How I got into Classics (and why you should too!)
This post, posted on her Coffee & Classics blog, explores Anika Murali’s journey to discover the ancient world, as part of our #CelebratingClassics campaign.
My entry into the Classical world was pretty unconventional. It all started with a TV series: Downton Abbey. The period drama follows the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the early twentieth century. In the second episode of the show, the sharp and spirited Lady Mary Crawley verbally spars with Matthew Crawley, the new heir to the Downton estate and her would-be suitor, over Greek mythology. The tale of Perseus and Andromeda, to be precise. It’s a phenomenal scene where you can almost see the sparks flying between them, the chemistry bubbling underneath the half-veiled insults. They level pointed barbs at one another using the myth as an allegory, each holding their own and demonstrating to the audience that they are more than a match for each other. I was hooked by the witty dialogue and the simmering tension in their banter, which was what pulled me deeper in.
Perseus freeing Andromeda after killing Cetus, 1st century CE fresco from the Casa Dei Dioscuri, Pompeii (©Wikimedia Commons)
I didn’t know then just how far this show would carry me. As I sailed through the rest of the series, these two characters intrigued me further with each passing episode. I wanted to be clued in to the allusions they made, to be familiar with the works that they would have been. I think I’d almost forgotten they were entirely fictional! And so, I jumped into read Mythos by Stephen Fry (former CA Honorary President, who chatted all about Greek mythology in this CA Film) This was a good decision; his style is easy to read and very engaging. The book assumes you have no prior knowledge of Greek mythology and introduces it to you from scratch. Gradually, I became familiar with several myths featured in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which made it much easier when transitioning to the primary sources. However, I think what really propelled me even further into the world of Classics was the Iliad.
Three weeks into starting university, I happened to walk past a shelf in the library (my favourite haunt). And there it was, sandwiched between The Collected Plays of Euripides and The Odyssey. I had the usual preconceptions about the Iliad – that it was long, difficult, and that my brain was in for a good hard slog. I picked it up and began reading, and I remember thinking, This isn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be. The language didn’t seem to be too heavy, and it helped that I was familiar with the Greek gods. That said, I did find it a little challenging at first. I came very close to abandoning it after about a hundred pages. And then I arrived at one of the most famous scenes in the Iliad – Hector’s bittersweet farewell to his wife, Andromache, and and baby son Astyanax. I found myself blinking back tears. He wasn’t just a warrior leaving to protect his city, knowing he might never come back; he was a husband and father bidding his family goodbye. That was the moment they ceased to be characters; they had transformed into humans. That was when I began to grasp the emotional carnage that all wars cause, and to see the vortex of emotions in the epic – anger, love, loss, grief, rage, pain, and death. Themes that will characterise our own lives at some point. Themes that are universal and always will be. This was my turning point, the pivotal moment that set the stage for everything to come.
Hector, Andromache and Astyanax (© Wikimedia Commons)
From that time on, I could not put the book down. I winced at the gory descriptions of the battle injuries, held my breath and curled my toes at suspenseful moments, and wiped away tears at the climactic battle between Achilles and Hector. There were moments when I had to put the book down and take a deep breath to process what I’d just read. Above all, it was the astounding intricacy of the characters that reeled me in; I spent a long time working them out, and I still am. I think I was shellshocked for a day or so after reading it. It scarred me in the best possible way – it made me want to explore it further and devour more texts like it. If the Iliad hadn’t been as seductive as it is, I wouldn’t have wanted to continue down this path. I read the Odyssey and the Aeneid in quick succession, followed by Metamorphoses and a few plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. I intend to read Cicero, Aristotle’s Poetics and Plato’s Republic next, as well as a great many others.
Classics need not be intimidating, or only accessible to an exclusive, elite group. Trying to understand a time and place so far removed from our own can at first seem pointless and irrelevant. It isn’t, and doesn’t have to be. It feels daunting, I know, to attempt to navigate this labyrinth of interconnected families and marriages and murders. The good news is, like Theseus, we have string to help us along the way. Authors like Rick Riordan, Madeline Miller and Stephen Fry have certainly done their part in making it much more accessible to contemporary audiences.
Furthermore, classically inspired creative media are very much present in the modern world, from literature such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (based on the Greek myth of Pyramus and Thisbe) to Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. Whilst Troy (2004) brought the Iliad to life, making for a memorable – if not completely accurate – retelling of Homer’s epic, we have both The Return and Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie to look forward to, bringing the Odyssey on to the big screen. In the art and architecture we enjoy, the television we watch, the lyrics that resonate today, we’ve been dipping our toes into Classics all along without realising it. We’ve all engaged with it in some shape or form, which means we’re all classicists in a way. Classics is a pentimento – a masterpiece that’s been painted over, but the traces of which are discernible if you look closely enough. They aren’t mere relics whose significance began and ended thousands of years ago; they are alive and well in the media we consume today. They laid the foundation stone for modern pop culture and thereby retain their relevance, which is why they are still just as important as they were when the bards first invoked their Muses and composed their works.
Anika has also written about her first reading of Virgil’s Aeneid and particularly his treatment of female characters, which you can read here, and enjoy a brief extract below:
“As such, Lavinia’s characterisation, or lack thereof, corresponds to the values of the time period. She is the embodiment of the ideal Augustan woman – someone who’s got to be morally spotless, beyond reproach; someone worthy of the honour of giving birth to the Roman race. Lavinia is the only mortal woman in the Aeneid to survive, come to that; every one of the others die because they are impediments to Aeneas in one way or another…”
Keen to find out more about the Aeneid? Listen to our podcast series here!
