“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

― Henry David Thoreau

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Welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

Despite writing numerous essays on Aristophanes’ Frogs this academic year, I have not been able to properly speak about one of the most fascinating phenomena of the ancient world: Mystery Cults. In the Frogs, the Chorus of Initiates (the mystai) are worshippers of Dionysus and Demeter who provide wisdom, political satire, and guide the protagonists through the underworld.

The Initiates are, essentially, the moral and dramatic conscience of the comedy.

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However, unlike their presence in Aristophanes’ play might suggest, the existence and nature of the Eleusinian Mysteries remains as opaque to historians now as the name implies. The rites and celebrations that took place were sealed by an oath of secrecy sworn by all those initiated, one that, a testament to its success, seems to have died with the last initiate.

The matter of secrecy was, in fact, legally binding: initiates were forbidden by Athenian law from disclosing the secrets of the Mysteries. Those who disobeyed were committing a capital offence, and were punished with the death penalty. The most famous instance of such legal sanction being brought to bear is the trial of Alcibiades in 415 BCE, who was among those prosecuted for allegedly re-enacting the rites at a private symposium.

Celebrated annually for roughly two thousand years, the Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in the town of Eleusis, fourteen miles outside of Athens, and were the oldest and most prestigious of their kind in the ancient Greek world. Hundreds of thousands of Initiates, not only to Athenian citizens but to women, slaves, and some foreigners, flocked to the multi-day rites of the Mysteries to honour the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone.

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Demeter’s typical association is with agriculture, her cult worship relating to that concerned with the earth and the natural cycles of life and nourishment. But the worship of Demeter in the Mysteries is oriented around a different register of her mythology, drawn from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which tells the tale of bitter separation and joyful reunion between the goddess and her daughter, Kore (later Persephone) after she was abducted by Hades and taken to the Underworld.

The Hymn speaks of the profound disorientation and grief Demeter endured following Kore’s disappearance, and how, in her distress, she neglected her task of nurturing the natural world. Searching and searching, Demeter, disguised as a human nurse, was said to have stopped to rest at Eleusis, and ordered a temple and altar to be built there in her honour. When Kore, now Persephone, the goddess of the dead and the wife of Hades, was returned to her mother, though compelled to spend only half of the year on earth and the remaining time in the underworld, Demeter instructed the leaders of Eleusis in her sacred, and secret, rites.

It is from these sacred rites that the Eleusinian Mysteries take their shape, and it is precisely their sacred and secret nature that makes them so difficult to reconstruct. Much of what we know comes from a patchwork of archaeological remains, passing references in ancient literature, and a small number of images: all of which, by design, fail to show us what we most want to see.

The Experience of the Initiates

The Mysteries were divided into two parts: the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries. The Lesser Mysteries were a result of Hercules, Castor, and Pollux desiring to be initiated when they stayed in Athens at the time of the celebration of the Mysteries.

The ceremonies of the Lesser Mysteries entirely differed from those of the Greater Mysteries, representing the return of Persephone to earth at Eleusis; the Greater Mysteries represented her descent into Hades. The Lesser Mysteries honoured the daughter more than the mother, who was the principal figure in the greater Mysteries. In the Lesser Mysteries, Persephone was known as Pherrephatta, and in the Greater Mysteries she was given the name of Kore.

The day before the start of the Greater Mysteries in early September, the priestesses of Demeter and Persephone commenced the procession along the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis, fasting, carrying torches, and invoking the names of goddesses. On arrival, initiates entered the Telesterion, or Hall of Initiation, a large hall built for a collective assembly in darkness, where Initiates are thought to have perhaps reenacted and identified with Demeter’s grief while Kore was lost.

The initiates are known to have been served a drink called kykeon. Various scholars have advanced a psychedelic hypothesis, which argues that the kykeon was adulterated with ergot, a fungus parasitic on grain that contains alkaloids chemically related to lysergic acid diethylamide. The altered states of consciousness produced by this mixture would, by their argument, explain both the intensity of initiates’ experiences and the lasting psychological transformation the ancient sources consistently describe.

However, many scholars dispute this due to lack of evidence. I find myself skeptical too. While a thoroughly fascinating theory, this hypothesis would require us to posit a consistent and sophisticated pharmacological operation sustained across centuries, when no ancient source describes the kykeon even as anything other than a simple preparation of barley, water, and mint.

Beyond this point, we, like the Initiates, are plunged into darkness. We know that something was recited, something was revealed and acts were performed, but the precise nature of these remains largely obscure.

Some writers speak with a kind of reticent clarity: Pindar (Fragment 102) wrote that those who had witnessed the rites understood the end of life and its divine origin:

Cicero, initiated in the first century BCE, called the Mysteries the greatest gift Athens had given the world. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is explicit on the soteriological stakes of initiation: those initiated would fare well in the underworld, while those who had not undergone the rites would have nothing good waiting for them.

The most explicit information we are afforded is in the mouths of later Christian authors (including Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of all Heresies, 5.3), though they write with the express intention of defaming the rites as pagan abominations. These Christian sources write on the rites tripartite structure: things done (dromena), things said (legomena), and things shown (deicnumena). The third category is understood to represent the climax of the ritual, wherein some kind of epiphanic revelation (the epopteia) is reached, the content of which is never described directly.

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The Ninnion Tablet

The most significant visual evidence we possess of the Mysteries is the Ninnion Tablet, a red-figure votive plaque dated to around 370 BC, discovered at Eleusis and now housed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (which I was lucky enough to visit a few years ago!)

The plaque was dedicated by a woman named Ninnion (from whom it takes its name) as a personal offering to the goddesses. Depicted are two processions, led by Iacchus, approaching Demeter and Persephone, with Initiates bearing torches and some the kiste, a sacred basket at the centre of the rite whose contents no ancient source describes.

