#Peter Green

[undergroundrockpress]

Peter Green, 1969.

[jt1674]

[thats-h0w-th3-light-g3ts-in]

• O C T O B E R 1 0 T H •

Happy Fleetwood Mac Day

Here‘s to the best band that ever existed

[jeannereames]

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Peter Green, giant in Classics. He died this last Monday morning (9/16/24) at the ripe old age of 99. He was born the same year as both my parents.

Peter was not only a very fine scholar, but also a damn good writer--which isn't always true of historians. He wrote historical fiction (no, really, he did: The Laughter of Aphrodite, about Sappho, and Achilles, His Armor, about Alkibiades). And he wrote some quite excellent collections of essays: In the Shadow of the Parthenon and Classical Bearings. His Alexander to Actium--a monster book about the Hellenistic Age big enough to choke a mule--actually made money for U-Cal Press. Not common for academic books, especially of that size!

I have issues with Peter's take on Alexander, I'll be honest. In fact, it was his cheeky summary of Hephaistion as "Tall, handsome, spoilt, spiteful, overbearing and fundamentally stupid" that made the little Hephaistion sit up in my head and object: "I wasn't like that!"

And that launched a dissertation. So in a backhanded way, you can thank Peter for my work on Hephaistion.

But I want to tell you about the other Peter I knew, a genuinely helpful, friendly, and likable guy. He and his wife (Classicist) Carin Green were long-time friends of Gene Borza (my academic father) and Kathleen Pavelko (Gene's now-widow). Born in the UK, he had mid-century British Classicist training mixed with some very progressive politics that might surprise.

He also gave me the best (academic) edit job I've ever received, in now 25 years of publishing. Together with Gene, I gave a paper at the then-APA (now-SCS), which ended up becoming my first (co-authored) publication, "Some New Thoughts on the Death of Alexander the Great." Peter was there to hear, and came up after to congratulate us then quiz me about my psych background and the info I'd brought on grieving. Gene told him about the chapter in my dissertation on Alexander's mourning, and Peter said, "Send me that chapter" for Selecta Classica, of which he was editor. I warned it was long. (To the tune of 60 pages in manuscript!)

But I sent it. And he took it. Then did the edits (both academic and literary) himself. It was fantastic. I quibbled on two things. First, commas. Ha. But second, he insisted everything go back into Greek without some translations, contending anybody reading it would know the Greek. I objected. I lost. I still think that was a mistake, but it was also evidence of that mid-century Brit Classicist that assumed the only people reading it would be other Classicists.

But folks, he made that first (solo) article of mine so much better, forcing me to clarify problematic phrasing, elaborate where I'd been too brief, etc. And he did it with a light hand that allowed my own voice to come through. He became my model of How to Be A Good Academic Editor. When I edit today, I have him in mind.

Peter, thank you for all you've done, not just in print, but as a human being and mentor to young scholars, like me. I'll pour a little libation of good red wine in your memory.

With his passing goes the last of that generation of Macedoniasts.

[musickickztoo]

Peter Green *October 29, 1946

[boxwright]

Fleetwood Mac - Peter Green

[hitku]

by Peter Green

[killcityarchive]

REST IN PEACE JOHN MAYALL

1933-2024

[seedsinmygarden]

MC's Wedding Day

for: @rosy05

this was a fun request!! i randomized every (former!) student and used that as my basis. while there were certainly some I could have done easily (like MC and Amit inviting Shah or MC and Imelda inviting Kogawa), I wanted the challenge. enjoy!

Word Count: 2,017 words

Tags/Warnings: Set in a time where Fig didn’t die in the Final Repository Battle; takes place seven years after the Battle Below Hogwarts— thus, all student characters aged-up to their early 20s! Fluff, some found family.

--

“HEADMASTER BLACK and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Mr. Phillip Hans and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          What in Merlin’s bloody beard is this? He scoffs, preparing to owl back, but then his wife, Ursula Black, spots the letter over his shoulder. “Is that a wedding invitation? Darling, we should go!” “Absolutely not. To be quite frank, I don’t even know why I was invited!” “Perhaps it’s only a formality?”

