Get ready!! All are invited to come tour the theme houses and learn more about our plans for the year. There will be free food and games, as well as information about our upcoming events.
When: Friday, Sept. 9, 4-6 pm
Where: W. College Theme Houses, corner of College and McDonough
PS Rumor has it that there will be scones. Get pumped.
Megan playing air guitar
Major: Political Science
Minor: Organizational Management
About me: I’m Megan, the ray of California sunshine in this house. I’m addicted to makeup, television, nail polish, and country music. Emma says that she thinks I’m the love child of Uncle Jesse from Full House and Rachel Greene from Friends. And I completely agree with her. And I wish I could sing more than anything else in the world.
Mythological figure: I chose Aphrodite. She is the goddess of love and beauty. And since I’m addicted to makeup, and I love love, I figured it was a pretty awesome match… despite the fact that she is sometimes characterized as vain and ill-tempered. Which describes me on a bad day.
Relationship to my goals this semester: I really plan on getting out more, being with people I love and looking good doing it. :] (And of course also making grades, if my mother is reading this).
Year: Sophomore
Major: Classics Minors: Film Studies
About Me: Think of me as the token theme house classics major in the house 😀 . I am a bit of a film fanatic and enjoy watching all sorts, including silent, classic and cheesy horror films like “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”. I enjoy reading Batman graphic novels. I LOVE bulldogs (not the team, the actual animal). I spend a lot of time listening to soft rock love songs, you know the type you hear on the Delilah show late nights. I enjoy getting engrossed in intense book series, right now its “A Song of Ice and Fire”. I am a huge fan of Khal Drogo ❤ . A weird thing about me is that I sometimes joke around that I’m the female Indiana Jones, a librarian/scholar by day and an agent by night searching for rare pieces of film. My arch nemesis would be the “Evil Dr. Meow” a sphinx cat dressed as a clown (terrifying right). One of my favorite activities is to break out in song or dance the tango down the street.
Mythological Figure: I’m Persephone, the goddess of spring and wife of Hades. I chose Persephone because of her inner strength and connection to nature and the seasons. I’m such a huge fan of the myth that I end up reading any interpretation made. The Hades-Persephone myth is often seen as a rape, horror story but I like to think of it as a marriage of convenience that turned into love. I like to think that she had the choice to escape from the underworld at any time but chose to stay there because of her freedom. I often identify with her struggles to balance out the multiple aspects of our lives and the desire for freedom from sheltered lives. She may not be one of the Olympians, but her myth alone is epic because it represents the coming of seasons.
How this relates to semester goals: I’ve always been fascinated with Ancient Greece and Rome and enjoy being a classics major Woot! I’m originally from Massachusetts and get homesick very often, but when I’m at Agnes I feel that I start to begin a second life. It’s always a struggle to be far from home, but this semester I’m going to try to hone in my inner Persephone and find a balance between my two lives as she does with her mother Demeter, and husband Hades. Next year I am planning on studying abroad in Greece and I hope I can learn tons more about myths.
Interests: Philosophy, Film, German, Political Science (no major yet, I’m indecisive)
About Me: Just thinking about the movie Up makes me cry. I wanted to be a pastry chef for a large swath of my adolescence. I name all my dresses. I really love K-dramas.
Mythological Figure: I chose Psyche as my goddess. There’s a complicated explanation for why I chose Psyche, but the short of it is that I once played Psyche in a rather hellish school play. Ever since then I have felt a particular kinship with the mortal-turned-goddess. I appreciate her curiosity. After all, who would not want to know what their husband looked like. She is symbolized by a butterfly and represents the soul. She fought with the gods and won… sort of.
How this relates to my semester goals: I am very reserved, to say the least. I want to branch out this semester and get involved on campus. I feel that I can use Psyche’s story as an inspiration in this quest. After all, she had to climb down her protected mountain and face the underworld, and anything I encounter can’t be that extreme.
Yitian doing Monkey King Pose
Year: Junior
Major: Biology and Mathematics
About Me: I used to be pretty active, going out doing sports work out etc. But as my hair grew to that long (like in the picture) it kind of prevented me from doing anything (well okay this is a lame excuse). Instead I stay in front of my computer a lot. My favorite game is plants vs. zombie, I love the sunflowers they are so cute! I don’t miss a single episode of Detective Conan, Desperate Housewives or The Big Bang Theory. I also love Bones, except that they find a person guilty merely based on DNA tests bothers me almost every episode (DNA tests are extremely unreliable and there are fairly high possibilities for two people to have the same test results).