The interpretations of the scene(s) on the tablet are split into two schools: those who support a single composition hypothesis believe that the tablet depicts a procession of initiates (men, women, and children) towards the two goddesses (Demeter and Persephone) who are seated on the right, with unity of place and time in the scene. The two figures who carry torches act as intermediaries between mortals and gods and present the initiates to the deities of Eleusis. The woman in the upper scene is Hekate, while the young man in the lower scene is Iacchus.

Those of the other school support a view that the plaque depicts two scenes of different temporalities (a dual composition): one from the Lesser Mysteries and the other the Greater Mysteries.

This would make the woman carrying the torch in the upper register Kore, leading the initiates to her mother, Demeter, who appears seated and holds a sceptre. Accordingly, the lower register would record Iacchus presenting the initiates to Demeter after their arrival to Eleusis in the Greater Mysteries, where Persephone has descended already to the Underworld.

I will not attempt to adjudicate between the two schools, but what strikes me is that this obscurity of visual culture surrounding the Mysteries internalises the same discipline as the initiates themselves, consistently offering the frame while withholding the centre, as though the boundary of the representable had been precisely mapped and observed. Whether intentional or simply a consequence of the absence of any corroborating written or material evidence, the secret is here maintained all the same.

Until next time,

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Right now, I’m wondering, have I done or said anything amiss? You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before? That’s what worries me. It’s like waking from a dream. I just don’t remember.

Henry Molaison

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Since William Wundt’s first introspective lab study in the late 1800s, the field of psychology has made a conscious effort to mark itself as a scientific enterprise, namely through the use of empirical studies.

However, famously, much of our understanding of the brain (especially regarding early theories of localisation) stems from case studies, almost the antithesis of the gold standard of clinical studies. Understandably, before the development of techniques such as fMRI or TMS, neuroscience relied on examining where the brain went wrong, with such cases typically resulting from serious accidents, the most famous of which being Phineas Gage, Henry Molaison and David Reimer.

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Phineas Gage

We start with Phineas Gage, a construction worker for the American railway in the mid 1800s. Regarded by his employers as "the most efficient and capable foreman”, he was tasked with moving rocks out of the path of the railway. The task was fairly simple, but when it came to larger rocks, the established and most efficient way to displace them was to drill a hole in the middle, then use a large metal road to push the explosives into the centre of the rock before lighting the fuse and blowing it into smaller parts.

On September 13, Phineas was completing this procedure as usual until something went wrong and a spark set off the gunpowder too early. This lead to the metal rod shooting upwards…through his head. Specifically, as later understood, through his frontal lobe.

Unexpectedly, he survived, and seemingly recovered all normal motor and mental function, except his prior disposition. Many reports suggest that he had “animal propensities” and was “no longer Gage”, becoming impulsive, promiscuous, psychopathic and unable to hold down a job.

However, it appears as though much of Gage’s story has been fabricated. Increasingly, examination of his physician Harlow’s reports suggest that many of the details regarding his supposed “personality shift” following his accident were extensively distorted. Harlow’s notes regarding Gage’s mental state were vague and there are little to no scientific records of Gage after a brief stint in a medical museum.

That is not to say the Phineas Gage didn’t change post accident. He became unreliable with plans, gained a propensity for swearing and developed a great attachment to certain objects, including the iron rod that had caused his accident. All behaviours that has been the antithesis of his earlier behaviour, however, these are not half as extreme as the “loutish” attitude that is often attributed to his later life. He even grew incredibly fond of animals and picked up jobs whereby he could work with horses.

It is even thought that he may have regained aspects of his old personality, as it is known that he worked as a coach driver in Chile, a job that would have required great planning skills and complex decision making; traits that had been reported to be extensively damaged in his accident. Unfortunately, he was later fired when he began to experience epileptic fits shortly before his death, likely as a consequence of his accident.

HM

HM or Henry Molaison, was a young man diagnosed with extreme epilepsy. It was thought to have developed when he was involved in a bike accident at the age of 7. Through his teenage years, he began to experience seizures that became increasingly severe, preventing him from holding a job or living a normal life.

At the age of 27, he was recommended to a neurosurgeon, William Scorville, who proposed a radical bilateral resection, removing both his left and right medial temporal lobes in hopes of stopping the seizures. Scorville thus removed his Hippocampi, and some of the amygdala and entorhinal cortex.

Unfortunately, what was not known to surgeons at the time was that the hippocampus plays an important role in the forming and encoding of memories. Thus, when Henry awoke, he could not form new memories. He had a memory span of approximately 30 seconds, after which he would forgot what had immediately occurred. He also could not remember much about the 3 years prior to the surgery, although he had preserved IQ, demonstrated preserved procedural memory1, the ability to recall factual information learned before the accident and had memories of his childhood.

This discovery paved the way for our modern understanding of memory, both providing concrete proof for the fundamental distinction between the short term and long term memory, and bringing awareness to the presence of multiple memory systems (episodic, semantic and procedural), all landmark discoveries. He was experimented on for around 50 years, with him published under the pseudonym HM for privacy.

However, there lies questions within the ethicality of Scorville’s operation. It was an experimental surgery, one that he had only attempted on psychotic patients prior to HM, and whilst it is suggested he deeply regretted the outcome of the surgery and spoke out against the operation in his later life, the question remains unanswered as to how blurred the line was between medical research and treatment.

Additionally, there are debates regarding HM’s ability to consent to the experiments he participated in for 50 years. Whilst Susanne Corkin and many of the other researchers that worked with HM claimed he did provide consent, can a person with such a severe cognitive impairment legally or morally provide consent? Does the knowledge gained from the experiments outweigh the appropriateness of seeking it?

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David Reimer

Undoubtedly one of the most tragic stories in psychology, David Reimer was the eldest of two twin boys born in the 1960s. However, at a few months old he was subject to a botched circumcision which burned his penis beyond surgical repair. His parents, concerned for his wellbeing, took him to the psychologist John Money, who specialised in sexual development and gender identity.

