January 2020 – The Scholarly Dilettante

January 14, 2020

Magna Carta and Modernity in Medieval Films, part 2:

Ironclad

In the last entry, we saw how Magna Carta was modernized in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Today we see a similar transformation in Ironclad.

Like Ridley Scott, Jonathan English, director of Ironclad, released in 2011, claims historical accuracy for his film. Like those of Ridley Scott, English’s claims don’t hold up.¹ Compared to Robin Hood, Ironclad has more historical and less folkloric content. Ironclad is based on a real event, the siege of Rochester Castle, and its characters, although a mixture of real and fictional, do not include any mythical figures like Robin Hood. Nonetheless, Ironclad’s treatment of Magna Carta is equally as modern as Robin Hood’s and, in fact, is even more strongly reminiscent of an eighteenth-century document, the Declaration of Independence.

Ironclad is set in the fall and winter of 1215, during the baronial rebellion that followed the failure of Magna Carta. The film focuses on the siege of Rochester Castle, in which it imagines that seven brave defenders held off the forces of John and his mercenary army. (The director, Jonathan English, has acknowledged his inspirations included The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai).² These medieval magnificent seven are led by Baron William of Albany and Thomas Marshal, a troubled Templar who in the course of the siege falls in love with Isabel, wife of the castle’s lord, Reginald Cornhill.³ John ultimately takes the castle, but is unable to follow up on his victory when an invading French force shows up, led by Prince Louis, son of King Philip. John flees, and the film ends with John’s ignominious death by dysentery after losing his treasure in the Wash while Thomas and Isabel ride away from the castle to live, presumably, happily ever after.⁴

While the time period of Robin Hood is well before the actual time of the granting of Magna Carta, the action of Ironclad takes place in the months after Runnymede. Magna Carta still plays a large role in the film, however. The civil war of late 1215 is presented as resulting from John’s attempt to take revenge on the supporters of Magna Carta; the defenders of Rochester Castle see themselves as defending the ideals of Magna Carta. However, the Magna Carta of Ironclad is not the Magna Carta of Runnymede. To paraphrase Greta Austin, who claims that all medieval films are “modernity in drag,” Magna Carta in Ironclad may be described as “the Declaration of Independence in drag.”⁵ Like the Declaration, it has a single author. Like the Declaration, it is signed by its supporters. Like the Declaration, the physical object, the document itself, is seen as significant. And like the Declaration, the meaning of the document has been transformed from its original context to be something else.

In Ironclad, Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton is presented not only as a supporter of Magna Carta but also as its sole author. Langton was identified as the author of Magna Carta at one time, but today the scholarly consensus is that its composition was a group effort, with Langton perhaps insisting on clause one, on the liberty of the English Church.⁶ In Ironclad, however, when we first meet Langton in the episcopal palace at Canterbury, he tells Thomas, “I am to be excommunicated for writing Magna Carta.”⁷This is understandable for dramatic reasons—the story is easier to follow if we can attach a face to the document everyone is fighting over. But in addition, Stephen Langton is the stand-in for Thomas Jefferson.

The script refers several times to John’s “signing” Magna Carta. In reality, Magna Carta was not signed but sealed.⁸ Interestingly, a few references to sealing the document do creep in—it’s almost as if the screenwriters knew the proper term but frequently lapsed into the familiar error. This confusion is already evident in the film’s opening sequence, where a voiceover spoken by Charles Dance, who plays Stephen Langton, provides the historical background necessary to understand the rest of the story:

“It was agreed that John could remain on the throne, on one condition—that he would sign a document upholding the rights and privileges of all free men, but ultimately limiting the power of the monarchy. [At this point we see John sign the document.] The Magna Carta was sealed at Runnymede on the fifteenth of June in the Year of our Lord twelve hundred and fifteen.” [emphasis mine]

The look of this scene is clearly influenced by nineteenth-century visual representations of what the artists imagined to have happened on June 15, 1215. Do a google image search with terms like “Magna Carta signing” and you’ll see plenty of examples.⁹ The one I believe the filmmakers chose is an 1864 illustration by artist James Doyle.¹⁰ In the illustration, John is in a tent, seated at a table covered with a red tablecloth embellished with gold brocade. He is surrounded by standing knights and clergymen. Through the open back of the tent can be seen more tents spread across a rolling green meadow next to a river.

