Theodore Roosevelt (26th President of the USA, c. 1858-1919)
“The struggle for existence is very keen in the far West, and it is no place for men who lack the ruder, coarser virtues and physical qualities, no matter how intellectual or how refined and delicate their sensibilities.”
According to folklore set in 10th-century Iceland, a man named Thrain Sigfusson was invited to attend the wedding feast of his prominent nephew, Gunnar (d. 992). Thrain, as the stories go, was accompanied to the wedding by his then wife, Thorhild the Poetess. Their marriage, however, was incredibly strained—it was hanging by a thread, as the saying goes, and their powder keg of a relationship was about to blow up at the wedding they were about to attend.
The upcoming marriage celebration would be a huge affair, as Gunnar was marrying a woman named Hallgerd, who came from a family of prominent chieftains of the Laxardal region of Iceland. Her father, Hoskuld Dalakollsson, and other family members, such as her showy brother, Olaf Peacock, would be at the wedding with an impressive entourage. Hallgerd, herself, would be a sight to see; Njal’s Saga praised her beauty, stating, “Now the story turns to Hallgerd, Hoskuld’s daughter: she grew up to be a beautiful woman, very tall, and therefore called Long-legs. She had lovely hair, so long that she could wrap herself in it. She was lavish and harsh-tempered” (Njal’s Saga, chapter 9). Hallgerd had allegedly been married twice before she agreed to wed Gunnar. Hallgerd’s first husband, Thorvald Osvifsson, and second husband, Glum, were reportedly both murdered after instances when they hit Hallgerd. The first marriage was childless, but the second produced a daughter named Thorgerd. Previous marriage trouble aside, Hallgerd cherished her daughter, and she kept Thorgerd closely by her side. Years later, when Hallgerd was marrying Gunnar, the bride made sure to have Thorgerd sitting beside her during the wedding feast. This seat of honor, however, contributed to the scandal that was about to unfold.
Thorgerd, evidently, had inherited her mother’s long-legged, beautiful looks. Thrain Sigfusson, the aforementioned unhappily married uncle of the groom, took an instant interest in the young woman sitting beside the bride. Struck by her beauty, Thrain apparently could not stop himself from shooting frequent and obvious glances in Thorgerd’s direction. Meanwhile, Thrain’s wife, Thorhild the Poetess, caught on to her husband’s wandering eye, and she chastised him for his behavior. Living up to her name, Thorhild allegedly chided with a short poem, saying:
“’Thrain…
‘This gaping is not good,
Your eyes are all agog.’”
(Njal’s Saga, chapter 34)
This public comment, so the stories go, was the proverbial final straw that doomed the marriage between Thrain and Thorhild. Bolting upright from his seat, Thrain shouted that he could no longer stand his wife and he was going to divorce her, then and there, and nobody would be able to talk him out of it. According to Njal’s Saga, “Thrain jumped at once across the table and named witnesses and declared himself divorced from her—‘I won’t take any more of her mocking and malicious language.’ He was so vehement about this that he would not stay at the feast unless she were sent away. And so it was—she went away” (chapter 34). After this odd tantrum, the wedding feast guests (minus poor Thorhild the Poetess) were able to settle back down and continue enjoying the banquet.
As the feast progressed, Thrain Sigfusson—now an eligible bachelor in need of a new wife—decided to saunter up to Thorgerd’s family and ask for her hand in marriage. After many ‘what do you think?’ questions were passed around between Hoskuld, his brother Hrut, the groom, Gunnar, and the bride, Hallgerd, they finally assented to the proposal. Thorgerd, herself, evidently also fancied Thrain, for she was said to have given her personal approval of the match. According to Njal’s Saga, “Gunnar asked mother and daughter whether they would accept this agreement. They said they had nothing against it, and Hallgerd betrothed her daughter” (chapter 34). Thus, instead of the day being a simple marriage between Hallgerd and Gunnar, it now became a double wedding for the additional couple, Thrian and Thorgerd. The saga would go on to claim, “Thorgerd took over the household at Grjota and was a good housewife” (Njal’s Saga, chapter 34). Hopefully the marriage went well between the two of them. Whatever the case, Thrian and Thorgerd had a son named Hoskuld, and no known marital troubles arose besides, perhaps, complaints that Thrain spent too much time abroad. Unfortunately, the story did not reach a happy conclusion—according to Icelandic folklore, both Thrain and Hoskuld were eventually murdered.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Frithiof kommer till Kung Ring (ur Frithiofs saga), by August Malmström (c. 1829-1901), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the National Museum of Stockholm).
