Unraveling the Enigma of CLASSICS: A Call to Question and Discover

CLASSICSall the page tops call my classes. Therefore, you, now looking at this image starting with me a spring term s study, might be said to have heard a call. It s CLASSICS calling? Wait a minute! Sounds like one of those robot calls promising payouts, pushing scams. Yet when it s Classics,I can t just slam down, hang up. I can though call to account the page tops, query where from, when, by whom, for what & why one header classifies Democracy, Tyranny, Empire, with Mythology of Greece & Rome, & Making Pastoral Myth, can query CLASSICS claiming every screen. John Van Sickle jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 1

In short, the CLASSICS moniker calls for questions why & how to study, what to make of different sorts of items: some to be sure that will get featured on CLASSICS screens like January s hymned inaugural urgent ode; but still more what to make of items already featured so long they might seem stale, might benefit from fresh first looks via Rubric for Reading: Who gave Classics pride of placement? Where did Classics come from? When did Classics get so called? What did Classics call on, or call on? Whydid Classics get to be calledfirst class? Howmay Classics own a spot, still now no longer claim top screen? RUBRICATION red line guides for scribes on a medieval manuscript of Thomas from Aquino town (where Cicero likewise native son) not far south from Rome. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 2

The Rubric for Reading {RfR}from Who to How where HOW recalls in other order WHO may council, index, star in text or mark in margins, items to migrate into journals, file in order, ready to thread, reorder in order to count, recount, accounting for how you study & what you bring to class, exchange with peers & hope to make your own & theirs.. Roots at Rome for later, students first meet Classics now conflicted: {I} called too colorfast to keep its pride of place above our screen-tops; {II}clarion incandescent screed via violent, turbulent, bullying factions; {III}needed still to own our language ours as born to, rarely owned though language fraught where Greek & Latin lurk below like classic shipwrecks haunting Mediterranean bottoms till George Bass (at rest from vying) ventured risky dives retrieving treasure: so linguistic treasure now must Classics ever dare for stock in language if neglected now retrieved may nurture all who would ascend beside Amanda. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 3

Clicking Classics almost stymies RfR (circa 5,710,000.000 results), with contretemps: He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive? (click here), calling Classics closet racial, still Don t yield ancient history and literature to the alt-right (click here). Quick further RfR hitsClassics once acclaimed for calling light from ancient Rome & Greece against ecclestiastic dark, denominated catholic via Greek & Roman via still imperious Latin. Still. though not yet called ENlightenment, Classics had enjoyed by metaphor rebirth (Renaissance: circa 228,000,000 results) adorned with colloquy: Humanism. (circa 370,000,000 results) present active Latin, salving exiled Greek. Meanwhile research via RfR tracks Classics back millennia (Latin thousands years ) to Mediterranean sea closed in by Africa s north shore, Asia s west coast, Europe s jig-sawed southern stretches. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 4

Mediterranean known, though lately less for Classics than for diet features Latin medi-, middle, as in medio (Spain, Italy), midi (France) &English middling, likewise terra, land in Latin & in Italy, tierra (Spain), but terroir (France, & Napa, Cutchogue), till terrestrial (English): parsing Mediterranean thus by nomenclature amid lands. Then to call the sea s three borders continents entails another claim to call on Latin terms: con- meaning with, together : fixed thus first con- points the action codified by TiN, in Latin meaning keep or hold. So conwithTiNtogether means together hold, keep with, while conTINents [since Latin NT counts as English ING] means keeping together sea with wave-lapped beaches edging sprawled tectonic plates. Now TiN, that brings the verbal force, is called the root or stem from parts of plants. called parts of words via metaphor. TiN to hold, to keep, as in ConTiNue, PerTiNent, also TaiN, as in perTaiN, conTaiN, imperTiNent. inconTiNent, & TeN in TeNure, TeNant, TeNet, entertain, retain. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 5

