January

Clarke: Accused of Pig Ignorance: Sunday Times January 26th
In The Sunday Times for January 26, education secretary Charles Clarke said that he was not much concerned about the teaching of Classics. This was picked up by the Evening Standard on Wednesday January 29, and on Friday Peter Jones went on the Today programme to defend the subject. Mr Clarke told the Sunday Times: "One of the main purposes of university is to encourage people to think. But education for its own sake is a bit dodgy, too. "The idea that you can learn about the world sitting in your study just reading books is not quite right." Mr Clarke advocated pupils studying philosophy, his own subject at university, but said he was "less occupied by classics". Classics has often been dismissed as an elitist subject, as most state school pupils do not get a chance to study either Latin or ancient Greek. Last year, only 0.2% of total GCSEs were in Latin, with the number of ancient Greek papers sat not even registering 0.1 of a per cent. In Greek, 54% of pupils gained an A* grade and 24.8% an A grade. In Latin, the figures were 30.6% and 31.5%. But Dr Jones said: "How on earth can a subject be elitist? Only people are elitist. "Education in classics is a preparation for living, living well and making a living."

Pompeii Frescoes: The Times January 18th 2003
A series of frescoes, thought to have adorned a substantial hotel in the southern suburbs of Pompeii and brought to light by motorway digging, is now on display. A fine fresco of Apollo playing a lyre - see picture - is thought to represent the young Nero. The building, about six hundred metres outside the city walls, had probably been a restaurant and country hotel, complete with thermal baths; the frescoes come from the triclinium. There are currently plans to build a hotel near Pompeii together with a museum in which visitors can don 'virtual reality visors' to see Pompeii as it would have been before Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.

Bill Clinton could be a leading candidate for the Chancellorship of Oxford University: The Financial Times, January 9 2003
In its third leader, headed Finis coronat opus, the FT speculates that Bill Clinton could be a leading candidate for the Chancellorship of Oxford University which has fallen vacant on the death of Roy Jenkins. It proceeds to herald the occasion with a spoof Latin oration in the style (and grammar) of Private Eye's mock honorary degree ceremonies. Extracts will give the flavour (our question-marks):
Magnam gaudeam (?) nuntio vobis! Habemus Cancellarius (?)...in res publicis and civitatis (?) homo erectus stupendus ut in mens (?) et in corpore. Philosophus profundus, per exemplo (?) 'Quae quod (?) significatio verbi "est" est?'...herba marijuana (?) fumerat (?) sed non inhalerat (?)...regnum Clintoni benignus (?) erat...sed eheu! magnum disastrum (?) suscepit sua maxima culpa...sibi (?) pizza donata est a Monica Lewinsky, puella pulchrissima (?), sensuosa (?) californicante (brilliant!), fellatrix (?) superiore... etc. etc.

February

On Blondes: The Times Magazine, February 15 03
An extract from Joanne Pitman's 'On Blondes' finds the origin of the cult of the blonde-as-sex-bomb in Aphrodite. The first 'universal' blonde was Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Cnidos (360 BC), hair tinted with gold. Prostitutes went to great lengths to imitate it, using saffron and other dyes or even yellow muds on their hair, or acquiring blonde wigs at enormous expense from northern lands. Menander was contemptuous: 'What can we women do wise or brilliant who dye our hair yellow, outraging gentlewomen, causing the overthrow of houses and the ruin of marriages?'

Guardian Education, February 18 03
Stephen Cook reports on Charles Clarke's initiative to allow Classics to become part of a schools' 'humanities' special status bid, but only part: it could not become a a specialisation in its own right, as Marion Gibbs, head of James Alleyn's Girls' School and chairman of JACT, emphasised. Cheney School in Oxford, already bidding for language college status, thought Classics stood a good chance of thriving in that environment; Simon Carr, head of Classics at Camden Girls' School, said the school was already bidding for arts specialist status and thought there was a strong potential interest in Classics. Bob Lister, director of the Cambridge Schools Classics Project, said only 10% of state schools have a classical subject on the curriculum, but still felt there was a 'hunger for the subject', quoting the success of the Cambridge Latin On-line project and the primary school new Iliad project.

The Sunday Telegraph, February 23
Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, has said that the Elgin marbles will 'never' be returned or even loaned to the Greek government. 'They have a purpose here because this is where they can do most good. The British Museum can situate the achievements of these Greek sculptures in the context of the wider ancient world.' He drew a parallel between Greek visual culture and Italian and Dutch, also spread around the world. He proposed instead a virtual reality reconstruction of the Parthenon, producing a computer-generated model of what it looked like. Professor Anthony Snodgrass, chairman of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, said 'I would only be happy with a virtual reality version if they were put in the British Museum as a replacement for the originals.'

Roman Silchester: The BBC History Magazine, March 2003
The TV presenter Julian Richards discusses Roman Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) near Reading as a town in a constant state of evolution through the imperial period, and one which seems to have resisted the Saxon invasion at first, since no Saxon finds have emerged there. But how did it met its eventual end? Richards uesses that there was a sort of ethnic cleansing, with no signs of violence but a deliberate closing down of the city, perhaps by the people of Calleva itself, or by Saxons, determined no one else should use it.
The programme will be shown on BBC 2, March 4 at 8pm.

The Sunday Telegraph, February 2nd 03
Oliver Poole reports that Latin take-up has increased dramatically in the United States as a result of the 'Latin' in Harry Potter (e.g. the spell expelliarmus, the dog (Latin) Fluffy, a Cerberus clone, and so on). Numbers sitting the National Latin exam have risen from 53,000 to 123,000 over the past twenty years, and interest in the classical world is becoming 'fashionable'. The actress Gwynneth Paltrow has signed up to film Donna Tartt's The Secret History, a story of classics students in Vermont staging a Dionysiac frenzy.

March

The Times March 22 03
The first Roman deed of sale for a slave to be found in Britain has been revealed on a wooden tablet unearthed in London in 1996 and now transcribed by Roger Tomlin in Oxford. The text is eleven lines long; the date is AD 180-200. It reads 'Vegetus, assistant slave of Montanus the slave of the august emperor, has bought the girl Fortunata, by nationality a Diablintian [from near Jublains in France], for 600 denarii. She is warranted healthy and not liable to run away...'

Geoffrey Kirk
Geoffrey Kirk, co-author of Kirk and Raven (and now Schofield) The Pre-socratic Philosophers and author of The Songs of Homer, has died aged 82. His obituary was published in The Daily Telegraph (March 13). He was Fellow of Trinity Hall (1946-70), Fellow of the British Academy, Professor of Classics at Bristol (1971-4) and Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge (1974-82). He was general editor of the fine six-volume Cambridge commentary on Homer's Iliad (1985-93), and contributed the first two volumes (Books 1-4 and 5-8).