Mythological Figure: I’m Demeter, the agricultural goddess! I love how everything grows from as small as a cell to pretty much everything alive we see. This is the magical power I adore and respect most. I’m guessing that this is a very loving and caring goddess which is exactly the kind of person I wish to be.
How this relates this to my semester goals: I was once in a classics class at Agnes. It was a fantastic class about women in ancient world. However, I dropped the class two weeks after because there were too many reference of ancient western culture that were so natural for everyone else but me. I hope to know more about Western Classics, and share my knowledge of Eastern Classic cultures with my friends and all other Scotties! This relates to Demeter because expanding my knowledge will help me grow as a person!
Halloween 2010, Emma as Pineapple
Year: Junior
Major: Art History, Minors: English Literature and Classical Civilizations*
About me: The fact Agnes Scott’s colors are black and purple was a major factor in my college decision. I have mega-crushes on Cary Grant, Sandro Botticelli and Virginia Woolf. I will purchase any tchotchke from Ross as long as it is peacock themed. In my headcanon of my own life, I am the lovechild of Zooey Deschanel and Snow White. My all-time favorite song is “Hey Ya” by Outkast. I am known to have anxiety attacks over the Philadelphia Phillies.
Mythological Figure: For my identifying mythological figure, I chose Hestia. Hestia was one of the Olympians, though sometimes she gets removed for Dionysus. She is the goddess of the hearth and home, and always gets the sacrifice first at those in the home. Because she was always attending the hearth, poor Hestia didn’t go gallivanting about like all the other gods. But she was still really kickass. Because everyone has a home, she gets worshiped a whole lot.
How this relates to my goals this year: I am headed to Florence, Italy (!) during the spring semester. This is super exciting, but it also means I only get to live in the theme house for a semester. So during this fall semester, I really want to focus on the house. I want to take part in all the events we plan, and keep up with the blog. I also really want to stretch my roots deep here in Atlanta before I head off to Florence. So in the terms of Hestia, I want to tend my own hearth. I want to spend as much time with my friends and family as possible and I want to experience everything at Agnes to the fullest. Part of this may be preparing for the realization that once I get back from Florence I only have one year left before I graduate. For me, this not only means one more year at Agnes, but also the possibility of only one more year in and around Atlanta, the only metropolitan center I’ve ever lived around.
*Subject to change. (I shouldn’t be able to say that as a junior, should I?)
Year: Junior
Major: Psychology
Aboard a tiger at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Ind.
About Me: I will wear anything that is nautical themed (yes, even this). The Spice Girls are still my favorite band and I eat more popcorn than what is healthy. I like owls.
Mythological figure: As our first activity, we were all supposed to choose a (Greek) mythological figure to serve as our “patron” figure for the year. Bonus points if they are somehow associated with your year-long goals, which we all set this week. I chose the goddess Hecate, who is the goddess of witchcraft and crossroads (more on the character of Hecate later). This selection was not so practical (I chose last) and is admittedly rather whimsical. Why Hecate? What the hell does this have to do with what I hope to accomplish this year?
Firstly, one of my goals is to become Willow Rosenberg (jk – already done). Like many people my age, I constantly changing. I find myself at a crossroads with every decision that I make, particularly with those related to my education. I recently (read: spring finals) decided to change my major from History to Psychology. This is both scary and exciting for me – I’m fascinated by Psych and all of the possibilities this path will give me, but I’m terrified of letting go of my plan. I hope that choosing this goddess who is symbolic of physical and metaphorical crossroads will help me stay level headed and make good decisions. And if it helps me to perfect my Patronus, even better.
I love opera. I sincerely believe that the best Sundays are Sundays spent listening to Puccini. This interest started last autumn when I took an Art History class called “The Art of Spectacle in Baroque Rome” and one of these types of spectacles included the new musical form of opera.
Now where did opera start? With a misinterpretation of Greek drama! (Of course)
Before the development of opera, there was solo singing in a dramatic context with some pretty simple music, as well as performances of choral music without a real narrative. But during the revival and discovery of Greek dramas during the Renaissance, some musicians misinterpreted the “chorus” role as being sung, and some believed even the solo speaking roles were sung. So by combining narrative with music and singing was seen as a return to the high point of Greek drama.