Money, who was a champion for the “gender neutrality” argument (that gender identity was primarily developed through social learning) suggested that it would be better for David to undergo radical surgery and hormone therapy to make him female2. Thus David’s name was changed to Brenda and he lived as a girl until he was 14.

David and Brian both spoke out against Money’s practises, some of which involved reenacting “childhood sexual rehearsal play”, which he insisted was “important for the development of gender identity”. Eventually, David told his parents he would end his life if they made him see Money again, which lead to them telling him about his gender reassignment. Thus, he decided to assume a male gender identity and underwent treatment to reverse the reassignment. Money reported the experiment as a success in confirming his hypothesis of gender identity resulting from social learning, despite David never identifying as a girl.

David lived a relatively normal life until 1997, when, encouraged to by his sexologist, he spoke out about his story to dissuade physicians from doing a similar thing to other infants, bringing his story to international attention

Unfortunately, both David and Brian eventually committed suicide in their 30s, with Money’s influence on this being still widely contested.

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In conclusion:

Despite the importance of such figures, it should be noted that such case studies are shrouded in difficult ethical questions, namely regarding upholding the rights of vulnerable patients.

Did Henry Molaison really have the ability to make informed consent to many of the studies. Didn’t Phineas Gage deserve better than his story of mistreatment and recovery becoming mythologised to the point of falseness? Didn’t David Reimer deserve justice after being unknowingly used as a participant for most of his childhood?

Additionally, does our innate fascination with the macabre nature of these stories and our desire to impose our own ideology on the conclusions extrapolated pose a problem for psychology? Are we righteously preserving these stories in the name of science or caricaturizing vulnerable patients because they make a good story? A fault even this article could be guilty of doing.

Where is the line between patients rights and scientific advancement? I am not suggesting that we forget these stories or erase the history behind some of psychology’s most influential findings, but it is high time we erase some of the sensationalisation that clouds them.

Until next time,

“Colour contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty. Colour should have a minor part in the consideration of beauty, because it is not colour but the structure that constitutes its essence.”

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

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Welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

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This week, I took a walk through the Museum of Classical Archaeology, housed in the Classics Faculty of my university. The gallery is lined with white plaster cast figures of Ancient Greek Bronzes and Roman marbles, imposing and austere and familiar to anyone who has walked through any museum’s classical antiquities wing, clustered together in authoritative rows. Though these are not originals, the whiteness of the casts is presumed: it is simply what ancient sculpture looks like.

But this whiteness is not ancient. It is, in fact, a modern, ideologically charged retrojection and is far from innocent.

Yet, when you first enter the gallery, you are met not with one of these white figures, but with colour: bright, striking, and honestly rather gaudy colour.

This is a plaster cast of the Peplos Kore, one of the best known examples of Archaic Greek Art. She takes her name from the peplos gown, a type popular among archaic Greek women, she wears, and kore being the name given to free-standing female ancient Greek sculpture of the Archaic period.

She is displayed in two versions, side by side: one in white and another painted in vibrant reds, greens and blues.

Her display is intentionally provocative.

Where the rest of the gallery conforms to expectations, with austere, white casts lining the walls, the Peplos Kore aims to challenge our assumptions about what ancient sculpture actually looked like.

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This brings me to our central topic, one of the most exciting fields in classical scholarship that has exploded over the past few decades: Sculptural Polychromy, the study of ancient painted sculpture.

Ultraviolet light and X-ray technologies, alongside increasingly sophisticated pigment analysis, have allowed researchers to conclude that the marble statues of ancient Greece and Rome were, in fact, originally coloured. Indeed, coloured to such an extent that it jars with everything we understand about ancient visual culture.

The Augustus of Prima Porta, familiar to many and co-opted extensively in in fascist iconography as an image of imperial composure, was, in its original form, red lipped, donning painted armour, a richly coloured cloak.

The Ara Pacis, an altar in Rome dedicated to the Pax Romana, is thought to have been similarly coloured throughout, and a recent event at the Museo dell'Ara Pacis saw light projections on both the western front of the altar that sought to reanimate this coloured reality for a contemporary audience.

Among the most striking extant examples of sculptural polychromy are the Bluebeard figures from the Hekatompedon pediment, now housed in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, where the original blue pigment remains visible to the naked eye.

These pigments on statues seem alien to us now, an anomaly rather than a norm. Yet, they were entirely expected in antiquity, especially in Rome.

Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia, discusses at considerable length the pigments and the colouring of sculpture, demonstrating how colour in art was not incidental to Roman visual culture but theorised, debated, taken seriously as a component of meaning-making.

The absence of colour was incompleteness. If the goal of sculpture was realism, to depict without colouration was an artistic failure: colour helped to distinguish and animate figures, bringing gods and figures of myth into realistic focus.

Indeed, colour is elsewhere readily naturalised in our perception of the ancient world. We make no objection to the strength of colour in Egyptian mummy portraits, nor in Pompeian wall painting.

This, therefore, begs the question: why does colour seem so unnatural, transgressive even, in ancient sculpture?

Statues Scrubbed Clean

First, we can ask the question of what happened to these pigments in the first place. The answer is not necessarily nefarious: pigment of statues largely vanished naturally, subject to centuries of burial, weathering, and the particular entropy of time. What survived, in many cases, were microscopic traces, entirely invisible to the naked eye, and thus largely ignored until recently.

Moreover, many early modern discoveries and excavations were not conducted with scholarly intent. They were essentially aristocratic ventures in treasure hunting, sourcing objects with an eye to the art market, to be collected in aristocratic homes and emerging national museums. In this context, cleaning a statue, scrubbing away what appears to be accumulated grime, was simply commercially rational.

That some of what was being removed was original polychromy was likely unknown or, eventually, regarded as acceptable loss.

It is important to distinguish this from what came next.

