Tag Archives: Antigone

Ancient and Modern in Greece 

 As I close one decade and enter a new one, I ask myself whether it is better to revisit familiar places or to explore new horizons. Is it more rewarding to travel back, and learn what has changed and what remains, or to set out on a fresh adventure and be surprised by the new? One way to enjoy both old and new worlds is to visit places you know about but have never properly visited. So I have come to Greece for my 70th birthday celebrations.

I find Greece a wonderfully hospitable country. Each of our friendly guides asks us the same three questions: What’s your name? Where do you come from? Have you been here before? Well, I have been here, but my previous visits have been two and far between: a stifling night in a hotel in Piraeus in 1978, returning from my wedding in Tanzania, and a week on the island of Corfu in the 1990s, when we exited the Club Med once for a half day tour. 

If academic studies were an accurate guide to destiny, I would have spent more time in Greece. Ancient Greek is my third foreign language, after French and Latin. My investment in the first two languages has already paid off well. I spent much of my working life in francophone countries, and now, in retirement, I’ve enjoyed almost six months in Italy, where they speak a modern version of Latin. So why haven’t I spent more time in Greece? 

Greece in early spring is as beautiful as it is supposed to be. The birds are singing, and wildflowers explode under the olive trees. The poppies are a deeper more blood-red colour than those showing their first growth in my Edinburgh garden. A few days ago, in the blue and white seaside village of Galaxidi, I listened to the water lapping on the shore and watched as “rosy-fingered dawn” appear over Mt. Parnassus. My thoughts turned to the Odyssey, taught to us by the late Michael Longley, to Odysseus and Telemachus, and then to my son David running at the same moment across England from West to East. We too also crossed mountains, the snow-covered Pindus range, not on foot but in a jeep. For a few hours, in that remote part of Greece, close to Albania, we were well away from the madding crowd of other tourists.

Before this visit I already knew much about this country’s history, culture, and religion. For two years in the mid-1960s I was one of a small band of pupils who chose to study Ancient Greek, and obtained two O-levels—one in the language and one in the Greek New Testament. The Good Book was first written in Greek, as I was reminded when we visited Corinth, and saw where St. Paul faced his accusers. When I was fifteen I was able to translate the entire Gospel according to St. Mark into English. It helped that I was well-versed in the English text.

When we visited the Acropolis on my birthday, and posted a picture to prove it, one of my Facebook friends remarked that this was a ‘confluence of ancient ruins’. Ha ha, Dave. I had a similar thought, but kept it to myself. Good word ‘confluence’, but of Latin origin. I would prefer ‘synchronization’ from the Greek, meaning ‘in time with’.  

The Temple at Delphi

From that vantage point, high above the city of Athens, we looked down at the theatre where Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone was first performed. I thought of our teachers, Old Rothers and Charlie Fay. It is the only play I have ever performed in —in both Greek and English—hiding my nerves behind a giant mask of the Chorus.  

The Agora and temple of Hephaestus

Of course, today there is the slight problem of updating my knowledge of Ancient Greek to Modern Greek. Judging by their puzzled reactions, today’s Greeks have difficulty understanding their own archaic tongue, particularly when spoken with a Belfast accent. Over the last two millennia some vowels have shifted, and some consonants have clustered in confusing ways. 

Notwithstanding these impediments, as I travel through this country I feel that the Greek language insurance policy I took out fifty years ago has finally matured. It is satisfying to be able to decipher and make sense of the characters of the 24-letter Greek alphabet. In a restaurant, this reveals the simplest words for potatoes and tomatoes. Along the highway, I discovered the place name Thermopylae, just in time to ask the driver to stop at the battlefield where the ancient Spartans made their last stand. And in the amazing monasteries of Meteora I was able to decipher the biblical texts on the walls. Each small success — with menus, the names of streets, or scripture— gives me the simple joy of connecting with ancient and modern people through a shared language.

‘I am the light of the World.’ St John’s gospel

Dr Fay’s plays

Cushendun, where we studied Antigone in 1970

Dr Fay assigned me to the chorus of one of his plays — Antigone — and so I can only make a minor contribution to their history in comparison with those, including the distinguished Irish cleric Rev John Faris, who played the main characters.

I became a classics scholar more by default than design. First form at Inst meant studying foreign languages — French and Latin — for the first time. Our new French teacher was perhaps a better coach of the 1st XV than of 11- year-olds struggling with avoir and être.

However our Latin teacher, Rev. McConnell Auld, was a decent chap, who tolerated our repeated mistakes without pulling our hair. He didn’t seem to notice that we decorated the covers of our New Latin Course textbooks, so that they became so many ‘Newts Eating Courses. The Auld sipped his chocolate, munched his biscuits and exhorted us to soldier on with porto, portas, portat as ‘the girl sits under the tree’ (puella sub
arbore sedet) and as ‘the sailors launch their boats into the sea’,
(nautae scaphas etc). It was because of the more sympathetic teaching of a dead language than a living one that I chose to study Greek in 3rd form, rather than German like most of my friends.

Rothwell was another good chap, though quite eccentric. He seemed to be obsessed with pigs. I wonder if anyone remembers his brilliant Scottish Presbyterian minister’s sermon which included the phrase ‘Where the Wild Haggises Roam’. He was a distinguished classicist who instilled in us a love of the languages. With only five boys in my Greek class, my turn to answer the questions came round so often that learning inevitably took place. Rothers also introduced us to the classical theatre, taking us down to Dublin to see Medea performed at Trinity, and entertaining us to lunch in The Buttery.