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This painting, by the Dutch artist Willem de Poorter (c. 1608-1649), serves as an allegory about vanitas, Latin for vanity. A complicated relationship between life, possessions and death is portrayed in the artwork through its presentation of a woman and a grotesque skeletal figure interacting with a heaping pile of treasure in a dark and gloomy room. Although the painting is intended as an allegory of vanity, it also could serve as an allegory for humanity’s behavior toward wealth, in general. Particularly, the scene is curiously reminiscent of an ancient satirical description of humanity’s treatment of wealth that was penned by the writer, Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180). Envisioning Wealth as a personified god, Lucian—speaking in character as the arch-god Zeus—wrote that Wealth was always, “complaining that the rich kept you locked up so closely with bolts and keys and seals that you couldn’t even peep out and see daylight. At any rate that was your complaint to me, that you were stifled in total darkness. That’s why you appeared so pale and careworn, your fingers distorted with constant counting on them, and you threatened to run away if you got the chance” (Lucian, Timon the Misanthrope, section 13). Similarly, Willem de Poorter’s artwork displays a woman keeping her wealth in a prison-like environment, dominated by shadows and darkness. Unlike Lucian’s Wealth that was left in a sunless void, the painting of Willem de Poorter does have a bit of light, albeit it shines dimly through a small window that seems like it could be crisscrossed with metal bars. Also, likely to the displeasure of the woman in the painting, she must face an unsettling skeletal figure instead of the pale and worn god in Lucian’s satire.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
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Njal’s Saga (written anonymously in the 13th century)
“It’s not breaking a settlement…if a man deals lawfully with another—with law our land shall rise, but it will perish with lawlessness.”
Tacitus was a Roman historian who was born around the year 56/57 and died sometime after 117. He was famous in his own day, and his oratory skills were especially lauded by his peers. Thorough and full of insight and critique, Tacitus continues to be considered one of the foremost historians ever produced by ancient Rome. This video cites quotes from Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome (translated by Michael Grant, Penguin Classics, 1996), as well as his Agricola and Germania (both translated by Harold Mattingly and J. B. Rives, Penguin Classics, 2009).
Music:
The Intro contains horns from Beethoven Symphony No. 5 (via the YouTube Audio Library) and drums from Also Sprach Zarathustra (via filmmusic.io).
The music in rest of the video is Kirwani – Teental – Aditya Verma, Subir Dev (via the YouTube Audio Library)
All background images used in the creation of this video were designated as public domain or open access at the time of video’s creation.
Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180+) was an orator, a teacher, and a literary figure known for comedy and satire. Yet, before devoting himself to speaking, teaching and writing literature, he had allegedly been set up by his family for a very different occupation. He was born in the region of Samosata, in provincial Roman Syria, and Aramaic was likely his first language instead of Rome’s Latin or the scholarly Greek used by writers from the eastern Mediterranean. His family life was complicated, for his immediate household was apparently not well off. Lucian was able to receive a proper education, but other than that, as he told himself in his own satire, “you are now poor and the son of a nobody…” (Lucian, The Dream / Lucian’s Career, section 11).
While Lucian may have rudely thought that his father was a nobody, his mother—or at least her side of the family—was far from the same. His mother came from a family of respected artisans of stone craft. They seemed best known and renowned for sculpting and statuary work, but they also evidently provided basic masonry services, perhaps doing this between commissions of their statues. In his work, The Dream, otherwise known as Lucian’s Career, the satirist described a personified goddess of Sculpture saying to him in a dream, “I am the craft of Sculpture, dear boy, which yesterday you began to learn, having close ties with you on your mother’s side. For your grandfather (naming my mother’s father) was a sculptor, as are both your uncles, who enjoy much fame thanks to me” (Lucian, The Dream / Lucian’s Career, section 7). Lucian was exposed to his mother’s family’s business at an early age, and he emulated some of his kinsmen’s artistic ability in his youthful free time. Through his school, Lucian was given access to a supply of wax, which he used to shape his own hand-crafted models. The young boy’s phase of wax creations posed an annoyance to the teaching staff, but it also piqued the interest of the maternal family artisans. Lucian wrote, “[W]hen school was over, I would scrape the wax off my tablets and mould it into cattle or horses or indeed people, and he [referring to a professional sculptor uncle] thought they were lifelike. I got caned by my teachers for this, but now I was praised for having natural talent, and that modelling gave them good hopes that I would quickly learn the craft” (The Dream / Lucian’s Career, section 2). Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for literature, a subsequent sculpting apprenticeship for Lucian did not go as easily as everyone had predicted.