Because the more consequential question to ask is not why colour disappeared, but why scholars came to believe it had never been, or never should have been, there in the first place.

When researchers began recovering and studying these objects from the Renaissance onward, the prevailing assumption became not that the statues happened to be white, but that they should be. Whiteness, here, was not an accident of preservation, but an index of artistic sophistication.

The Winckelmann Problem

For this ideological shift, we have to turn our attention to Johann Joachim Winckelmann. His two volumes of Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) stand as the foundational texts of the modern art historical discipline, and his influence on Western aesthetics can scarcely be overstated.

The quote I opened this discussion with is intentionally clipped. Winckelmann’s full proclamation is entirely unambiguous:

“The whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is. Colour contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty. Colour should have a minor part in the consideration of beauty, because it is not colour but the structure that constitutes its essence.”

Winkelmann’s idealised vision is one of a pure, marble-white Antiquity, Platonic in conception: the True Form stripped of the distraction of colour, displaying beauty in its most essential state. He was instrumental in entrenching this vision, in particular in his citing the famed Apollo Belvedere, the white, serene and formally perfect figure, as his model of classical achievement.

His aesthetic framework also carried a moral charge. Colour in sculpture came to mean barbarism, and the unornamented form was taken as evidence of Greek intellectual and moral elevation. Whiteness was not merely an aesthetic preference but a visible expression of a moral category.

This is where the ideology becomes uncomfortably consequential.

The assumption that the ancient Greeks had been pale northern Europeans circulated widely in Winkelmann’s period and found convenient confirmation in their apparently colourless sculpture. The later Victorian scholarly consensus that white was the best colour for ancient sculpture was at least partly driven by contemporary racial attitudes which sought, erroneously, to also claim that the ancient Greeks had been light-skinned and blue-eyed.

Winckelmann’s vision sparked the Neoclassical movement, and became the organising principle that shaped architecture, civic imagery, and the visual grammar of European and colonial institutions for the coming century.

This was not a tradition inherited from antiquity. It was, crucially, an eighteenth-century fantasy of antiquity constructed through racialised aesthetics at the founding moment of the modern discipline.

And it is this framework that created a vocabulary for later ideological projects.

The Ideological Inheritance

Napoleon was fascinated with the Venus de’ Medici, a renowned 1st-century BCE Hellenistic marble statue, and seized it from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence as part of his Italian campaign. He also had himself depicted in the Greco-Roman mode, seen here in the white and classically authoritative form of Mars the Peacemaker.

Mussolini dressed the imperial ambitions of his fascist regime in the imagery and ideology of ancient Rome. He adopted symbols like the fasces, promoted ancient Roman values (Romanitas) and sought to reconfigure Rome’s urban landscape to highlight imperial ruins, ushering in what he called a “Third Rome” that would revive the glory of the Empire.

Hitler, in 1938, purchased the Lancellotti Discobolus, a 1st-century BCE Roman marble copy of Myron’s ancient Greek discus thrower, viewing it to be an exemplary symbol of Aryan physical perfection and racial supremacy, celebrating the idealised, athletic, and white male body.

This was a category for which there was no ancient precedent; it was entirely a product of nineteenth-century racial pseudoscience, whose art-historical resonances are traceable, at least in part, to the aesthetic hierarchies of Winckelmann’s era.

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Even more recently, the pattern continues.

The January 6th Capitol riot saw participants donning Spartan and Roman symbols and armour, a visual vocabulary familiar in far-right and white supremacist groups that use Classical imagery, Sparta especially, as a model for both racial purity and martial supremacy.

None of this is coincidental. These movements rely on an invented tradition, fetishising a white, pure, unornamented antiquity that they use to confirm the ideology they already want to believe.

The sculptural reality is in no way what these movements imagine.

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Why Polychromy Matters

The statues did not arrive white. They were made white as a result of the confluence of material accident, ideological investment, and institutional inertia. This whiteness has been subsequently retrojected onto an antiquity which possessed no such comparable colour prejudice.

This is why sculptural polychromy is so exciting and essential. It holds the potential to expose the mechanism by which a discipline constructs its objects, and demands a reckoning with the question of whose aesthetic values were encoded as universal at the moment art history constituted itself as a field. It allows use to examine questions not only what the statues looked like, but who decided what they should look like, and what work that decision was made to perform.

Until next time,

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The couple, believing that they had found a recently deceased mountaineer, contacted a nearby landlord about the discovery, who then reported it to the police. After a number of failed rescue attempts (which lead to significant damage to the body and artefacts) the body was successfully transported to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University in Austria. Here, upon examination, it was confirmed that the mummy was not a modern mountaineer, but at least 4,000 years old. Further analysis concluded that he was 5,300 years old, making him Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy, having lived in the Chalcolithic period (the Copper Age). At the time of his death, Ötzi was about 45 years old, 160 cm tall and weighed 50kg with approximately 61 line tattoos on his body.

It is thought that he potentially held a job as a high altitude shepherd due to the wear on his joints around his hips and legs, however, the high amount of copper residue in his hair suggests that he may have worked in copper smelting.

He was found with some excellently preserved belongings including; a bow and quiver with arrows, an axe with a copper blade, a flint dagger in a wicker sheath, remnants of a backpack and many more small artefacts. The axe was particularly important in informing scientists about Ötzi, as such an item would have been seen as a status symbol and would have been buried with him, (though the tool did show signs of wear and tear suggesting it was not just ceremonial).

The reasons surrounding Ötzi’s incredible preservation are still contested. The original theory as held by Spindler was that Ötzi froze to death in a snow-free gully in the late summer or autumn. He was then freeze-dried on the snow on the surface, before more snow fell and covered the body and artefacts. Eventually, a glacier covered the area, and buried the body and the artefacts until the snow melted enough for the discovery of his body. However, some scientists found remnants of a pollen only found in spring in his system, dating his death to an earlier point in the year. Additionally, theories are increasingly suggesting that there were periods where the ice holding Ötzi’s body melted and refroze, explaining why some items and parts of the body deteriorated more than others.

