Reading for Halloween: "The Shining", hauntings at a classical work building

Now that we are preparing for Halloween, I remembered a bit all the dark novels and short stories I had read through the years: Poe, Lovecraft, also the immortal tale about the autumn people in "Something wicked this way comes" by Bradbury, "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Hawthorne, the enigmatic "Olalla" by Stevenson, even some of the scariest biblical passages. However, after reading the novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank redemption" last April, I decided for the first time to try a long novel from Stephen King and chose "The Shining". The book was a second-hand copy given to me by a friend/coworker after his wedding last July.

Well, just two weeks ago after finishing the novel, I was telling my friend and some colleagues at work about my favorite scenes, so I reminisced about how five-year old hero, Daniel Torrance goes around the scary third-floor rooms of the old hotel. Little Danny knows all the hauntings in the hotel can disappear if he concentrates the power of his mind, so he runs and shouts across each room: "False face. I know who you are. You are all just masks and lies." But Danny still fears because the hotel is like a wasps' nest, full of bad spirits and ghosts, shouting and living in it, and one never knew where the next danger would come from. The haunted restaurant? The rooms? The fireplace with the mechanical clock? The elevator, hallways and stairs?

Then I laid back over my chair at lunch and told my colleagues "Know what? We needed a real Danny Torrance in this building." One of them replied "Why? Do you see many ghosts around here?" I just burst "Are you kidding me? Just think about our building - it is a four-floor solid institution from the mid 1920s, early classical 20th century architecture. And just think about all the powerful men that have governed this workplace! All those souls that did not want to relinquish power, still yearning for the status and influence they lost after leaving us. Of course, we have plenty of ghosts here. No wonder we are so often in a bad mood, always uptight and nervous about our tasks, writings and stuff. We suffer the bad influence of all those former governors, managers, board members, still making their aura felt around here!"

After laughing hard at this, people did confess that indeed one hears of ghosts inside the building, like the little girl who cries and the old man on his cane walking the dog. Just for you to have an idea and see what we were joking about, I leave you some pictures of our lovely 1920s work building. It is indeed a pleasure and a privilege to be here at such a solid institution in a great South American country. You can see pictures of the front entrance, the stairway, an office meeting rooms full of paintings from influential people that governed our institution, the hallways, our wonderful cafeteria with its large painted wall, and even a haunted clock from one of our emblematic rooms.

Pindar and Christina Perri sing of people as a Shadow of a Dream: Sports glory, defeat and loneliness

This week after Cristiano Ronaldo won his best player award I remembered two things: one, an ancient greek song about glory and defeat in Sports, and, second, a sad love song by an Italian-American singer, Christina Perri. What a coincidence that Cristiano and Christina share a male/female pair of the same Christian name!

Glory in sports always reminds me of one of the most celebrated ancient Greek poets, the singer Pindar. Almost all of his surviving poems are Victory Odes, songs made to celebrate the victors at Greek games such as the Olympics. In the ancient world, only the wealthy had time to practice sports, therefore the winners of the Olympics and other games were usually rich and they would receive more wealth and admiration upon their return as heroes to their towns. Pindar wrote his poems and songs to praise his employers, the victorious sportsmen, yet he did so with an elegance and beauty that remind us that life is a brief period full of struggles, that not everyone is a celebrated winner, and that the winners of excellence and glory achieve victory only after years of hard labor, grit and persistence.  That is why the sports winners are admired by the gods, their countrymen, and even the jealous defeated. Pindar’s most famous poem, the Pythian 8, dedicated to a famous wrestler, is believed to have been written in his old age and in just a few lines mentions all these motives of hardship and fame.