colonial Latins emigration north & west up Europe, eastward Europe figures personified in myth Europa s immigration. When? Time figured back so far that continents were still not called so. Where? To Crete s substantial island, slated future sill for Europe, reached via troubled short sea traverse leaving Asia s western shoreline, after likewise troubled travel up from Egypt demigration after Io s emigration tracked her boomorphic crossing Bosporus, breasting her named sea, post herding by the wakeful Argus (keen till killed by lulling Hermes). once from Argos forced before its pendulant peninsula later called by her kin Isle of Pelops. What? Migrant miscegenerate mingling Mediterranean ever exchanging Greek, Nilotic, gods & heroes, cities recycled, remigrations. Why? Could any nature, human or more than human, count on so much vying, othering, getting, owning, crossing indiscriminate middling & outlandish typically mixing kind & unkind? Whilst Mediterranean via terra, tierra, terroir tells jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 6

Who? Genealogy calls Europa, Greek, wide watcher, gendered female, hence recalling plots endorsing gender stereotyping sister, daughter, mother, queen, witch, crofter, artful crafter, often forced for sex or work (in 1975, just migrant to Manhattan were nt we called by Peter Schocken launching Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: [by Pomeroy, S. B.] Women in Classical Antiquity ?) Europa, wide eyed, sexual pick by father Zeus, Bright day , & tricked by his tauromorphic guise to ride his back to Crete type tale (deceit, seduction, origin plot, foundation, cock & bull): all classic lines that tempt embroidery, mythopoeic text adornment, prompt incontinent tellers bent on spinning stereotypes, thus maiden tricked to mother Minos, archetypal naval classic, sister stolen sought by brother Kadmos search that broughtfrom Asia signage still spelled alpha bet. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 7

from Egypt, demigrant from his bullying brother Belos (Baal) & Berber mother Libya (by Zeus brother Poseidon burdened), she herself adaughterborn to Memphis (city, daughter Nile s not Mississippi s), Memphis local bride for immigrant Epaphus, Tag in tagged by Zeus. By Zeus? Our story left Europa bullied on Crete, her father, Agenor, fathered by Zeus sibling sea god linked with Libya, child to Memphis, hitched to Epaphus, Tag great-grandsire for Europa , whilst his father her great-great-grand-p re tauromorphic Zeus: stay tuned for kin from Tag remigrant back to mother Io s Argive source. In Asia Europa s immigrant father, called Agenor, hailed jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 8

How? threads tangledcousins, second, first, removedlike kindred clews my mother used to comb & order. Classics classes though may query where like items stem from, stand for whom, as if from Lonely Planet, Blue Guide,Rough Guide, Libya, Egypt, Memphis, Nile personified, paired off via verbs like hitched, joined, wed. in plots to thicken by picking terms like barter, steal, inveigle, win, enslave, rape apparat verbs called in stories to stand for what s seen, heard read, really wanted, suffered, fearsome: stories reckoned to look like truth, if not true: mold mythology comme il faut, draft names as if carte blanche from Map-quest, moeurshumanes, too much so. Search on Libya, migrant [(Circa 3800000 results), New evidence shows refugees and migrants trapped ...www.amnesty.org 2020/09. Migrants, female, male rape : nihilhumanum mihi alientum nothing human strange, alien, other to myth.. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 9

Meanwhile, back in school for Classics, one spring term will not suffice to scout Europa s Minos, Daedalus, Minotaur, much less Io s kin remigrant back to Argos gentry down through Menelaus, Helen o Paris, Troy destroyed, Aeneas fled, his fated odyssey s fatal wreck in Libya, onward tale via tricorn Sicily, vatic Cuma, premising lofty Rome. Via myth the Mediterranean story swells to out-grow mid lands ; skirting meddle; rising to meditate migration meaning to plot, to intend to do, or up to mediate exchanges, hinting restless migrant ranging searching caught forever short of own & wanting other s promised terra. Clock via RfR Europa s hybrid east but likewise track from Mediterranean up through terra, tierra, terroir, territory terms from Rome s encroaching Latin stalking Europe s west, where every changed inflection talks colonial invasion s forced exchanges via migrations: still despite mutations land. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 10

