AIMS AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

At the outset of this course, we aimed to analyze Roman views of Marc Antony and Cleopatra through Edward Said’s Orientalism. After examining Livy’s description of the Bacchanalia, we shifted the class’s focus to that text. We explored the subaltern, Orientalist, and gendered facets of Livy’s descriptions as we translated the original Latin. With these new aims in mind, we worked in groups to translate Book 39, 8-19 of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita on the Bacchanalian conspiracy, paying attention to ambiguities in the original Latin. We worked to improve our Latin abilities while building a community of scholars who could approach Classical texts through multidisciplinary and modern perspectives. We produced a commentary with three theoretical works in mind, providing context and deeper analysis of terms and phrases in the text. Each student brought a unique background to the table, enriching our analysis of Livy’s work.

Our theoretical framework for this project has been shaped by Edward Said’s Orientalism, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, and Joan Scott’s “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” Orientalism provided us a framework with which we could view Western^[1] prejudices against the East. In the case of the Bacchanalian Conspiracy, Romans felt the cult’s ideas and values were Eastern (Greek) and so looked down upon them. Meanwhile, Spivak’s essay helped us recognize and understand the othering language used by Livy in his condemnation of the Bacchanalia and its participants. Little to no voice was given to the participants beyond Hispala who, despite her occupation, was still in quite a privileged position, rather than a subaltern as defined by Spivak. Furthermore, Joan Scott’s “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” has informed our understanding of the role gender played in the power structures of the body politic which influenced the actions of the state as well as Livy’s account.

Said, Edward W. (2003). Orientalism

Over the past 45 years since the publication of Said’s foundational text, the term “Orientalism” has taken on many lives of its own. A concept, once mired in controversy and contained within the confines of academia, has become mainstream; Orientalism now pervades contemporary conversations in both academic and public spheres, often serving as a signifier of any asymmetrical relationship between the (broadly constituted) West and the East. This reductive understanding obscures much of the nuances of Orientalism as a theoretical framework, as articulated first by Said, and then developed further by Spivak, Bhabha, and many others. Not merely denotative of Western portrayals and characterizations of the East, Orientalism is a dominating discourse of power-knowledge, predicated upon and constructed by perceived differences – a system which, through its representation and re-presentations (Darstellen and Vertretung) of the other-ed “Orient”, commits epistemological and ontological violence towards it. A subsumed and servile East with no agency and no space for enunciation, entirely constituted “under Western eyes” (to quote Mohanty), becomes the ideal ideological pre-conditions for, and justifications of colonialism, masquerading under civilizing guises.

In developing a conjectural account of Orientalism from its nascent stages to its use as a vehicle of asserting colonial hegemony, Said focuses primarily on the intellectual history of the Enlightenment and afterwards. His brief discussion of Greek Orientalist narratives in the works of Aeschylus and Euripides, while instructive, does not provide a clear picture of Orientalism as a dominating discourse in antiquities; in fact, Said seems to believe that Orientalism is a mostly modern phenomenon. Our work of close-reading and analyzing Livy’s account of the Bacchanalia enriches Said’s analyses by further grounding Orientalism with the ancient world. Livy’s dramatic and exaggerated portrayal of the Bacchanalia and its participants, as counterfactual as it might be, is the all-consuming, all-powerful episteme which creates and defines history – a significant demonstration of the relationship between Orientalism and imperial power which had begun to take shape since antiquities.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

The subaltern, as defined by Spivak, is one who does not engage in the definition and characterization of who they themselves are. Through this lens, we can see that the Bacchanals occupy a similar position with little agency over their historical reckoning.  Although  the Bacchanals would not fit in the traditional paradigm of what Spivak constitutes as the “subaltern,”, we are using the frameworks of subaltern studies to understand their voicelessness. The preserved written accounts of the Bacchanals largely rest on Livy’s account of the “Bacchanalian Conspiracy” in The History of Rome and the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, which offer two Roman perspectives, but no Bacchanalian perspective. Naturally, the lack of both perspectives is nothing new in the field of ancient history, but in the consideration of persecuted groups, it is particularly important to consider on the one hand the likelihood of a certain depiction’s historical accuracy and, on the other, how it might be tainted by political or prejudicial motivations. Throughout our commentary, we note the biased terms with which Livy describes the Bacchanalia to lay bare the impressions he tried to elicit. While the time has passed for the Bacchanals to join the dialogue of their depiction, it is up to us to read through the lines of Livy’s account in the context of the histories and surviving material culture in order to find, or at least postulate, their shared realities.

Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.”

Scott furnishes her own unique definition of gender, finding fault with the traditional theoretical approaches generally used in historical writing. She critiques historians who separate so-called women’s spheres (of children and families) from the so-called men’s spheres (of war and politics), as if the subjectivity of men and women must be at odds. Scott’s definition of gender includes both the perceived differences of the sexes as well as the power distinctions created by these perceptions. Furthermore, the article argues that study of the social and political construction of gender is essential to history. We have attempted to avoid the type of historical analysis which Scott criticizes, while focusing on gender as a primary facet of history. The ways in which perceived sex differences have affected the relationships of power in Livy’s Rome are apparent throughout the narrative, and we have worked  to shed light on these power dynamics through close literary analysis.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT AND AUTHOR INFO

This project has no one singular author. It was a collaborative effort undertaken in the spring of 2022 by the Advanced Latin Reading course at Pomona College by students from all five Claremont Colleges. The work of translating and commenting on the text was divided evenly among the class. The class was split into three study groups who each wrote up translations of specific sections of the text over the course of the semester. Each group also researched and commented on aspects of the text that both interested them and were relevant to the themes of the course. . At several points during the semester, we gathered as a class to review the document and provide feedback to each other. The comments throughout the document were also frequently inspired by discussion we had during class. Our collective translation and commentary were influenced by a number of sources we consulted throughout the semester, including ancient primary sources and selections on modern race and gender theory. Two additional ancient texts that we translated and drew on to translate and analyze Livy were the Senatus Consultum de Baccanalibus and Horace’s Odes 1.37. By putting these ancient texts in conversation with the critical theorists described above, we developed the project published here.

Contributors included: Tommy Burke, Pomona College ‘22; Kevin Carlson, Pomona College ‘24; Blaike Cheramie, Scripps College ‘22; Howard Deshong, Harvey Mudd College ‘22, Nam Do, Pomona College ‘23; Katherine Goldman, Scripps College ‘25; Lilly Haave, Pomona College ‘23; Madison Hesse, Pomona College ‘24, Louie (the lab TA) Kulber, Pomona College ‘23; Eric Prough, Pomona College ‘24; and our phenomenal Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Pomona College, Jody Valentine.