Areopagus Volume VIII

Welcome one and all to the eighth Volume of Areopagus, your weekly dose of interest, use, and beauty.

The big news this week is that I've switched my newsletter platform from Revue to ConvertKit. Hopefully nothing has changed on your end - all it means is that I'll be able to send you better newsletters in a more user-friendly way. So if things look slightly different, don't worry.

And with that being said: vamos!

I - Historical Figure

Xenophon

Ancient Greek soldier, philosopher, and historian.

Why is he interesting?

Whereas some ancient figures fit neatly into one category or another, Xenophon (430-354 B.C.) has long puzzled classicists. Was he a general, a philosopher, or a historian? Well, he's all three. Xenophon was a contemporary and friend of Socrates, the Father of Western Philosophy, and wrote several philosophical dialogues based on his teachings.

But Xenophon was also a soldier who, at the age of 30, was appointed as the leader of a huge force of Greek mercenaries employed by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger to win the imperial throne from his elder brother, King Artaxerxes II. He led these 10,000 warriors from Greece all the way to Babylon - and back - then wrote an account of this extraordinary adventure.

And that's where the history comes in. Xenophon wrote several important works of history, such as the Hellenica (a history of Greece in his own lifetime) and the Cyropaedia (an account of how Cyrus the Great established the Persian Empire in the 6th century B.C.) In all cases Xenophon showed an acute understanding of both political and military matters.

How do I pronounce his name?

You say the X like a Z, and the ph like an f.

As in: Zen-o-fon.

If I want to read more about him?

There's no better place to start than with Xenophon's own work. I would recommend his Anabasis (generally known as The Persian Expedition) which is a brilliant retelling of his journey among ten thousand other Greek mercenaries to the heart of Mesopotamia and back.

II - Painting

The Menin Road

Paul Nash (1919)

Why this painting?

The First World War may well go down in history as the most important conflict of the 20th century. It marks, in many ways, the start of the modern world. Europe was torn to pieces as its Great Powers fought an unprecedented mechanised war that destroyed much of the continent both physically and spiritually.

Few paintings summarise that sense of destruction like The Menin Road. Its jarring angles, vivid colours, and metallic texture give a strange futurism which could hardly be more different from the gentle green countryside known to the soldiers who fought in the First World War. Indeed, one of Paul Nash's other paintings is entitled We Are Making a New World.

What style is it?

Paul Nash was a Surrealist painter, and Surrealism is itself irrevocably connected to the First World War. The psychological impact of the conflict had shattered many of Europe's accepted artistic, political, philosophical, and moral standards. Surrealism represented an attempt to uncover the human subconscious and move past those lost preconceptions, often drawing on dream-like, illogical, and bizarre imagery.

III - Classical Music

Adagio for Strings and Organ in G Minor

By Tomaso Albinoni or Remo Giazotto (or both?)​​

Why this piece?

The Adagio in G Minor is a masterpiece of tranquillity. And yet it goes beyond peace. I sense an undercurrent of profound but composed grief; a magnitude of emotional depth subtly and sophisticatedly conveyed. But when the steady pulsating of the organ is overtaken by the soaring strings you can hear the limits of that emotional restraint. Something powerful has burst out and taken control. Haunting, moving, beautiful music.

So who is it by?

Saying the Adagio in G Minor was by Albinoni or Giazetti wasn't a mistake. Rather, there's a fascinating mystery behind this piece. See, Remo Giazotto (1910-1998) was an Italian musicologist who catalogued the works and compositions of Tomaso Albinoni, a Baroque composer who died in 1751. In 1958 Giazotto published a previously unknown work by Albinoni - the Adagio in G Minor - which he claimed to have discovered in the bombed-out ruins of the Saxon State Library in Dresden, in 1945.

It is now widely believed that Giazotto simply wrote the music himself and attributed it to Albinoni, but there's still an inevitable element of doubt. And I dare say there's a brilliant film or novel hiding in this story...

IV - Architectural Masterpiece

Crossness Pumping Station

Who knew sewage could be so stylish?

I normally prefer to talk about churches, castles, temples, and other feats of architectural wonder. But this week's inclusion is ostensibly a little less glamorous.

Fact File

The Crossness Pumping Station was built in London in 1865 to dispose of sewage by raising it up from the sewers below and pumping it into the Thames. Over the next century its engines and mechanisms were modified (along with waste regulation, thankfully) until it was decommissioned in the 1950s. Although it then fell into disuse and disrepair, the Crossness Pumping Station became a Grade I listed building in 1970, and a charity was established to restore the building and turn it into a museum.