James Doyle, ”John Signs the Great Charter,” 1864.

In the opening sequence of Ironclad, there is an establishing shot with a tent-covered meadow next to a river; the camera then takes us inside John’s tent where he is seated at a table covered by a red cloth embellished with gold brocade and surrounded by standing knights and clergymen.

The field at Runnymede, from *Ironclad*.

John signing Magna Carta, from *Ironclad.*

The writers did enough research to know that Magna Carta was sealed. They must have just assumed it was signed as well, partly from the influence of the visual tradition they were following, but also because in modern times we expect important legal or governmental documents to be signed. A bill doesn’t become a law until the President signs it; the Declaration of Independence couldn’t take effect until the delegates signed it. So Magna Carta must have been signed as well.

The parallel of Ironclad’s Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence extends further. The prop Magna Carta used in the film was neither a duplicate of one of the surviving 1215 copies nor modeled on the eighteenth-century facsimile (as Robin Hood’s was). Rather, Ironclad’s Magna Carta has a similar layout to the Declaration. John’s signature is centered below the main text, in large letters—like his namesake president of the Continental Congress—with the other signatures in columns to its left and right.¹¹ In fact, the leaders of the baronial revolt did not sign it either, but our familiarity with the Declaration of Independence has conditioned our expectations of what such a document should look like.¹²

The Magna Carta signed by ”John of England,” from *Ironclad*.

On the must-see list of any first-time visitor to Washington, D.C. is the Rotunda of the National Archives, where the “Charters of Freedom” exhibit reverently showcases the original documents of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Americans revere the Declaration as a physical object.

Ironclad has a similar view of the importance of the document itself. In an early scene, John and his Danish mercenaries arrive at the castle of one of his enemies. John shows him a copy of Magna Carta and, pointing to it, asks if this is his handwriting. The baron claims he was forced to sign it; John grimly replies, “I know the feeling” and has the man hanged. Later on, John is shown in a sacked burning castle surrounded by heaps of bodies; one has a crumpled-up bloody copy of Magna Carta stuffed in its mouth. When the rebels first occupy Rochester castle, a member of the resident garrison protests, “The rebellion’s over. The king surrendered to the Great Charter.” Albany then pulls a copy of Magna Carta out of a leather tube and says, “Magna Carta. This one sealed by the King’s own hand. And now he’s executing everybody who supported it.”¹³ Late in the siege, when the defenders are coming to realize that they are doomed, Reginald Cornhill wants to negotiate a surrender. Squire Guy, the idealist youth among our “Magnificent Seven,” objects, saying, “We swore an oath, to Albany—to England.” Cornhill answers, “Your oath is worthless. Magna Carta is worthless. The Church has annulled it. Whatever happens here is meaningless.” He leaves the room and Guy silently unrolls Magna Carta and looks at it. Almost the last thing we see in Ironclad, after a final Charles Dance voiceover that narrates John’s death and the loss of his treasure in the Wash, is a shot of Magna Carta floating in muddy water.

Ironclad’s view of Magna Carta’s broader significance is also informed by modern expectations and parallels the popular understanding of the Declaration of Independence. In the popular mind, Jefferson’s list of all the crimes of George III is forgotten; all that we remember is “All men are created equal” and the inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Similarly, in Ironclad all the technical clauses of Magna Carta are ignored and its scope is extended to, as the initial voiceover sequence puts it, “upholding the rights and privileges of all free men.” English echoes this judgment in his commentary, where he references America’s other founding document: “The Magna Carta of course is one of the original documents that formed the basis of liberty and justice for all men and was the basis of the American Constitution.” When John first confronts the rebels at the walls of Rochester castle, Albany reminds him that he “sealed a charter giving the people of England freedom.”¹⁴