With that, just as in the visual arts, composers turned to Greek and Roman narratives for their source material. Also, according to my professor from “Spectacle,” Baroque Romans and Florentines weren’t all that great as suspending their disbelief when watching people break out into song, especially when the people on stage were supposed to be just normal people. So within the narrative the roles needed to be 1. divine, half-God, full-God 2. Ancient or 3 somehow possessing a gift of music.
Guess which myth totally fits the requirements? That’s right: Orpheus and Eurydice.
So in case you don’t know the myth…
Orpheus kills at charming people with his music. Hermes invented the lyre, but Orpheus perfected the playing of it, but he also sang. He was taught the lyre by Apollo and the art of epic poetry by his mother, muse Calliope (see the song and narrative coming together…familiar?) He falls in love with Eurydice, a lovely oak nymph. He plays song and she dances, attracting the attention of a satyr. To avoid him, she falls into a pit of vipers. When Orpheus finds her, he is so overwhelmed with grief that he plays songs so mournful that all the gods and goddesses weep and they encourage him to go to the Underworld to retrieve her. He goes to the Underworld and plays music for Hades and Persephone and charmed them into letting him take Eurydice back. However, there was a condition. He was to walk in front of her and not look back until they were both on solid ground. But when he arrived at the upper world, he was so anxious that he looked back a moment too soon, and Eurydice is lost forever.
Orpheus and Eurydice by Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, 1806
Womp.
Now as you can see, what not for a Baroque opera composer to love? 1. Amazing musical talent in the protagonist as a metaphor for themselves 2. Because it is myth there can be reinterpretations of it 3. DRAMA
The first surviving opera, by Jacopo Peri, was Euridice performed in 1600 for the wedding of Henry IV and Marie de Medici at the Palazzo Pitti. Beginning with the wedding of the lovers, it follows the myth pretty closely until the end: where Eurydice gets to come back to the upper world and everyone is happy! (I admit, this is a much better ending for an opera performed at a wedding ).
But the real Baroque masterpiece of Orphean opera is L’Orfeo, by Claudio Monteverdi. Peri did it first, but Monteverdi did it bigger, better and sadder, with foreboding choruses and the original sad ending.
This video shows Orpheus singing “Rosa del ciel, vita del mondo,” Eurydice singing “Io non diro qual sia neltuo gioir” and the chorus singing reprises of earlier choruses.
This is a different production from the last video. This one appears appears to be entirely on youtube in 12 parts, if you want to check it out. Definitely a little cheesy and overdramatic. But this scene includes with Orpheus looks back at Eurydice and a really frightening looking Hades.
But what if you hate Baroque opera? I know I am probably in the minority for liking it. Well how do you feel about folk music?
Folk musician Anaïs Mitchell staged a “folk-opera” of the myth called Hadestown in 2007 and then released the music on an album in 2010. It features Justin Vernon, beloved Bon Iver lead singer, in the role of Orpheus, Ani DiFrance as Persephone, Ben Knox Miller from The Low Anthem as Hermes and Mitchell herself as Eurydice. Mitchell’s voice, which sounds like a combination of Vanessa Carlton and Joanna Newsom, takes some getting used to, but the album as a whole is pretty great and an awesome interpretation of the myth.
“Wedding Song” from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell feat. Justin Vernon
If you want to learn more about Orpheus, you could read Ovid’s Metamorphoses where Orpheus’s story appears or Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet by Charles Segal.
If you want to learn more about Baroque opera, you could read Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance by Gary Tomlinson or check out Agnes Scott’s collection of opera recordings including L’Orfeo by Monteverdi, as well as a selection more modern opera composers like Puccini, Wagner and Verdi.
Agnes Scott Library does not have Hadestown, but I still highly recommend it if you are into some epic folk music. Plus you can follow Mitchell’s interpretation of the myth on her website by reading the libretto, as well as her personal history of how her interpretation developed.
It’s pretty simple right? TOGA TOGA TOGA!
Not quite.
Greeks didn’t wear togas. Who knew? Actually, they wore a chiton or a peplos and then sometimes various things over these items. A chiton was sewn or fastened, while a peplos was draped.
Young man in a chiton
Athena in a fancy pantsy peplos
These are the main pieces of Ancient Greek clothing, but they were by no means boring! Current perceptions of Greek clothing are based on statues like I showed above and they are all white because they are made out of marble. However, these statues were actually painted to reflect the colors of the clothing and the Greeks could be kind of gaudy!