Ivory head of Apollo comes to light: The Times, March 13 2003
An ivory head of Apollo has come to light, which may be by Pheidias. Originally part of a chryselephantine statue, it was dug up eight years ago by an Italian treasure hunter near a villa owned by the emperor Claudius and was sold on via a Munich-based dealer to a British collector, Robin Symes, who has handed it back to the Italians, having realised that it had been removed without permission. Other fragments of a statue have also been recovered - fingers, toes, an ear, some curls of hair - but they may not belong to the Apollo.
See also The Daily Telegraph.

Latin: The New Geordie Dialect: The Daily Telegraph, March 14 2003
An English town with strong Roman links yesterday reverted to Latin as a living language at its railway station. People using the Metro at Wallsend, North Tyneside, were met by new bilingual signs and names on a map. Overnight the fish and chip shop became known as pisces et holera while public lavatories were latrinae publicae. Nexus, the Metro operators, and Art on the Riverside, a lottery-funded project, commissioned the artist Michael Pinsky to create a Metro map at the station reflecting Wallsend past and present. He used the town's association with Emperor Hadrian, at the eastern end of his eponymous wall, as the theme for his work, entitled Pontis. It will remain in place for the next three months and could become a permanent feature if the public approves. Mr Pinsky said: "I have spent a lot of time in Wales and Ireland where bilingual signs are common and I thought it would be good to use that idea. I enjoyed using a dead language." He studied Latin at school for four years but called in expert help with the translation from Professor Donald Hill of Newcastle University. The artwork is on display at the Metro station's compulsory ticket area, now known as locus ubi necesse est tesseram tenere. Latin names are used on maps of Hadrian's Wall in the style of a plan of the Metro and a series of panels show enlarged images of surrounding streets. The 1960s Forum shopping centre is fori tabernae, the town hall is curia oppidi and the Job Centre forum venalicium, which has the literal translation of "slave market". Changes at the Metro station or statio metropolitana include renaming the passport picture booth picturae amplificantur dum manes. Sarah Walters, 21, a university student, said: "It's great that the town is making something of its past. It is Wallsend's greatest claim to fame. I love the fact that the exit sign at the station is now tagged as the vomitorium, it's very descriptive." Mark Hamilton, 43, unemployed, was also in favour of the double-takes. He said: "I don't know what it's about, but I quite like it. The words on the signs look like some of the things I come out with after a night in the pub. No one I know in Wallsend speaks Latin, although people from other parts of the country might think we do."

April

Sex without guilt...: The Times magazine April 26 03
John Clarke argues that Romans did not look guiltily on sexual activity or see it as evidence of transgression unless performed within certain tightly restricted social confines, but thought of it as a ribald or romantic, beautiful or laughable activity often indicative of luxury and high status.

Stolen Frescoes Recovered: The Daily Telegraph April 9 03
Italian police have recovered two stolen frescoes, already packed for export, that thieves had ripped off the house of the Chaste Lovers in Pompeii (a villa excavated since 1987 but never opened to the public, so called because the lovers are clothed). The damage caused by the frescoes' removal was severe, extending to other frescoes around it.

Archaeology in Siena: The Times, April 11 2003
Siena in Italy was said to have been founded by Senius, son of Remus, who sought exile there, pursued by Romulus' horsemen. This was said to explain the city's interest in horses (hence the Palio). Archaeologists have now found under the Cathedral evidence of a sacrifice dating from early Roman times, consisting of three horses and a dog, each sliced into three - a ritual apparently connected with founding a city. Since there was an earlier Etruscan foundation in Siena, the sacrifice may have been connected with the re-foundation of Siena by Romans.

May

Top Classics Departments: The Guardian, Education Section, May 20 03
Readers may care to compare The Guardian's 'top ten' departments of Classics with The Times's, published here on May 8. A major difference is that The Guardian does not count research in its assessment.
1. Royal Holloway, London
2. King' College, London
3. Cambridge
4. Oxford
5. University College, London
6. Birmingham
7. Warwick
8. Manchester
9. Glasgow
10. St Andrews

Beckham and Latin: Catherine Bennett in The Guardian of May 7 as follows:

Quis pili facit Man Utd?
After the Education Secretary's recent admission that he would not give a toss if Classics teaching fell into desuetude, what with it being no earthly use in the workplace, how heartening to find Mel Gibson making a film in Latin, Channel 4's temporarily rescued school drop-out coming top in Latin and, now, David Beckham adopting this officially denigrated language for the decoration of his arms. My Latin adviser, the author of Beginner's Latin, George Sharpley, confirms that Beckham's two chosen tattoos, Perfectio in Spiritu and Ut Amem et Foveam, are indeed Latin - and thus likely to be comprehensible in both Spain and Italy, should Beckham ever be tempted by offers from either country. We must hope, however, that he remains at home, protecting children from the yobbish tendencies of Charles Clarke. Before long, thanks to Beckham, it could be commonplace to hear football crowds reciting the following Sharpley translations of their favourite chants. Quis pili facit Man Utd? ('Who the fuck are Man United?'), Solus numquam vades ('You'll never walk alone'), or Nos detestamini? Facimus nihili ('Nobody likes us, we don't care'). Should Clarke one day appear in their midst, the supporters can politely inquire, Quis comedit omnia crusta? ('Who ate all the pies?').

Top Classics Departments (again): The Times 2, May 8 2003
The Times's table ranking university Classics departments in terms of teaching assessments, research assessments and student entry 'A' level grades has produced the following top ten:

1= Oxford, Cambridge
3 King's College, London
4 Birmingham
5 University College, London
6 Nottingham
7 Warwick
8 Royal Holloway
9 Reading
10 Swansea

The Daily Telegraph, May 12 03
Remains found at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire turn out to be a 200-yard stretch of Roman high street, complete with pedestrian walkways, shops, workshops, homes and roadside shrine. The village was probably settled in the second century AD, but the Roman buildings were abandoned at the end of the fourth century AD. There are some Saxon buildings in the village.

June

A Follow up to an Interview with Charles Clarke: Education Guardian, June 24 03
Charles Clarke can be in little doubt about the passionate feelings aroused by the decline in the teaching of classics in schools after he welcomed a delegation from a north London state secondary with a thriving classics department into his Whitehall office.

