The Ancients - Race & Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

For the first 4 centuries AD/CE, the ancient Greek novel was the most popular literary form in the Roman Empire and at the heart of these popular texts is discussion over race and identity. Could a Phoenician living within the Empire also identify as Roman? Could they be both X and Y? And can we use these novels as a lens through which to see how people in the ancient Mediterranean viewed prominent powers beyond Rome’s borders, for instance the Kingdom of Axum in modern day Ethiopia. To explain this and more, with a particular focus on Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, Tristan spoke to Dr Mai Musié, Public Engagement Manager at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford.  Wishing you all a very happy Boxing Day from the Ancients team! If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating Ancient content, then subscribe to our Ancient History Thursday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit.To download, go to Android or Apple store

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, first of all, happy Boxing Day. I hope you all had a great Christmas. And I know, I know you're now itching to get back to Ancients podcast. So it's great that you're here because we've got a good topic today. We're talking all about race and identity, race and ethnicity in the ancient Greek novel. And in particular, we're focusing in on one particular novel, and that is Heliodorus' Aethiopica. Now, this is a really remarkable piece of work, especially when looking at race and identity in the ancient Greek novel, in the Roman Empire, in the Eastern Mediterranean during the first few centuries AD. And joining me to explain why, I was delighted to get on the podcast Dr. May Musier. May is the public

engagement officer at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. She's done a lot of work around the ancient Greek novel. This is one of her great passions of ancient history. But she also does work elsewhere in ancient and medieval history. She's done work bringing to the fore ancient and medieval manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea, bringing them more into the light, particularly those at the Bodleian Libraries. And she's also done a lot of work around the outreach of classics, classics in communities, bringing subjects such as Latin, ancient Greek and classical civilisation to more schools in the UK. May, it was absolutely

wonderful to get on the podcast. She's so lovely to talk to. And without further ado, here she is to talk all about race and identity in the ancient Greek novel. May, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. It's an absolute pleasure. Now, the ancient Greek novel, this is quite something. The dominant literary form of the first four or so centuries CE or AD, and ethnicity, fluidity of identity, these topics, they're right at the heart of these texts. That's absolutely right. It's really interesting that they start exploring these issues of ethnicity and identity and multi-identity, hybrid identities, under the

climate of a new world, I suppose, under the Roman Empire, where you've had Greeks who occupy multiple identities, Romans who occupy multiple identities, and, you know, the world that encompasses. So, you know, we're going to be talking about the Syrians and Ethiopians with quotation mark, Egyptians and so forth. So there is a absolute huge range of regions and languages and cultures and influences. And this is where the kind of new literary form sort of came out of. Well, you mentioned this is a new literary form. So May, as background for the start of the podcast, I mean, what are the ancient Greek novels? What is an ancient Greek novel? what are the ancient greek novels what is an ancient greek novel yes that's actually quite interesting a lot of modern people tend to think the novels or novella as we know it really sort

of grew out in the sort of 18th and 19th century however they can be traced back to the ancient greek or roman world and so these these Greek and Roman novels grew out of, you know, sort of travellers tales, epics, poetry, and, you know, myths, and so forth. And we have at the five complete Greek novels at the moment, and two complete Roman novels, but there are novels on the fringes too. So, for example, the story of Alexander the Great in the Alexander Romance, and also Lucian's True History, which some people would suggest that was our earliest form of science fiction

because it involves intergalactic warfare, which is really interesting between sun and moon people. But the Greek novels are sometimes considered as romance novels, because they involve two male and female protagonists, who are sometimes, you know, they are kidnapped or separated, and so forth. And then they go through various adventures to try and be reunited, or actually, you know, sort of to try and get back to the original home. And so you've got, you know, five novelists who fit into that kind of mode.

Carroton, who wrote Caleroe in the first century CE. Xenophon of Ephesus, who wrote an Ephesian tale in first century CE. And then you have Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, which is around the second century CE. And then you have Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, which is around the second century CE. And Achilles Tatius, Leucopae and Clytophon in the second century CE. And then you come across Heliodorus, which we'll be talking about in a more depth later on, the Ethiopian stories or otherwise known as the Athopika in the third and fourth century CE. You do have the Petronius Satyricon, which I think a lot of people would recognise and, you know, sort of have influenced later sort of literary books,

such as the Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, for example, or The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tony, was it Tom? I cannot remember his surname um but you know they've been the sort of basis for modern fictional novellettes. And if we focus a bit more on these novelists first unfortunately I couldn't help you out with the Bonfire of the Vanities I'm afraid I did not know that author. It just went completely blank there for a moment. That's quite all right. Moving on to these novelists in particular, because these novelists for the ancient Greek novels,

they all seem to come from more towards the east of the Roman Empire, shall we say, east of the Aegean Sea. Yes, absolutely. I think the novelists themselves are representative of the time that they were living in a very hybridized, you know, sort of mixed world of the Roman Empire. The Heliodorus tells us he is Syrian. Caritan is from Aphrodisias. Ecclestasius from Alexandria.

