A little humor...

[eisely]

This has absolutely nothing to do with scouting, but it is too good not to share with my on line friends in the scouting community. This was sent to me by one of my sons. It was printed in the Economist magazine and is a hilarious send up of a guide for getting through the holidays.

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SUB SOLE NIHIL NOVI

DECEMBER 16TH 1999

 

Fed up with Christmas and all its excesses? Such woes have an ancient provenance. The following manuscript was recently

unearthed during building work in Rome. Written in colloquial, even chatty, Latin (our translation can only be an approximation), the text is a first-century guide to etiquette during Saturnalia, the pagan festival which Christmas replaced. Such guides were popular among imperial Rome's workaholic middle class.

 

Translation follows:

 

SATURNALIA is the most wonderful time of the year, and also the worst. You want to enjoy yourself, but every December you end up exhausted, hung over and broke. All that shopping! All those presents! All that food! All those children and slaves running riot all over the house!

 

Relax. The key to a great Saturnalia is planning. Follow our question-and-answer guide, and you will never drag yourself like a corpse into January again.

 

HOW MANY DAYS CAN I TAKE OFF?

 

The vital question, of course. Saturnalia was originally only one day, the 14th before the Kalends of January. Augustus

allowed three days for it, December 17th to 19th, but he was a man of severe habits. The festival usually lasts for a week, and most people take as much time off as they can get away with. Macrobius talks of lounging around "for most of January". That is certainly too long, but the point of Saturnalia is that, with the schools and the law courts closed, people can take a break from the frantic pace of modern life. Here's what Saturn himself has to say about it, in Lucian's

words:

 

Not everyone can take a break, of course. Essential services need to be maintained. Cooks go on cooking, accounting for the pall of smog that hangs over us all in December, and the shops stay open for those last-minute gifts you've forgotten. Abroad, too, those men engaged on expanding our glorious empire have to go on doing so. Only actually

starting battles is forbidden. A generation ago Cicero, writing from Cilicia to a friend back home, described how a minor

tribe called the Pindenissitae ("Who the hell are the Pindenissitae?" you will ask) had given him a great Saturnalia present by surrendering to him, and that he had taken 3,000 prisoners who, when sold at auction, had fetched 12m SESTERCES. "The soldiers are enjoying the festival thoroughly," he added.

 

DO I HAVE TO GO TO THE TEMPLE?

 

Temple-going on the first day of Saturnalia is optional, but it is traditional and good for appearances. Most of us

seem to have forgotten the religious point of the festival, if we ever knew what it was. Saturn (just to remind you) is the sickle-wielding god of sowing and grafting. He presided over the Age of Gold, that magic and long-past transformation of the world, when lions lay down with lambs and the earth brought forth crops without ploughing. At Saturn's feast, for

just a few days, we pretend we are back in that time of bliss and plenty, "when wine flowed in rivers, and there were

fountains of milk and honey; when all men were good and all men were gold," as Lucian says.

 

Virgil once wrote that we are expecting a new golden age that will be heralded by the birth of a mystical child, a bringer of universal peace. It's a nice story for poets and children, but of course we all know that universal peace is what the emperor brings us, if rather more expensively.

 

WHAT DO I WEAR?

 

No problem here. You are absolutely required to leave off the toga and put on the SYNTHESIS instead. (It's that thing in

the back of your wardrobe which looks like a dressing gown, only made of flimsier stuff.) Togas mean business, lawsuits, affairs of state; the SYNTHESIS says that you are going to PARTY. Some people complain that it makes no sense to dress like this when there is ice on the ground and Boreas is blowing, especially when they have sweated through the summer in an all-wool TOGA PRAETEXTA. But NIL DESPERANDUM--put on lots of tunics underneath, a fur cloak on top, and beat the slave

who fires up the hypocaust.

 

IS IT ESSENTIAL TO GIVE PARTIES?

 

Yes, it is. Only social losers hang round the Arcades trying to cadge an invitation. As Lucian says, there are two main

reasons for offering Saturnalia hospitality to your friends: (something lost here in the translation)

 

A few party suggestions. Inviting "More than the Graces" (three) but "less than the Muses" (nine) is the best rule. Food

should be plentiful but not extravagant. Eggs and fish for a starter, followed by boar and turbot, then sow's teats and Lucrine oysters and sausages and pastry, followed by cheese and fruit for desert. Keep the wine well watered.

 

Myrtle is always a good choice for decorations. And the conversation should be decent but never serious. Even Caesar,

Cicero said, would discuss "only light matters such as literature".

 

Games are essential. "The dice-box reigns supreme," as Martial says. A favourite is choosing a king of the party on a throw of the dice, who then makes the other guests take their clothes off, libel each other or take turns with the flute-girl. People will play for hours, and bet on anything that moves.

 

WHAT ABOUT PRESENTS?

 

This is the biggest Saturnalia headache of all, but the answer is simple: give them to everyone. This means your

clients, your patron, your lawyer, your wife, your mistresses, your slaves and your children. Make a list of them, and omit no one. "I hate the crafty and mischievous arts of presents," Martial says; "Gifts are like fish-hooks." But at Saturnalia everyone is fishing, and everyone is biting.