The Greek bard reminds his listeners that winning is more than mere boasting. Very few are the lucky ones who became wealthy without effort of their own, and for some heroes victory is bittersweet for they return home and may find that a loved one died and will not celebrate their victory. The poet also sings that one’s victory is the defeat of many others, and just like in wrestling the glory raises up some men and crushes others into the ground. For those who fail to win often the aftermath is miserable and their previous supporters, perhaps not even their mothers, give them any comfort or celebration party:

“He who boasts gets tripped, in the fullness of time, by his own violence. (…) At home, though, the hero Adrastus’ fortune will be the opposite. For he alone of the army of Danaoi will have to gather the bones of a son who died. (…) Justice stands beside the sweet-singing victory procession. I pray that the gods may regard your fortunes without envy. For if anyone has noble achievements without long toil, many think he is wise, that his life is well. But that is not ordained to be for men. It is a god who grants fortune; raising up one man and throwing down another. Enter the struggle with due measure. (…) Returning to their mothers, sweet laughter does not rouse delight in them: hidden in alleys, they avoid their enemies, bitten by misfortune.”

Meanwhile the glorious victor celebrates his success, the respect and admiration of everyone is even more important than the material wealth gained.  Yet if the winner is wise, his happiness is disturbed by the knowledge that victory is a fleeting moment in the here and now, and often victory will quickly be followed by a defeat, when everyone will forget his past achievements.

“But whoever has as his lot something beautiful in the here and now, in a time of great splendor, such a man soars driven by his aspirations, lifted high in the air by his feats of manliness, thinking of that which is greater than wealth. In a short time the delight of mortals grows, but just as quickly it falls to the ground, shaken by adverse opinion. Creatures of a day are we. What is someone? What is a no one? Man is the dream of a shadow. But whenever the radiance of Zeus comes, a bright light and gentle life pleases him.”

This is probably Pindar’s last work, he would have been an old man by now, and he sees that both successes and misfortunes are transient and ephemeral. Joy is insubstantial, the dream of a shadow. Men is the creature of a day, nothing more than fleeting dream. Only the worship of religion and the gods, “the radiance of Zeus” gives lasting wisdom and guides our lives. Perhaps this is a lesson for athletes and also sports’ fans today – we must find higher meaning in our lives, rather than just watching silly games. Both famous people and the unknown ones will all be forgotten one day. In fact, Pindar’s most famous line “Man is the dream of a shadow” echoes the thoughts of other Greek tragedians such as Aeschyllus (“The race of mortals thinks only for today and is no more to be relied on than the shadow of smoke.”), Sophocles (in his play Philoctetes, the hero Neoptolemus does not realize he fought against a mere phantom, the shadow of smoke) and even of the Bible, in particular the book of wisdom, the Ecclesiastes (“Who knows what is good for mortals while they live the few days of their vain life, which passes by like a shadow?”). St. James said our life is but a vapor.

That is Pindar’s song: one day we are a great success, another day we are a humiliated loser. How many athletes and coaches today can say they shared this feeling before? Everyone. Cristiano Ronaldo must have felt this feeling and he even shared a tragedy mentioned by Pindar for once he won a game with Portugal’s team, only to find out that his father had passed away.

All of us, normal people, non-athletes, surely shared the same feeling many times. How many times did we look in the eyes of our spouses, partners or even our parents, just to find a feeling of deception and disappointment? Christina Perri sings exactly of this in her chilly song “The Lonely”. Perri wrote the song about her relationship with no one, "nobody or with this ghost of somebody": “Crying off my face again. The silent sound of loneliness wants to follow me to bed. I'm the ghost of a girl that I want to be most. I'm the shell of a girl that I used to know well.”

The major losers today are the unloved ones. Our society is particularly obsessed with those who are less beautiful, unloved and lonelier, and that is why we invented the internet, Facebook and many of the social media, so we feel more in-contact and less alone by ourselves. Probably in the ancient world, such as Pindar’s time, this kind of loneliness was not as common, because people stayed in their hometown and close to their families all their lives. Only a few brave ones would move alone to other cities to study for college and find jobs. Today even people as young as freshmen college students will have felt feelings of loneliness, abandonment, lack of love and rejection, all of this at an age as young as 18!

