Trajan's Column

Here at Small Talk, I've been having technical difficulties.

Translation: I determined that the charger for my computer was bad. Discovered that it was just too inconvenient to write a post on my so-called smart phone. Refused to pay $80.00 for a new charger from the computer manufacturer. Ordered a knockoff from China. Received my new charger and discovered that it worked.

Each of these tasks managed to eat up one week of my life.

During the downtime, I kept notes (on my so-called smart phone) about posts I was planning to write as soon as the technology caught up with me, if such a thing is possible, and especially on a Roman battle formation called the turtle (testudo).

For the testudo, a small group of legionaries raises their shields (scuta in Latin) so that the front and top, sides and back, of the squad are protected from projectiles, with the shields covering it like roof tiles.

So the turtle has two primary purposes. One, it can defend against arrows shot by a company of archers on the battlefield. Two, it can shelter against missiles thrown from the walls of a besieged city while the squad digs under the foundation or otherwise tries to break in.

Although the shields are not too heavy to lift and hold--each shield weighs about twenty-two pounds--the formation is unwieldy, because the men in essence overlap shields and move or stay as a unit. The formation can also prove unsuccessful: if positioned directly under a wall from which heavy objects are being dropped, the men can be summarily wiped out, and we have a record of this having happened.

There is a striking image of Roman legionaries in the testudo formation on Trajan's column during the siege of Sarmisegetusa in the second Dacian war (106 CE). (Sarmisegetusa was in what is now Romania.)

I reckon that this turtle is made up of sixteen shields. So I am going to provide a video, if you will, of this snapshot, based on my research into the Roman army at this time.

The senior chief (decanus) yells, "Form the turtle! (Testudinem facites!).

The other chief and both squads, each composed of seven tent-mates (contubernales), smartly raise their shields.

Other legionaries, probably not the men keeping their shields up, begin hacking at the water pipes that bring water into Sarmisegetusa.

This tactic ultimately brings victory. When the Roman army threatens to torch the city, Sarmisegetusa must surrender.

The testudo, or turtle, formation, shown on Trajan's column.

Cristian Chirita. CC by SA3.0.

Bookworm

The first time someone called me a bookworm, I was a little girl, but I sensed that the word was pejorative.

The word was coined in 1599 by Ben Jonson in a now all-but-forgotten play called Cynthia's Revels. (Well, not completely forgotten; you can find it online.) The play was first performed in 1600 and published in 1601.

"Heart," remarks Hedon to Anaides about the scholar passing by, "was there ever so prosperous an invention thus unluckily perverted, and spoyl'd by a Whore-son, Book-worm, a Candle-waster?" (Cynthia's Revels, III, ii.)

The hyphen in Book-worm, denoting that two words are being coupled in an unusual way, had been dropped by 1855, when Mrs. Gatty finally used the word to refer not to a reader who was also a dreamer but to the anolium beetle and other pests who feed on tasty parts of books.

Here you will find a painting of a man-after-my-own-heart bookworm by Carl Spitzweg.

In passing, let me remark that the now-defunct hyphen in a compound word like bookworm or email causes editors to rip out their ever-greying hair, to hold the line unbecomingly, or to give way to the new while some measure of grace is still possible.

The Bookworm, by Carl Spitzweg, 1850. Held by Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt, Germany.

Uploaded by Iryna Harpy to Wikimedia Commons.

Andy Warhol's Marilyn

Sometimes, when I don't have anything to read, I look up a topic on Wikipedia. The other day, my topic was pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987). You can look him up on Wikipedia, just like I did, and research him on the internet. Thanks to technology, you can even listen to some of his interviews. In one of these, in the spirit of Christian love, he said, "I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty."

I will not rehash the whole thing here, but I have an observation about Warhol concerning the pull between his faith and his interest in fame.

