Andromache's Plea

On Saturday 2 November 2013, Heffers bookshop sponsored the Second Classics Fact, Fiction and Children's Literary Festival, featuring luminaries like Mary Beard, Simon Scarrow and Lindsey Davis. One of the events was a balloon debate. Five of us were asked to plead the case of a character from Classical mythology and all but one of us would be chucked out of the balloon. I spent several hours crafting a moving plea for my chosen heroine, Andromache. I even brought a black scarf to throw over my head à la Leighton's moving painting.

Andromache in exile by Frederick Lord Leighton

I am Andromache. My name means Battle of Men
Though perhaps it should be battle of brothers
I had seven of them: a quiver full.
I had to be strong, growing up with that lot.
I heard them plan hunting trips as I sat at my loom
And my shuttle became a hunting spear 
in the thickets of warp and weft.

I heard them plan raiding expeditions as I sat at my spindle
And my winding skein was a file of men on a mountain path.

I saw them slaughtered by Achilles in one afternoon
Along with my father
While my hands were red up to the elbows
In a simmering cauldron of dying beetles 
with its floating strands of yarn. 

My life unraveled; the woe unwove me.
And when Artemis slew my mother
Nothing was left but an empty loom
A bare frame of my life… A taut spare web of grief.

Then you came, Hector. 
You became not just my husband,
But my father, my mother, my brothers.
You let me weave my unraveling weft 
into your strong warp.
And we became a new tapestry together. 
You took me away a place of happy memories
Made hateful by the son of Peleus
And you brought me to high-towered Troy.

We had a son, a little lord of the citadel.
I called him Astyanax, you called him Scamandrius
After the river where we once picnicked
A buzzing, honey-scented afternoon, among the asphodel.

My brothers taught me about the hunt
But you taught me about war.
You, and your house of strong women:
Hecuba, the matriarch
Cassandra, never afraid to speak her mind
Helen, the sister-in-law from Hades
Sparta, rather… Same thing.
And at the end Polyxena, who boldly went to her sacrifice.

The last time I saw you Hector, the time
you frightened our son with you horsehair plume
I begged you not to seek the thick of battle 
making me a widow and our son an orphan
But to guard the part of the wall by the wild fig tree
Where three attempts had previously been made
By the crafty Greeks. But did you listen to my strategy? 
No. You went out
And got yourself killed by Achilles.

Not long after that, they took our little boy up
the last remaining tower to throw him off.
But before they could lay hands on him,
he stepped into air of his own volition.
Lord of the citadel to the very end.
More courageous than a thousand Greeks.

And now the son of the man who killed my husband
My father and my seven brothers
Has taken me as his prize.
The psychopath son of Achilles, Neoptolemus: 
Red-haired, hot-headed, cold-blooded Pyrrhus. 

Hector foretold my future: 
To ply the loom for another woman
And carry a heavy water jug to and from the fountain.
Jostled by laughing children and happy families.
To remain childless 
or worse yet, bear children 
to a man whose house murdered my house.

I am a “paragon of misery”. 
I do not fear death. I pray for it.
Like my brave little boy, 
I would throw myself from the ramparts of Troy
Or even from your balloon. 
That would be true bravery.
But if you judge me worthy, 
I will do something even braver: 
I will live. 

props did not help me!

How did I do? Well, Prof Paul Cartledge cannily chose the Odysseus' faithful dog, Argos. How many British would vote to save a poor pooch being tossed from the balloon? A goodly number. Ruth Downie chose Dido and won the vote of all women who've ever been lied to and abandoned by a cad like Aeneas. (Quite a few, as it turned out.) Rugby-loving, football-referencing Harry Sidebottom plumped for Hector: thick but noble, (and doomed). He got a robust number of masculine votes. But the deserved winner was witty, Diet-Coke-fuelled Natalie Haynes, who moonlights as a stand up comic and Booker Prize Judge. She made a moving and impassioned plea for Odysseus.

As for me, Andromache, I got tossed out first. 

Riddle of the Roman Vase

The next time you are in central London, you should visit the Portland Vase in Room 70 of the British Museum.

The ‘Portland Vase’ is the modern name for one of the most famous pieces of Roman art in the world. It is a beautiful blue and white glass amphora made in the extremely difficult ‘cameo technique’. In this method of manufacture, opaque white glass covers darker glass (watch a demo HERE) and is then painstakingly carved away to show a scene in relief (i.e. ‘bumpy'). We know from chemical analysis that this beautiful vase was made in Roman times. We know from the glass technique used that it was probably produced around the time of Rome’s first emperor, Octavian Augustus (between about 30 BC and AD 20). We know that the vase used to have a pointy bottom, like all amphoras, but that this was broken during its many adventures (check out Wikipedia or the excellent Mystery of the Portland Vase) and a new flat bottom was fitted.

Everybody agrees that the Portland Vase is a masterpiece, but not everybody agrees about what it was used for or who commissioned it. (A vase this finely-crafted and expensive must have been ordered by a very rich person.) And the biggest mystery is: who are the seven figures on the vase?