I end with the links to two translations of Pindar’s poem and Christina’s beautiful song:

http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5307

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0162%3Abook%3DP.%3Apoem%3D8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m18idutgCWc

A peaceful emperor haphazardly started the first Jewish genocide and their European diaspora

Hadrian is the Roman emperor associated with the longest period of peace. Although the definition of peace is somewhat difficult to define in an empire with such large borders, Hadrian made serious attempts to make peace in the East with the Parthian empire and strengthened the defensive borders along Scotland, the Rhine and the Danube. In general Hadrian’s reign was marked by an absence of major conflicts and the Roman army was so peaceful that Hadrian decided to create fake alarms and drills to keep the soldiers disciplined and to signal that the army was always alert to possible invaders. Imperial policy was also benevolent towards business, including trade relations with the Arabs and the Parthians.

However, while Hadrian (see his bust on the left) is often labelled as one of the “five good emperors”, it is nevertheless true that his reign witnessed a brutal war between Romans and Jews, which resulted in over half a million victims (according to Dio Cassio, although some modern historians believe this number to be exaggerated) and the general depopulation of Judea. There were large numbers of victims caused by both sides, including internecine fights among opposing parties of Jews. After the 2nd century Hadrian became the prototype of the antisemitic Evil King in every Jewish tale and in the teachings of rabbis, which often mention “Hadrian, may his bones be crushed”. However, most modern historians believe that the idea of an antisemitic Hadrian is an anachronistic image written well after the events and that the war started due to bad planning and communication of the Roman authorities. Using a bit of an anachronistic example I would suggest Hadrian’s mistake was trying to impose a pagan Hellenistic culture (which was tolerant of naked sports, homosexual love, and all sorts of religious rituals with drugs and animals such as serpents) upon a conservative, traditional and monotheistic population. Just imagine how people would react nowadays if a powerful politician would announce the building of an arena for drugs, sex, and rock n’roll, right in front of a major church and a sanctuary of holy ground. Such was the mistake of Hadrian almost 2000 years ago. I make this remark as a metaphor and do not intend it to be either a criticism of modern culture or a precise description of the Roman-Jewish conflict.

After the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, which lasted from 132 to 136 AD, the majority of the Jewish population of Judea was killed, exiled, or sold into slavery, and Jewish religious and political authority was suppressed. Archaeological remains show that the depopulation impact of Hadrian’s Jewish War was much worse than the First Roman-Jewish War fought by Vespasian and Titus. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a purely Roman city. Hadrian forbid the Jews and Christians from entering Jerusalem, and his persecutions started the Jewish diaspora towards other Roman provinces. In order to erase any relationship between Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of Judea to Syria-Palestina. Several historians view the Roman actions as so brutal that these should be classified as genocide. Jews disappeared from history as a political nation until the 20th century and remained only as a religious-ethnic community.

Unfortunately, there are few reliable historical documents about how and why both sides started the war. The scanty Greco-Roman texts are either too brief (as in the case of Dio Cassius’ book) or tainted by the stain of untrustworthiness (as in the case of Historia Augusta). Cassius Dio, 69, 12, 1, relates: “At Jerusalem Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there”. There are also several ancient Jewish and Christian documents mentioning Hadrian’s hatred of Jews, but such texts were written one century or more after the events.

There is archaeological evidence that Hadrian visited Israel in 130 AD, just 2 years before the war, therefore it is quite possible that the rebellion erupted after some measures he proposed then. However, some modern historians believe this particular passage of Cassius Dio was modified by the late Byzantine author Xiphilinus. Building a pagan temple on top of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem would have been an obvious catalyst for war, since the traditional Jews would have rebelled against it. This plan is therefore judged to be highly unlikely to be part of Hadrian and the Romans’ intentions. Hadrian had at his disposal plenty of examples of the Jewish sensitivity to the presence of idolatrous cults or simply images on the Temple site. Also, Hadrian’s was more inclined to peace rather than provoking wars.

Some modern historians speculate that Hadrian's real plan may have been to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman colony. Perhaps Hadrian expected that a new Roman colony would have been well received by the Jewish population, since these colonies had honorific and tax privileges. Several wealthy Jews and business men may have seen benefits in a better Roman administration. However, the local Jewish population in these Roman colonies could be recruited as soldiers and even be used to fight against their countrymen. Epigraphic texts show that Jewish citizens from Caesarea Maritima (see images above) fought in favor of the Roman army during the Roman-Jewish wars of 66 and 132. Another aspect of a Roman colony in Jerusalem which could have offended the traditional Israelites is the introduction of pagan and imperial cults in the future city, even if standard Roman policy exempted Jews from participating in Roman religious rituals.

