Greeks vs Romans: the result

In the end the chairman called yesterday's close-fought TLS debate for the Greeks. Listen here if you want to hear it.

At the start of the event a show of hands from the 400 in the Everyman Theatre revealed a small and unexpected Roman majority.

The Romans, it seemed, had done more for us - or at least for Cheltenham - than the Greeks had.

But at the end of a high-impact hour of gladiatorial argument, our Hellenist champion, Edith Hall, had turned round enough men and women voters to scrape home.

Mary Beard fought as hard as any legionary, defending the beer-drinking soldiers of Hadrian's Wall against a high-minded Hall assault on their poor spelling and restricted vocabulary.

But Beard's countering of pure Greek science with applied Roman skills,Greek logical philosophy with Roman running water, did not play as strongly with the audience as one might have expected.

Too complacent about their comfort perhaps in this Gloucestershire spa town.

The bloody bouts of the arena - raised by an early questioner - also played against the Roman case.

The Beard strategy was to claim that both Roman and Greek societies operated equal-opportunities-for-cruelty.

This worked with the slavery argument. Both were accepted as bad on that score.

But the idea of Greek gladiators and beast-fights never caught on. Not enough movie exposure, I guess.

The Beard case that much less Roman Colosseum activity took place than we think (just too expensive) was also not quite believed.

Does nothing fail to happen in Cheltenham just because it's too expensive?

The pace of argument was furious - with one lady audience-member asking for a little less adrenalin ten minutes into the first half.

The Roman side did well on war and terrorism-control, on the secret ballot and the multiculturalist skills of running big cities and empires.

But again the gentle town of Cheltenham was perhaps not quite right for that. War was bad anyway. Science and philosophy were good. The purer the better.

Professor Beard accused Professor Hall of using Greek sophistry - of choosing different bits of the Greek world to support different arguments.

Professor Hall smiled and continued. Protagoras and his sophist friends would have been proud.

The TLS chairman was proud of them both - and of everyone else who turned out at 10 am on a Saturday morning for such an educative scrap.

Comments

[Dion Per Sona]

"The Roman side did well on war and terrorism-control, on the secret ballot and the multiculturalist skills of running big cities and empires."

H'mm. But all Rome's indigenous gaultiers had to do to make it in the City, after all, was to babble Imperial buzz. Roughly equivalent to a C-school MBA.

[Tony Francis]

Egad:
http://www.sportinglife.com/nfl/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=international_feed/07/10/16/GRIDIRON_USA-NFL_Goodell.html
http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/story/10410478
Reaction is mixed. Some like the idea, others don't. But as one sportswriter said, "I think it is a good idea. I have reservations to sit on the throne in Buckingham Palace."

[Dion Per Sona]

Thank you for your update on the world of Weird Stuff, Mr Francis. Will there be dramatic defections, I wonder, of US citizens unwilling to run the gauntlet of Homeland Security procedures on their return? What if US visitors to Britain end up on the Terrarista hit list during their visit? What if one or two are shot by Metropolitain police when embarking on an innocent visit to the Underground? How will anti-Terrarista profiling police be able to distinguish Mexicans from Hispanics from Chinese from Eigh Rabbs? Fact is, they can't.

The Marcel Proust Institute has been lobbying for their key championship finals to be held in Goa. If all fits a pattern.

[Tony Francis]

Dear DPS, This is hardly weird stuff. It is England (notably London) stealing our national treasure. It is akin to the Elgin Marbles, and we know from Mary Beard's blog how modern day Greeks feel about that. You had better hope that the Americans don't decide to stay in the UK. They are pushy, arrogant and impatient. It will ruin the whole ambience of the British Isles. As CNN talk show host Larry King once said, "Marx was wrong, religion isn't the opiate of the people, sports is." Now I discover this is a misquote of Marx!
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
It is a truism that all men and many women in the US (and now Mexico) live for the NFL. It is the only reason for existence. My Kansas City Chiefs beat the Chargers and the Bengals this year. I have these games on DVD and study them all day long. There is no other reason to live. Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys is the next Brett Favre. This is worth intensive DVD study, as well. Sports writers in the US are not kind. Becks has proved to be a bust. He sprained his ankle and didn't play. Becks was quickly branded a "weenie" or "wiener" by the sports press.
As for me, I won't be attending the Super Bowl in London, unless I can be assured a seat on the Royal Throne; the pocelain one, not the upholstered model. I don't envision that happening.

[Dion Per Sona]

Dear Dr Francis:
NFL? Daddy was a rugby man. I have only ever seen one game worth watching: for once a sweaty stupid run-about-brainless contact team sport actually looked like fast chess. The next time I looked, it didn't, so I stopped watching to avoid getting caught up in the general embarassment because it's yet another fraud. People watch these events in relentless idleness the way a cat looks out the window: just in case something happens.

These spectacles are worthless without a hero - which is why (I suspect) so much misdirected intensity is applied to their observation.

As you say, the hero (Bex) is a washout, when relied upon. It's only in myths and fables and epic poems that he always falls sunny-side up, unselfish rescuer whose grand motives are beyond reproach, and so unlike those of the admiring crowd.