"I got the impression he thought it was going to be a cosy fireside chat with uncle Charlie, but it wasn't like that," says Simon Carr, head of classics at Camden School for Girls. "We were on a mission, and the students were very much part of the mission. They were certainly not abashed. In fact, they were very confident."

The five girls and two teachers were invited to meet the education secretary after some throwaway remarks by him early this year were widely interpreted as dismissing the value of classics in modern education. Hackles rose, words like "pig-ignorant" were bandied about, and following an article in Education Guardian (Latin types: Why are the classics vanishing, February 18), Carr decided to take the initiative and invite Clarke to visit the school, where classics is thriving against all odds and 45 pupils have taken GCSEs in classical subjects
this year.

His secret weapon was Alex Birtles, aka the daughter of Patricia Hewitt, secretary of state for trade. She is studying A-level Greek at Camden and was willing to persuade her mother to hand-deliver the invitation, signed by every classics student at the school, to her cabinet colleague.

Clarke opted not to come to the school and "face the real music", as Carr puts it, but he gave half an hour of his time to the delegation, kicking off with assertions that he had been thoroughly misrepresented in the media and that he believed classics was a subject worth studying on its own merits. Then the girls pitched in.

"I think what we said hit home" says Katie Rose, aged 16. "We told him why we enjoyed classics, that only a few schools offered Latin and Greek these days and that we had friends at other schools who are very envious
because we're able to do the subjects and they're not. I think he was impressed that we cared so much. He also seemed impressed by the statistics and paper work we gave him, and we definitely answered all his questions. So I think the meeting was a good beginning." Naomi Scott, 14, mimics Clarke body language by leaning back luxuriously in her chair and putting her hands behind her head. "I think he was definitely listening," she say, "But whether he was taking it on board, and whether he will let it influence his views, I just don't know."

There were also robust contributions from Pascalle Matherson-Frederick, Seveen Cummins and Alex Birtles. Once the girls had finished, Carr and colleague Rachel Johnson brought out the facts and figures which illustrate the crisis brewing in classics teaching caused by shrinking supply at a time of growing demand. They showed him an article by Bob Lister, director of the Cambridge School Classics Project, detailing an increase in the number of classic teaching jobs advertised in 2002, a year when only 30 new classics teachers were trained, out of which the majority would most likely end up in private schools.

They also told him about the success of Minimus, a textbook based on the life of a mouse in ancient Rome which has been used by more than 70,000 state primary school pupils. At present, not many of those pupils who develop an enthusiasm for the subject will have a chance to study it at secondary level in a system where fewer than 10% of schools now offer any classics subjects.

But perhaps the most telling figures come from Camden itself, where more than half of next year's year 10 and year 11 groups - 130 out of 240 pupils - have opted to do classical subjects. Timetable problems mean that those studying Greek have to come in at 8am, but there's no shortage of pupils willing to do it. "We are the only school in the whole of inner London with a decent sized classics department," says Carr. "If we can pull in the pupils, there is no reason why other schools can't do the same if the right conditions are created."

Clarke mentioned the partnership scheme which would allow state pupils to study classics at nearby private schools with better facilities, but Carr is vehement: "The whole thing is demeaning, a sop to the masses - the idea that little Johnny goes along there doffing his cap and saying 'please let me learn Latin at your great institution'. It's just wrong."

By now the meeting had gone on for 25 minutes and Clarke was checking the clock, but Carr managed to stir his interest in the Cambridge Online Latin Project, which is putting the finishing touches to a set of CD roms which can be used to study Latin by distance learning at schools with no Latin teacher. "It was quite clear to me that this was the first time he'd heard of the project," says Carr. "He was clearly interested and specifically asked me for the website."

So where do things go from here? It's widely felt that the steep decline in classics has a lot to do with the demands of the national curriculum, and Carr thinks Clarke's recent announcement that it needs to be relaxed
a bit may offer an opportunity to rebuild. A crucial part of that would be to bump up the numbers training as classics teachers. Carr thinks the Teacher Training Agency needs to double last year's figure of 30 just to satisfy existing demand, let alone permit expansion. Johnson says: "We just want Charles Clarke to start talking up the subject and emphasising how classics can tap into many of the government's priorities in education, such as citizenship, literacy and projects for the gifted and talented. I really hope he'll do that."

Talking to Education Guardian, Clarke agrees with Johnson that "the new subject of citizenship addresses many areas previously within the remit of classics - morality, rights and responsibilities, the relation of the individual to the state". He also says the extension of the specialist schools system earlier in the year, and recently revised rules for the national curriculum, should give heads and governors greater scope for including classics. Meanwhile, other subjects such as history touch on things including the Roman occupation of Britain.

But he points out that while classics was once considered vital to a well-rounded education, times have changed and children in 2003 study a range of subjects unthinkable to their ancestors. "This is not the same as saying that the study of classics is a waste of time which I have never said ... simply that it's a matter of priorities. Education exists to prepare young people for the challenges of the world in which they live, and there are only so many hours in the school day. "History is vital to understanding who we are ad how we got here; languages are essential if we are to understand our neighbours. But I make no apology for arguing that modern history should take precedence in the curriculum over ancient history; or that living languages are of more practical application than dead ones." As a final flourish, he says: "If the Department for Education really believed classics to be a dead subject, is it likely we would have piloted an online Latin course in secondary schools to be rolled out nationally in the coming year?" But hang on, isn't this the Cambridge Online Latin Project, which he was apparently hearing about for the first time at his meeting with the Camden delegation? Yes, indeed it is! Ah well, that's politics.

Katie Rose has just taken GCSEs in Latin and Greek: "I recommend Charles Clarke should read some epigrams by Marcus Valerius Martial, because they're little remarks and jokes to do with everyday events. They illustrate what a flexible subject classics is, really relevant to modern life. For me, the best thing is translation - Latin is so succinct and definite in its principles, not at all like English."

Naomi Scott is studying Latin and will start Greek next year: "I couldn't quite imagine Charles Clarke as a Roman Emperor, or setting fire to people to light up his parties like Nero did. He seemed too calm, slightly detached, not very passionate. One of the things I love about classics is finding out how things haven't changed, how humans will always be humans."

Pascalle Matherson-Frederick, aged 15, is studying classical civilisation: "I'm not sure Charles Clarke made me want to be a politician. I think if I was one, I'd be a bit more enthusiastic than he was - he was a bit too laid back. My favourite classics story is about Hippolytus, whose stepmother falls in love with him and goes crazy. It's really quite freaky."