This emphasis on “the people” and “freedom” is especially notable in the words of Squire Guy. When Thomas finds out that Guy has never killed anyone, he tells him, “Then you will learn that it is not a noble thing.” Guy counters, “Not even when it’s for freedom?” Thomas, the disillusioned Crusader, replies, “Not even when it’s for God.” When Cornhill asks the company at dinner in the castle why they support the rebellion, Guy proclaims, “Because we are for the people.” Again, English reinforces this sentiment in his commentary: “The central theme of the film is worth—the worth of men, the worth of the people; that’s essentially the concept of the Magna Carta.” ¹⁵ Finally, the last words spoken in the film reinforce this idea of Magna Carta as a declaration of freedom that was ahead of its time: “In time the great keep of Rochester was rebuilt. It stands to this day. So too does the noble dream that was Magna Carta.”

Conclusion

No one has ever made a straight historical movie that tells the story of Magna Carta—one that begins in John’s reign, climaxes at Runnymede, and doesn’t have any legendary figures in it. Some studio missed a great opportunity for a 2015 release. But why has no one made such a film? Perhaps it’s because Magna Carta now exists more in memory than in history, and in memory it’s no longer tied to specific events (apart from the signing ceremony, which didn’t even happen). The legacy of Magna Carta has turned it into a document about freedom and modern constitutional democracy. Whatever it meant in 1215, this is what it means now, so even in movies that are set then, Magna Carta is presented with the significance it has now.

The directors of both Ironclad and Robin Hood claim to be telling historical truths, but both are incorrect. Not just because they are careless with historical facts (although they are), but because both films are a-historical. Ironclad at least keeps Magna Carta tied to its own historical moment, but then turns it into the Declaration of Independence. Robin Hood takes Magna Carta completely out of history, placing its origins in the 1160s or 70s and its resurrection in 1200 and transforming its content into a generic “rights of man”—in effect, making it timeless, and, in true Enlightenment fashion, universalizing it.

Both these movies perpetuate the Enlightenment stereotype of the Middle Ages. If the Middle Ages are the Dark Ages—by definition, unenlightened—then if anything positive appears in the Middle Ages, it must be modern. The filmmakers have clothed a medieval document that arose at a specific time and place, out of specific circumstances, to meet the needs of specific people, in Enlightenment dress. Truly, “modernity in drag.”

January 13, 2020

Magna Carta and Modernity in Medieval Films, part 1

Robin Hood

The year 2015 saw considerable attention paid to Magna Carta on its 800^th birthday. Books were published, aimed at audiences both popular and scholarly.¹ The Magna Carta Trust organized a myriad of special commemorative events, including lectures, exhibits, walking tours, conferences, and performances. The Library of Congress displayed Lincoln Cathedral’s 1215 copy of Magna Carta as part of an exhibit titled “Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor.”² Not to be outdone, the British Library mounted a major exhibit, “Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy,” that reunited all four surviving 1215 copies of the document.³ One medium that did not participate in this commemoration, however, was the cinema. There were no Magna Carta-themed major releases in 2015.

It’s not as if the early Plantagenet era as a whole has been neglected by filmmakers. Of all the eras in medieval history, the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth century time of Henry II and his sons is perhaps the best-known to an English-speaking audience. Modern movie-goers have become well-acquainted with the period from films like Lion in Winter and the various versions of Robin Hood. In fact, if you watch these films in the correct order, you can learn much of the story of the first Plantagenets (if you don’t mind a few inaccuracies).

Becket (1964) tells the story of the conflict between Henry II and the archbishop of Canterbury, culminating in Thomas Becket’s 1170 martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral. ⁴ Lion in Winter (1968) dramatizes the tortured emotional relationships of Henry, his Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John after the death of Henry the Young King in 1183.⁵ The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is set in 1194, with John ruling England as regent while his brother King Richard was held captive on his way home from Crusade.⁶ Walt Disney’s Robin Hood, released in 1973, duplicates this setting, ⁷ but Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood of 2010 begins with the death of Richard in battle in 1199 and depicts the early days of John’s reign.⁸ Ironclad (2011) jumps to the civil war that occurred in 1215.⁹