          After some persuasion from his wife, Headmaster Black attended the event. He started off still grumbling, but eased up only a tad as the ceremony turned out to be rather lovely (and both Eleanor Gryffindor and the Minister of Magic were in attendance as well, seeing as Phillip, MC’s now-husband, was a renowned Auror). Besides, it was free food and he supposes there was some good conversation to be had among the other… witches and wizards, in attendance. He exchanged brief conversation with Phillip and MC when they visited his table (shared with a few other professors and their spouses) during dinner, only just congratulating them after a firm nudge from Ursula on his right.

“PROFESSOR MATILDA WEASLEY and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Mr. Thomas Dharby and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Professor Weasley was shocked to say the least, but not too shocked. She had remained in touch with many of her former students, but she had never been invited to one of their weddings before! Since it was only just outside of Hogsmeade, it wouldn’t take much of her time to attend and so she did. It was a beautiful wedding, especially when Tommy loudly proclaimed his vows as if he wanted the whole world to hear them because, well, who could blame him.

          Upon the first opportunity she saw during the reception, she had made her way to the lovely couple and thanked them for inviting her to join them on their day, to which MC had smiled and invited her to an embrace. “Oh, how you’ve grown into the wonderful adults you are. May your lives together be full of fortune, love, and happiness.” 

(PROFESSOR ELEAZAR FIG)

          Well, Professor Fig didn’t quite need an invite as he was the person walking MC down the aisle. When MC had asked him to walk them down the aisle alongside their father, Professor Fig could not have been more honored to do as much. He won’t admit, but he cried after MC had left. He got to watch them grow up into the wondrous person they are now and he was ecstatic to be there as they take their next step in life— quite literally.

          He watches as MC wedded Peter Green, the quiet Ravenclaw that was seemingly Madame Scribner’s favorite student in all her years as librarian of Hogwarts (and he was sure she would have been invited had she not passed away so soon). The dinner and reception were both lovely as ever, and he could see the love in both their eyes as they had their first dance, not far from the love he held for Miriam when they first wedded. MC was in perfectly good hands.

“PROFESSOR DINAH HECAT and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Mr. Lucan Brattleby and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          When the former Unspeakable first received the invitation, she was a bit surprised. It certainly wasn’t everyday that former professors would be invited to the wedding, though perhaps she had more of an effect than she thought back when they were students. 

          She later learned that with both MC and Lucan long out of school and working in the same department as Aurora, of course they were going to reunite and, as it seemed, a relationship kindled from there. When she arrived and witnessed the couple tell their vows, she knew the love they held was true and wished that it would live forever for them— one of a kind, she told them when she got the chance to speak to the couple. 

“PROFESSOR ABRAHAM RONEN and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Ms. Annabelle Sallow and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          To say he was giddy was certainly an understatement. He cheered so loud, one could have heard it clear across the castle. He knewwww, he kNEW, from the moment Anne and MC sat together in 6th year Charms (how she was cured, Ronen will never know, but he always had an inkling that MC was involved) that they would come to spend the rest of their lives together. Now to get an invitation to their wedding? Merlin, he was pleased!

          The venue and reception were beautiful, and he could see the hint of charmwork weaved into the space, including Avis, the very first charm he had taught them in their 6th year. To know they had valued him so much in their lives that they would invite him to witness their marriage brought him to tears alone, and he was ready— more than ready— to sing their praises (and maybe brag a bit about some of the present charms as he had taught them so long ago). When he finally came face to face with the newly married couple bearing MC’s surname, he gave them both a great big hug and wished them all the best on their new lives together.

“PROFESSOR ASEOP SHARP and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Mr. Everett Clopton and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Well, this was certainly a surprise. An unexpected one. Yet, it was also rather welcome. He found himself itching to go, but at the same time, he wasn't exactly a party person, he had always been much more introverted... but then again, MC was one of his best students (and possibly the most powerful ever) and they were a joy to have in his classroom, though he would never admit that out loud. 

          In the end, he decided to attend the ceremony and since he had a plus-one, he took along Professor Ronen to keep him company. He knew the man's giddiness would rub off at least a bit and allow him to enjoy the wedding— and enjoy the wedding he did! He didn't quite dance, but he got to sit in on the scenery and atmosphere, and found himself grateful that he had decided to attend. (Even Professor Ronen managed to drag him out to the dance floor for one dance and of course, bragged about it later.)