 

How much should I spend? you will ask. Again, the answer is simple: as much as you can afford. Even the young Claudius, who was thought too much of a simpleton to be given a magistracy or anything of that sort, was allowed 40 pieces of gold by Tiberius to spend on Saturnalia presents. And Pliny the Younger reminds us that Julius Bassus, once pro-consul of Bithynia, defended himself against charges of rapine and extortion in his province by saying that he had needed the money "for a few slight gifts on his birthday and at Saturnalia." This will give you some idea of the expenditure required.

 

Lucian suggests putting aside a tenth of your income, as well as going through your cupboards to see if you can spare any

old clothes or tableware. These will do for freedmen. Give your slaves a few pennies to spend at the fair in the Forum, where they sell the sort of trinkets slaves like, and give your children nuts and clay toys: they will be broken in a day anyway. But be extremely careful about how you go about cutting corners with everybody else. The tribune Publicius once

suggested that because Saturnalia was such a burden on the poor (and even the non-poor), no one should give anything but

wax tapers to anyone richer than himself. He was obviously a fool.

 

Whole books have been written on what to give at Saturnalia. Martial's "Good Gift Guide" suggests you cannot go wrong with a nice stationery set, new toga, alabaster bottles for the ladies, or set of silverware. If these are too expensive, the standard offerings these days are a box of candles, set of napkins or jar of plums. Although unoriginal, these are quite acceptable; and, if kept unopened, they can be recycled with nobody noticing. It was sheer bad luck that when Umber sent Martial a festive cornucopia of writing tablets, beans, tablecloths, sponges, olives and figs by special delivery (eight tall Syrian slaves), Martial should have spotted that these were all the presents that people had sent to Umber in the five days before.

 

If you prefer not to recycle, you can try to reduce the worth of your presents year by year, so that the togas get thinner, the cups lighter and the candles more transparent. But this should not be taken too far. Martial complained that the weight of Postumianus's present of silverware fell from four pounds in the first year to two pounds in the second year and one in the fifth, until in the seventh he sent him "half a pound of silver scrapings in a little cup". To another colleague he wrote what might be called an "Ode to Meanness": (also lost in translation)

 

Many friends are a puzzle when it comes to presents. Looking for that special gift for the man or woman who has

everything? Can't face another jar of plums this year? Why not consider some of Martial's other suggestions: live mullets, a peacock-feather fly-whisk, a snow strainer, or "Cilician socks from the beard of the fetid goat"?

 

HOW CAN I AVOID FAMILY ARGUMENTS OVER WHICH SHOWS TO WATCH?

 

There is no point in having such arguments, since nothing of quality is ever put on for the holidays. It is always the same old formula: criminals torn to pieces, a commercial break, followed by Gauls eviscerated, and ending with a crowd-scramble when the emperor throws out vouchers for free wine.

 

DO I HAVE TO GIVE MY SLAVES TIME OFF?

 

Unfortunately, yes. Part of the vaguely religious point of Saturnalia is that it is a festival of freedom: "When I was

king," Lucian's Saturn says, "slavery was not." This is why prisoners are not executed (except for your viewing pleasure) and children are excused from school; and it is also why your slaves are allowed to dress up, dance, insult you to your face, refuse to wait at table and generally misbehave. It is horribly inconvenient, just when you are trying to impress your friends and hangers-on with the quality of your domestic service, to find it IN FLAGRANTE in the garden, or throwing up in the street. But just for a week, all men are equal. You must indulge all this with a tight-lipped smile.

 

HOW DO I DEAL WITH UNWANTED GUESTS?

 

You must be nice to them, even when they are relatives you wish you didn't have or friends on whom you thought you had

turned your back. That is the Saturnalia spirit. And remember, when they walk cheerily through the door, that things might be worse: they might be Julius Caesar and half his army, who turned up uninvited one Saturnalia and expected Cicero to entertain them. The great orator, of course, was stoical about it:

 

CAN'T I JUST SKIP THE WHOLE THING?

 

You must be a philosopher, or some other sad Greek. It is not done to get out of Saturnalia, and only spoilsports try.

However, if you insist, you could always retire to your country house and, once there, retreat still further to a summer house in the garden. Pliny the Younger did this. He told a friend that when he sat there, with the interior curtains drawn and the windows open on views of the sea, he was quite unable to hear, in the house, "the licence and mirth of the

servants". "I don't hinder their festivities," he wrote, "and they don't disturb my studies." The philosopher Seneca

did much the same in his flat in the middle of Rome, and Juvenal said he knew lots of starving poets who simply spent the holidays in their attics, getting their verses ready for the publisher.

 

For poets, of course, the unbridled excess and commercialism of the festival is disgusting. Others might agree. But

there is a good reason for taking part, even if you remain unmoved by the magic of these "best of days", as Catullus calls them. The world's only superpower will never preserve its booming economy without the wild holiday spending of

ordinary Romans. In this consumer-led Golden Age, Saturnalia is no longer an indulgence. It's a civic duty.

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