The sequenceterra, tierra, terroirstems from Latin spoken, gossiped, muttered, scrawled, inscribed, penned, versified at Roma, meaning strength in Greek: one further symptom how that sea was median folk exchanging each with other, migrant, whether in war or trade intriguing commerce, daring piracy & pillage, pressing conquest, extirpating or enslaving, owning others. Boats in battle rammed or storm-tossed kept from home or destined markets crowd the bottoms, decks still heaped with amphors cracked though sealed & vintage year-marked, emptied too of oils anointing glistening athletes. Also ingots, armor. coin hoards attracted George & Anna Margaret to pioneer these ever daring, deeper Classics quests. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 11

Back millennia folk with horses, cattle, deity bright day father drifting down from northern flatlands: eastward migrant nearing Europe called their way & walk through field & woodland PaT. Like linguistic logic then called PonT the way to get to islands beckoning over inland sea. Still other kin to those bright father people drifted westwards south down Italy s slim peninsula, where what one kept wanting to get to wasn t some far island shore but close-up river bank: closeness made them make their term for way there neither PonTos sea, nor PaTH (field, forest), rather PoNS, PoNTis crossway, bridge, a rocky Tiber ford at Rome nor trivial thrice exchanging, {I} migrants crossing Italy north & south, {II} while routing Via Salaria traffic in salt from seaside flats to upland rivals, {III} mingling merchants too arrived from every Mediterranean port & stayed by rocky ford from further sail upriver making market (forum) trading oil, wine, stock in slaves & cattle (capital captive, interest pecuniary. lively emporium, travelers port). jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 12 :

Nature apt for human culture, colonialamphitheatrical, entrept secured by looming mesas (Spanish from Latin mensas) table lands, Rome s Seven Hills, employed for urban purpose: fortify, one sanctify reserve for bright day father (Iupiter migrating Zeus pater), call gangs to dig a drain (cloaca ) channel run-off down to Tiber drying land to mark a second market (forum not for stock) where neighboring hilltop settlers could coalesce & restless quarrel. Location, Rome, location! What would human nature make of this? How to cultivate, to culture, colonize, what derring do on such -ike banks here too would human nature prove itself to its own self too true? Exceptional for order & disorder, deeds to retail via mythopoeia spinning yarns resembling truth, sometimes claiming truth. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 13

Migrating ,strength from Greek to Latin, ROMA collimates with Latin s other means for owning Greek exchanging names in migrant, mediate, mutant forms like {Herakles} to Hercules, Odysseus to Ulixes or Ulysses, maybe above all Zeus like Jupiter one, the same, 1. the same, yet owned by each contrary other, each with its own spin: Hellenic line from ever-so-great great grandpa Zeus via Io s touchy progeny from Egypt back to Greece, remigrant, Argive gentles, Pelops boys Agamemnon, Menelaus gone to claim Zeusdaughter Helen back from Ilium destroyed. Whilst Roman lineage descends from Jupiter via his Titan aunt Dione, then their daughter, Venus smitten to mix with Trojan lord Anchises bore Aeneas, name foreshadowing pain but claim. His son Iulus followed by, give or take four centuries, Ilia named for Ilion, jailed by wicked uncle, loved, unlocked by Mars (of Jupiter son with wife & sister Juno for once ), Ilia bore twin sons, wolf-nursed, but Remus killed by Romulus his naming Rome jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 14

, all too, e.g. typically replete with rape first Mars on Ilia, next their offspring s new foundation, migrant, fugitive men themselves in hope of theirs, conniving, snatchingwomen daughters, wives of upland neighbors: first constraining, quick exchanging, each another owning. future mothers, weaving common weal for war & work, migrating women s crafts for flax & wool, extracting, drawing, pulling fibers, carding, rinsing, teasing strands to twist on spindles, spinning yarns to hang as orders, upright lines on looming frames, primordial warp before inserting cross line urgent woof for weaving woolen or linen cloth for clothing, togas, tunics: artful crafting via metaphor transferred to order forum, senate, fold, & field for farm & warfare: ergo ordo line, warp, row, rank, kind vies with (logos). count, recount, account, owning the Mediterranean.mare nostrum seaour own? Myths, from primordial brother murder. style Roman nature jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 15