“PROFESSOR MIRABEL GARLICK and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Ms. Amoria Dovah-Fawkes and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Professor Garlick gasps happily at the sight of the wedding invitation, and to see that it was located in MC's own conservatory, a beautiful location on its own... Merlin save her. Though it had been a while since the two were out of school, Garlick was rather close with MC and Poppy as they started a combined herbology/beasts in the Gilded Perch corridor, a dream they shared since they had found it all those years ago (as MC had enthusiastically shared with Garlick shortly before graduation). 

          When she arrived, she could feel all the love that was put into the new conservatory, and the love that the now-married couple had for each other. Amoria always had a fascination with beasts, particularly dragons, so of course there was a couple baby dragons about without their mothers (whether it be abandoned or the mother was dead :( ). She congratulated the couple when she was finally face-to-face with them, happily wishing them all the best on their new lives together like a pair of beautiful budding roses. 

“PROFESSOR CHIYO KOGAWA and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Ms. Poppy Sweeting and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Like Professor Sharp, Kogawa was rather surprised to have received this invitation— unexpected, yet welcome. She found herself sighing with a smile as she looked at the beautiful artwork on the invitation itself— a phoenix and a badger, no doubt reminiscent of the couple whose wedding she was invited to. She decides then and there to attend— MC was a wonderful person and to be marrying Poppy Sweeting… Kogawa knew they had found true love with the sweet yet stern Hufflepuff girl. 

          The wedding ceremony was beautiful, of course, as was the reception. MC had expressed their excitement upon Kogawa’s arrival and chatted with her a bit while Poppy danced with her few bridesmaids— some mutual friends of her and MC’s— and Kogawa, of course, wished them well. 

(PROFESSOR MUDWAI ONAI)

          Professor Onai couldn't have been happier to walk her daughter down the aisle to MC. The two have been inseparable since they first met in Charms class in their 5th year and even through all the hardships they had experienced, well… they experienced them together and it only brought them closer. 

          Handing her daughter off was truly a gift in itself. She had heard MC’s muttered compliment and Natty’s giggle in response and smiles. The ceremony itself was beautiful and went off without a hitch, and when the reception came with dinner and dancing involved, Professor Onai sat and watched the lovely couple. She remembered the excitement Natty brought with her after her first date with MC, and she certainly didn’t need to be a Seer to know that her daughter was in good hands.

“PROFESSOR SATYAVATI SHAH and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Ms. Scarlet Fawkes and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Professor Shah scoffs. A former student inviting her to their wedding? Please, this must be a joke. However, after a brief conversation with Professor Garlick, who was also invited, Professor Shah decided it was worth her time and went only as long as Professor Garlick joined her. Of course, Garlick was excited, and even shared the color of her gown with Shah so they could match if Shah so wanted to.

          The venue itself was beautiful, but the reception area was extravagant. So much more than Shah was expecting. It was in the Highlands, and it was a clear sky, and they were so lucky to have picked a date where there would be a few constellations and even planets spotted in the sky. MC visited with Professor Shah, thanking her for coming and the two shared in spotting some constellations. Shah wouldn’t say it aloud, but she was proud of her students and the wonderful people they grew up to become. 

“PROFESSOR BAI HOWIN and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Mr. Leon Hans and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Certainly a pleasant surprise when Professor Howin received the owls. She knew that MC had been traveling the world with Leon as he played Quidditch, and they studied, rescued, and rehabilitated various beasts that they found around the globe, often owling Howin with their finds and anything else interesting they see along the way.

          She attends the wedding, marking it the first time she saw them in years and MC was excited that Howin was there. She doesn’t converse much as she wasn’t a party person, but she still wishes the couple all her best and only the best lives together going forward. 

“PROFESSOR CUTHBERT BINNS and a plus one are cordially invited to the union of Ms. Florence Watts and Mx. MC. Dinner and dancing to follow, owl with regrets only.”

          Unfortunately, he cannot even leave Hogwarts as he's confined to its walls. (It's a ghost thing.) He sends an owl with regrets, but adds a letter wishing them all the best and a few books as a wedding gift. Hopefully they understand. 

[cannedbluesblog]

Peter Green

[jt1674]

[thats-h0w-th3-light-g3ts-in]

• O C T O B E R 1 0 T H •

Happy Fleetwood Mac Day

Here‘s to the best band that ever existed

[jeannereames]

I see you talk a lot about historiography! What would you consider the most important development of Alexander’s historiography?