Born Andrej Varhola, Jr., in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Warhol was the third son of Slovakian immigrants. He and his family were devout Byzantine (or Ruthenian) Catholics. This church originated in his parents' homeland, Carpathian Ruthenia, from the ninth century--before the Great Schism (1054)--and so is still in full communion with both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

As a boy, Warhol and his family went to St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949, he moved to New York City, and his mother joined him at some point. Every Sunday he went to mass at St. Thomas More Church, with his mother until her death in 1972 and then afterwards with his dachshund, Archie. Often he went during the week as well.

Warhol was obsessed with fame, an obsession that began in childhood when he was bedridden, during which time he drew, listened to the radio, and arranged pictures of celebrities around his bed. You could see this interest in celebrities as the other side of religious devotion. Salvation through God? Why not ensure some earthly salvation too, by becoming famous and by concerning oneself with others who are famous. An observer remarked that Warhol chose St. Thomas More as his church because famous people, including the Kennedys, attended.

In the days following Marilyn Monroe's death on August 5, 1962, Warhol decided to immortalize her in his Marilyn Diptych. He chose a publicity still from her first movie, Niagara (made in 1953), and silk-screened acrylic onto canvas: twenty-five images of her face are arranged in a 5x5 grid in color on the left side of the canvas and twenty-five images are arranged in the same kind of grid on the right in black and white. (The finished size of the painting: about 81 by 114 inches, or almost phi, the golden ratio, in tribute to her beauty).

In an optical illusion, the color side of the work seems to come forward and show Marilyn in real life. The black-and-white side of the work seems to recede and show her in the shadows, where a ghost might reside.

In another sort of illusion, the images appear to degrade as they are repeated across the canvas. The artist did not clean the screens of gloppy acrylic residue from one image to the next (although it looks like he did clean them between the color work and the black-and-white). Instead of an icon of beauty, Marilyn becomes a face so familiar with repetition as to become meaningless (or, in a later rendition, to be overlaid with the deaths' head of memento mori, Latin for "remember that you too will die.")

As Julian Schnabel says, “There is something at the bottom of all his work that is absolutely heartbreaking.”

Marilyn Dyptich, Andy Warhol, 1962. Held by the Tate Gallery.

Uploaded by Cmyk, 2009.

Spring Fever

In case you haven't been able to tell, I am in favor of opening the treasure chest of civilization and taking out and admiring the gold circlets, silver studs, and precious beads cached therein. Even at the risk of turning up a cliché (or two).

Our entire heritage hangs in the balance. Will the digital information age lock away knowledge that we can then unlock at any time, if only we know what to look for? Or will it make green our past, so that new and wonderful things can leaf and blossom from it as they have since its beginning? I don't know.

Consider this most beautiful description of love in the spring.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2

10 My beloved spoke, and said unto me: 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

11 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle[dove] is heard in our land;

13 The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Note that I have emended turtle to turtledove in chapter 2, verse 12. I happen to know that, even though I unfortunately do not read ancient Hebrew,  the word for turtle should read turtledove. How do I know this? I cannot remember and have not been able to find out, in a rather summary search of the King James Bible (1611), the Revised Standard Version (1901), the English Standard Version (1971), the Living Bible (also 1971), and the Oxford Annotated Bible (1973), from which I learned so much about textual criticism.

I already know that my next post will (or maybe, given my changeable nature, I should say may) be headed "Spring Training." Which, for the record, I thought of before I knew that Major-League baseball announcer Ernie Harwell (1918-2010) opened the first Detroit Tigers Grapefruit-League game of the season by reciting the Song of Solomon, 2:12. He always said "turtle."

Spring Cleaning

In the opening scene of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, the Mole has "been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home."

And I imagine that, ever since we gave up a nomadic life, we, like the Mole, reach a point where we must clear out the last of winter and welcome spring by opening doors and windows and cleaning
"[f]irst with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs . . . ." The Mole even gets out his whitewashing brush to freshen up his walls.

As the Mole cleans, he feels rather than observes "Spring . . . moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing." Grahame captures the heart of the matter: When the seasons turn, winter to spring, summer to fall, the Mole and the rest of us feel uneasy about the change but know that we have our own part in it.