And Xenophon from Ephesus. And Longus seems to be the odd one out, who seems to come from mainland Greece. And I suppose, like us, the Greeks and Romans kind of struggled to understand the variety of different races and ethnicities around them. And how they viewed foreign cultures was very much tied up with how they viewed themselves. So being Greek or Roman was sort of fluid and oscillatory. And these terms were constantly redefined, reviewed and scrutinized. Well, we will definitely get on to Heliodorus in a second, as you mentioned right there and before. But there's one other term I'd like to quickly ask about before we go there. And this is the term the people in the ancient Greek novels, which are referred to as the other.

May, who are these people? Well, I suppose even from very, very early literary forms, you know, we have the epics, the other tend to be sort of these monstrous beings on the periphery, or the sort of Amazonian types where they sort of inhabit a topsy-turvy world. And then later on, as there were far more knowledge, you know, through exploration, through discoveries, the other then become to encompass Persians and Ethiopians and Egyptians and Syrians and Phoenicians. So these people who are perhaps non-Greek, but then it becomes rather complicated when you have the Romans in the mix.

And there is sort of a very subtle conversation going on in these novels about who really are the Romans, you know, if they cannot be the other, but then at the same time, they are non-Greeks too. So as time goes on, you go through literary forms such as, you know, as I said, the epics and poetry from Homer to Herodotus to Ctesias, as you have far more contact with the East, inverted commas, this other becomes rather complicated. And so these novels are written within the backdrop of really complicated, nuanced views of the other.

Well, let's now then focus in on one of these novels, a novel which I know you have a lot of interest in, which is Heliodorus' Ethiopica, or please correct me if I'm saying that wrong but May what is the Ethiopica? So the Ethiopica if I go back to the beginning is written by a novelist called Heliodorus of Emersa and just to reiterate that we actually don't really know very much about the novelists themselves. So we've only got a handful, you know, sort of information about themselves. And Heliodorus of Emessa, his novel is thought to have been written either in the third century or fourth century CE. And he sets his tale in the either late sixth century BC or early fifth century BC. So actually, this is quite common where you have novelists setting their stories in the glorious Greek past. And that's in itself a

rather interesting thread that we could talk about of why do they do that and the relationship they have between the sort of the past and the view of themselves and the current contemporary Roman Empire. So in any case, the novel is set during the foundation of Alexandria and during the Persian occupation of Egypt. The great king, the Persian king, remains nameless. And then we have, you know, two sort of heroes. So what's interesting is that all the novelists tend to have a very strong female heroine at the centre of their novels. And so sometimes the sort of male counterpart tends to be slightly secondary. So the interesting tale about the Ethiopian story and the reason why it's called the Ethiopica is that the heroine

Karikleia is Greek and it turns out that actually she's born from Ethiopian royalty and I suppose the whole story is really her journey to rediscover herself and her lineage her royal lineage, but also the exploration of Ethiopia in the Greek and Roman imagination and what that means. And really about decentralising Greekness and actually refocusing the sort of countries on the periphery like Ethiopia and Egypt to perhaps have a wider discussion about the you know, the contribution of these cultures to Greeks and Romans. And so it's a really interesting tale where it begins in the middle and you are like a detective piecing things together, little clues of who Calorea is and who these different people in terms of, you know, ethnicities are. And at the end, you sort of solve the mystery.

And what's really interesting is that Heliodorus only gives you information one bit at a time. I mean, exactly, exactly there, May. I mean, I could go on so many different questions now from that. But let's focus on the character of Chariclea then. Does it almost feel as this detective story is unraveling as it were I mean is this big revelation that she's actually Ethiopian is this only revealed at the end I mean how is she portrayed during the text do we expect this big revelation? So it's a sort of multi-layered reading so you would have to read it at least three four times

and each time it sort of reveals a different part. And then you have things that become obvious as you're reading it continuously. And, you know, that contributes to your greater understanding. So in no way is it revealed that Cara Clare has this kind of mysterious dual heritage, shall we say, until you have this kind of great reveal. However, you do have different narrators in the story dropping little hints. So you have, you know, sort of oracles talking about, you know, the sort of crown being placed on the sort of heroine's head in a distant land. And there is is a real real emphasis on black and white as colours there's a real emphasis on Caracalla as this person who embodies Greekness however through

the exploration of you know the sort of her journeys she changes and becomes very much the embodiment of diverse cultures and And her counterpart, Theagenes, is actually quite interesting because he comes off, you know, right from the beginning, this extremely strong Greek hero, you know, very much in the mould of Achilles. And so you've got this real image of a Greek hero. And then by the end, he too stays in Ethiopia and accepts his role as a future Ethiopian king. But in the middle, he begins to sort of acquire different languages. So he starts learning Egyptian and so forth. So that's really, really interesting, which makes it very different to other novels,