The "Peplos Scene" from the Parthenon Frieze
Interpreting the Parthenon Frieze has been troubling to art historians since as early as the 15th century. The peplos scene is one of contention. Two intepretations of the frieze as a whole are that it is either a contemporary deciption of a festival where the goddess Athena is given a new, giant peplos (probably in purple and saffron no less!), which occurred annually, or a mythological narrative of the founding of Athens. This scene is important because of whether the girl on the right is giving the peplos to the man or is being given the peplos. If she is giving the peplos, she is probably one of the arrhephoroi who spent nine months weaving it for Pallas Athena. However, if she is being given the peplos, then she might be donning the sacrificial peplos because she is about to be sacrificed to save the city from an early doom.
Now, Romans did wear togas. But not everyone could and they all didn’t look the same! We also know a lot more about dyes that were used in Rome and the fabrics (wool, silk, leather).
Until the empire began in 44 B.C, all free citizens could wear togas, including women. But then the toga became more of a social code. One example of this is women being forced to wear togas if they were adulterous or prostitutes. The toga also represented peace, as men who would be soldiers wore them in the government and they couldn’t wear the bulky toga fighting. Cicero (favorite!) wrote “cedant arms togae,” or “let arms yield to the togas.”
Some of the varieties of togas were:
Toga candida: The bright white toga wore by candidates for public office. The word “candidates” comes from “candida” which means “pure white” referring to the toga.
Toga praetexta: White toga with a purple border, worn by young boys, magistrates, and some priests.
Toga picta: This purple toga was also embroidered gold. Worn by generals in their triumphs or by the emperor on very special occasions.
Toga Picta, circa 350 BC
Well, you’re in luck. Greek and Roman fashion continue to serve as inspiration for lots of clothing styles today!
1. You could wear gladiator sandals and pretend it is 65 BCE (or 2007) like housemate Maddye! Though you may look more like an Olsen twin then a gladiator…
2. You could also show your self-importance by wearing purple and gold. Though don’t run into an emperor or a general during his triumph parade, he might not be too happy.
3. Embrace your inner caryatid (a figure of a woman who replaces a column on a temple) and support your structurally weak neck with an intricately braided hair style!
Caryatid from the Erechtheion
4. Greek/Roman inspired clothes don’t have to look like a peplos or a toga. You could take inspiration from the art. This top from Anthropologie has detailing that looks a lot like Geometric pottery from the 9th and 8th centuries BCE.
Greek and Roman by misswoodhouse featuring ankle sandals
So enjoy your summers with some fabulous Greek and Roman fashions. And remember to laugh at the inconsistency inherent in “Greek” toga parties.
Greek and Roman literature gets kind of a bad rap sometimes as far as feminism goes. There are a few things in there that nearly everyone can agree are just bad (rape as valid form of procreation, or recreation, women being treated like property). But don’t discount the Classics yet! There is lots in there for the feminist in all of us.
In the post I wanted to give you a brief about some pretty epic women, some from myth, some from epic and some from real life. Also because we’re all about interconnectivity here at the theme house blog, I am going to place these awesome women in a context that I think most of us are pretty familiar with…90’s tv heroines. So with my brief, cursory and pedestrian description of the four Classical women I chose, I included a 90’s tv heroine counterpart.
So here goes our first film studies/Classics connection blog post!
Athena/Minerva-Nurse Carol Hathaway
Athena is the strong Classical woman. So strong, sometimes she makes you wonder if Zeus is really running the joint. And her origin myth supports this. Zeus swallowed her mom, Metis, so that her children wouldn’t become more powerful than he. But then Athena sprang forth from his forehead, and became his favorite daughter.
Athena loves who she loves, and hates who she hates, and there isn’t much you can do about it. Goddess of war, wisdom and civilization, the woman is pretty badass. She is also gorgeous, with her most common epithet being glaukopis or bright-eyed. She is also associated with the owl. Athena was the patron goddess of Athens. She beat out Poseidon for its patronage, and got to have some pretty awesome building named after her (maybe you’ll hear about some of them in my soon-to-written-and-then-published blog post “Guide to the Classical Orders: or Why Borromini Would’ve Given Vitruvius a Heart Attack”).
Her 90’s counterpart is Nurse Carol Hathaway from ER. This woman was THE smart, sassy nurse who was not going to let any male (or female) doctor get in her way of helping the patients, or even the doctors, with their problems. She’s the problem solver both in and out of the ER. Also, Carol is extremely passionate and caring, entering a series of possibly self-sabotaging relationships. But she is also very strong, knowing that the most self-destructive relationship would be with Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney). So she doesn’t give him a sticking chance until he has matured and developed enough to match her awesome.