Dispertiii viri, dispertiti ordines {Forced apart men, forced apart ranks} Called together by rows & ranks from farm & forum Roman legendary legions, draftees othered owning other neighbor Latins, Oscans, finally touching Italy s lower reache Hellenes, heard the further call from over Cyclops straits, three-cornered Sicily held by Argives south east Syracuse. but Palermo northwest held by Asian migrants ruling Libya Carthage reaching far as Cartagena, Barcelona, Empord . Roman consuls ordering legions called, contriving linen sails past Sicily rounding Mediterranean margins Africa s stretched north border, Europa s Asia, east to conquer Argive kingdoms, westward. northward terra, tierra, terroir up through Europe (struprum, taxes, thousands killed or trafficked buying factions, crossing Rubicon claiming power at Rome). still up to England, where Rome left such coin as Chester, miles, cheap, wall. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 16

Latin Classics links to verbs to call, pick, order, draft An early king called men to classes: callings, legions, drafts. When calls or classes differed, classic came to mean not merely called but called in order marked by values down from first, thus classic migrates up from merely called to first, called, classy hence priority, privilege, prime. first class. Advancing, othering, owning southward Romans saw that Sicily called for sailing linens hoist on boats: that called for special drafts, hence classis, naval call or legion, fleet. To call said fleet to arms the toot & tooting horn both called the classic, meaning of the fleet. C.L C.L root meaning call, pick, summon, draft So Cla lass = ones called & Classical = just classed, BUT in order picked, So First call = best Hence first class > classy jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 17

Beyond the call to sail to Cyclops Sicily, cruise to quarrel with Carthage (toot, row, ram), the root for sounding stem CL could likewise muster other kinds of calls, as figuring still where English usesl Latin relics: verbs acclaim, declaim, exclaim, reclaim & verbal stems in nouns like proclamation, reclamation, exclamation {!}: likewise other semantic forum livestock clarity, clarify, clarific- ation, clarion like that naval toot, & cousins cognate clearly, clear, besides own Spanish claro.Add with cognate compass council tying together CON with CiL that migrates CaL exchanging vowels so claiming council roughly meaning together call., where Roughly Etymo- logical Meaning (REM) gets urgent force regarding current calls to reconcile. with re- again, back, making reconcile via REMmean call together back again : in our own English language forum Latin migrates still the claim of murdered brother s call from clamorous quarrels. C.L call : CLassic CLangor CLamor acCLaim declaim proCLaim reCLame couCiL reconCiLe jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 18

In fine, to calls for other than Mediterranean ownership, Classics moots its own exchange with classic craft owned now by Caribbean ranked colony once, now ranked a classic range. Forced emigration from Africa, slaves transported, othered & owned along Roman lines dark plight by means of mastering craft reported, owns classic rank renewing mythic light. With Omeros Walcott migrates epic home, lofts once colonial edge to classic height from which reordering epic Greece & Rome knows human hurt via mythopoeic sight. No matter which sea human troubled call, frail craft sets sail: ever classic risking all. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 19

Whilst Walcotts classic crosses Atlantic, Caribbean, Aftrican. even Irish hurt migration, pain for home, reweaving epic plots his island Helen madras turbaned sought by empires & his alter ego Catherine hurts for death in snow of Sioux, our class via RfR will study other craft than epic genre kinds of ode, psalm, prophecy, hymn: another classic now to own for this known time, While reading RfR,we ll first begin to remark in text, to index items, note in margins, scribble. scrawl to a pad or an on-screen file each day for a diary- journal in order that reading onward, indexed items call you back to compare / contrast, infer from changes cluing sense via claimants, plot points, urged agendas. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 20

In journals draw from texts your items indexed. quickly marked in rough form. From this compost draw & order weaving your own new texts, enter- taining others, still no less yourselves.. RfR now Where? The Hill. What? Why?. Climb. Who? When? We, including not alone Amanda {Latin verb form must be loved, from AMOR topping ROMA} likewise us now: all Miranda too admiring, likewise Maya message in.. jvsickle@brooklyn.cuny.edu 21