Otzi’s death

It took scientists 10 years to determine the cause of Ötzi’s demise, with explanations ranging from ritualistic sacrifice to death in a snowstorm. In 2001, a new explanation was borne from the finding of an arrowhead logged into his shoulder, alongside a corresponding tear in his clothes. It is thought that the arrowhead shattered his shoulder bone upon impact and hit his lung, leading him to bleed out to death.

The reconstructed scene suggests that originally Ötzi was involved with a conflict at the bottom of the valley, as a stab wound was found in his right hand, potentially an injury from self defense. However, is it thought he won this fight, and chose to ascend up the mountain, potentially fleeing from his attackers. Unfortunately, it is suggested he was unsuccessful.

It is thought his murder was a continuation of the earlier conflict, with one of the attackers following him up the mountain, and, knowing that he wouldn’t have won in close combat, shot him with an arrow from afar (approximately 30m away). The attacker, however, left Otzi’s belongings, which would have been considered valuable at the time, with his corpse, suggesting the crime was motivated by hate instead of profit.

The last meal:

One thing that made Otzi’s story particularly compelling was what they found in his stomach.

Finding the stomach proved particularly difficult, as decomposition had resulted in his organs had shifting upwards. However, post this discovery in 2009 further investigations found the contents remarkably well preserved. Overall, the team at The Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies identified 167 animal and plant proteins in his stomach.

Ötzi’s last meal consisted of cereals made from einkorn wheat (an early form of domesticated wheat), with red deer and ibex (wild goat) meat. As the meat hadn't been heated above 60 degrees celsius, it was likely that it had been dried, potentially in preparation for the journey.

His high fat diet (with animal fats making up around 46% of his stomach) was beneficial for his environment (the cold alpine region) as he would have needed to maintain high energy to avoid starvation. However, it is a slight mystery why the meat was from wild animals, not domesticated animals, as it has been well established that his peers had begun to domesticate animals. Potentially, this was because he was an outlier in his community, adding more complexity to the motive behind his murder.

Additionally, he had traces of Bracken in his stomach, a type of poisonous fern. Some have posited that he may have ingested it by accident, by wrapping the food in it, though it may have been used to soothe his stomach ulcers, a practice used in indigenous communities today.

The discovery of his stomach also revealed a lot more about the Iceman. Ötzi was lactose intolerant (like your author). He also had intestinal parasites, such as Trichuris trichiura (whipworm) and Helicobacter pylori (which still lurks in around half of the population today ) and is known to cancer, ulcers and gastritis in about 10% (which Ötzi would have been apart of).

It is thought that the Iceman felt safe, as signalled by his enjoying rest and consuming a larger meal. Nevertheless, around half an hour to an hour later he was shot and his body froze in the snow, before he could finish digesting his food, preserving him, and his stomach, for 5000 years.

Until next time,

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“Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.”

— Thomas Browne, Urn Burial

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Welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

This week, I have for you one of my favourite ancient discoveries and one of the most remarkable objects to survive from the ancient world: the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator dating to c. 100 BC, often called the world’s first computer.

While its technological complexities are somewhat beyond me, I hope to give you a brief introduction into this incredible device!

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The Antikythera Mechanism was recovered in 1901 from the wreck of a 1st century BCE trading ship that sank near the island of Antikythera in the Mediterranean Sea. It was, by all appearances, a corroded lump of metal of little distinction, surfaced by divers among a range of amphorae and bronze statues.

For decades after its recovery, the device remained largely unexamined, assumed to be some form of navigational instrument, and attracted little sustained scholarly attention. It was not until the 1970s, when physicist Derek de Solla Price more clearly established the intricacies of the device’s inner workings, that interest was sparked in earnest.

Since then, the Antikythera Mechanism has proved a great challenge to researchers and the wider scholarly tradition alike, as they attempt both to understand its great technological complexities and reconcile them with the generally accepted narrative of ancient scientific development: a narrative built largely upon a far richer tradition of textual sources.

How does it work?

The device, when recovered, was split into 82 fragments, with only a third of its original mechanism surviving. The parts that do survive are, however, remarkably informative for identifying its function.

Thirty corroded bronze gears survive, which are known to have worked in concert to produce a revolution equivalent to one solar year. On the front of the mechanism is a large dial showing the position of the Sun and the Moon in the zodiac, with a a small ball, resembling a quarter moon, displaying lunar phases. The mechanism displaying the lunar phases is especially sophisticated: it employs a specialised combination of gears that replicate the moon's irregular motion across the sky, a variation Greek astronomers of the time had identified and termed the “first anomaly.”

In 2005, Microfocus X-ray CT decoded the structure of the rear of the machine, revealing it houses two large dials. The upper dial displays the Metonic cycle. It has a five-turn spiral slot with a moving pointer that displays the 235 full moon cycles from new moon to new moon occuring over 19 years. The span of 19 years is astronomically significant, as the sun and moon return to almost exactly the same position relative to each other; thus, tracking this cycle is invaluable for keeping lunar and solar calendars in alignment.

A subsidiary upper dial tracks a period of four-years, tracing when the various Panhellenic games would take place, four separate, prestigious athletic festivals in ancient Greece alternating between the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games.

The lower dial tracks the Saros cycle, a period of 18.2-years after which eclipses recur in a predictable pattern. It has a four-turn spiral with symbols to mark months in which there was a high statistical likelihood of a solar or lunar eclipse. These astronomical cycles would have been known to the Greeks from Babylonian astronomical sources, a culture whose advanced knowledge of astronomy was, for a long time, unmatched in the ancient world.

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The 2005 X-ray CT also revealed Greek inscriptions on the device itself, describing the motions of the Sun, Moon and all five planets known in antiquity. Enough of these inscriptions survive to further consolidate and identification of the device’s astronomical, or calendrical, purposes.1

The First of its Kind?