Most of these films are set prior to 1215 and therefore don’t include Magna Carta as part of the narrative, although it could be argued that the near-universal depiction of John as a tyrannical bully is a type of foreshadowing, given that the audience knows what’s coming.¹⁰Two exceptions to the cinematic silence regarding Magna Carta are the 2010 version of Robin Hood and 2011’s Ironclad.¹¹

Robin Hood, which purports to present the “real story behind the legend,” imagines that an early version of Magna Carta was drafted by the Robin Hood character’s father. Ironclad is a dramatization of the siege of Rochester, part of the civil war that ensued after Magna Carta was granted in June 1215. In both films, Magna Carta is represented as a document more modern than medieval. Specifically, both Robin Hood and Ironclad transform Magna Carta into a product of the Enlightenment.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe as Robin, opens in 1199, with King Richard’s army besieging the castle of Chalus in southern France. When Richard is killed by a crossbow bolt, the archer Robin Longstride, who had been confined in the stocks for insubordination, takes advantage of the situation and escapes along with a few fellow soldiers. As they make their way home, they interrupt an ambush by the French of a party of English knights who are carrying Richard’s crown. Robin and his buddies drive the French away, but the English knights are all killed. As one of them, Robert Loxley, is dying, he commends his sword to Robin and asks him to return it to his father, from whom he was estranged. Robin and his friends take on the identity of the dead knights as a means of getting passage across the Channel. On the boat, he reads words etched into the sword’s hilt: “rise and rise again until lambs become lions.”

After safely delivering the crown, thereby informing John of his brother’s death, Robin travels to Nottingham to discharge his promise to the dead Robert Loxley. There he finds the knight’s widow, Marian, and her elderly father-in-law, Walter. Walter asks Robin to assume the identity of his dead son Robert in order to protect Marian and the estate from the depredations of the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin is reluctant at first, but agrees when Walter tells him his own history.

Robin’s father, Walter tells him, was a stonemason who, many years ago when Robin was a small child, led a revolt against tyranny. As Walter tells the story, we see the events in flashback. Robin’s father had carved the revolt’s slogan, “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions,” into a slab of stone, and little Robin pressed his handprint in the wet mortar. Robin’s father wrote a manifesto—a “charter of liberties”—but the revolt failed, his father was executed, and the charter was forgotten. Walter produces a copy of the charter and tells Robin its time has come once again. In the meantime, a traitor in John’s court, Godfrey, has incited a baronial revolt against John and plotted an invasion of England with French king Philip Augustus.

In his persona as Robert, son of Walter—or, we might say, Robert fitz Walter¹²—Robin joins the baronial rebellion against King John’s tyranny. He convinces the barons that rather than remove the king, they should demand that he issue a charter that would guarantee their liberties. John agrees to the charter and, having reconciled with the barons, goes to the Channel coast to meet the French invasion. The invasion is repelled thanks to Robin’s military leadership (aided by Marian, who shows up on the beach wearing a perfectly-fitting suit of armor she apparently had hanging in her closet). Now that John’s throne is secure, he sets the charter on fire and makes a speech of his own, asserting that he rules by Divine Right. The film ends with Robin being declared an outlaw and taking to the forest with Marian. The final words on the screen are “And so the Legend begins.”

Like most historical films, Robin Hood claims historical accuracy. In the “Director’s Notebook” included on the Blu-ray version of the film, Ridley Scott says,

“I think the idea of Robin Hood is so tied up historically in terms of was he real? I believe he was real. There was somebody who existed who ignited the flames of this idea, this legend. But what’s interesting is digging up all those facts, because people think they’re just facts of fiction, the facts created by some writer of a fictional idea, when actually they’re not, they’re real, they’re absolutely real.”¹³

And like most historical films, those claims to historical accuracy don’t hold up. To take just one example, there was no epic battle on the beach in 1200 between an invading French force led by Philip Augustus and English defenders under King John—because Philip Augustus never invaded England. And don’t even get me started on the Higgins boats.¹⁴

