orichalcum

Well, I have learned how to play the 120 students in Roman Civ like a musical instrument. When I want them to laugh, I say the words "sacred chickens."* When I want them to groan, I put up a slide with another list of important vocabulary terms they need to know like "Zama" and "haruspices." (Points for anyone who knows the significance of those two without looking them up, who isn't a classicist already.)

Meanwhile, I've been teaching Genesis and Sappho and the Odyssey in the History of Gender and Sexuality course. It's a quiet group, but it's got some very smart kids in it; one of the first questions was, "so how do Achilles and Patroklos fit into the traditional Greek lover-beloved male same-sex relationship model?" That's a question people have literally been puzzling over for 2500 years

I think the most "teachable moment" in Genesis came this point when I noted that, when the first woman is created from Adam's side, she doesn't have a name, just a pronoun, "she." She doesn't receive a name until directly after the expulsion and curse, when God tells her "and your husband shall rule over you." The first thing that happens post-curse is that Adam names her Eve, "the mother of all living" and then "knows" her. Naming is the first act of rulership, of establishing authority; Adam has previously named all the animals and established dominion over them, after realizing they were unsuitable as equal partners. He names her, and then he has sex with her. But Eve, interestingly, leaves Adam out of the equation in her first post-expulsion comment. "She conceived, and bore Cain, and said, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." Chlldbearing, for Eve, is the result of interaction between her and God, not her and Adam.

*Sacred chickens: According to legend, during the First Punic War in 249, the commander, Publius Claudius Pulcher, was carrying out the standard pre-battle practice of consulting the sacred chickens to determine the omens for the battle. This involved laying out grain on a grid and seeing where the chickens went to eat. In this case, the chickens refused to eat any grain at all, a terrible omen. Claudius Pulcher was infuriated by this and tossed the chickens over the cliff into the sea, saying, "if they won't eat, let them drink." He then engaged the Carthaginians and suffered a disastrous defeat, was tried for incompetence, and ultimately committed suicide, thus demonstrating the wisdom of following the advice of sacred chickens.

So, this is awful, but it's a terrific data point for the book. Don Imus, well-known radio commentator, referred to the Rutgers' women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" and "rough girls." Thus we see that people are still using slang for prostitutes to characterize assertive, aggressive women, regardless of any knowledge of their sexual behavior (not that it's relevant.) Of course, the racism angle affects things too, but I think the point is still there.