What the Hell is Historiography? (And why you should care)

This question and the next one in the queue are both going to be fun for me. 😊

First, some quick definitions for those who are new to me and/or new to reading history:

Historiography = “the history of the histories” (E.g., examination of the sources themselves rather than the subject of them…a topic that typically incites yawns among undergrads but really fires up the rest of us, ha.)

primary sources = the evidence itself—can be texts, art, records, or material evidence. For ancient history, this specifically means the evidence from the time being studied.

secondary sources = writings by historians using the primary evidence, whether meant for a “regular” audience (non-specialists) or academic discussions with citations, footnotes, and bibliography (sometimes referred to as “full scholarly apparatus”).

For ancient history, we also sometimes get a weird middle category…they’re not modern sources but also not from the time under discussion, might even be from centuries after the fact. Consider the medieval Byzantine “encyclopedia” called the Suda (sometimes Suidas), which contains information from now lost ancient sources, finalized c. 900s CE. To give a comparison, imagine some historian a thousand years from now studying Geoffry Chaucer from the 1300s, using an entry about him in some kid’s 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that contains information that had been lost by his day.

This middle category is especially important for Alexander, since even our primary sources all date hundreds of years after his death. Yes, those writers had access to contemporary accounts, but they didn’t just “cut-and-paste.” They editorialized and selected from an array of accounts. Worse, they rarely tell us who they used. FIVE surviving primary Alexander histories remain, but he’s mentioned in a wide (and I do mean wide) array of other surviving texts. Alas this represents maybe a quarter of what was actually written about him in antiquity.

OKAY, so …

The most important historiographic changes in Alexander studies!

I’m going to pick three, or really two-and-a-half, as the last is an extension of the second.

FIRST …decentering Arrian as the “good” source as opposed to the so-called “vulgate” of Diodoros-Curtius-Justin as “bad” sources.

Many earlier Alexander historians (with a few important exceptions [Fritz Schachermeyr]) considered Arrian to be trustworthy, Plutarch moderately trustworthy if short, and the rest varying degrees of junk. W. W. Tarn was especially guilty of this. The prevalence of his view over Schachermeyr’s more negative one owed to his popularity/ease of reading, and the fact he wrote on Alexander for volume 6 of the first edition (1927) of the Cambridge Ancient History, later republished in two volumes with additions (largely in vol. 2) in 1948 and 1956. Thus, and despite being a lawyer (barrister) not a professional historian, his view dominated Alexander studies in the first half of the 20th century (Burn, Rose, etc.)…and even after. Both Mary Renault and Robin Lane Fox (neither of whom were/are professional historians either), as well as N. G. L. Hammond (with qualifications), show Tarn’s more romantic impact well into the middle of the second half of the 20th century. But you could find it in high school and college textbooks into the 1980s.

The first really big shift (especially in English) came with a pair of articles in 1958 by Ernst Badian: “The Eunuch Bagoas,” Classical Quarterly 8, and “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7. Both demolished Tarn’s historiography. I’ve talked about especially the first before, but it really WAS that monumental, and ushered in a more source-critical approach to Alexander studies. This also happened to coincide with a shift to a more negative portrait of the conqueror in work from the aforementioned Schachermeyr (reissuing his earlier biography in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichtenkeit und seines Wirkens) to Peter Green’s original Alexander of Macedon from Thames and Hudson in 1974, reissued in 1991 from Univ. of California-Berkeley. J. R. Hamilton’s 1973 Alexander the Great wasn’t as hostile, but A. B. Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great turned back towards a more negative, or at least ambivalent portrait, and his Alexander in the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (1996) was highly critical. I note the latter two as Bosworth wrote the section on Alexander for the much-revised Cambridge Ancient History vol. 6, 1994, which really demonstrates how the narrative on Alexander had changed.

All this led to an unfortunate kick-back among Alexander fans who wanted their hero Alexander. They clung/still cling to Arrian (and Plutarch) as “good,” and the rest as varying degrees of bad. Some prefer Tarn’s view of the mighty conqueror/World unifier/Brotherhood-of-Mankind proponent, including that He Absolutely Could Not Have Been Queer. Conversely, others are all over the romance of him and Hephaistion, or Bagoas (often owing to Renault or Renault-via-Oliver Stone), but still like the squeaky-nice-chivalrous Alexander of Plutarch and Arrian.