Also, perhaps some of the younger generations and the more liberal minded may actually have enjoyed the Roman and Hellenistic culture, with its temples and baths where men would exercise mostly naked. Archeological and numismatic evidence shows that Hadrian’s policy gained some approval because of its privileges and benefits, which is particularly clear in the ruins of cities such as Tiberias (see image on the left) and Sepphoris (see images below) in Galilee where a majority of the population was Jewish. In these cities elegies were dedicated to the cult of the emperor Hadrian. This evidence demonstrates the rationality of Hadrian’s project which was not a mere provocative act against Israel, but could have met some approval.

Another sign of local Roman support is that the Jewish rebel leader, Simon Bar Kokhba, punished severely any Jew and Christian who refused to join his ranks, applying mutilation of fingers and hands to the disobedient. The images below are of the Cave of Letters which was found in the Judean desert in 1960. In this cave they found a tied bundle letters from Bar-Kokhba, next to a woman's belongings: wool, cosmetic tools, beads, a perfume flask and a mirror. Most of the Bar-Kokhba letters are orders to punish and steal the crops of wealthy Jewish landowners who refused to cooperate with him. Therefore not all Jews were against Rome.

Some historians also speculate that Hadrian may have been driven by a religious syncretism policy in an attempt to unify the imperial religions as a support for his autocracy. Roman-Greco culture rejected circumcision as a violence exercised on a perfect human body and also because circumcision was seen as a political symbol of hostility towards the Roman-Hellenic world. Hadrian may have therefore implemented harsher measures against circumcision in an attempt to impulse Israelite assimilation. Historian Giovanni Bazzana compares Hadrian’s policies to Saint Paul’s suggestion of abandoning circumcision in order for Christianity to be accepted in the wider world. Saint Paul's ideals were successful because they were only about social and religious precepts and not about a new political order.

Hadrian had already tried to unite the traditional Greek cults by creating a coherent belief system that could be spread across the whole empire, a project that had already been devised earlier by Hellenized Jewish intellectuals such as Philo. In Judaea there was already a Hellenized Jewish population, the Samaritans, which integrated their religious rites with Hellenistic ones such as the worship of Zeus. Although nowadays the Samaritans are only a few thousands of people, there were around one million Samaritans in Roman times, which can be easily confirmed by the large number of times a Samaritan appears in the New Testament or in the ancient Jewish literature. This attempt at conciliation between Judaism and Hellenism foundered when faced with strict Jewish traditions and monotheism, which caused the uprising against Rome.

Perhaps the biggest historical surprise is that Christianity became the Roman Empire’s dominant religion less than 200 years after Hadrian’s visit to Israel. Undoubtedly, Hadrian saw Jews and Christians as backward fanatics, which were destined to disappear in the middle of an enlightened Hellenistic-Roman era. My bet is that almost all Romans and pagan scholars shared Hadrian’s opinion that Jewish-Christianity was a backward and dwindling faith. Who would have guessed then that almost two thousand years later both Christianity and the Jewish religion represent the most vibrant communities of the western world? Even more surprising is that such different and opposing sources merged so well that our entire law systems are now jointly supported by these three pillars: Jewish-Christian faith and love, Hellenistic philosophy and knowledge, and Roman legislation. And as Saint Paul would say in his Epistle to the Corinthians, from all of these pillars the greatest and most important one is Love.

The Curse of Memory: how the first Christian emperor erased his family from history

The greatest punishment in Roman law was not the death penalty, but the damnatio memoriae: a mix of a death execution, the seizure of the person’s property, and the removal of all traces and memory of his life. Such a sentence implied that statues of the condemned person could be destroyed, his face would be erased from paintings and his name could be erased or blotted out from written documents, coins and even from the stone inscriptions in monuments.