Only one of the figures is easy to identify. It is found on the side which scholars call the ‘A-side’. It is the flying baby with the torch and bow: the Roman god of love, Cupid. His presence means that the couple below him are about to fall in love.

But who are the two lovers? Who is the lady with wet or dishevelled hair and a snake in her lap? Who is the young man she is holding on to? And who is that pensive bearded guy over to the right?

On the other side – the ‘B-side’ - are some more mysterious seated figures: a naked youth, a woman with a hairdo datable to around 30 BC, and a woman holding a downturned torch and tearing her hair. Who could they be? And what are they all sitting on?

We can identify Cupid on the A-side by his wings and bow, but none of the others are obvious. This may be because they are real people, rather than Greek heroes or Roman gods. Another interesting aspect is that women are the central figures on both sides. But that still doesn’t help us.

Who are they? Scholars have put forward more than 50 different theories.

Susan Walker, Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, presents an exciting theory in her book The Portland Vase (Objects in Focus). She believes the woman with the snake is Cleopatra and that Octavia is on the other side. Those of you who have read The Beggar of Volubilis know that Octavia (sister of the emperor Augustus) lost her husband Antonius to Cleopatra, but after their deaths she nobly raised their surviving children as her own. Susan Walker's theory is quite persuasive, but it was an asp that killed Cleopatra, not a sea-snake, and her identification of the bearded man as Mark Anthony's father is also unconvincing.

Other scholars believe the woman with the snake is Thetis, the beautiful sea-nymph and mother of Achilles. It was prophesied that her son would be more powerful than his father. All the gods of Olympus desired her, but Jupiter knew it would be fatal if one of them sired her child: that child would be more powerful than any of them. So he told a mortal, Peleus, the secret of winning Thetis. ‘She can change into any creature,’ warned Jupiter, ‘but if you hang on tight then she will be yours.’ Is the handsome young hero Peleus? And is the man watching Jupiter?

The only problem with that theory is that she’s holding onto the handsome man, not the other way round. And Jupiter does not have any of his trademark identifying symbols. No thunderbolt, staff or crown. And who would have commissioned a fabulously expensive amphora showing the origins of a Greek hero? The Romans believed they were descended from the Trojans, mortal enemies of the Greeks.

Stephen Pollock-Hill is a modern glassmaker. He owns one of the few glass factories in Britain where glass is still blown in the ancient way. His firm – Nazeing Glass – has produced specialty items such as railway signal lenses, glass wall-blocks and laboratory beakers and tubes. (right: Stephen with engraver Lesley Pyke © Lesley Pyke)

One of Stephen’s passions is the Portland Vase. Over the next year, Nazeing Glass is going to produce ten interpretations of the vase. Skilled glass-makers will blow cobalt blue glass and then coat it with opaque white glass at just the right temperature so that the coating sticks and doesn’t make the glass underneath crack. Then ten engravers from all over the world will each carve their version of the figures on the Portland Vase. (You can watch a fascinating clip of one of them, Lesley Pyke, on her website www.lesleypyke.com.) This project will cost over £100,000!

One beautiful spring evening, on Tuesday 22 April 2009, I went to the Art Workers Guild near Great Ormond Street in London to hear Stephen give a talk about the vase. Speaking in a beautiful lecture hall full of portraits of famous craftsmen and artists, Stephen presented his theory about the identity of the seven figures on the vase. Members of The Glass Circle were there, and also Dr Paul Roberts, the Curator of Greek & Roman Antiquities at the British Museum and an expert on Roman cameo glass.

Stephen Pollock-Hill believes the woman with the snake is Atia, mother of Octavian and Octavia. She claimed to have been visited by a snake at the sanctuary of Apollo nine months before the birth of Octavian. (In Roman times a snake was good luck, not bad luck, and Apollo is often associated with a snake.) The man she is clutching is Gaius Octavian, her husband and the man with the beard could be the Trojan hero Aeneas – ancestor of Romulus and Remus. What about the B-side? Stephen believes the woman in the centre is Octavian Augustus’s second wife Scribonia, who was rejected in favour of Livia. The downturned torch could show her failure. The handsome man on the left is Octavian himself, the future emperor, gazing into the eyes of Livia, who would become his empress and mother of Rome’s second emperor, Tiberius.

Who do YOU think the figures are? Can you find other examples of a woman with a snake or a woman with a downturned torch? (Is it a torch of 'love' or a torch of 'life'?) The two handsome men and the bearded man don’t have any special attributes, so they might well be real people. Any ideas about what the woman with the torch is sitting on? Could it be a funeral pyre? Or something else? You should also think about who would commission such a fabulous piece of art. 

I can’t wait to hear your theories.

In the meantime, Stephen and his glassmakers will soon be firing up the furnaces to make modern versions of this mysterious and beautiful Roman masterpiece, the Portland Vase.

P.S. Since I wrote this blog, another magnificent cameo-glass vase has appeared: the Bonham Vase or Newby Vase as it's also called. Read about it HERE.

[The 17 books in the Roman Mysteries series are perfect for children aged 9+, especially those studying Romans as a topic in Key Stage 2. You can watch season one of a BBC adaptation of the Roman Mysteries on iTunes.]