Meleager of Gadara, meet Lawrence of Arabia

Robert Graves recalls his first meeting with T. E. Lawrence, who as already famous for his desert exploits and was writing them up from notes as the book Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

The first time I met him... was in February or March 1920, It was a guest-night at All Souls, where he had been awarded a seven-years’ Fellowship... I was only an accidental guest and knew nobody there. Lawrence was talking to the Regius Professor of Divinity about the influence of the Syrian Greek philosophers on early Christianity and especially of the importance of the University of Gadara close to the Lake of Galilee. He mentioned that St. James had quoted one of the Gadarene philosophers (I think Mnasalcus) in his Epistle. He went on to speak of Meleager and the other Syrian-Greek contributors to the Greek Anthology, and of their poems in Syrian of which he intended to publish an English translation and which were as good as (or better than) their poems in Greek. This interested me, and I said something about a  morning-star image which Meleager had used in rather an un-Greek way. Lawrence then said: ‘You must be Graves the poet? I read a book of yours in Egypt in 1917 and thought it pretty good.’ This was embarrassing, but kind. He began asking me what the younger poets were doing now: he was out of touch, I told him what I knew.

I've started writing an article about the Graves-Lawrence-Meleager connection; it may come to nothing but I'm intrigued by the blend of true/plausible modern context and blatantly made-up ancient content. The passage is from a volume of reminiscences edited by Lawrence's brother to cement his legacy. Thrifty Graves used the passage in his memoir Goodbye to All That as well, but that time he left out the most blatant fib, which I've emboldened above. Mnasalcus is made-up, too, and there was no University of Gadara. Likely to come back to this at least once.

 

Opening to an unwritten novel

...and doubtless never to be written, so relax. The scenario that came into my head was Strato of Sardis in Domitian's Rome; I think I can place him there, which would surely make him an acquaintance of Martial and perhaps a pal. I have the vague idea in my head of a story in which they hunt werewolves or solve crimes or... something or other yet (and perhaps never) to be determined.

All the details and incidents would be out of ancient epigram, a genre so brimful of wonderful weirdness that bits of the story would write themselves. This sketch of an opening sets up for an epigram by Martial about a boy run through by an icicle that fell from a leaky aqueduct, a poem I've blogged about in connection with the TV show Bones. Anyway, here it is and I hope you like it.

....

Via Lata, [DATE]

The boy had not seen it coming. I crouched and checked him over. There was less blood than one might have thought, and I wondered if the cold had shocked the arteries, cauterising even as it ran him through. I waited with him and watched meltwater seep from the dreadful punctures at shoulder and groin. Dressed as he was, he could not have come far; in some wealthy household of the Viminal or Quirinal a housekeeper was already missing him and calling in panic for searchers. Someone would be along.

I would have to tell Marcus. My tastes run older, with a warm embrace, and epitaphs were never my style; this boy’s fate would fascinate him and his verses would fix the moment for posterity. The boy would rise from the grave in next year’s instalment of my friend’s never-ending elegiac miscellany of Roman street life.

From a side-street, an intake of breath and a sudden wail. A mother had come. I covered the boy with my cloak and stood back. Above my head the rusticated arch was leaking itself a new tooth.