is the sort of focus on different languages and why Heliodorus suddenly kind of realises, actually, if I want to build a really diverse, complicated world, then languages and ethnicities have to be quite central. And he makes a conscious point to make that. I mean, I love what you said there. And it is so, so interesting, because it's not just Caraclaire then, is it? As you say, it seems to be all of these major figures in this story who embrace different identities, interactions with these different cultures and these different languages. It's not just Caraclaire. This is a huge thread in the whole story. Absolutely. Absolutely, Tristan. So what you're battling with is this kind of tradition of portraying sort of these countries

on the periphery so such as Persia this sort of faraway world of lovestruck oriental kings and powerful eunuchs and this kind of really far away land you know akin to Arabian Nights and that has a similar sort of framing with Egypt as well this kind of dual nature of Egypt being extremely ancient even to the Greeks this powerful civilization but at the same time slightly primitive you know but you know sort of full of charlatans and that kind of dual a very sort of conflicted image of Egypt. And that is epitomised in one of the characters in the Ethopica. And then you come to Ethiopia, which in itself is such an imaginative place in Greek and Roman mythology.

This sort of place at the periphery of known civilisation. So what you get is this kind of journey of the other, but different kinds of the other and what that means to the Greeks and the exploration of Greek identity and what that really actually means. What does Greek identity and Greekness really mean? And so by the end of the story, you start to realise actually the story does not end in Greece where you would, you know, that's the natural sort of progression really. And if you look back at, you know, earlier fictional tales like the epics, you always return

to the centre and the centre is Greece. However, in Hylidorus' story, the centre is Greece. However, in Heliodorus' story, the centre becomes Ethiopia. And we're talking about Ethiopia in a sort of how the ancients perceived Ethiopia, not modern Ethiopia. So there's an interesting sort of marrying up of the real Ethiopia with the sort of fictionalised Ethiopia. So Ethiopia as in Meroe and Nubia and modern day Sudan. And then Ethiopia as in the sort of there's a mention of the Aksumite civilization and so forth. So there's a, you know, there's a real interesting interplay between historical details. So you'll get, you know, sort of real

names, real places with the fictionality of the characters setting and the sort of imagined worlds. Now, you did mention earlier, so I'm going to harken back to it. And this is when you mentioned how this whole story is set, well, Heliodorus is writing in the fourth century CE or AD. This story is set with the Persians. This is pre-Alexander the Great. This is like almost a thousand years earlier. And if he's using this setting to talk about all these new ideas and this hybrid identity, why do you think he sets this story so far back in the past? That is a really great question. So there are obviously different ideas about why the novelists and particularly the two novelists. So out of the five novels, two novels concentrate and have a greater Persian

engagement. So you have Carrotin's Caleroe and then you have Heliodorus' Athopica. And interestingly, they, you know, Carrotin is at the beginning and Heliodorus is at the end of that timeline. So it's interesting how they sort of speak to each other or Heliodorus definitely speaks to Keratin. Carrotton's imagery of the Persians to talk about current contemporary images of the Parthians you know that the Romans dealt with and I guess it's that sort of complexities of the novelists themselves of how they feel about the contemporary political situation. And perhaps they feel much easier to subtly interrogate the Roman powers of the day by constructing an idealised golden past of the Greeks, of when the Greeks were superior, when the Greeks were at the top, rather than, you know,

the contemporary Roman situation where the Greeks are, in some ways, being conquered by the Romans. So there's a real kind of subtle questioning about the Roman emperor and his sort of, you know, sort of his control through the imagery of the Persian king and the sort of satrap system and you know which is quite similar to the governorship of the Roman empire and so forth so in a way I think there is this comfortability of setting their stories in the comfortable Greek past where they can subtly use different characters to interrogate their contemporary landscape. I mean, Maya, it is really, really interesting. Forgive me if I'm barking up the wrong tree. I mean, it's also quite interesting how it's set in a time where it seemed as if it was like

people thought you were either Greek or you were Phoenician, you were either Greek or you were Egyptian, Greek or Ethiopian or whatever. But actually, this whole novel, even though it's set in that time, it's exploring these ideas that you can be both Greek and Ethiopian. You can be both X and X. Absolutely. It's this kind of hybrid identities, which Homi Bhabha, a contemporary, well, I say a current post-colonial theorist, talks about these kind of hybrid identities where you can tap into multiple identities. You don't necessarily have to stick to the identity that you're born with in terms of ethnicity, but you can tap into other identities. And this is very much what the Greek and Roman authors talk, you know,