The real lesson, which sports fans never seem to learn, is that "the team" will always let you down. Absolutely always. That is also the less comforting backstory in myth and legend, and survival of the individual conscience depends how early in life a "team's" weakness is perceived.

On a lighter note, will you mind if I respond with a Hum to your remark about

THE THRONE
Behold, the triumph of human ingenuity,
Coaxed by necessities' famous superfluity,
Our gift of ease, relief, of pleasure,
It dispatches each achievement
With it's rightful measure.
Here, Justice shares her secret:
Blest at last are beggars
And profligates are martyred
By the odour of their treasure.

BTW the sports ambience of the British Isles is postively Baltic States knee-deep in regurgitated pub food. Nothing could spoil it - but it could get worse.

[Dion Per Sona]

Dear me, this is dreadful. Others will have straight away noticed the poet is misquoted :
THE THRONE
Behold, a monument to human ingenuity,
Nursed by necessities' famous superfluity, etc.

One should get this sort of thing right or not bother. Pls excuse.

[Andrew Kenneally]

I think you're being very unfair to the cat, Dion. If more of us looked out windows instead of in the direction of electronic hypnotist boxes we'd be a far more meditatively wise people. The aristocracies of India, I believe, used to spend long periods simply looking at the sky. Zen & the art of simplicity, as opposed to the art of mass mind-control.

[Dion Per Sona]

Being fair to the cat, I must emphasize that it intensely wants something/anything to happen, whereas a crowd of sport spectators is much more selective (and more often disappointed) about what, than a cat.

A cat is more often pleased to note than you appear to suppose.

[Andrew Kenneally]

To focus on what has been handed down to us, especially with the recent focus on the thread, ie the television age, in Plato's Allegory of the Cave we've been given one of the great prophecies of literature far more true now than then in relation to the possibilities of ruling elites fostering delusional states of consciousness in their subjects. Needless to say, the ones who see the light are seen as mad by those gazing at the projections of the puppet masters.

[Tony Francis]

The Super Bowl is a corporate extravaganza, where companies send favored clients, and their own executives to live in lavish excess for a week or so. It climaxes with the actual game. This is somewhat different from the regular games which are populated with true fans of the team and the game. The playoff games are usually the best. There are many exciting games in the early rounds. The actual Super Bowl is more often than not a disappointment. The last two were exceptions: The Steelers and the Colts won those.

[Dion Per Sona]

"...the ones who see the light are seen as mad by those gazing at the projections of the puppet masters."

DOLLAR SHILLS

So many loan contracts written in bucks,
So many T-Bills abroad that it sucks,
So much has been promised, so many damn lies
Told to so many suckers that none are surprised.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e87f070e-7c96-11dc-aee2-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fe87f070e-7c96-11dc-aee2-0000779fd2ac.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&nclick_check=1

http://www.forbes.com/home/personalfinance/2007/10/17/dollar-currency-feldstein-pf-etf-in_cd_1017etfbriefing_inl.html

I do not contradict Mr Kenneally's apt and learned remarks, but mean to display for your interest contemporary contrasts in puppet mastery, sampled today.

[Dion Per Sona]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utkb1nOJnD4

[Andrew Kenneally]

If everyone could see that cockatoo video & understand its implications, there's be revolution on the streets by morning. As for the fluctuations of an hallucinatory substance called money...where would we be without enslavement to the imaginings of our god-like reason?

[Dion Per Sona]

I thought:
The meaning of life = (Snowball) = Art.

[Andrew Kenneally]

You thought wrong. Meaning & art are emanations of the mind. If there is a "meaning", it is the mind itself, as opposed to its emanations. Ask your cat.

[Dion Per Sona]

My cat says there is no life without Art, neither is there a mind to direct it. She is stalking Snowball on YouTube as we speak.

[Andrew Kenneally]

Your cat is remarkably intelligent on the grounds of its its linguistic ability, but also intellectually deluded in its wilful denial of the existence of the mind. A typically confused materialist.

[Dion Per Sona]

Mademoiselle is puzzled by your remark, for she views the Mind as proof of the existence of Art, and says there must be some mistake, adding that doesn't think of Art as just ghastly overpriced canvasses, but as a continuum of complimentary skills, achieved through discipline and self-observation.

She's very good company, BTW.

[Andrew Kenneally]

Your cat is lost in the entanglements of its own reasoning. A while earlier claimed there was no mind to direct art. Now it's claiming Mind is the proof of Art. Whatever this might mean-if it does mean something, of which I have my doubts- it is in clear conradiction to the earlier statement. Explain to said beast it has lost one of its intellectual nine lives.

[Dion Per Sona]

Yes, there's a word or two missing from the hastily-transcribed conversation I had with her.

"My cat says there is no life without Art, neither is there [life without] a mind to direct it. She is stalking Snowball on YouTube as we speak"
I fluffed her throwaway line, amind her chatters at the dancing cocatoo.
Pls excuse. Now she's embarassed me.

[Dion Per Sona]

http://i.today.reuters.com/pictures/galleries/Stories/633281471882031250/Previews/02_mdf1189151.JPG