An Interview with Charles Clarke
As a result of the interview in The Guardian (see the archive, February 18), Simon Carr, Head of Classics at Camden School for Girls, was invited to discuss Classics in schools with Education Secretary Charles Clarke on May 20. This is Simon Carr's account of the meeting:

"The meeting in fact went very much as we had rehearsed it at school. Clarke started off by saying how foully he had been misrepresented in the press and the truth of the matter was that he was the biggest supporter of Classics since sliced bread. He did point out that he didn't buy the argument that learning Latin was the best way to learn French, although he did later concede that Latin of course helped with the whole process of language proficiency. Nor did he believe that there was something intrinsic to the study of Classics that made it the best subject bar none for the development of a child's thought processes. But he very much believed Classics was a subject worth studying on its own merits. He actually said, 'We need more Classics'.

After this initial preamble from him, the five pupils we took with him then had a chance to say what they got out of Classics. We had planned this bit out carefully in school beforehand and they all did brilliantly. We had chosen the five with a view to them being as representative as possible of the wide mix of kids here at Camden interested in Classics (2 kids of Afro-Caribbean background, one American girl and the daughter of Patricia Hewitt). They all came across, despite the different angles they took, as very enthusiastic about Classics, and when Clarke asked them if friends in other schools in Camden would also like to have the chance to study classics they were very loud in backing that proposal. They were very good at explaining to him the differences between Greek and Latin, and Classical Civilisation.

After the kids had all had their turn Rachel Johnson (my colleague at Camden) and I both weighed in with facts and figures. He had clearly seen from the kids that there was a demand from the kids for more Classics and asked if there were the teachers out there to supply demand. I had brought with me a copy of Bob Lister's article in the JACT Bulletin about the difficulty of recruiting good Classics teachers and we were able to inform him of the fact that with the latest TTA reduction in the number of Classics PGCE students there was now a maximum of only 30 new Classics teachers coming on stream in any one year. This in no way covers existing demand, let alone leave a supply of teachers over to service any future expansion of the subject. We told him about the success of 'Minimus' and that in current estimates there are approx. 70,000 state school primary kids who have been enthused about Latin thanks to the course, but with nowhere to go with their interest in Latin when they get to secondary school. We told him about the numbers of kids opting to do Classical subjects at Camden - about 65 kids out of a Year group of 120 opting for at least one Classical subject in both next year's Year 10 and next year's Year 11. We are an ordinary Inner-London comprehensive school, but the only school in the whole of Inner London with a decent-sized Classics department. If we can pull in the kids there is no reason why other schools couldn't do the same if the right conditions are created.

We pointed out to him that where Classics does survive in the state sector, it does so by teachers being prepared to do much beyond the call of duty - early morning Greek, taking trips in holidays, being prepared to each other things besides Classics to make up a full timetable, being HOD at a very early age, but then having nowhere to go upwards with their Classics and hence being forced either into Senior Management or into the private sector. We also said it was unfair for state school kids to have to compete with their private school peers in Latin and Greek at GCSE and A level, when the private school kids have begun their Latin and Greek significantly earlier and had a proper timetable allocation for them. He mentioned the Partnership scheme whereby state school kids would have the opportunity to study Classics at private schools, but we indicated some of the huge practical difficulties in delivering that, as well as the underlying injustice in the private sector supplying something that the state sector should also be offering.

At this point (after about 25 minutes) he was keen to wrap up proceedings, but I managed to get in a bit about the Cambridge Online Latin Project and was able to quote facts and figures about how well it is going down in Barking and Dagenham. I also left him with a paper on feedback from kids in Barking and Dagenham about how they felt about this opportunity to study Latin - saying that they enjoyed Latin precisely because of its difficulty (unlike other watered-down subjects on offer in schools today!) and that they saw Latin as a way in to positions of privilege which had been traditionally denied to them. Clarke was clearly interested and specifically asked me for the website address on the COLP."

July

Roman Face Cream: The Daily Telegraph, July 30 03
The humorist Oliver Pritchett discusses the importance of the Roman face-cream find:

'I believe that this remarkable find will force us to revise many of our ideas about the history of the Romans in Britain. In fact it puts a whole new complexion on the period. The face cream dates back to the time when the military governor of Londinium was a distinguished general, Maximus Factor. Little has been known of him up to now, but my own research shows that he was given the post as a reward for his valour in the Third Vaseline War. In that war, he and his legions withdrew to winter-quarters and had to endure several months of dry and chapped skin. Even so they achieved victory over the barbarians...

After his victory, the proclamation giving Maximus the posting in Londinium added the traditional Roman accolade for a war hero, 'quod dignus es' - roughly translated as 'Because you're worth it'. In his rule over Londinium, Maximus devoted himself to soothing and cleansing, but he could also be very severe. He introduced a law that said spectators sitting in the sun at gladiatorial contests should cover their skin with creams to protect themselves. Even those who were thrown to the lions had sun-block rubbed onto their shoulders first. There was soon a large and fiercely competitive trade in various skin creams...

So, we can say that, when it came to beauty and skincare products, Maximus Factor was the one who laid the foundation. It has been suggested that the pot of cosmetic cream which has just been discovered may be some sort of offering to the gods. I think this is likely. My guess is that it was intended for the goddess Nivea, who was widely worshipped in Londinium at the time and was believed to be the deity who looked after people last thing at night. Maximus Factor's wife was called Mascara. She was a noted beauty, but was also unfaithful. Mascara is generally credited with encouraging the use of lip gloss in Roman Britain. She also persuaded gladiators to tint their hair. Many of these gladiators were her lovers, of course, and as they put the highlights in
their hair, they would cry out: 'We, who are about to dye, salute you'...

Eventually, Maximus Factor lost patience with Mascara running wild and he had her murdered. She did not see the hired assassins as they crept into her chamber because her eyes were covered with slices of cucumber. A soothsayer had been bribed by Maximus to tell her that the cucumber would have a rejuvenating effect. The death of Mascara was convenient as it left Maximus free to marry the slave girl he had fallen in love with and whose name was Clinique.

The rule of Maximus Factor lasted 22 years. Normally he would have been expected to retire much sooner, but reports reaching Rome said he appeared so young and his skin was so firm and this convinced them that there must have been a mistake about his age. He was succeeded by his son Radox, who was not an effective ruler as he spent most of his days idling away his time at the baths. For a period of about 10 years Londinium saw a major decline in the standards of skincare. All the good work Maximus had done of revitalisation appeared to be lost. The population seemed to age, and commentators of the time complained about sagging chins, bags under the eyes and numerous blemishes. Radox did nothing, but stayed at the baths with his cronies, becoming more and more pruny. Finally he was brutally overthrown and replaced. Londinium now had to put on a brave face under a new and ruthless governor - Botox.