through their fictional tales, talk about is the complexities of identities. And in some ways, the novels sort of interrogate Greekness and, you know, often question Greek superiority. And so by projecting and framing certain characters as, you know, sort of the embodiment of, you know, Greek superiority that they have in, for example, in Theogenes, they are in some ways actually questioning that. Do we have the right to be superior? There's a, you know, mention of Athens in Hylidoris' novel. But when Athens is mentioned, the setting is a story of treachery and, you know, sort of illicit passion. And, you know, there's a real kind of image of Athenian people that is actually quite negative rather than positive. So it really turns it upside down of what you think being Greek is and Greek places and the ideas of Greek people. I mean, because this complexity, this fluidity of identity, is this also emphasised through the skin colour of Caraclea? Yes, thank you for bringing that up, because that is actually quite a really, really

interesting tale. So colour doesn't seem to be a huge sort of theme in the earlier novels. However, novels. However, in Hylidorus, it's absolutely central. I mean, the main story, really, is Caraclea, who is actually, looks white, but is black. And so that becomes rather complicated. And the reason why she is white, later on, is revealed is that a mother the Ethiopian queen Persina and her husband whilst they are in the throes of passion in bed she gazes upon a painting of Andromeda and you know Andromeda is being rescued by Perseus. If you remember the myth of Andromeda, she is actually from an Ethiopian heritage, so from royal Ethiopian heritage. And so she gazes upon that painting and then that is imprinted on the unborn child. Now, lots of scholars have researched about that sort of the impression on an unborn child in the mother's

womb, and the theories behind that amongst Greek philosophers and so forth. And so that is really interesting of how Heliodorus uses colour to talk about colour, black and white. And there's a, you know, sort of, there's no subtlety about it at all it's quite central to the story interestingly Andromeda in a lot of paintings and a lot of you know pottery is painted white but there are a couple instances where her colour is mentioned in some literary texts so Heliodorus is really kind of drawing our attention to the complexities of you know race and what that means in terms of skin tones and what is race in you know and in these conversations i mean absolutely if we do go to the end of the story i know huge spoilers alert indeed but like so i mean how does it therefore

end up with the monarchs of ethiopia Karaklea coming back together as it were the revelation is there and the recognition is there also how does that all come about yes so we just to say that um that the novel also happens to be the longest in comparison to the other texts so in the uh Heliodorus the tale is is told within 10 books that we have at the moment and you have this sort of linear journey rather than a circular journey of where you begin in greece you go through egypt and the reveal is obviously the ethiopia the caracalla returns to her place of birth and that happens in um but you know it starts from book seven where you've got the interaction with Persians in Memphis and then that moves to Morawi and in book 10 you've got this kind of great reveal in the court in the

court scene where Carac Claire is actually sort of seen as a stranger and, you know, king and queen are, you know, sort of presiding over her trial, and she's about to be sort of burnt. And then there's various different trials. And then, you know, there's a great reveal about her identity. And then her mother realises that actually it's her daughter. And so, you know, that sort of scene is really, really interesting, because you've got this kind of interaction of Greeks and Ethiopians in this sort of court scene. And so Ethiopia provides a very dramatic climax and resolution to the story. And so, you know, the sort of, the action takes place in the following countries. So Greece, Egypt and Ethiopia, Caraclia and Theagenes end up in Ethiopia,

but there are sort of dramatic actions taking place that you're not quite certain if they're going to live or die. Lise on Tentahooks. to spying, wardrobes, to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So you mentioned that persian episode there which i'm definitely going to rewind to and go to in due course but i mean may what you were saying there what is so interesting is that like when you think of that journey as it were my mind instantly goes to the likes of odysseus and that hero's journey home as it were and then right then right at the end, you have that, you know,

that great climax when he's back at Ithaca. You can see so many similarities with this story, this homecoming, but rather than going back to somewhere, an island near Greece, it's Cara Claire going back to Ethiopia. Absolutely. And so I guess it's a real questioning of, well, is Ethiopia the sort of primitive, barbaric nation, you know, sort of mythologized nation that is constructed through Greek eyes? Or is it something else? And through Cariclaire particularly and her heritage is this kind of acceptance of a dual heritage so she is

Greek and Ethiopian and I suppose that comes back to the central point of hybrid identities you could be more than just one thing you know and and that's by the end it's the acceptance of that and it speaks to the novel's own kind of Syrian background where he can see himself as a Phoenician, the, you know, descendant of the sun. He sees himself as a very much, you know, embodying Greekness, but also is a Roman citizen. And so it's just this kind of tapping into different identity markers of, you know, to build a whole person and their kind of understanding of themselves. So Karakleia becomes whole by becoming Greek and Ethiopian. I mean, sorry, slight tangent here again, but my mind instantly was going to say as well, because when you think of the time period as well, the 4th century CE,

this is a time when the kingdom of axum and merui as well they're flourishing they're absolutely flourishing at this time there's strong connections between axum and the roman empire and further east and further south as well do you think this might have been for heliodorus an acknowledgement and the changing attitudes maybe in the greco-roman empire at this time of the importance of the astonishing culture of Axum, of that part of the world in that time period? Yes, absolutely. And I think we have to be sort of slightly careful here