Indeed, no other geared mechanism of such complexity is known from the ancient world. Prior to the discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism, the astrolabe, an astronomical instrument that served as both a star chart and physical model of the sky, was believed to be the most sophisticated device of its kind to have survived antiquity. The next comparable achievement in such precise mechanical engineering would not occur until a millennium later, with the construction of Medieval cathedral clocks.

Yet, for all its remarkable complexity, we should not conceive of the Antikythera Mechanism as a device ahead of its time.

The Mechanism is not remarkable because it anticipates modernity, but rather because it exposes the degree to which our picture of ancient intellectual and technological life is shaped not by what existed, but by what survived.

A device like this does not exist without precedent: there would have been a rich, sustained tradition of workshop knowledge, accumulated technique, and iterative refinement of which we have no material trace. The tradition that produced the mechanism did not receive the same accident of preservation as the device itself.

This extraordinary discovery is, ultimately, a rare and pointed reminder of everything that written sources alone cannot tell us.

Until next time,

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Welcome to this week we learnt!

I recently read that scientists estimate that we make approximately 35,000 decisions every day. Whilst most of these encapsulate the menial, or even subconscious daily choices we make consistently, this 35,000 also encompasses some of the most significant and difficult decisions we ever make. Thus, with decision making being the forefront of our human experience, I thought I would spend this week talking about some of the processes guiding our decision making, and when they go wrong.

The decision making process:

Our overarching goal, when we are executing decisions, is to minimise risk and maximise benefit. Specifically, however, we are profoundly averse to loss and wish to reduce anxiety. We are influenced by a cognitive bias, whereby we feel the pain of losing twice as intensely as we feel the pleasure of an equivalent gain (i.e. losing £100 is far worse than gaining £100).

This is activated throughout the 3 stages of decision making:

1. Firstly, we identify the decision we have to make and gather evidence1

2. Then we generate solutions or appropriate information that may assist us in making a decision. The depth of generation is dependent on both environment and cognitive factors (i.e. time pressure, being drunk etc)

3. Finally, we make a judgment on what to do. We evaluate our options and the likelihood of outcomes before executing our decision. This stage is highly influenced by heuristics.

What are heuristics

Heuristics as a term originates from the Ancient Greek word heurísko (εὑρίσκω), meaning “I find” or “discover” and is a psychological term referring to the mental shortcuts that humans2 use to make decisions. These are intuitive strategies that allow us to quickly and efficiently solve problems and reduce cognitive load. However, these “generalisations” are very prone to bias, leading to us often making false or inaccurate conclusions or assumptions.

The history of heuristics

Whilst there is a long history of work relating to decision making. The term “heuristics” was first coined by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s, though it is thought to be based on Herbert Simon’s prior research on problem solving.

Herbert Simon suggested that human problem solving operates under the rule of bounded rationality, which suggests that human rationality is limited when we make decisions, and thus we make decisions that are only satisfactory, instead of optimal (also called satisficing).

Tversky and Kahneman built on this in the 1970s, contributing their prior research on cognitive biases to make heuristic models, areas where our cognitive biases consistently override more logical or rational choices. These being some of the following:

Types of heuristics

The Availability Heuristic:

I’ll start by asking you a thought problem: Do more words begin with the letter K, or have the letter K as their third letter?

Most people (around 70% in Tversky and Kahneman’s original article) would say the more words begin with the letter K, despite the fact that typically there are twice as many words with K as a third letter. This logically makes sense, so why do people so often say the opposite?

The answer lies in availability. It is much easier to come up with words that begin with the letter K as opposed to words that have the letter K as the third letter.

This is a common mistake that humans often make when executing decision making. Because the information comes to mind much easier than a more logical solution, people automatically assume it’s true.

The Anchoring Heuristic:

The anchoring heuristic is whereby when estimating a value, we tend to give an initial value and then adjust it. Essentially, we are “anchored” by the original scale, and further adjustment is insufficient, which leads to bias.

Tversky and Kahneman’s original experiment was as follows:

• A Wheel is spun

• Participants are asked whether the % of African countries which are in the UN is higher or lower than number

• Participants are asked to estimate the exact %

• Participants make significantly higher estimates when wheel lands on 65, as they use this initial (irrelevant) number as an anchor

Additionally, in a more ecologically valid example, Englich et al (2006) ran an experiment, whereby judges and prosecutors were given hypothetical criminal case notes, before being asked by a ‘journalist’ whether they think the sentence for the defendant will be higher or lower than 1 (or 3) year(s). It turned out that the hypothetical sentencing lengths were significantly higher if exposed to high anchor.

The Representativeness Heuristic:

The representativeness heuristics describes how we have a tendency to estimate the certainty of an event by assessing how it compares to an existing mental prototype or stereotype.

The Linda problem

“Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations”

What is the probability that Linda is:

A) a bank teller?

B) a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement?

Whilst logically, the probability of Linda being A massively exceeds the probability of Linda being B3, most people pick B! This is likely because the conjunctions of the features (her activism) make the second instance feel more representative of the mental image we hold of Linda, despite the fact that it reduces the objective probability.

The Recognition Heuristic:

The recognition heuristic is a shortcut where people tend to believe that a recognisable object holds higher value on the criterion than an unrecognised one.

A good example is from 2007, where Scheibehenne & Broder asked amateur tennis players and laypeople to indicate the names of the tennis players they recognized and used this to predict the 2005 Wimbledon match outcomes. Interestingly enough, the predictions based on the recognition rankings ended up correctly predicting 70% of all matches! Suggesting that heuristics have the potential to not only be correct, but also useful !

The Fundamental attribution error:

Also known as correspondence bias, this heuristic relates to how we overestimate the influence of dispositional factors (or personal characteristics) on peoples actions but underestimate the significance of situational factors (such as running late).