Try this little lot: The Sunday Times, June 29 03
Jean Aitichison (Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford) and the lexicographer John Ayto discuss the hundred words that the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries say every American high-school graduate 'should' know: 'if you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a command of the language'. They then produce the equivalent list for English school pupils. Naturally, they do not point out that well over 80% of the words are from Graeco-Latin roots...
American list
Abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious, belie, bellicose, bowdlerize, chicanery, chromosome, churlish, circumlocution, circumnavigate, deciduous, deleterious, diffident, enervate, enfranchise, epiphany, equinox, euro, evanescent, expurgate, facetious, fatuous, feckless, fiduciary, filibuster, gamete, gauche, gerrymander, hegemony, haemoglobin, homogeneous, hubris, hypotenuse, impeach, incognito, incontrovertible, inculcate, infrastructure, interpolate, irony, jejune, kinetic, kowtow, laissez-faire, lexicon, loquacious, lugubrious, metamorphosis, mitosis, moiety, nanotechnology, nihilism, nomenclature, nonsectarian, notarize, obsequious, oligarchy, omnipotent, orthography, oxidize, parabola, paradigm, parameter, pecuniary, photosynthesis, plagiarize, plasma, polymer, precipitous, quasar, quotidian, recapitulate, reciprocal, reparation, respiration, sanguine, soliloquy, subjugate, suffragist, supercilious, tautology, taxonomy, tectonic, tempestuous, thermodynamics, totalitarian, unctuous, usurp, vacuous, vehement, vortex, winnow, wrought, xenophobe, yeoman, ziggurat.

Proposed English list
Abstemious, algorithm, anomaly, auspicious, baroque, biodegradable, bovine, burlesque, byte, cholesterol, chromosome, churlish, circumlocution, circumnavigate, coerce, cognitive, cyberspace, deciduous, demographic, diaphanous, diffident, encephalitis, enfranchise, equinox, euro, expedite, expurgate, facetious, fatuous, fen, filament, gamete, gauche, gyration, haemoglobin, hegemony, Holi, homogeneous, hypotenuse, incognito, incontrovertible, infrastructure, interpolate, irony, jeopardise, kinetic, knell, laissez-faire, lexicon, loquacious, lugubrious, metamorphosis, minuscule, mitosis, muezzin, nanotechnology, neurosis, nihilism, nomenclature, obsequious, oligarchy, omnipotent, orthography, oxidise, parabola, paradigm, parameter, pecuniary, photosynthesis, plagiarise, plasma, polymer, precipitous, quasar, quotient, ramification, recapitulate, reciprocal, reparation, respiration, sarcophagus, soliloquy, subjugate, suffragette, supercilious, tautology, taxonomy, tectonic, tempestuous, thermodynamics, unctuous, usurp, vacuous, vehement, vortex, whet, wreak, xenophobic, yogi, zenith.

The Daily Telegraph, Wednesday July 9 03
In a half-page article Barbara Bell writes about the success of Minimus, which has now sold 42,000 copies and is used in 1500 primary and prep schools world-wide. Minimus Secundus is to be published in March 2004. She describes the very successful Minimus Saturday in the British Museum when 300 schoolchildren engaged in a number of activities, including meeting Roman soldiers, following a Roman trail and seeing the Vindolandas tablets.

The Daily Telegraph, Friday July 11 03
Dazzling Roman mosaics have been discovered by archaeologists on the site of an ancient villa in Sicily in Eloro, close to Noto. Called the Tellaro mosaics after the nearby river on whose banks they were discovered, they adorned the floors of a large patrician villa. Scenes include hunts and the return of Hector to Priam. The quality and colour is said to be exceptional.