of projecting what we thought that the Romans and Greeks thought about other cultures and, you know, how they thought about different cultures. I mean, you know, the novels themselves just show the sort of cultural exchanges going on between, you know, Greece and Rome and other sort of countries surrounding that Mediterranean melting pot and the contribution of other cultures to that great civilization. And so, you know, the plots of these Greek novels, which take their kind of Greek protagonists into so-called barbarian lands, where their Greekness can be measured against and defined by other ethnicities, such as Persian, Egyptian, Indian, Ethiopian, and Phoenician, you know, the basic

plot can actually be read as a metaphor for the kind of unstable ethnic identity of the authors, and generally as a kind of contribution to a discourse on this area. And so, you know, there has been really great work exploring how the genre of the Greek romance itself draws on non-Hellenic traditions of storytelling by assimilating those marginal traditions to the dominant Hellenic culture. And so by doing that, it's kind of redefining the boundaries of greatness and sort of, you know, which some people may have seen as a culture in itself, danger of becoming marginal to Rome. So in some ways, in these stories, the Greeks can perhaps identify with Egypt or identify with Ethiopia, you know, and so forth. And then in the real contemporary world, it really does show the kind of interactions that the sort of, you know,

neither superior, neither inferior kind of cultural, political interactions. And with, you know, very much emphasis on trade too that was going on around that time absolutely indeed may and before we go on to heliodorus and his appearance in the novel right at the end i'd like to rewind slightly because you did mention that there is this episode with the persians in memphis so i mean quickly let's really delve into this episode because i've got in my notes here the Arsacare the Arsacare the Arsacare episode I mean May what is this? Right well this is um book seven of the Ethiopian tale and um Asaki is the Persian sort of royalty so So she's not queen, she is the sister of the great king. So in the story,

you never actually meet the great king. And in some ways, that's quite interesting itself. There's this kind of person, this great power in the distance. It's a bit like Star Wars. It's a bit like Star Wars. It's a bit like Star Wars. Well, you've got the Great Emperor, haven't you? And you don't really get to see the Great Emperor until later on down, you know, a few, you know, sort of Star Wars episodes. It's a big revelation in itself. Exactly. And so he controls from his power base, but you never quite get to meet him, you know. And then you have his sort of, you know, subordinates controlling the different regions that are under the great Persian Empire. Now, Asakir is in Memphis, and she is

married to the Satrap, Persian Satrap, who has governorship over Egypt. So she belongs to the Persian imperial class, which rules occupied Egypt. And she is the wife of a really powerful and influential satrap. And as I said, a sister of the Persian king. So her power and authority are dependent on and are elevated by these two men. The satrap has to go and deal with a battle with the Ethiopians. And the king is clearly, you know, in Persia. And so there is this period of absence where Asaki attempts to play the man and takes an active role in ruling, thereby invading what is traditionally the inside kind of elite space of masculine power.

Furthermore, Asaki has to sort of contend with one of the novel's main protagonists, whose hyper-masculinity and Greekness is contrasted with Asaki's foreignness and overt sexual nature. So we talked about Caraclet's counterpart and her partner, who is the sort of embodiment of a Greek hero and hyper-masculinity. And so Asaki's character is constructed as a stereotypical outsider. Her ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality are used to portray her in a negative light, particularly emphasising her as this kind of hyper-sexualised barbarian, a sort of a familiar image steeped in literary tradition, which you might recognise.

So really, you know, part of that image is actually, you know, we're getting an opportunity to investigate, well, how far can this image be interrogated and what does Heliodorus do in order to offer us alternative readings to the role of Asaki and how does she disrupt the sort of insider outsider dynamics and how does she manage her femininity and ethnicity while in a predominantly male environment I mean just keep going just keep going, just keep going, that's great.

Well, I suppose, you know, we talked about the kind of framing of the novels, the historical framings and this kind of once upon a time in a land far away, very much akin to Arabian Nights. And, you know, with these kind of lovestruck oriental kings comes these lovestruck sort of royal women and this is where the interesting interplay with cariton's earlier novel caleroe comes in where heliodorus sort of reverses and sort of reverses the plot in some ways. In Carrot and Story, you have a female Greek protagonist who, you know, not of her own accord,

ends up in the Persian court and she is gazed upon by the great king and the great king wants her to become his concubine, right? And so there's this kind of, you know, he sends out his Persian eunuch, his greatubine, right? And so there's this kind of, you know, he sends out his Persian eunuch, his great servant to try and entice Caleroe to submit to the great king, right? Now, that is subverted in Heliodorus' novel. So when Theagenes arrives at the court of Asaki, you have this kind of like a mirror image of the relationship between Calero in The Great King and Theogenes and Asaki, the princess, the Persian princess. So then, you know, where the relationship of the male, you know, gazing upon the woman is sort of kind of accepted in Carr keratin's tale it's rather un you know accepted