Essentially, we over-attribute other peoples actions to their internal dispositions. We assume a person who cuts us off in traffic is inherently a bad driver, rather than someone who is in a rush. Simultaneously, we do the opposite for ourselves. We justify our bad behaviour on external stressors such as time pressure or stress, as opposed to a negative personal attribute.

How to stop relying on heuristics:

In his seminal work “Thinking fast and slow”, Kahneman paired heuristics with the concept of us having two models of thought: system I and system II4

It suffices to say that if we engage more frequently with our more analytical processes, and examine our assumptions and biases, we will become less reliant on heuristics for our decision making and (maybe) make more rational and logical decisions.

However, heuristics are not intrinsically good or bad. They are a shortcut like any other and if we spent all our time deliberating on what to eat for breakfast no one would get anything done. I do implore you though, when you have a moment, to really examine some of those 35,000 choices you make each day. You might just make a better decision.

Until next time,

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On the morning of September the 9th, 1900, a museum guard at the Museo Archeologico in Florence walked into work, disgruntled and consumed by some private fury, looked at one of the most precious objects in the building’s collection, and promptly threw a chair at it.

His target, the François Vase, a 2,500-year-old Athenian krater of unique refinement and ambition, exploded into 638 pieces.

The story of this vase is, in almost every respect, a story of improbable survival and how thin the line is between the hands that make things, and those that break them.

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Welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

Today I have for you a short one, but a great one. And that is the tale of the François Vase.1

One of the oldest vessels of its kind, the François Vase was innovative and rare in all aspects. Its life begins in Athens, 570 BCE, where a potter, Ergotimos, and a painter, Kleitias, came together to form a volute krater, a vessel used largely in the convivial setting, for mixing wine and water at aristocratic drinking parties. Their creation stood at sixty-six centimetres tall, with dramatically scrolling handles and an expanse of surface upon which the painter Kleitias inscribed a vast mythological cosmos.

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Some 270 are storied across the Vase’s many registers. Figures of gods, heroes, hunters, dancers, centaurs, run, fight, feast, in processions that would have been entirely familiar to the Archaic viewer. The essential players are identified in some 121 painted inscriptions, anchoring each figure to their story: Peleus, Thetis, Dionysos, Ajax or Theseus, each named and placed in context. These labels have become, for our modern understanding, an invaluable key.

Indeed, the central frieze depicts the wedding of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, the seminal myth of the union that bore Achilles. We can trace the whole arc of Achilles’ life, from his conception, his kleos, to his corpse sagging in Ajax’s arms painted on the handle.

The vase displays a number of other myths: in the uppermost register we see Peleus engaged in the Calydonian boar hunt; another shows the chariot race organised by Achilles in honour of Patroclus, as detailed in the Iliad; we see Achilles’ execution of the youngest prince of Troy as he collects water just outside the city walls.

We can also identify funeral games, the famed battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, and the return of Hephaestus to Olympus. Even the base of the vase is painted with a comic battle of Pygmies and Cranes.

There is no shortage of narratives: from births, unions, glory to brutal demise.

They furnish its elite users at the symposia with a mythic genealogy, serving as a vehicle to prompt debate and conversation, perhaps even recitations of Homer.

This remarkable vase was exported from Athens in antiquity, crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea to Etruria in Northern Italy, where much of the Athenian pottery now known to us appeared in large quantities during the 6th and 5th centuries. It was eventually buried in a tomb near Chiusi and, in 1844, it was rediscovered by Alessandro François, who gathered its countless shattered fragments.

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Reassembled and installed in Florence’s Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, it became a canonical masterpiece: a vessel signed twice by both maker and painter, densely inscribed and alive with mythological episodes, acting as a touchstone for the study of black-figure vase painting technique.

And then, on that fateful September day, the guard threw the chair.

A vase that had survived millennia and been meticulously reassembled, was shattered once again in 638 pieces.

A vase that narrates violence and stories of fractured life, with boars gored, youths slain, and centaurs rampaging, becomes itself the victim of savage rupture.

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For two years Pietro Zei and his fellow conservators, under the instruction of the museum director, Luigi Milani, reassembled it: an act of scholarly devotion mirroring François’ earlier labour.

Thus, the krater survived again, its breaks now part of its biography.

This is what strikes me about this story: the François Vase has been smashed twice, yet twice it has managed to survive. It outlasted the civilisation that made it, the civilisation that imported it, and the wrath of one anonymous man two millennia later. The only thing it could not survive was obscurity. The chair, in a strange way, guaranteed that most people who know the vase at all know that story first: the shattering, the 638 pieces, the two-year repair. The mythology painted on it seems secondary to the mythology that has accumulated around it.

Perhaps this is simply the way with ancient objects. Sometimes, they need a certain drama to remain canonical in the contemporary conversation. Venus de Milo’s missing arms render her a masterpiece of incomplete beauty. Van Gogh’s posthumous success is owed to the suffering of his life.

The François Vase earned its place in history twice over: once through the hands of Kleitias and Ergotimos, and once through a moment of inexplicable human fury.

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Until next time,

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Welcome to This Week’s This Week We Learnt!

This week I decided to go back to my roots, and the first ‘research’ project I ever really did. My EPQ! If you’re not from the UK, an EPQ is a research project that you can do alongside your A levels. Despite my ability to write essays having (hopefully) improved over the past 2 and a half years, I still feel very proud of it and hope to convince you about one of the coolest therapies out there.

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The history of MDMA

MDMA was first synthesised in 1912. It was originally patented as a parent compound to synthesise haemostatic medication. MDMA allegedly appeared on the streets of the USA in the late 60s, while the first forensic detection of MDMA was in Chicago in 1970.

However, little was known about the usage of MDMA and some of its derivatives in a clinical setting until the 1930s, where pharmacologist Gordon Alles discovered the psychopharmacological effects of MDA (a MDMA derivative), and later published a study into the effects of MDA in 1959. He claimed it “induced a state of intense emotions and cognitive alteration”, which kickstarted studies into the effects of the drug and other derivatives in conjugation to psychotherapy.