Many of the “evil” emperors such as Caligula, Domitian or their relatives (such as Livilla, the daughter-in-law of Emperor Tiberius, and Geta, the brother of Emperor Caracalla) suffered damnatio memoriae sentences. Above and below I show pictures of a stone pillar in Spain where the name of Emperor Domitian was erased after his death and a portrait of the Severus imperial family where Caracalla’s brother Geta was erased from the painting. I also show a cameo portrait of Livilla, daughter-in-law of Emperor Tiberius, who was executed in 31 AD because of accusations that she had conspired with her lover Sejanus to kill Emperor Tiberius and take over the imperial throne. Also, Livilla’s own mother accused her of having poisoned her husband (Emperor Tiberius’ son) and that perhaps her children were the result of adulterous liaisons. The Senate removed all mentions of Livilla after her death, so there are no absolutely certain portraits of her, but some scholars think that this cameo fits her description and could be a rare portrait that survived the harsh legal sentence.

The term damnatio memoriae was actually created in the 16th century by the German legal scholar Christoph Schreiter in a thesis of 1689. In practice the Romans applied several different measures to reach the joint effect that the condemned individual would lose all the honors of being a Roman citizen and its memory. For example, the removal of all the written inscriptions of the name of the condemned was a sentence called the abolitio nominis. For the Romans the removal of memory was the opposite of the Apotheosis, which represented the glorification of a deceased person (such as an emperor or empress) to divine honors. Since Roman society stressed the importance of honor, respectability and fame, then erasing one's memory was the most severe punishment of all.

The Roman emperor who became perhaps the biggest user of the “curse of memory” sentence was Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor. In particular Constantine I applied the damnatio memoriae to several of his family members who at certain point aroused his anger or stood in his path to power. While Christianity is a religion that values forgiveness, apparently such teachings do not preclude erasing the memory of your enemies and relatives. Perhaps if one simply forgets their hated memory, then it is not really necessary to forgive them at all.

Constantine lived one of the most turbulent periods in history, since those were the decades in which Christianity was on the point of being either the largest minority religion of the Empire or its major religion. This was a breaking point at both the political and social levels. At the political level the Empire was divided among four co-emperors and each one resented the power of its colleagues. Each single emperor was waiting for a moment of weakness from its rivals in order to invade its territory and stripe away his powers. Constantine started as the weakest of the co-emperors, being in charge only of Britain and Gaul. These territories were weak in terms of economic resources and armies, and were also continuously threatened by invasions of Scottish and Germanic tribes. Therefore Constantine was the weakest of the four co-emperors and the most likely candidate to be humiliated and eliminated from the political scheme. However, Constantine and also his eldest son Crispus were extraordinarily good generals. Constantine won wars against each of his co-emperors which had much larger armies and stronger navies. Even if Constantine was not known today as the first Christian emperor, he would certainly be remembered as a general of the same importance as Caesar or Alexander the Great. Below I show a picture of myself and my twin brother in front of Constantine’s bronze statue in York, England, where he was first acclaimed as Emperor in 306 AD. In the next few years Constantine would often receive messages and ultimatums from his co-emperors asking him to resign himself to a lower imperial role. However, in less than twenty years Constantine would have taken over all the territories of his rival co-emperors and by 324 AD he was the complete master of the Roman Empire. In 337 AD Constantine was planning a big war against the powerful Persian emperor Shapur II, justified as a crusade to protect the Christian followers in the Persian Empire.

At the social level the Roman Senate and its old aristocratic families now realized the traditional pagan cults were irrelevant to most of the population and were only practiced at official ceremonies which no one cared about. Think of those boring speeches that politicians give nowadays on TV and then no one remembers a single sentence in the next day? Well, that was how the top pagan priests felt like around 300 AD. Besides Christianity other sun religions such as Mithraism were now popular all over the Empire and clearly the traditional Roman paganism was withering away rapidly. Traditionally, Rome was a state with complete religious liberty (as long as its religious supporters did not defy the imperial laws and paid their taxes). One could even think of Ancient Rome as a “market of religions”. There were temples of all sorts of deities standing side by side. One could go worship a snake fertility god or go listen to an Egyptian cat-goddess speak through a statue (with a hollow space inside where a priest or priestess could hide and speak). Others would participate in the mysteries of obscure eastern religions with different grades of tests designed to evaluate their worshippers’ worth as they climbed the orders of their religion. It was during Constantine’s adolescence that the main Roman Emperor Diocletian launched the greatest persecution of Christians during Roman history. Most of the stories of Christian martyrdom come from this time period. Some estimate that the Diocletian’s persecution could have made around 3,000 victims, which was a significant number by Roman standards (although much less than the 20^th century religious and political conflicts).