The presentation of Magna Carta in Robin Hood is also historically dubious. The filmmakers have given their Magna Carta a chronology that is, shall we say, confused. The film opens in 1199, with Richard’s death. In the documentary “Rise and Rise Again: Making Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood,” Ridley Scott claims that they deliberately chose that date to distinguish this version of Robin Hood from earlier ones. In the classic Robin Hood retellings going back to Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819), the historical moment is 1194, while Richard is being held captive in Austria on his way home from the Third Crusade. His brother Prince John is ruling tyrannically in his absence and plotting to usurp the throne. Both Ivanhoe and the 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood (heavily indebted to Ivanhoe) conclude with Richard’s triumphant return and restoration of legitimate rule. Ridley Scott, however, deliberately rejects that narrative:

“What we’ve tried to do is redefine the times, in fact shift the timeline. We kill Richard instead of having him ride in and save the day. But I think it’s more historically accurate, in my opinion anyway, in terms of what the cultural melee [sic] was that a Robin Hood character could rise out of.”¹⁵

Yet if they wanted to introduce Magna Carta into the story, it’s still fifteen years too early. And the backstory makes it earlier still. Walter Loxley tells Robin that his actual father had drafted a charter of liberties several years ago, when Robin was a small child. (Robin had earlier told Robert Loxley that his father abandoned him at the age of six.) Robin is presented as a grizzled old veteran who had fought with Richard on crusade, including at the siege of Acre (1191), so he must be at least in his 30s (Russell Crowe was 46 when the film was released). This dates the writing of the original charter to the 1160 or 1170s.¹⁶

The real Magna Carta arose out of the specific circumstances of the end of John’s reign, but we are given no hint of what prompted Robin’s father to write his charter back in the days of Henry II (who is not actually mentioned), unless it is understood to be generic medieval tyranny. When Robin as an adult resurrects his father’s charter and urges John to grant a new one, John does so, only to renege on his promise and publically burn the document. Perhaps he has to do this to leave room for the real one to be granted fifteen years later.

The time period that best fits the presentation of Magna Carta in this film, however, is neither the mid-twelfth nor the early thirteenth century; it’s the eighteenth century. The first hint of a modern overlay on the film’s ostensibly medieval setting is the occupation of Robin’s father—a stonemason. Recall that many of the American Founding Fathers were Freemasons. The content of the film’s charter of liberties also evokes the Age of Enlightenment more than the Middle Ages. In the “Making Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood” documentary, Oscar Isaac (the actor who plays King John) states, “The issues that [the film] deals with are enormous. I mean freedom, you know, the rights of man.” In the “Director’s Notebook,” Ridley Scott characterizes Robin Hood as follows: “He’s captured everyone’s imagination by being the definitive athletic warrior who has the rights of men as part of his main principle.” He’s Super-Philosophe-Man!

Robin’s speech at Barnsdale in front of the barons and King John also has a modern ring to it. The beginning of the speech at least attempts to sound medieval. Robin denounces tyranny using a metaphor of cathedral-building, probably inspired by his newly-discovered masonic origins:

“If you try to build for the future, you must set your foundations strong. The laws of this land enslave people to its king. A king who demands loyalty but offers nothing in return. I have marched from France to Palestine and back, and I know—in tyranny lies only failure. You build a country like you build a cathedral—from the ground up. Empower every man, and you will gain strength.”

But as he continues, his call for a charter of liberties begins to sound like a mashup of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights:¹⁷

“If your majesty were to offer justice, justice in the form of a charter of liberties, allowing every man to forage for his hearth, to be safe from conviction without cause, or prison without charge, to work, eat, and live on the sweat of his own brow, and to be as merry as he can, that king would be great. Not only would he receive the loyalty of his people, but their love as well.”

Guaranteeing safety “from conviction without cause or prison without charge” recalls the due process amendments of the Bill of Rights.This item, at least, might be said to stem from Magna Carta’s famous clause 39, “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, or will we send against him, save by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land,” usually taken to be the origin of due process.¹⁸

“Allowing every man to forage for his hearth” is rather awkwardly worded. I assume he’s not talking literally about collecting kindling in the woods but is referring more generally to private property rights, repeated when he asserts the liberty “to work, eat, and live on the sweat of his own brow.” The echoes of John Locke in this sentence shift to Thomas Jefferson with the final liberty enumerated, “to be as merry as he can.” The rights of man, according to Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of merriness.

