On the last day of Chanukah, ten brave classics faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and library staff took a few minutes off from exams, papers, grading, and book purchasing to gather in the Classics Library to read aphorisms in Latin, Greek, Sinhala, Mandarin, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Swedish, and English out loud, picked from a bowl of faux parchment scrolls with some 40 aphorisms, and listen to music from around the world, arranged and performed by the Library’s resident musician Yo Shionoya, munch on candy and gingerbread cookies, and have a few well-earned laughs.

Ceremony

On a gorgeous, albeit cold, November morning many Italian Americans, including a woman in her 90s who had attended the dedication of the original statue in the 1930s, a few Italian Italians, several Italophiles, and representatives from City Hall and Cincinnati Parks, some of Italian descent, channel 5, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and other press, gathered at Eden Park for the unveiling of the new Lupa statue with the original twin brothers Romulus and Remus on a marble base with gilded lettering announcing the gift of it from the Governor of Rome to the City of Cincinnati, the namesake of the Roman general Cincinnatus, in 1931 (not in place until 1932 as the “wrong” Lupa (a baby one) was initially sent). The governor in question was Prince Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi (Governor 1928-1935) who was sacked by fascist leader Mussolini, landed on Hitler’s “most-wanted” list, and aided Italian partisans and allies, e.g., welcoming the British Red Cross to operate from his palace.

Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 BCE-65 CE) is a controversial figure in the political, literary, and philosophical history of Rome. Seneca was a remarkably versatile and prolific writer whose life was affected by several emperors from Tiberius to Nero. Claudius caused his exile from Rome and Nero his death. Seneca wrote a large collection of letters, full of memorable quotes (e.g., “If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich,” quoting Epicurus, 16) and thoughtful philosophical essays about anger, death (shortness of life), leisure, the happy life, and tranquility, and also rather gruesome tragedies such as Medea and Thyestes, and even a satire with the impossible title Apocolocyntosis [instead of Apotheosis] divi Claudii (The Gourdification of the Divine Claudius) as well as a work on cosmology, meteorology, and astrology/astronomy. The main controversy stems from the seeming inconsistency of his adhering to a Stoic philosophy of decency, moral awareness, mindfulness, and moderation juxtaposed to his defense of the murderous dictator Nero and his own amassing of considerable wealth and power.