Here's Uncle Zeus, Aunt Hera, the Twins ... The New York Times, July 12 2003

By BENJAMIN WEISER
It was about 20 years ago when Jon O. Newman, a federal appeals court judge in Manhattan, walked up to a staff member in the New York Public Library and asked, "Do you have a book anywhere in this library that has a complete genealogical chart of Greek mythology?" They didn't. "O.K., second question," Judge Newman said. "If there were such a book, would you buy it?" "We'd have to," the librarian replied. It was what the judge had wanted to hear. For years, his father, Harold Newman, had pursued a hobby - an elaborate genealogy project - trying to link all characters from Greek mythology in a single family tree. Judge Newman wanted to finish it. Now, the Newmans' work has been published by the University of North Carolina Press as "A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology: Comprising 3,673 Named Figures of Greek Mythology, All Related to Each Other Within a Single Family of 20 Generations."
If the title seems daunting, the project was, well, herculean. The research, begun by Harold Newman in 1964, took almost 40 years. He did not live to see it published; he died in 1993 at the age of 93. Jon Newman, now 71, said in a recent interview in his chambers that he was able to complete the work with the assistance of a classics scholar and several graduate students. Even with all the help, he said, "I still had no idea it would take so long." The book is laid out over 72 segments that connect horizontally and a 93-page index that allows readers to find, as the judge writes, "the entire cast of Greek mythology - Titans, gods and goddesses, kings, heroes, mortals, giants, monsters, centaurs, horses, rivers, winds, stars, and personifications of abstract conceptions." Zeus's progeny appear on many pages. "He has liaisons with girls all over the chart," the judge noted. His lovers included his wife, Hera (producing Ares, the god of war); Mnemosyne, the symbol of memory (producing the nine muses); and Leda (producing Helen of Troy). Judge Newman, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, with chambers in Manhattan and Hartford, is not a classics scholar, nor does he profess to have any more interest in mythological figures than the average person. He says he was far more interested in the detective work involved. It seems fitting that the mapping of the family links between the Greek gods and heroes would be a father-son project. Harold Newman had practised law and then began writing books on decorative arts, including a definitive guide to ceramic tea warmers. He also tinkered with genealogies, tracing his own family tree.
Harold Newman's interest in mythology was casual, his son said, until he started inserting mythological figures into a family tree format. Then, his son said, "it just got out of hand." Harold had drawn his Grecian family tree on large pieces of cardboard. In 1980, Judge Newman used a computer software program to present the chart in printable form, but discovered that it was incomplete and had "mistakes." "As my wife keeps saying to me, 'What do you mean mistakes? These people aren't real.' " To get the facts down, the judge leaned on Apollodorus, a writer from the second century B.C. who collected myths and legends. "His whole book is just a collection of 'Who begat whom' and 'Who married whom' " he said. "I'd read through that, and pick up any names in that book that were not yet on my chart." Pausanias, who wrote a kind of Baedeker for ancient Greece around the second century A.D., was also useful, Judge Newman says. "He'd say, 'I was in this town, and the local figure is so and so, and they tell the story that he married so and so, and the children were so and so.' I would go through that, and pick up a lot of names."
Given the heavy demands of his day job, Judge Newman had to squeeze in Greek time on Sundays, at night and in the hours before rosy-fingered dawn made her appearance. The judge eventually sent the work to a university press. It was reviewed by an outside scholar, who found it interesting, but not publishable because it lacked authoritative citations. The scholar, Maria-Viktoria Abricka, who had taught mythology at the University of North Carolina and reads Greek and Latin, agreed to help. She says she joined the project because she felt that such a book, with citations, would offer "a way of tracking the actual stories from the ancient sources themselves, instead of the bland summaries that you get in handbooks or dictionaries of myth."
"There was nothing like it before," Dr. Abricka said. Assisted by a team of graduate students, she delved into the ancient writings and gave the judge some new connections and their sources.
Judge Newman found the material valuable. "I started consulting original texts," he said, "and finding relationships that weren't even in some of the secondary sources." His goal was to identify and cite the oldest authoritative source for each relationship. But because many such works have been lost to history, Dr. Abricka said, "we were dealing with fragments, and putting them together, and seeing what we could come up with." One question was where to begin. "There are different theories of the beginning," Judge Newman said. He chose the version of the Greek poet Hesiod. "He says it started with Chaos," the judge said. "Chaos is really not a person. It's more a concept." But he had to start somewhere. Another challenge was the blurry line between myth and reality. Early Greek kings, for example, often claimed to be descendants of the gods. The judge included such personages only where "a recognized ancient source" reported them as the offspring of mythical figures. Different figures also had the same name. The judge found at least four women named Antigone. In such cases, he would try to determine whether they were different versions of the same person, or different people with different parents. As he notes in the introduction, "There was no registry of births and marriages on Mt. Olympus, or at Athens or Troy." If there was any parallel to judging, he says, it was here: it was like deciding paternity suits. In the chart and the index, the judge used Roman type to signify male figures, and italic for female. But some mythological figures did not fit easily into the scheme. Caenis, for one, was a famous beauty who was raped by Poseidon while walking on the seashore. Poseidon then agreed to her request that he make her into a man, so she would never be a rape victim again. She was transformed into the warrior Caeneus. In the book, Judge Newman lists the figure in both italics and Roman type: Caenis/Caeneus.
The judge's daughter, Leigh Newman, 46, a trusts and estates lawyer in Hartford, said her father's desire to have accurate citations and a system for presenting them reflected "something that one does in writing legal opinions or legal briefs all the time - citing to authority." And Judge Guido Calabresi, a fellow member of the appeals court, says he is not surprised that his colleague would tackle such an ambitious project. He calls Judge Newman "a brilliant legal scholar" who is "unusual, because at the same time, he can see the forest and the trees." One person who is grateful the Newmans stuck with the project is Elizabeth L. Diefendorf, chief librarian of the general research division of the New York Public Library (who was not present when Judge Newman visited years ago). She said she had already added "A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology" to the collection. "I showed it to my colleagues - and I do have some very learned colleagues here - and their faces just lit up," she said. Judge Newman thinks the $75 oversized book could find an audience with another group: crossword puzzle fans. "I think hardly a week goes by they don't have a clue that has to do with Greek mythology," he said. Will Shortz, the puzzle editor of The New York Times, confirmed the judge's suspicion. Mythological figures appear frequently in the paper's puzzles, he said, especially short names with lots of vowels, like Erato, the muse of lyric poetry. "They help set up the juicy long entries," he said. "Mythology is part of our common culture," he said, "It's something I expect New York Times solvers to know." Ms. Newman, the judge's daughter, is a serious crossword puzzle aficionado herself. Yet she admits to knowing little about mythology. So will she use her father's book as a reference tool? No. If a Greek god appears in a clue, she will try to fill in other answers until the mystery solves itself. "Good solvers," she said, "don't use solving aides."

August

New Statesman, August 25 03
Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and contributor to the latest ad fam (XXV: see also under 'BBC History Magazine, November 2003' below) argues that the comparisons between imperial Rome and modern America are not as outlandish as might seem to be the case. He identifies, for example, Rome's refusal to become too involved in the running of other states, but sees more parallels in Rome and the Founding Fathers: their passion for liberty as against kingship, their inability to control their own excesses, and the alienation of rulers from ruled (e.g. the way politicians used the courts to cling to power and then clung to power to avoid the courts). Cf. Jonah Goldberg in The Times September 6 2003, who argues that America does not possess an empire but is more of a hegemon, i.e. leader of a geopolitical pack; and Joe Klein in Time, September 8 2003, who contrasts the ruthless way Caesar put down opposition in Uxellodunum in 51 BC (Gallic Wars, VIII 2) with the problems the Americans are having in Iraq - a country also divided into three parts...

The Times, August 26 03
A Roman foot, covered with sock and sandal, in bronze has been excavated at Southwark in London - an 'unexpected find'. Two letters (August 29) point out that (i) letters from Vindolanda contain details of socks, sandals and underpants being sent to men stationed on Hadrian's Wall, and (ii) a first century AD relief from Palazzo della Cancellaria in Rome clearly shows Roman soldiers wearing socks inside their openwork military boots.

The Mouse in the Museum - 'Minimus' day at the British Museum
Barbara Bell writes a special report for Friends of Classics

On June 14th this year I had my faith in education restored. 300 Primary children, with their teachers and some parent, converged on the British Museum. Their purpose - to enjoy a day of activities connected with Minimus.

The idea came from one of my "Granny Latin" volunteers, at a training day held last year. Her daughter works in the BM and thought it would be fun to hold an event there. Pam Macklin, one of my superb management committee and an advisor for the second Minimus book, took on the considerable amount of organisation and paperwork, assisted by Diana Sparkes and Wendy Hunt. We were also greatly helped by Richard Woff, assistant Director in the Education department of the BM and himself a Classicist.

After checking in at the BM's excellent new schools' centre, the children were welcomed, divided into groups and set off on their different activities on a carousel basis. They were enthralled by a presentation on the Roman army by Legio secunda, a Roman re-enactment group. Two men were dressed as legionary soldiers and one lady dressed as a Roman lady of the period. They even brought a soldier's tent, complete with cooking equipment. Their talk was excellent and the children much enjoyed trying on Roman armour. Nothing like wearing Roman armour to realise the weight that Roman soldiers carried.