John’s response to Robin’s passionate oratory is, “What would you have? A castle for every man?” To which Robin rejoinders, “Every Englishman’s home is his castle”—thereby anticipating not only Magna Carta, but also Edward Coke’s 17^th-century legal dictum. The historical confusion continues later, when John publically renounces and burns Magna Carta. He makes a speech using the language not of the rights of man but of absolute monarchy:

“I did not make myself king; God did. King by divine right. Now you come to me with this document, seeking to limit the authority given to me by God.”

If Magna Carta is the Bill of Rights, then John is James I or Louis XIV.

Given the eighteenth-century sound of the charter, it’s appropriate that the production designers gave the physical document an eighteenth-century look as well. In 1733, after a fire two years before had damaged one of the four surviving 1215 copies of Magna Carta, the engraver John Pine was asked to produce a facsimile, now in the British Museum. Pine apparently thought the unadorned text of the 1215 parchment looked too plain, so around the outer border of the document he added, in color, the coats of arms of the 25 barons whom clause 61 of the document entrusted with its enforcement.

Facsimile of Magna Carta by John Pine, 1733.

In the movie, when Robin finds a copy of the charter his father had written and hidden away years before, we see that it was modeled on the 18^th-century facsimile.

The Charter of Liberties from Ridley Scott’s *Robin Hood*.

In other words, a 2010 movie uses an image of a 1733 copy created as a result of a 1731 fire of a 1215 document that is imagined to have been drawn up decades before by the father of a legendary character.

Next: Magna Carta in 2011’s Ironclad.

January 8, 2020

Schliemann Syndrome

A trireme. A warp-weighted loom. A hike across the mountains of Attica. A peplos. Jumping weights. Hoplite armor.

What do all these items have in common (apart from their connection to ancient Greece)? They are all examples of a phenomenon in classical studies that I have labeled “Schliemann Syndrome.”

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) is well known as the excavator of ancient Troy and Mycenae. His work, along with that of other pioneering archaeologists like Sir Arthur Evans, pushed back the boundaries of ancient Mediterranean history by thousands of years. But Schliemann was no average dry-as-dust academic.¹

Most classical scholars of his era believed that the poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were entirely works of the imagination. Nothing like the Trojan War ever occurred, and the Homeric poems were literature and not in any way historical.

Schliemann had a different attitude. He saw Homer as a historian and his account of the Trojan War as a reliable history. Schliemann was not an academic; he was mostly self-taught. But he was fluent in multiple languages, including ancient Greek, and, having made his fortune in business (including in the California Gold Rush!), he had the resources to test his hypothesis.

In 1871, he began his excavation at Hissarlik, a mound on the Aegean coast of what was then the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), one of the possible candidates for the site of ancient Troy. Among the artifacts he found there in 1873 was a cache of golden objects, which he labeled “The Treasure of Priam.”² Priam was the wealthy and powerful king of Troy during the Trojan War, so clearly, reasoned Schliemann, any treasure found in Troy must be his. Some of the treasure was jewelry, and Schliemann took a photo of his wife Sophia wearing what he called “the jewels of Helen of Troy.” Who wears jewelry? Beautiful women. Who was the most beautiful woman in the world, who, according to Homer, was living in Troy? Helen. Ergo, the jewels were hers.

Sophia Schliemann wearing the “Jewels of Helen of Troy.”

Schliemann believed that having found the remains of a wealthy, hitherto unknown civilization on the site of Troy meant that he had proved his hypothesis, that the Homeric poems were historical. We might see some holes in this argument, but Schliemann didn’t. Instead, having found the home of one side in the Trojan War, he set out in 1876 to explore the home of their opponents. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek contingent, was called by Homer the King of Mycenae, and so to Mycenae Schliemann went. There, among the artifacts of a pre-classical Greek civilization that would come to be called “Mycenaean,” Schliemann found a hammered-gold death mask. Who would get an elaborate burial with precious grave goods? A king. Who was king of Mycenae? Agamemnon. So Schliemann, naturally, promptly identified it as the “Mask of Agamemnon.”