Also, Nurse Hathaway is extremely beloved, just like Athena. The character was supposed to die when she attempted to commit suicide in the first episode, but she was such a fan favorite they kept her around for six whole seasons.
If you want to know about Athena, check out one of the many mythology books from the library, or even a translation to The Iliad or The Odyssey, as Athena is a major player in both.
Unfortunately, Carol Hathaway is our only 90’s heroine not currently featured on Netflix Insta-watch, but I’m sure once they understand the Classical implications of her plight, the people in charge will right this.
The Sirens – Ally McBeal
.jpg/120px-John_William_Waterhouse_-_Ulysses_and_the_Sirens_(1891).jpg "The Sirens")
The Sirens make their most famous appearance in The Odyssey. They sing their sweet song and entice men to their deaths on their rocks. Everyone wants to be with them, but they never get happiness (at least from a man) in the end. They are controversial figures in feminism because they can be seen as flighty and dangerous, or sexually empowered. Sound anything like our favorite flighty lawyer with too-short skirts, whose life has the most repetitive soundtrack, and Billy, whose name I can’t remember, Robert Downey Jr., and and even Jon Bon Jovi wanted to be with her? So the Sirens are Ally McBeal; their voice get to be kind of annoying, but you have to admit, it has got a really great soundtrack.
If you want to know more about the Sirens, you could either read The Odyssey or some modernist/imagist poetry because they love classical allusions, especially the Sirens and their connection to poetry/singing.
Ally McBeal is available on Netflix Insta-watch and I highly recommend it for a fun, nostalgic look at the nineties. But beware of season 5, it gets a little weird and choppy.
Boudicca-Angela Chase
Redhead? Check. Misunderstood by those in power? Check. Angst out the wazoo? Check. Mission failed too early, despite great participation/critical acclaim? Check. These four things link our next heroine and her 90’s fictional counterpart together.
Boudicca was queen of the Iceni in Britain and when the Romans tried to take her kingdom after her husband died, she was not having any of it. She rallied the forces and killed a lot of Romans, only to be defeated prematurely because the Romans had a whole lot of military strategy, while, face it, the Iceni had very little. But we don’t really know what happened to Boudicca afterwards, whether she died, or went back to her homelands or even assimilated into the Romans.
Angela Chase, of My So-Called Life, gave a voice to the angsty girls of the nineties. The anti-90210, on MSCL the teenagers talked and thought like teenagers and had real problems without ridiculousness, and it was okay for Angela to be angsty for no other reason other that Jordan Catalano did/did not look at her the right/wrong way. Without easy solutions or necessarily happy endings, Angela was just a teenage, who was super realistic and easy to relate to.
For Boudicca, I highly recommend either Decisive Battles: Boudicca: Warrior Queen or Warrior Queen: Boudicca, I can’t remember which one I’ve seen, or even if they are the same thing. But it is definitely by the History Channel and a weird (but awesome) reenactment documentary.
My So-Called Life…also on Netflix!
Penelope-Buffy Summers
Penelope is another figure from the Odyssey, Odysseus’ wife to be exact. She’s cunning, beautiful and extremely loyal to her family. But she is more than just a housewife. Oh yeah, she’s so clever that she can distract twenty plus suitors from eating all her food and stealing all her husbands stuff. My personal favorite 90’s heroine, Buffy Summers, specializes in fighting large groups of icky vampires and has the love of her life (Angel)* go on a nebulous journey of undisclosed time and mission. Buffy, the beautiful, fit, blonde, kind of vapid high schooler, proves herself to be more than the archetype, just like Penelope. Also she is really good at distracting said icky vampires with witty banter.
For Penelope, of course you should read The Odyssey, but you could also read the feminist retelling The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, or the Heroiades I, by Ovid which is a letter from Penelope to Odysseus, and just about some of the most feminist stuff you’ll read from the Classics.
Buffy Summers…also on Netflix! (is it clear where I get most of 90’s tv from…)
*I expect a rebuttal from Spike fan Jessie sometime soon.
Who is your favorite strong woman from the Classical world? And does she have an counterparts in contemporary fiction or television, whether they are a direct influence or not?
Maddye
Chen
Jessie
katjenlilly
Megan
Emma
persephonespomegranateseeds
Yitian
ASC Lyceum: Theme House Blog 