So by the time we entered Charlie Fay’s class, we knew classics quite well, and were inoculated to some extent against his infamous wrath. We steered our way through his lessons more or less unscathed, and without being brought to ‘our knees’ too often. Dr Fay may have seemed a monster to pupils who struggled with classics, but he was kind to those who showed any enthusiasm for the subject. We were few and he needed every one of us to take part in his plays.

In my youth I suffered from stage fright. My first and only starring role at school, at the age of seven, was as one of the Pleiades. Fortunately Miss Strahan, the choreographer of this piece of stellar entertainment
for Inchmarlo parents, gave me no words to recite.

A couple of years later my one and only solo performance in the Windsor Church choir also turned out to be a silent one. I had learnt by heart the words of the second verse of The Holly and the Ivy (The Holly bears a berry as red as any blood) but when Alec Mc Neilly gave me my cue to perform in front of the congregation no words came out of my mouth, in spite the organ master’s smiling face, pleading with me to perform.

For a few years after that I succeeded in avoiding any solo stage appearances. When I learnt that my good run had come to an end, and there was no way to avoid conscription into one of Dr Fay’s plays, I was relieved to hide behind a mask, deep in the ranks of the chorus.

The choruses of Antigone were set to music by Geoffrey Trory, or Mr Trog as my Aunt Emily once addressed him, confidently, at a parents’ meeting. I can still remember the rising melody that Trory composed for the first chorus of Antigone:

‘Wonders are many on earth, and the greatest of these
Is Man, who rides the ocean and takes his way
Through the deeps, through wind-swept valleys of perilous seas

That surge and sway.’

Behind my mask I was at last able to perform in public. And I also sang in tune, which is more than can be said for some others, including Fay himself, who belted out the words from the wings when he thought the chorus was not getting its message across to the audience loudly enough.

Looking back today I admire the actors who played the leading roles In Antigone, learning swathes of Greek and English text, while all I had to memorize were a few chorus lines. As John Faris recalls, I also had sympathy for the parents who were condemned to sit through the play twice — first in Greek and then in English. Perhaps some of them sat in the Common Hall on a cold winter’s night, reflecting on ancient lessons about the laws of men and the laws of God. I suspect most were counting the minutes until the final curtain fell and they could drive their offspring safely home, through Belfast’s troubled City Centre streets, back to leafy Malone Road suburbs.

Recently I took my grandchildren to Cushendun and pointed out to them the house where, in 1970, we were summonsed by Charlie Fay to stay for a week with him and his wife and daughter, and study Antigone. That Easter I had been at my uncle’s farm in Loughgiel and had cycled over the mountains, past Slieve na Orra, where in 1583 Sorley Boy MacDonnell won a decisive victory against the MacQuillans, and down through beautiful Glendun to the village. It amazes me today that we were taught next to no Irish history at Inst, and certainly nothing about Sorley Boy MacDonnell, whereas we spent long hours translating Caeser’s Gallic wars and learning of battles between Athenians and Spartans.

At Cushendun Fay gave each of us household tasks. Mine was to sweep the kitchen floor each morning, since then a duty I have always taken seriously. We studied Greek all morning, translating the entire play, and were free after lunch. One afternoon one of the main actors in the play (was he Ismene?) was displaying his skills as a fly fisherman, casting into the river Dun, when a wind arose and he hooked his own ear. He was whisked off to the Cottage Hospital in Cushendall to get the hook removed. Comedy and tragedy are but a breath apart.

Today there is a little statue near the spot. It’s just below the bridge, near where Game of Thrones busses deposit sword-wielding tourists, who march solemnly round to the caves to take selfies, or enact battle scenes from the blood-curdling series, before having coffee at McBride’s. In fact the statue is not in honour of a Game of Thrones hero, Sir Jaime or Eurion, nor of Dr Fay, nor even of our unfortunate fisherman, but of a much-loved local goat, the last animal to be culled in the foot and mouth epidemic. Epi demos — from the Greek — a plague upon the people. We ignore the laws of God at our peril.

Thanks to our talented Classics teachers I did well in Greek and Latin ‘O’ levels. My last memory of Dr Fay is passing him in the N block stairwell, seeing him stop and turn round, with a look of regret. saying, “You should be studying Classics at ‘A’ level”. I did not want to disappoint him, but by that time I had found a good French teacher, outside Inst, and my eyes were fixed on Edinburgh and an M.A. course in Contemporary European Institutions.

Over the years I have sometimes pondered on the tale of tragic destiny that Sophocles presents to us in Antigone. I’ve thought of those old men in the chorus, who we first played when we were adolescents, coming on stage to declare, “Woe is me — the Gods are unhappy — this is not going to turn out well.” I sometimes felt my role as EU Ambassador in different countries, attempting to find common language among 28 national positions, was like leading a Greek chorus. Perhaps now that one of the most out-of-tune Member States has left the stage, the sound will be more EUphonious… perhaps not. As the chorus reminds us towards the end of Antigone “The future is not to be known; our present care is with the present; the rest is in other hands.”