As told by Lucian, the young student began to study under the guidance of one of his uncles. Despite the first good impressions with wax, Lucian quickly learned that transferring his artistic abilities from the soft medium of waxes to the hard and unforgiving substance of stone would be a long and frustrating ordeal. Lucian evidently had too heavy of a hand in his stone shaping, and he ended up breaking the stone that he was working on more often than not, which, in turn, caused an angry outburst from his kinsmen co-workers. As Lucian put it:
“So as soon as it seemed suitable to begin my training, I was handed over to my uncle and the arrangement seemed pretty good to me: in fact I thought it a delightful pastime and a way of impressing my comrades, if I were seen to be carving gods and creating little statues for myself and my special friends. Then I experienced what usually happens to beginners. My uncle handed me a chisel and told me to give a light tap to the stone tablet lying before us, quoting the proverb, ‘Well begun is half done.’ But being inexperienced I hit it too hard, the tablet broke, and in a rage he grabbed a nearby stick and gave me an initiation which was neither gentle nor encouraging: thus my apprenticeship began with tears” (Lucian, The Dream / Lucian’s Career, section 3).
After that introduction to stone working, Lucian decided that he did not want to wait for the proper technique to be beat into him by his stick-wielding uncle. Instead, Lucian chose to pursue a career path in the realm of culture, or, more specifically, literature and its many avenues—fiction and nonfiction, oration and writing. Lucian would go on to become a wide-traveling orator, teacher and writer who traveled from Samosata to Greece, Gaul and Egypt. The chronological timeline of Lucian’s career path is unfortunately vague, but it is believed that he began his own writings (dominated by comedy and satire) when he was in his forties, after having spent the previous decades consuming philosophy—which he later relentlessly criticized in his satirical works—as well as teaching rhetoric, and serving as a professional orator. Not just an imitator, Lucian repurposed the ancient dialogue structure used by Greek philosophers, such as Plato, and repurposed it for a new genre of comedic dialogue.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Pygmalion series artwork, by Emmanuel Jean Nepomucene de Ghendt, Charles Joseph Dominique Eisen, Thomas-Charles Naudet, and A. Liamet between 1748 – 1815, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Rijksmuseum).
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This illustration, vaguely labeled “Charlemagne” or “Charlemagne: Emperor of West and King of France,” was created by the French artist Jean Marie Mixelle (c. 18th-19th century). Although the title does not explicitly state what is going on in the scene, it is highly likely that the artwork depicts Charlemagne being crowned as an emperor by Pope Leo III (r. 795-816). If that assumption is correct, the artwork is based on an event that occurred in the year 800, when Charlemagne traveled to Rome to support the beleaguered Pope Leo III, who had nearly been assassinated a year prior. With Charlemagne’s help, the people who had assaulted the pope were caught and brought to justice. As thanks for the king’s aid, Pope Leo III personally crowned Charlemagne as an emperor and named him Defender of the Roman Church. Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard (c. 770-840), described the event, writing, “Thus Charles traveled to Rome to restore the state of the Church, which was extremely disturbed, and he spent the whole winter there. It was at this time that he received the title of Emperor and Augustus” (The Life of Charlemagne, chapter 28). A later figure named Notker the Stammerer (c. 840-912), wrote another account in his text, The Deeds of Charlemagne, where he stated, “As Charles stayed in Rome for a few days for the sake of the army, the bishop of the apostolic see called together all who were able to come from the neighboring districts and then, in their presence and in the presence of all the counts of the unconquered Charles, he declared him to be Emperor and Defender of the Roman Church” (The Deeds of Charlemagne, book 1, chapter 26). Such is the event likely playing out in Jean Marie Mixelle’s artwork. The imperial designation given to Charlemagne that day in the year 800 eventually evolved into the title of Holy Roman Emperor. After around a millennium of existence, the Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved in 1806.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
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Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321)
“Just as a swimmer, who with his last breath
flounders ashore from perilous seas, might turn
to memorize the wide water of his death—
so did I turn, my soul still fugitive
from death’s surviving image, to stare down
that pass that none had ever left alive.”
Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE), a poet from ancient Rome, wrote about how Roman society tried to push him down the path toward several specific professions. His passion was verse and storytelling, and although poets were lauded in ancient Rome, Ovid’s devotion to his poetic craft evidently garnered some criticism from his peers, at least at the beginning of his career. One must keep in mind that Ovid came from a prominent family of the knightly equites class in Rome’s social hierarchy, and this upbringing primed Ovid for potential careers in the military, the law courts, and the government bureaucracy. Indeed, Ovid was sent by his parents to learn statesmanlike rhetoric in Rome, and he dabbled in low government office appointments for a time, but he ultimately left public office behind in order to pursue poetry. He may have received pushback over this decision, and these criticisms were likely channeled into Ovid’s first published poetry collection, The Amores. In Amores 1.15, Ovid wrote:
“Why dismiss the poet as a drone?
What’s your complaint? That I’ve failed (though young and healthy) to follow
Tradition, or chase the dusty rewards
Of a soldier’s career? That I haven’t mugged up dull lawsuits,
Or sold my eloquence like a whore
In the courts and Forum? Such labors are soon forgotten.”