in hilijuris's tale so it's a sort of it twists it around where asakis has the female gaze rather than the male gaze and she is the one in power now this doesn't sit comfortably with greece and romans in terms of feminine power and it's that kind of exploration of feminine power, but it's, you know, a barbarian feminine power, which is even more sort of seen in a negative light. And, you know, we can think about, you know, sort of other characters in Greek and, you know, sort of tradition like Medea, for example,

who subverts that, Clitomenestra, who subverts that, Cleopatra for example who subverts that clitomanestra who subverts that cleopatra even who subverts that so in asaka you do have a lot of kind of historical and literary female characters coming to the fore there may it's really interesting how these stereotypes of these other as it were what they thought were the other, seem in Heliodorus more, shall we say, visible through women in the tale more than through the men? Absolutely. And I've always thought that Heliodorus could have been our sort of feminist author without realising that he's a feminist. Because in comparison, Heliodorus' novel has a greater concentration of female characters. And these female characters have, as the story progresses, far more power and authority than,

say, in previous novels or in previous literary traditions. So this is quite interesting for someone to write this in the third fourth century a.d and i suppose it's a kind of reflection of the growing sort of the changing role of women in you know greater roman culture and these women you know they are in some ways seen in a kind of negative light because they have, you know, a lot of control, a lot of wealth, and they sort of subvert the patriarchal system in some ways that they don't necessarily have to be from a foreign background. You know, they just have to sort of subvert the male control. And that is portrayed in Hilarios' novel. How he portrays that is very, very subtle. So on the surface, you think he's actually, you know, agreeing with this sort of

construction of these women, but actually the more and more you read it, there's this sort of revelation that perhaps, you know, for example, Asake was, you know, to put in a very difficult position. She uses her femininity in order to survive rather than, you know, to just because she wants to, it's more like she has to. And so by the end of the novel, you really do come away with a far more nuanced and complicated image of these women, and particularly Asake. I mean, it's such an interesting episode to look at Heliodorus' attitude towards ethnicity and gender, as well as you were saying there. And Heliodorus himself, at the end of the novel,

he makes his own revelation. He makes his own appearance, doesn't he? Yeah, so you've got this last line which says that he's a phoenician man a descendant of the sun which is you know where his name comes from and so that is actually quite interesting where the sort of the author is in the background sort of pulling and manipulating the story but then he comes into the story himself and so this really complicated story of different cultures and different ethnicities and you know sort of gender and class is actually a story perhaps about him too and his kind of revelation that he's born of this

really complicated hybrid world so is this therefore suggesting that in the fourth century, the Greco-Roman Empire, in the Roman Empire, it's this idea of being both and is coming to the fore through Heliodorus' characters, but also through Heliodorus himself saying, I'm Phoenician, but I'm also have this Greekness. I mean, I'm guessing people who were watching the play or reading the novel, shall I say, probably expected him to be Greek. And then he does this revelation at the end that he's not, this idea of both and. And that plays throughout the novel where you don't really realize until the end and you get this chance to piece it together like a detective and then you see a greater picture

emerging and I suppose that really tells you that actually life is far more complicated than just this kind of linear journey that you make through it and that you are influenced you know externally as well as internally by your environment i mean absolutely you can't go much further than not being linear than starting a novel in this middle of the book which you know is i hope some you know sort of tv director somewhere you know in the future will look at this novel and think, wow, I'm going to make a film of this, because it will be absolutely fascinating to see how that scene sort of translates to cinema. I mean, it's a very cinematic scene. And so it'll be interesting, but I really hope so at some point in the future. There's definitely no shortage of extraordinary

TV documentaries, films to be made out of ancient works. Absolutely agree with you there. So if we move on from that, then, I mean, if we go to the modern day, how can we apply these ancient concepts of ethnicity and identity to modern society? What I've personally gained from some of these studies and, you know, sort of the benefits and the possible drawbacks of personally identifying with the past is that the ancient past is not necessarily a mirror that we could look into and find ourselves. So L.P. Hartley in his great novel wrote, the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. However, they give us a lot to think about when we discuss how ideas come to be. What do we do? What do we understand about the world around

us? How do we interpret concepts such as race, identity, nations, city-states, borders, and I mean, shifting borders too, and psychological trauma and so forth. And so for me, it's been a really fascinating journey into self-discovery through Heliodorus about modern day Eritrea and Ethiopia, you know, which is the heritage that I belong to, to learn that there were highly sophisticated society that traded for empires such as Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Arabs. And it is kind of comforting to know that the modern view of Africa during and after slavery is extremely misleading and full of errors. And so I spend a lot of time now trying to interrogate that, you know, post 18th century colonial attitudes about Africa. And the advantages of studying the