Constantine lived through turbulent times, therefore he hit his adversaries as hard as he could even if these were close family members. Constantine first applied a damnatio memoriae to his father-in-law (and also his step-grandfather), the old co-emperor Maximian. Actually, Constantine had good reasons for such a measure. Constantine had treated well his father-in-law and given him some powers with his army, but a few months later Maximian decided to rebel and support his own son against Constantine. After this Constantine quickly won against Maximian and forced him to commit suicide. However, some years later, after Constantine had won the war against Maximian’s son, the co-emperor Maxentius, he re-habilitated Maximian’s memory and gave great honors to his deceased father-in-law. Later Constantine started a war against his powerful co-emperor in the East, Licinius, who was also his brother-in-law. After Constantine and his eldest son Crispus won several large scale battles, he became the undisputed master of the Roman world and issued a damnatio memoriae against Licinius, accusing him of killing the families of other co-emperors and of the persecution of Christians. Modern evidence shows that Licinius in fact supported Christian rights, had a Christian wife and may even have been a Christian himself, therefore Licinius was a victim of Constantinian propaganda.

Just two years after Constantine became master of the world, he ordered the execution of his eldest son Crispus by “cold poison” and a damnatio memoriae against Crispus, his wife and his only grandson. This must have been a big surprise to all of the world, since Crispus had been a good and reliable general of Constantine and was his only adult son, therefore his most plausible future heir. One month later Constantine also ordered the execution of his own wife, Fausta, by an “overheated bath” and her damnatio memoriae. Fausta was the mother of three male children and one daughter of Constantine, therefore again this must have been a hard decision. Also, Constantine had Fausta in high esteem and had given her the divine honors of Augusta just three years before. Below I show a coin with Crispus image and a bust of Fausta.

Historians speculate that the death of Crispus and Fausta are related, but no one knows exactly how since the “curse of memory” erased historical records that would have been essential for our understanding. Crispus was Constantine’s son from a previous marriage, therefore Fausta was only his step-mother. Ancient historians Zosimus, the anonymous work Epitome de Caesaribus, the 8^th century fiction Passion of Artemius, and the 12^th century scholar Joannes Zonaras, say that Fausta wanted her own children to become the future emperors and told Constantine that Crispus wanted to rape her or begin an adulterous affair. In this possible version of the story Constantine orders in rage the execution of his eldest son and after one month realizes that Fausta lied and kills her too. However, other historians point out that an “overheated bath” could indicate an attempted abortion and therefore a possible adulterous affair between Fausta and Crispus which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. Significantly, Fausta’s sons later became Roman Emperors after Constantine’s death and none of them tried to rehabilitate their mother’s reputation, therefore this points out that they believed her to be guilty of something.

There is, however, a third possible explanation of this story. An article by historian Patrick Guthrie in 1966 suggests that Constantine ordered both deaths on political reasons. Constantine wanted to build a dynasty for his children, but that created difficulties in managing their ambitions. Therefore he orders the death of Crispus to prevent his ambition and remove a threat against the three sons of Fausta. Then he orders the death of Fausta as a signal to his other children and relatives that Constantine is firmly in the grasp of absolute power and that he would not hesitate to kill anyone if he deems it necessary. While this explanation may sound a bit off, we must remember the ancient world often had harsh struggles for power. The previous rulers of the Seleucid or Ptolemaic empires often had to order the deaths of their siblings to keep power. Also, many Roman emperors before Constantine and also his Byzantine successors often ordered the imprisonment and death of husbands, wives and sons, in order to keep their power. Therefore it is not impossible that Constantine himself feared treason from inside his own family. Whatever happened the erasing of memory leaves a lot to our imagination for solving this mystery novel.