of the Dauphin she had undergone a complete transformation from farm girl to leader of men. She cut her hair in to the bowl cut worn by soldiers and put off the red dress for a soldier's costume. The change was not purely cosmetic. We know that growing hair and cutting hair as a vow to the Almighty has a long biblical history. Even today there are modern sects who neither shave nor cut their hair and whose women cover their hair so no outsider may see it. Hair is powerful and sexual. To drain Samson of his strength Delilah cuts his hair. To protect his soldiers from the enemy's grasp Alexander the Great,commanded that all his soldiers have military haircuts and shaven chins. In the sixties growing hair long was the youth anti-war protest against a status quo it had not created.

Donning man's clothing was expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy; it is as an abomination. Joan insisted that her voices had commanded her to wear the uniform of a soldier. She was being obedient to God. It is this point that the Grand Inquisitor holds fast over and over again. Joan is not being obedient to to the Church. Joan thought God and the Church were the same thing. The learned clerics who condemned her knew better. Why was wearing men's clothing such a crime? Sumptuary laws have been with us forever. They are intended to keep the inferiors in their place. If a slave wore a toga with a stripe he might be taken for a senator.

Lectures on Joan

Some time ago my friend Ellie Chandler, who was on the curriculum committee of BILL, now OLLI asked me if I would lecture on the French Revolution. Knowing my limitations and how complicated the French Revolution was in its causes and results I demurred. I did say that I probably could lecture on Joan of Arc. The committee was as usual short on lecturers and was happy to have me sign on.

Now I had to actually learn enough about the woman, the place, the times and the customs to do six one and a half hour lectures. I assumed that my audience would know nothing about the Middle Ages in France. Probably nothing about France. Taking the good witch's advice to Dorothy I decided to start at the beginning. Well 15,000 years ago seemed far enough back for one to get the idea that France has been pretty continuously inhabited.

We had visited the Caves at Lascaux whose walls were painted with ancient animals. These were executed as well as any French painter in the future could hope to match. Protuberances in the wall became the shoulders of ancient bison. The colors were ground from minerals and blown with some kind of pipe onto a surface that had been coated with oil. But what was the source of the light needed to execute these paintings? In another cave was a very moving grave of a woman buried with her jewelry and cooking utensils which dated from that era. Obviously these early people had our same emotions. For the lectures I skipped through the prehistory to the first Greek settlement about 500B.C. at Marseilles. The trade was as today in olive oil and wine. Above the port was a settlement protected from marauders containing amphorae and fibulae (yesterday's storage pots and safety pins).

Gaul before the Roman invasion was the home of a tall, blond, blue eyed fair skinned people. They were careful of their appearance, both men and women. They had invented a soap which contained a natural bleach and kept their hair blond. They had an affinity for glass bracelets and gold earrings and necklaces,. Pottery and minerals were exported as far away as Greece. The religion of choice was worship of the mother goddess. Women were treated as equals in war and peace and were known to take up arms and fight next to their husbands. Wives were consulted when war was contemplated.

When Julius Caesar appears on the stage of history Gaul becomes important as a colony of Rome, to be subdued and exploited. Caesar famously divided Gaul into three parts, praising the Belgian tribes for their bravery. None of the tribes had the population or organization to withstand the juggernaut of Caesar's armies. Nor were they prepared for the false promises made to them for their cooperation. Poor Vercingetorix, the noblest of Caesar's adversaries was promised peace for cooperation. Instead he was chained to a wagon and paraded through the streets of Rome as a disgraced slave. An exquisite marble statue of The Dying Gaul is preserved in the Capitol Museum in Rome. Gaul became a province of Rome, linked by roads, canals and aqueducts and soon enough a common language. The ancient religion of druids and forest gods was subsumed under the umbrella of the Olympians. In the distant provinces like Brittany the old ways lasted longer. Henceforth the land would be Gallo-Roman until the empire fell to the barbarian hordes of the east.