Meanwhile another group was off round the Roman galleries, following a trail and completing a quiz. They had the chance to handle Roman coins and other artefacts, clearly described for them by the BM staff. The kids especially appreciated seeing the Vindolanda writing tablets, upon which the stories in Minimus are based. "But they are so tiny!" was frequently heard. A third group joined Helen Forte, illustrator of Minimus , to explore the Minimus website (www.minimus-etc.co.uk). Helen took them through various fun activities and also used her IT skills to de-code the Vindolanda birthday invitation. These young computer wizards loved this activity and the website has been used even more frequently since that day. Helen also brought 2 of her pupils from Moreton Hall prep. school in Suffolk, dressed as Minimus and Vibrissa the cat. Their presence, as they rolled around and chased each other, Tom and Jerry-like, was much appreciated by the children.

Finally each group had a chance to shop, buying various Minimus items - pens, pencils, stickers, post-it notes etc from our special display stand. New for the occasion were Minimus carrier bags and specially - designed t-shirts bearing the slogan "Minimus - the mouse that made Latin cool."

The 150 morning children - mainly from London and the home counties - disappeared at lunch-time and the Minimus staff team just had time for lunch before preparing for the afternoon group. These tended to be from further afield - Wales, Bristol, York - and had travelled in sweltering temperatures. Nevertheless they arrived with boundless enthusiasm and dashed around the galleries as their morning counterparts had done.

At 4.15 they gathered for the final plenary session. Richard Woff presented an interactive session on "How to decode Roman tombstones". With consummate ease he used powerpoint to show a large, incomplete Latin tomb inscription. Having told the children its provenance and background, he got them to decode it. Despite hours of travel and activities and temperatures in the eighties, the children were literally jumping up and down to volunteer their help and be involved. It did my heart good to see their obvious love of learning and of Latin.

As for me, I had a whale of a time, meeting pupils and teachers who enthused about Minimus and Latin and queued for my autograph or to have a photo taken with me. Incredible! St. Joseph's in Oxford proudly showed
me their school Minimus scrapbook and children from Alleyn's Junior school all arrived in Roman costume! Wonderful. As soon as the day finished we were asked "When is the next one going to be?" The answer is likely to be next summer, but in the Yorkshire Museum - the setting of 'Minimus secundus', which is due to appear in February.

Barbara Bell

For further details of any Project activities, contact me on:
bmbellmini@aol.com
Tel/Fax : 0117 9531819

September

The BBC History Magazine, for September 2003
Peter Jones writes on Roman food, comparing the dining styles and diets of rich and poor, discussing 'bread and circuses', etc; and Michael Billings writes on the Herculaneum project, set up to preserve the Roman remains there.

The Times, September 8 2003
Superb gold jewellery unearthed in Winchester three years ago now appears to have been made by a Roman or Greek craftsman rather than by a Briton. Dated to 70-30 BC, the torcs, brooches and bangles were a common ornament in Iron Age Europe, but the craftsmanship suggests a Graeco- Roman origin. It is suggested that they were specially made to suit British tastes and were perhaps part of a major diplomatic gift from the Romans to British chieftains to persuade them not to intervene in wars in Gaul.

October

from October 2003

From The Daily Telegraph, Monday October 20 2003
The unusual 3rdC AD double villa site in the grounds of St Lawrence School, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, has now been shown to be the earliest example of an owner converting rooms in a villa for Christian use: in this case, a baptistery (converted in 5thC AD). The villa complex belonged to a local Romanised British family, with outbuildings for housing slaves and workshops, including smithy, grain drier and smokehouse for curing food.

Taikonaut
We have received this email from David J Critchley:
"The Financial Times on 16th Oct quotes the Chinese coinage "taikonaut" for astronaut, from the Chinese for space. It occurs to me that this may be the first word to be formed by directly combining Chinese and Greek."
Any others that Friends can think of?

Unique Roman Vessel unearthed in Staffordshire
From The Times, October 1 2003
A unique Roman vessel bearing the name of four forts on Hadrian's Wall - Mais, Coggabata, Uxelodunum and Calloglanna - and an individual named Aelius Draco has been unearthed in Staffordshire. Dated to the second century AD, decorated with Celtic-style motifs and inlaid with coloured enamel, it is thought to have been a Roman soldier's souvenir of service on the Wall.

From The Daily Telegraph, October 8 03
Professor Anthony Leggett (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), who won this year's Nobel prize for Physics, read Greats at Oxford before becoming disillusioned with the philosophy element in it, saying 'I wanted to work in a field where, in some sense, nature could tell you whether you were right or wrong'.

November

The Guardian Media Section, November 24th 2003
One of the highlights of 2003 for BBC 1, according to its controller Lorraine Heggessey, was 'Pompeii: The Last Day', which 'attracted a staggering 10 million viewers'. She went on 'I had hoped for something big, but that is mega by today's standards, especially for a one-off programme. I know about Pompeii because I studied classics - I wasn't sure how many other people knew about it'. The programme on the Colosseum attracted 6.8 million viewers. Both programmes attracted more younger people and men, and scored high on the 'appreciation indices'

The Spectator, November 8 2003
The fight to save a Private school that is threatened by Russia’s new cultural and economic thuggery
Rachel Polonsky

In Britain, it is easy to forget what an important human freedom non-state education represents. In post-totalitarian Russia, where civil liberties are in first bud in a hostile climate, this recently regained freedom is menaced, not so much by state ideology as by the rampages of power and money unrestrained by an adequate legal system. My children’s school, a modestly resourced ‘Classical Gymnasium’ founded ten years ago, is threatened with closure at the end of this academic year. Its rented premises have been sold by the City of Moscow to a shadowy company with only a mobile phone number as its address, which plans to build a massage centre on the site of this unique institution.

This is one poignant example of the vulnerability of non-profit-making cultural institutions in a society in which corrupt financial interests can get away with anything provided they do not become involved in liberal politics, and in which legislation is applied as an instrument of political power. The Russian State (formerly the Lenin) Library, the nation’s equivalent of the British Library, has been unusable for the past four years. The fabric of the building is in terminal disrepair, the stacks are unsafe, most books are inaccessible. Meanwhile, neon casinos, gaming arcades, beauty parlours, lingerie shops and strip clubs flash their charms in all corners of this real-estate Babylon among the gold domes of fabulously restored churches. There is nothing here but temptations of the flesh and temples for the repentant soul.