The Mask of Agamemnon, now in the National Museum of Athens.

Schliemann was an important scholar who made significant discoveries, but as you can see, he was enthusiastic to the point of obsession and tended to over-identify with his subject. For example, he named the two children he had with Sophia “Andromache” (the wife of the Trojan hero Hector) and “Agamemnon.”³ In his honor, I refer to examples of later scholars who behave similarly as exhibiting “Schliemann Syndrome.”

One of the most significant, most studied, and most controversial events in ancient Greek history is the Battle of Marathon. The main source for the battle, Herodotus’ Histories, raises a number of questions. For example, Herodotus states that the Athenian army advanced on the invading Persian force “at a run.” Many classicists have questioned whether it was physically possible for the heavily armed Athenian hoplite phalanx to do this, especially given that the two armies were a mile apart. How to resolve the question? Run an experiment with American college students. In 1973, two professors at Penn State, Walter Donlan and James Thompson, equipped Physical Education majors with 15 lbs. of weight and had them run in formation for 1600 yards; they couldn’t do it. Donlan and Thompson concluded that Herodotus’ account was inaccurate.⁴

Another Marathonian question arises in the aftermath of the battle, when, Herodotus says, the victorious Athenian army marched back to the city as quickly as possible, hoping to arrive before the (still intact) Persian fleet could round the peninsula of Attica.⁵ Could they have made it back in the time Herodotus says they did? British scholar N.G.L. Hammond (1907-2001), author of a standard textbook in ancient Greek history,⁶ writes,

Taking the direct route from Mt Pentelicus, I walked fast from Athens to the mound at Marathon in 6 hours and returned the same day to Athens in 7 hours.⁷

Based on this experience, Hammond concludes that Herodotus’ account of the timing is plausible.

Perhaps the most dramatic instance of Schliemann Syndrome that I have come across is also connected to the Persian Wars: the reconstructed trireme Olympias. Ancient historians had many questions about the trireme, the three-oared warship that brought the Athenian navy victory in the Battle of Salamis in the 2^nd Persian War in 480 and was the foundation of their fifth-century empire. For one, how were the “3 oars” (the literal meaning of “trireme”) arranged? If there were three levels of oars, how was the ship constructed so that they didn’t get tangled up with each other? How easy was the ship to maneuver? How fast could it go?

Another British scholar, John Morrison (1913-2000), hypothesized that the 3 levels of oars were cantilevered out from the hull. He tested his hypothesis by building a full-sized replica of an ancient trireme and then launching it in the Aegean Sea beginning in 1987. I brought Ford Weiskittel, one of the organizers and volunteer rowers involved in this effort, to Mount St Mary’s to speak back in the 1990’s. I took him to dinner before his talk and told him about the concept of Schliemann Syndrome, and then somewhat hesitantly suggested that Olympias was a manifestation of it. He immediately replied, “oh, absolutely.”

Not all instances of Schliemann Syndrome are military. While preparing a class on ancient Greek athletics, I learned about the practice of using halteres, or “jumping weights,” in the long jump event. Curious about how these worked, I discovered a study undertaken at Texas Tech University in which scholars constructed some weights, gave them to student athletes, and measured their efforts.

Left: vase painting with long jumper using halteres. Right:The Texas Tech experiment.

The history of textiles is another area that lends itself to Schliemann Syndrome. Looking for images of Minoan artifacts, I came across not only the so-called Snake Goddess figurines uncovered in Crete but also modern re-creations of the costume.

Minoan Snake Goddess (left) and a not entirely accurate recreation from a historical costumer.

The Penelope Project, named for the wife of Odysseus in the Odyssey who tricks her suitors by unraveling by night the shroud she weaves by day, explores the technology of ancient weaving. I’ve also found patterns and videos for making a peplos, the dress worn by ancient Greek women.

Left: vase painting with women weaving on a warp-weighted loom. Right: a reconstructed warp-weighted loom from the Penelope Project.

I wanted to show a clearer representation of the peplos to my students, so I made Peplos Barbie.⁸ Uh-oh—I think I’ve caught the Syndrome.