#are Luke Smith (stoker) and Sam[antha] Crispe (AB) btw

[annecoulmanross]

9. Tears

Another excerpt from Both Sacred and Dust for Terrortober2020 – today’s particularly niche offering is a gift for @kaserl​ – I hope you enjoy!

“Alright, would anyone like to translate the next several lines of ancient Greek?” Dr. George Hodgson asked. There was a deafening silence. Henry Peglar appreciated the fact that some things never changed; whether it was an undergraduate Latin 102 class packed with trust-fund kids who’d been studying the language since they were in prep school, or this tiny graduate Greek seminar full of PhD students (theoretically adept enough to be doing this sort of thing for a living), one thing always stayed the same: no classics student ever truly volunteered to translate of their own free will. Sometimes (rarely) an enthusiastic kid would agree to start out the day’s translation – or sometimes (much more often) someone would step up to translate because they had only prepared notes for the first section before giving up their studying in favor of catching up on sleep. But as predictably as the slow decay of the academic job market, one would reach the point in any Greek or Latin class where there was no one willing to translate without being nudged into the sacrifice. It usually happened sooner rather than later. Today, on the first day of Dr. Hodgson’s graduate seminar on messenger monologues in Greek tragedy, it had, in fact, happened “sooner.” Thomas Jopson, who was auditing (as an ABD – “All But Dissertation,” i.e. a PhD candidate in the last year of the program – Jopson had already finished his required seminars long ago), had taken the first seven lines of the final messenger speech in Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis, describing the sacrifice Agamemnon made of his daughter Iphigenia. No further volunteers, however, seemed likely to appear. Henry glanced covertly at his classmates, trying to see if he ought to fall on the proverbial sword himself. There weren’t many other students. Just Jopson, a few second years – Luke and Sam – and, sprawled at the head of the table, there was Hickey, wearing a grungy pink hoodie, his legs draped over the arm of his chair like he was hoping to create the impression of a slightly bored medieval princeling. Henry, watching Hickey chew on the end of a pen, decided that no help would be coming from that corner. “Dr. Hodgson?” Henry said, finally making eye contact with the professor. “I can translate the next chunk.” “Ah! Good!” Hodgson seemed relieved. “Why don’t you take it down to protheis in line 1550?” Henry nodded. It was only a few lines – four, to be precise. “Should I read the Greek aloud first?” he asked. Jopson had done so without asking, but Jopson read Greek aloud so smoothly that one hardly noticed the time it took. “Oh please do,” Dr. Hodgson replied. So Henry spoke the lines he’d been given. “Hōs d’eseîden Agamémnōn anax / epì sphagàs steíchousan eis álsos kórēn, / anastévaxe, kámpalin strépsas kára / dákrue, prósthen ommátōn protheís.”

Henry knew his Greek was uneven, stumbling, and entirely unfit to the meter for everything apart from Greek hexameter (which this, being tragedy, absolutely was not), but he did his best. “Very good, Mr. Peglar,” Dr. Hodgson said. “And will you translate that for us?” Henry nodded again. “‘But as– but when Lord Agamemnon saw’… er. Okay, kórēn is the direct object, so that’s ‘the girl,’ who is steíchousan eis álsos – she’s walking into the grove, the sacred grove where the sacrifice will take place. And epì sphagàs is a little troubling… ‘upon slaughterings’ doesn’t sound right–” “How many slaughterings?” asked Dr. Hodgson. “Oh!” Henry realized his mistake. “That’s a genitive singular. One slaughtering, just one slaughter. Okay, so she was walking into the grove ‘for the slaughter.’ And when she did that, ‘He – Agamemnon – groaned, and having turned his face away, he cried, and he put up his peplos in front of his eyes.’ So he hid his face with his robe.” Dr. Hodgson grinned. “Much better, Mr. Peglar.” Henry tried not to smile. He was always too easily pleased by any professor’s praise. “Now,” Hodgson continued. “Can anyone tell me why is this passage important?” The seminar room was deathly silent again, though Henry could tell that Thomas Jopson, beside him, had something to say and was in physical pain restraining himself from saying it. After a length of time that might be termed “decorous” (if one were being generous) or “awkward” (if one were not), Jopson broke the silence. “It’s a major art historical subject,” Jopson explained. “Cicero mentions the best-known painter who depicted the scene – Timanthes.” (Henry had learned, by now, that Jopson rarely passed up a chance to mention Cicero, no matter how tangential to the conversation it might be.) But this was apparently exactly what Dr. Hodgson had wanted, because he responded with a “Hear, hear!” and tapped his finger enthusiastically against the cover of the large coffee-table art book that had been sitting in front of him since class began. Henry had never been good at reading upside-down, but he could make out half of a title that read “Pompeii: Guide to the Lost–” before the professor opened the book to a glossy page already marked with a sticky note. “Iphigenia at Aulis,” Hodgson said triumphantly, as he angled the book toward Jopson. Henry could tell at a glance that none of this was new to Jopson, but Henry himself peered at the image. It showed what Henry assumed to be an ancient Roman wall-painting, preserved in the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius.

This style of Pompeiian wall fresco was vaguely familiar – and Henry had seen some of these specific faces before: in textbooks, in user avatars on classics twitter, in memes made by professors trying to be cool. But something about the whole composition of the fresco was new and particularly striking. Henry’s eyes were drawn to the veiled figure off the side, with its hand over its face as though hiding tears….