They are very much still around. Quite a few of the former group freaked out over the recent Netflix thing, trotting out Plutarch (and Arrian) to Prove He Wasn’t Queer, and dismissing anything in, say, Curtius or Diodoros as “junk” history. But I also run into it on the other side, with those who get really caught up in all the romance and can’t stand the idea of a vicious Alexander.

It's not necessary to agree with Badian’s (or Green’s or Schachermeyr’s) highly negative Alexander to recognize the importance of looking at all the sources more carefully. Justin is unusually problematic, but each of the other four had a method, and a rationale. And weaknesses. Yes, even Arrian. Arrian clearly trusted Ptolemy to a degree Curtius didn’t. For both of them, it centered on the fact he was a king. I’m going to go with Curtius on this one, frankly.

Alexander is one of the most malleable famous figures in history. He’s portrayed more ways than you can shake a stick at—positive, negative, in-between—and used for political and moral messaging from even before his death in Babylon right up to modern Tik-Tok vids.

He might have been annoyed that Julius Caesar is better known than he is, in the West, but hands-down, he’s better known worldwide thanks to the Alexander Romance in its many permutations. And he, more than Caesar, gets replicated in other semi-mythical heroes. (Arthur, anybody?)

Alfred Heuss referred to him as a wineskin (or bottle)—schlauch, in German—into which subsequent generations poured their own ideas. (“Alexander  der  Große  und  die politische Ideologie  des Altertums,” Antike und Abendland 4, 1954.) If that might be overstating it a bit, he’s not wrong.

Who Alexander was thus depends heavily on who was (and is) writing about him.

And that’s why nuanced historiography with regard to the Alexander sources is so important. It’s also why there will never be a pop presentation that doesn’t infuriate at least a portion of his fanbase. That fanbase can’t agree on who he was because the sources that tell them about him couldn’t agree either.

SECOND …scholarship has moved away from an attempt to find the “real” Alexander towards understanding the stories inside our surviving histories and their themes. A biography of Alexander is next to impossible (although it doesn’t stop most of us from trying, ha). It’s more like a “search” for Alexander, and any decent history of his career will begin with the sources. And their problems.

This also extends to events. I find myself falling in the middle between some of my colleagues who genuinely believe we can get back to “what happened,” and those who sorta throw up their hands and settle on “what story the sources are telling us, and why.” Classic Libra. 😉

As frustrating as it may sound, I’m afraid “it depends” is the order of the day, or of the instance, at least. Some things are easier to get back to than others, and we must be ready to acknowledge that even things reported in several sources may not have happened at all. Or at least, were quite radically different from how it was later reported. (Thinking of proskynesis here.) Sometimes our sources are simply irreconcilable…and we should let them be. (Thinking of the Battle of Granikos here.)

THIRD/SECOND-AND-A-HALF …a growing awareness of just how much Roman-era attitudes overlay and muddy our sources, even those writing in Greek. It would be SO nice to have just one Hellenistic-era history. I’d even take Kleitarchos! But I’d love Marsyas, or Ptolemy. Why? Both were Macedonians. Even our surviving philhellenic authors such as Plutarch impose Greek readings and morals on Macedonian society.

So, let’s add Roman views on top of Greek views on top of Macedonian realities in a period of extremely fast mutation (Philip and Alexander both). What a muddle! In fact, one of the real advantages of a source such as Curtius is that his sources seem to have known a thing or three about both Achaemenid Persia and also Macedonian custom. He sometimes says something like, “Macedonian custom was….” We don’t know if he’s right, but it’s not something we find much in other histories—even Arrian who used Ptolemy. (Curtius may also have used Ptolemy, btw.)

In any case, as a result of more care given to the themes of the historians, a growing sensitivity to Roman milieu for all of them has altered our perceptions of our sources.

These are, to me, the major and most significant shifts in Alexander historiography from the late 1800s to the early 2100s.

[musickickztoo]

Peter Green † July 25, 2020

[de-salva]

PETER GREEN & FLEETWOOD MAC - Untitled Instrumental (part 1)

Live At Carousel Ballroom, June 9 1968, San Francisco, CA