Why is a masterpiece?

The Crossness Pumping Station is perhaps the ultimate example of how that which is functional can also be beautiful. It has been described as a "cathedral of ironwork" for its extensive ornamental cast iron detailing, and even its exterior has a charming neo-Romanesque brickwork design. And that's not even touching on its former mechanical brilliance.

Here you can see the recent restoration of the station's paintwork.

V - Rhetoric

Antimetabole

One of the simplest yet most inventive rhetorical techniques there is.

Antimetabole is the repetition of words or phrases in successive clauses, but with the order reversed. This forms a symmetrical A-B-B-A pattern. And when used properly, it has the potential to produce instantly memorable, highly convincing statements.

The most famous example comes from John F. Kennedy:

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

Other examples include:

• When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
• All for one and one for all.

And sometimes the subject can change:

• Europeans work to live while Americans live to work.

No doubt you've come across this device many times before, but you probably didn't know there was a name for it. And that's part of the value of studying rhetoric: language becomes a toolbox you can use at will.

VI - Writing

The Dreaded Semicolon

The semicolon is by far the most controversial and confusing punctuation mark in the English language, and its use is dying out for that very reason. But used properly, it is an incredibly subtle literary tool.

What does a semicolon do?

The semicolon has a few different roles, including in lists, but its most important function is to connect two complete but related clauses without the need for a comma and accompanying conjunction. The clauses need to make sense on their own, but by connecting them with a semicolon you can infer balance, opposition, or contradiction.

Such as:

When I've finished my work I'll help you; that's a promise I will keep.

You could use a full stop instead, but the semicolon draws these two related sentences together much more closely. Alternatively, you could replace it with a conjunction like and, but that dilutes the power and purity of the two complete clauses.

So don't be afraid of the semicolon! It allows you to do things with language which, without it, you can't.

VII - Historical Anecdote

The Dancing Plague of 1518

On a summer's day in July 1518, a young woman called Lady Troffea started to dance in the streets of Strasbourg, a French city then part of the Holy Roman Empire. And then others started dancing too. And they didn't stop. Then more joined in, and suddenly there were hundreds of people dancing (as many as four hundred, per some sources) all day and all night. This lasted until September of the same year.

Local bishops and magistrates got involved in the Dancing Plague and tried to stop it, calling on doctors and clergy to cure the infected. People at the time put it down to "overheated blood" or demonic possession, but then or since nobody has definitively explained this curious epidemic.

And while this may sound like fun, it's believed that the Dancing Plague caused a number of deaths. Indeed, some of its victims may have danced so relentlessly and for so long that they died of exhaustion, hunger, and thirst.

Bizarrely, the Strasbourg Dancing Plague of 1518 is just of many reported dancing plagues throughout history.

Question of the Week

Last week's question to test your critical thinking was:

What defines a human being?

There were some truly insightful and thought-provoking answers, with a range of different perspectives. For example, Ben W said:

A human being is a creature of shared social myth. Our closest evolutionary cousins are like us in sexual desire, alliance building, care in parenting, resentment of enemies, and cooperation for food and defense. But they cannot imagine gods, nor communicate tribal histories, nor build coalitions across multiple tribes, nor create useful shared fictions like money, property ownership, or marriage. Not every human community creates these, or any, particular myths; but all imagine stories that they ensure are universally understood and appreciated within that community. This is the singular, irreducible element of human existence.

While Judith M said:

The short answer is empathy and morality. These are the absolute exception in the animal kingdom and we do not share them with close relatives like e.g. the chimpanzees. Yet even young children have empathy and a sense of morality (which astonishingly does not always align with the morality of the society around them), suggesting that these are innate in humans.

Supporting quote from Monbiot’s Out of the Wreckage: “By the age of fourteen months, children begin to help each other, attempting to hand over objects another child cannot reach. By the time they are two, they start sharing some of the things they value. By the age of three, they start to protest against other people’s violations of moral norms.”

This week's question to test your critical thinking is:

Are numbers natural or did humanity invent them?

And that's all

Writing Areopagus is the best part of my week. I hope you found Volume VIII to be interesting, useful, and beautiful. Now I'm off to read some Polybius and listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations...

Yours with delight,

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