Small wonder, then, that the Mole "suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat."

The Mole knows, just as we know, that we are happier experiencing spring than doing the spring cleaning. So I'm with him when his snout comes out into the sunlight and he finds himself "rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."

Dream Gingerbread

One of my favorite books is Victorian Cakes, by Caroline B. King (Boston: Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1988), a food writer's memoir of her childhood in a well-to-do household in 1880's Chicago.

I can't find my copy of the book right now, but, if memory serves, one of the chapters is entitled, "Dream Gingerbread." According to family lore, one of Caroline's aunts or great-aunts had a dream in which a gingerbread recipe came to her; she rose and baked the cake that very night. The cake was wonderful.

I feel obliged to remark that mine is an elderly memory and does not, in fact, always serve. Lately, I got near the end of a spy thriller when I realized that I had read it before, the first time as a stand-alone and not the fourth in a series.

In any case, please let me give you my recipe for Dream Chocolate Sauce, which came to me a few years ago and is, if I do say so myself, quite wonderful.

Dream Chocolate Sauce

1/2 cup butter, unsalted preferred.

(I can manage to choke down the sauce I made yesterday with salted butter, however.)

12-oz. bag Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips.

(Mea culpa. I know my taste in chocolate should be more sophisticated, but I crave the chocolates of my childhood, Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Almonds, henceforth with no apology.)

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, organic preferred.

In a medium saucepan over warm or very low heat, combine butter and chocolate chips, stirring occasionally until they are melted together. Add the cream and stir in; warm briefly. Serve over ice cream or sneak a spoonful when you are alone in the kitchen.

Hmm. Let's see. I am not a recipe writer, but I would say this makes about a cup and a half of sauce.

Gently rewarm the sauce for each use. You can heat the container of sauce in the microwave for 10 to 30 seconds, for starters, or you can warm it in a saucepan with some water around it over low heat, very slowly.

If you walk away and forget what you are doing, as I often do, you may notice that, when some of the liquid evaporates, the sauce crinkles when it comes into contact with cold ice cream. I haven't fooled around with the ingredients enough yet to make it happen reliably, but that is good too.

Jacob's Cattle

I have been wrestling with Jacob's angel all night long. (More like weeks, really.)

How can I explain that a folk belief, which we in the twenty-first century know is only partially true, worked to Jacob's advantage? Of course, we know that Jacob has God's favor. But we also find out that, typical of our savvy trickster hero, Jacob makes a plan so he will come out ahead.

Here's the story. In exchange for Leah (whom he marries by Laban's trickery) and then Rachel (whom he loves), Jacob has promised to work seven years for each sister.

During his service, just in case Laban asks Jacob to take his share when they part ways, Jacob practices selective breeding. He makes sure that the strongest sheep and goats breed with each other, in the hope that he will get strong offspring. (True.)

And he makes sure that these sheep and goats gaze upon branches carved with mottled, striped, and spotted patterns during conception, in the hope that, according to an old wives' tale, his flocks will have mottled, striped, and spotted offspring as his own and he can pick them out. (Not true.)

Several years into service, Jacob asks Laban to let him go home. Laban reworks their deal and agrees to give him everything he asks for, all the mottled, striped, and spotted sheep and goats he has hoped to take with him, and to move his camp, all the way not home, but close by.

Now there is a white bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, marked with mottled, striped, and spotted patches of maroon and known by the lovely old name, "Jacob's Cattle." It is the bean used in traditional New England baked beans and is now sold as an "heirloom" seed.

So I was concerned that I could make these ideas all come together, and then: Synchronicity! I was reading a book called The Coat Route (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2013), by Meg Lukens Noonan, about the bespoke tailoring of a luxurious overcoat, and ran into the word "flocculent." Rule Number 1: look up unfamiliar words. Flocculent means "fleecy."

A sign! It was a sign that I should write this post straightaway and an assurance that I could, in some small way, pull it off. Call it superstition or synchronicity, we still want to impose an order on the not-so-orderly.