ancient world through this kind of broad lens, as opposed to the narrow lens of just Greece and Rome, is that the texts reveal in the interactions between cultures, so Greeks and Romans interacting with other cultures, be it politically, socially, linguistically, economically, that their geographic position mean that they have interacted with North and Eastern Africans and East Europe and Turkey in the Middle East and as far as India and China, and that these two powerhouses did not exist in vacuum. Therefore, it is rather simplistic to just study these two cultures without taking into account the cross fertilization of ideas from their neighbors. And that, you know, really,

the Greek world is far more fluid than our own, in some respect. And, you know, since the 1800s, there's been this sort of whitening of Greeks and Romans. European imperialists casting themselves as this kind of natural inheritance of Greek and Roman civilization, never mind that the Greeks and Romans themselves were influenced by other cultures and thought about themselves really differently. And so we have come to a point in history, particularly with Britain and America, who are, I suppose, at a crossroad, this kind of reckoning. Their image of themselves as these superior nations is becoming under threat. And so this idea of so-called Western civilization being a superior one is now, you know, rightly being

interrogated and some feel rather uncomfortable about that absolutely absolutely and i mean one other thing that i'd like for us to chat about just before we completely wrap up is your work with ethiopian and eritrean ancient and early medieval treasures at the bodleian library because this is something that you've been shining more light on and it's wonderful to see. Thank you Tristan. I've ended up working on it. I didn't intend to. This happened purely by, well it happened very organically and you know I don't profess to be an expert on medieval manuscripts at all. So the project came to be when I was in the classics faculty back in 2012. There was a conference on Ethiopian manuscripts taking place in the faculty, which was,

you know, absolutely extraordinary in itself. And one of the organisers, Professor Judith Mackenzie, who has since passed, she's a professor of late antiquity, was working on the Grima Gospels with Michael Gervais from, he's a professor in Toronto University. And this conference was bringing together, you know, people who worked on Ethiopian narrative manuscripts. And one of the highlights of that conference was that these particular manuscripts, which were the interpretation of the Gospels, were considered initially to have been dated back to the 11th century AD. And then recent work through carbon dating revealed, actually, they belong to the 4th century AD. So that really then, you know, turned the sort of general thinking upside down. And then they became the earliest surviving Gospels in the world. So it's a very kind of Eurocentric idea of we have the oldest things, you know, and actually these Gospels

turns out, you know, well, no, there's other countries who also have very ancient artifacts. And so it sort of decentralized Europe and, you know, sort of highlighted the importance of other cultures. Now, the Grima Gospels, they're named the Grima after Abba Grima, who is supposedly to have been one of the nine Syrian monks who came to Ethiopia to convert the Aksumites to Christianity. And Ethiopia, you know, is one of the earliest countries to have been converted to Christianity historically. Now, there is a place in Ethiopia called Garima after Aba Garima in the mountain ranges. And this is where the manuscripts live. And two years ago, I had the privilege to go to Ethiopia and visit the Grima Monastery. So then after that conference in the classics faculty, we worked together on a public engagement

project to raise awareness about these gospels and really medieval manuscripts in Ethiopian Eritrean tradition, using Professor Gervas's images of these Gospels because we couldn't take them out of the monastery in Ethiopia. And that really sort of triggered a host of public engagement projects, which included the one with the Bodleian Libraries. And prior to that, you know, I wasn't working as a public engagement manager at the Bodleian Libraries. And prior to that, you know, I wasn't working as a public engagement manager at the Bodleian Libraries. It started off in the Classics Faculty. And then over a six-year period, we've began, you know, sort of organising various public engagement projects to highlight the importance of Ethiopian Neurotrain manuscripts. And it was the Bodle curators who came to us to say, hang on a sec.

We also have some medieval manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Would you work with us to raise awareness about this at devising events and workshops and so forth? then that triggered a sort of conversation of how do we then involve the communities, the modern communities, the diaspora, Ethiopian and Eritreans communities in the UK. And so this then really became Bodleian's first initial foray into co-curation. So this kind of equitable partnership between researchers and community members. and I thought was going to be really important is how these manuscripts to speak to the younger generation and their place in modern British society. And so because there has been a lot of focus about, you know, what it is to be black in Europe, black in America, and this kind of inferiority complex and the fact that, you know, black civilization has, in some ways, been considered secondary, rather than, you know, being part has in some ways been considered secondary rather than, you know, being part of the story of human civilizations, I felt current identity issues could come to the

foray through the Grima Gospels. And in some sense, you know, the younger generation felt, you know, elated that actually their heritage had a, you know, centre stage and contributed to, you know, the greater story of human civilisation. And in some ways, it also showed that, you know, these manuscripts were still very, very relevant in Ethiopian territory in modern life. So the language that is used in these manuscripts is called Gitas and Gitas is an ancient language a precursor of the modern language Amharic and Tigrinya and Gitas is often spoken in churches and still is often spoken in churches so Ethiopians and Eritreans today still have an encounter with Gitas they may not know what it actually says, except the priests,