(Ovid, Amores, 1.15.2-7)
Passion and enjoyment aside, Ovid supported his decision to pursue poetry by pointing out the immortality of great literature. Most warriors, lawyers and bureaucrats are forgotten with time—and those who are remembered owe much of their name recognition to the storytellers and writers who preserved a record of human achievements in their written works. Ovid, if his own sentiments matched the philosophy put forward in the Amores, was a man drawn to the lasting legacy that literature could provide. He wrote:
“What I seek is perennial fame,
Undying world-wide remembrance. While Ida and Tenedos
still stand, while Simois still runs swift to the sea,
Old Homer will live, While clustering grapes still ripen
And wheat still falls to the scythe
Hesiod’s works will be studied. The verse of Callimachus—
Weak in imagination, strong on technique—
Has a worldwide readership. Sophoclean tragedy
Is safe from Time’s ravages.
…
Though time, in time, can consume the enduring ploughshare,
Though flint itself will perish, poetry lives—
Deathless, unfading, triumphant over kings and their triumphs,
Richer than the Spanish river gold. Let the crowd
Gape after baubles. To me may golden Apollo proffer
A cup brimming over, from Castalian spring
And a wreath of sun-loving myrtle.
…
So when the final flames have devoured my body, I shall
survive, and my better part live on.”
(Ovid, Amores, 1.15.8-42)
Ovid obtained his wish. He would go on to write masterpieces that greatly influenced Roman literature and even shaped the public perception of his subject matter, such as the mythological tales covered in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In that regard, many paintings of Greco-Roman myths that one might see in an art gallery were likely painted with Ovid’s verses in mind. Two thousand years later, Ovid is still a household name. His poems remain existent, and copies continue to be published and circulated around the globe.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Bacchus and Ariadne, painted by Gerard de Lairesse around 1680, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Rijksmuseum).
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This pencil and watercolor illustration, by the Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt (c. 1854-1905), was a preparatory work for a later painting he produced featuring the mythical character, Alcestis, waiting by the riverbanks of the Styx. Serving as the artist’s model for Alcestis was the Finnish opera singer, Aino Ackté (1876–1944), hence the title of the sketch. As for the story of the mythical character, Alcestis, herself, she was said to have been the daughter of King Pelias of Iolcos, and she eventually married Admetos (or Admetus)—the ruler of the Thessalian city of Pherae. Admetos was a divinely well-connected man, and he was particularly good friends with the god Apollo. Yet, having the close attention of the divine beings was not always a good thing, as the fickle gods could punish just as easily as they could bless. And that is exactly what happened in Admetos’ situation.
One fateful day, as the myth goes, Admetos was visited by his godly friend Apollo, but this time, Apollo was also accompanied by his divine sister, Artemis. Admetos and Apollo, as usual, got along splendidly. But Artemis, who decided to snoop around Pherae’s temples and shrines, soon fell into a foul mood, for she discovered that her due sacrifices and offerings in Pherae were not up to her standards. Being a typical ancient divinity, Artemis succumbed to the vice shared by most gods—wrath. In her fury over the deficient offerings, Artemis began to plot a deadly punishment against the king of the city. She was not subtle about her intentions, and Admetos became aware of his impending doom. Therefore, he went to his powerful and influential friend, Apollo, and begged for assistance. After listening to the situation, Apollo agreed to do what he could to help, but the god also explained that Artemis’ curse could only be delayed or transferred.
Following Apollo’s guidance, Admetos was able to postpone Artemis’ vengeance, and in the meantime, the Fates were bargained with in order to give Admetos more options. As the story goes, the Fates were persuaded to allow for a willing volunteer to take Admetos’ place the next time the king faced death. Yet, the trick would be finding a person who was willing to make such a selfless sacrifice. As the reader might have guessed from the subject of this featured artwork, only Admetos’ wife, Alcestis, was prepared to give up her life so that her husband could keep living. Yet, Apollo, a prophetic god, might have known that Alcestis’ fate was not as hopeless as it seemed. This myth and its conclusion was described by a scholar known as Pseudo-Apollodorus (c. 1st-2nd century):
“Apollo advised him to propitiate the goddess, and demanded of the Fates that when Admetos was about to die, he should be released from death if somebody would freely choose to die in his place. When the day came for him to die, neither his father nor his mother was willing to die for him, so Alcestis died in his place. But Kore [or Persephone] sent her back to earth again, or, according to some accounts, Heracles fought with Hades for her [and returned her to Admetos]” (Apollodorus, Library, I.9.15).
Such is the mythical character that Albert Edelfelt wanted to sketch and paint. His vision was to paint her standing on the banks of the River Styx after she faced death willingly in Admetos’ stead. Thankfully, as the quote above conveyed, Alcestis was eventually released or saved from the underworld.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
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