As I go about the City of Reconstruction that Moscow has become, only the proliferation of gourmet coffee shops alleviates my woe. In my street, a faceless office block has just gone up in the midst of a harmonious classical ensemble of early 19th-century university buildings. (Just picture a glass and steel tower in Trinity College Great Court.) Last month, the majestic art deco Military Store round the corner was expeditiously razed (along with a row of smaller 18th- and 19th-century buildings behind it) before pending conservation orders could be enacted, to make space for a shopping and leisure centre. Alexei Klimenko, head of the Union of Artists Historical Preservation Society, recently commented in the press that this demolition was the ‘pure apotheosis of Moscow power being unpunishable’. ‘Capitalism with a Stalinist face’ is how Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, characterises the political state that is rapidly taking shape in Russia. Speaking last week at an awards ceremony for independent journalists, Yavlinsky described Russians as engaged in a lethal struggle to hold on to gains they made in the perestroika years, whether those gains were in the form of money, power or freedom.

When communism collapsed in the early 1990s, Yuri and Elena Shichalin, the founders of the Classical Gymnasium, found themselves presented with a measure of freedom beyond anything they had dreamed of. Classics teachers at Moscow University, the Shichalins had been prepared for this moment not by experience but by academic learning. Yuri Shichalin had begun his university studies in the Faculty of Philosophy in the 1960s, eager to master logic and to read Plato and Aristotle. When his professor opened the first seminar by telling his students that the purpose of their studies was ‘to catch ideological deviants’, Shichalin dropped out and changed to classics. This left him free to read the ancient philosophers and to consider concepts like justice, liberty, democracy and citizenship, without continual resort to Marxism-Leninism.

In 1991, in a hungry Moscow with empty shops and an ugly, uncertain political mood, Shichalin quietly advertised a beginners’ course for adults in Latin and Greek. On the first morning, to his astonishment, a queue of more than 130 people of diverse professions had formed outside his door. Out of this success evolved the idea for a school with a curriculum emphasising ancient languages and mathematics. The Classical Gymnasium was established in 1993. Since then, it has grown from ten to 160 pupils; it gains outstanding results in public examinations, and has alumni in all Moscow’s best higher education institutions, studying everything from physics to history and economics. The Shichalins, who also run a small academic publishing house, have even begun to publish their own textbooks. In a decade, they have created the most inspiring, effective and spirited teaching institution I have encountered in all my educationally pampered life.

Many members of staff are university teachers who accept their low pay because they appreciate the atmosphere and ideals of the school, and its respect for their professional freedom. At the same time, the Shichalins profit from the nation’s enduring pedagogical strengths. Traditional Russian mathematics teaching is considered unrivalled in the world. A Russian banker who, like many of his kind, is educating his children at one of London’s most prestigious public schools recently confided in me that, appalled by the low standard of maths teaching in Britain, he and some Russian friends have started a Saturday class for their children, with Russian teachers. ‘I just don’t understand the English,’ he said. ‘Mathematics is everything.’

For the Shichalins, high culture is everything. Elena Shichalina is the grand-daughter of one of 20th-century Russia’s most eminent classical scholars, Sergei Shervinsky. Her father, Fedor Druzhinin, was an internationally celebrated viola player, who taught at the Moscow Conservatory throughout his career, and performed all over the world (though his wife, a teacher of French at Moscow University, was never allowed to accompany him on tour). Shostakovich dedicated his last composition to Druzhinin, a sonata for viola and piano completed only days before his death. Two of the most often-reproduced photographs of Anna Akhmatova were taken in Elena’s family dacha, where the compellingly beautiful poet often stayed. After Druzhinin had given her a private performance of Bach’s D Minor Chaconne in 1956, Akhmatova dedicated a lyric to him, and invoked the work several times in her densely allusive later poetry.

Though the family’s extensive property in Moscow was expropriated after 1917, the undistinguished Stalin-era apartment in which the Shichalins live is still adorned with Shervinsky’s small but exquisite collection of Russian and European art (whose treasures I dare not publicise), and a magnificent library of rare books. As soon as the Gymnasium pupils are old enough, Yuri Shichalin gives them a lesson at his home. ‘I want them to understand how close the past is,’ he says, showing me his 16th- century edition of Erasmus, ‘that you can touch it in these books.’ To the Shichalins, these treasures represent the survival of civilisation in the face of barbarism ... objects of uncomplicated love and real hope which they want to share with another generation of Russian children. They earnestly believe that only this will ensure the preservation of all that is finest in their cultural heritage, a heritage which, for good scholarly reasons, they regard as essentially European. To witness the effect on children of the Shichalins’ fresh and unembarrassed appreciation of high culture is thrilling. The living tradition embodied by the Shichalins represents the best of Russia, but everything they have created since perestroika is now threatened by official corruption and indifference. Faced with the demise of their school, they recently called a crisis meeting to inform parents of its grave position, and to solicit ideas for its salvation. We need a miracle, everyone agreed, or, failing that, an oligarch who will help us to buy a building. Again and again Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s name was raised. Various parents claimed, with differing degrees of plausibility, that they had channels of inside access to Russia’s richest billionaire. Before he was arrested by the FSB at gunpoint in the early hours of 25 October and incarcerated in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison, the oil tycoon had become known not only as a sponsor of the liberal opposition parties like Yavlinsky’s Yabloko, but also, through his Open Russia Foundation, as a Maecenas and a sponsor of independent education. In the past few years, Khodorkovsky has shrewdly spent money on enhancing his international reputation, including the US Library of Congress and Lord Snowdon among the beneficiaries of his charitable grants. At the same time he has, less visibly, given large sums of money to needy individuals and institutions whose activities have the potential to build a civil society for his native Russia. His arrest will hurt many besides the rich and the powerful.

There is scarce hope now of a handout from Khodorkovsky that will save the Classical Gymnasium, which in its small way gives such dignity to Russia’s cultural past and offers such hope for its future. That is why I am making known its plight to the humane and enlightened heart of the British establishment, in which Russia’s wealthiest exiles continue to seek refuge, just as they have for the past two centuries. If the jackboot of Russian history does not come down on institutions like the Shichalins’ school, the Russian children now being educated in the ancient, fortune-blessed public schools of England may (one day, perhaps) have a good reason to come home.

December

The Sunday Telegraph, December 14th 2003
Archaeologists at the Colosseum in Rome have worked out how the under-floor machinery worked to get the animals on stage. The animals, driven into cages underground, were hoisted by slaves working a pulley mechanism to a level immediately below the arena. At that point there was a sloping ramp leading into the arena, up which the animals leapt when their cage door was opened, making it appear to the spectators as if they had appeared by magic.