but they still sort of interact with that ancient language. So, you know, it was just sort of how does the manuscript still speak to modern societies and particularly diasporic Ethiopian Eritrean communities? And then that culminated, these workshops then culminated to a co-curation display in the Bodleian libraries, the Western library, and that included celebration events and so forth. And then in that time, you know, we didn't really plan this, but there was a new Ethiopian prime minister and he signed a peace deal with Eritrea which has been you know sort of

influx shall we say in you know over 70 years and so there was this kind of political change too of bringing together Ethiopians and Eritreans in this really communal way to celebrate both of our heritage and then I think during that celebration event, the Ethiopian ambassador of the UK just happened to be popping over to see the display. And we started having conversations of, you know, sort of how we can keep this project going. And the hope is that, you know, Eritreans also feel that they can contribute to this. So in a way, these manuscripts sort of speak to modern issues, you know, for Ethiopians and Eritreans, this sort of commonality, the dual heritage, the political situation, the social,

economic and so forth. And for the Bodleian Libraries, it was absolutely amazing because it was a co-curation project and the start of something bigger with communities, with its local communities. For the faculty, it was, you know, a great boon in some respect where these manuscripts highlighted, I suppose, the different cultures and their kind of historical artefact in conversations around the Greco-Roman civilisation. So, you know, that's pretty much it. And we're still, in our own ways, working on that project, you know, sort of digitisation project, working with different researchers across the world. You know, I've been in contact with medievalists who work on Aksumite civilisation and current Ethiopian Eritrean artefacts. And in some ways, this has

really helped me in terms of seeing the interactions between the ancient and medieval worlds, but also of how classics itself can be more inclusive and look beyond the borders of Greece and Rome. Absolutely indeed, May. Awesome, incredible work. This has been an eye-opening chat. Last but certainly not least, I can't not mention the book that you and a big team of authors has published recently. Talk to us a bit about this outreach work, this Classics in Communities, this Forward with Classics. Yes, thank you for mentioning and promoting our book. So again, this project was rather sort of produced organically, but the impetus was really a change in the primary curriculum where the government changed sort of language options at a primary level to include ancient languages as

well as modern languages so in 2014 that gave us a way in to introduce greece and latin where there wasn't really an option to do that in before and as you know classics has been in decline in state schools for a very long time it started off with in the 60s where examination in Latin ended in you know Oxbridge universities and then in the 80s with the introduction of national curriculum classics then you know sort of became on the periphery and it sort of went out of state schools and pretty much you know sort of only private schools were teaching and only a handful of state schools were clinging on to the classics curriculum so for a very long time classics has been on the periphery. And so if you were going to study the ancient world, you know, a lot of people went to private schools to do that.

And Classics and Communities was, in a way, a project to try and promote and encourage the teaching of Latin and ancient Greek at primary, but also at early secondary school level in UK state schools. also at early secondary school level in UK state schools. And what we were trying to do was bring together primary, secondary and higher education level teachers and helping to create and develop sustainable networks of educators who were committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise. And this project was underpinned by two key principles. This project was underpinned by two key principles. So there was a training and research where we sort of provided schools and teachers, particularly non-specialists, with information and guidance about teaching approaches and methods and classroom resources and support to help introduce the teaching of Latin and or Ancient Greek in their schools. And this was done in partnerships with universities around the UK.

ancient Greek in their schools. And this was done in partnerships with universities around the UK. We ran training days for primary teachers where we covered the base of Latin Greek and how these ancient languages can be taught successfully as part of the 21st century languages curriculum. And then alongside this, we were conducting a research study to investigate the impact of learning classic languages on children's cognitive development. And this is still being carried out. So the publication for that will be hopefully next year. But we've been busy, you know, collecting data about this. And, you know, just to say, actually, the great thing about the classics community is that we do come together whether it's university school researcher or you know the sort of international classes to promote our

subject and so we've been working with classics for all which I'm a trustee of the Roman society the Greek society the Iris project the program, to really try and make a difference and to raise awareness about these classical subjects. But not in a sense to reiterate the kind of exclusiveness, far from it is the sort of inclusiveness about the ancient world. And that's why we tend to concentrate on upskilling non-specialist teachers rather than sort of trying to get classics teachers in schools I think the best way we thought you know would really be to get English teachers and history teachers and you know and so forth to take on the subject and incorporate it in their learning so that it doesn't feel separated from other subjects.

Well, May, best of luck with that project. It sounds great, that whole outreach, getting classics, ancient Greek, ancient Latin, back into more schools, but also classical civilisation. I remember doing that course, absolutely love it. Shout out to Miss Galwika, Mr. Bolf, if you're listening. Absolutely. As somebody who took on classical civilization for my degree,

I absolutely implore people to take that. It's a wonderful, wonderful subject. Yeah, you're so right indeed. May, once again, absolutely great chat. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Thank you. I hope you've enjoyed this Boxing Day episode with the awesome Dr. May Mousier, all about race and identity, race and ethnicity in the ancient Greek novel. Now, if you

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