In 1967, two psychiatrists, Claudio Naranjo and Alexander Shulgin researched the properties of MDA as a drug agent alongside psychotherapy. The results were promising and therefore studies continued, leading to multiple more studies to be conducted. Shulgin synthesised MDMA in 1965 alongside MDA and MMDA, to study their effect on psychotherapy but did not try the drug until 1976 after hearing of its potent effects.

Shuglin introduced the drug to Leo Zeff in 1977; who, inspired by his own experience, administered MDMA to over 4000 participants over the course of 12 years and conducted sessions for ‘spiritual and personal development”. However, throughout this time, MDMA became more prevalent in the party drug scene, with its use growing exponentially and spreading across the US. With MDMA’s rising popularity as a street drug, there were many fears that it would be scheduled, with the first official report on MDMA psychotherapy published in 1983 as a means to potentially prevent this. Despite this, MDMA was officially scheduled as a Class 1 drug in 1988, (though it had been banned since 1985). It was labelled as having a “high potential for abuse” with no real accepted medical usage, a level it still holds to this day.

MDMA’s clinical makeup

MDMA is a drug that acts as both a psychedelic and a stimulant, meaning it creates feelings of alertness and feeling awake, alongside typical psychedelic effects, including auditory and visual hallucinations and distortions in time and perception, although these are only common in high doses. It is typically described as “empathogenic” or an “entactogen” as it increases feelings of closeness and empathy between people. The effects of the drug usually take approximately 20 minutes to activate, and will last around 3 to 4 hours.

MDMA increases the activity of 3 major neurotransmitters including dopamine and more potently norepinephrine (adrenaline) and serotonin. It works similarly to other amphetamines of its class, by increasing the activity and inhibiting the reuptake of the chemicals.

The drug also increases prefrontal cortex activation and decreases the amygdala fear response, enhancing prosocial behaviour, whilst decreasing cerebral blood flow in the amygdala and hippocampus reduces fear over recalling negative or panic inducing memories. MDMA also releases cortisol and adrenaline/norepinephrine improving “fear extinction learning” leading to people feeling less overwhelmed when discussing painful memories.

Most MDMA users commonly report feeling positive emotions such as arousal, friendliness, elation and empathy, alongside more negative emotions such as anxiety and confusion. Conversely, it also impacts impulse control and can slow reaction time, proving dangerous in specific circumstances. It also produces mild hallucinogenic effects and changes in perception via direct activation of 5-HT2a (serotonin) receptors. MDMA research also shows that it changes the brain’s response to stimuli, leading to an increased response to positive stimuli and a repressed response to negative stimuli, making the drug “prosocial” and beneficial in social settings. The drug also can lead to a decrease in emotions such as fear and anger in some cases, boosting mood.1

PTSD

PTSD is a mental disorder that typically is onset by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. It is one of the most common mental health disorders in America, with a lifetime prevalence of 6.8%. It is extremely common amongst veterans, affecting up to 18% of combat veterans.

The national centre for PTSD claims that 6% of the population of America will suffer from PTSD at least once in their life, with 12 million American adults suffering with PTSD within any given year.

In the 2014 survey across the UK, 3.7% of men and 5.1% of women screened positive for PTSD, approximately 4% of the population.

MDMA assisted psychotherapy

The emotions that MDMA triggers this lead to a perfect emotional setting to discuss trauma. The drug is shown to lead to a more positive perception of the self, whilst decreasing fear and anxiety around negative comments or perception from others, decreasing social anxiety. This leads to patients feeling more comfortable discussing emotional memories that would have been difficult to disclose otherwise. MDMA also leads to positive perceptions of “partner empathy and regard in a social interaction”. Paradoxically, MDMA also has a mild relaxation effect that takes the edge off hypervigilance, and it enhances the release of the hormone oxytocin, which fosters attachment and bonding. (Ben Sessa)

Within the sessions, participants are usually given between 75-125mg of MDMA or a similar amount of the placebo drug/control dosage of MDMA between 0-40mg. They then undergo two or three eight-hour therapy sessions spaced monthly with two psychiatrists and multiple 90-minute sessions before and after each drug session.

MDMA therapy thus far has been shown to be an effective treatment for severe PTSD. Through establishing an open emotional state via therapy and the empathogenic effects of the drug, those with PTSD can discuss painful and distressing memories with a reduced fear over what others may think and lower anxiety over memories of the trauma itself. The statistics for the treatment are also extremely positive with 67% of participants no longer qualifying for a PTSD diagnosis, whilst 88% reported a reduction in the severity of their symptoms.

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The treatment is also is substantially shorter than the typical length of treatment for CBT, only lasting 3 months. In contrast CBT therapy may need to be undergone for years for significant improvements and reductions in symptoms to occur, with research suggesting 15-20 sessions of CBT needed to occur for 50% of patients to report relieved symptoms. In comparison, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, as mentioned earlier, only takes 3 sessions for 67% to no longer qualify for a PTSD diagnosis. Although it is important to note the length of the MDMA psychotherapy sessions are substantially longer than a typical CBT session.

MDMA assisted psychotherapy has also been proven to be cost effective, compared to standard care, this treatment generates discounted net health care savings of $132.9 million over 30 years in the US, whilst also resulting in 4,856 quality-adjusted life-years and averting 61.4 premature deaths. This displays that if this treatment does become available in healthcare settings, it can lead to improved symptoms of those with PTSD, and has been shown to break even on cost to other therapies after approximately 3.8 years.

There are a number of limitations and drawbacks to this therapy, as the depleted serotonin levels post session may leave patients drained, lethargic and depressed. The use of cortisol released during the absorption of the drug may also lead to increased stress, creating the opposite response to what is needed. However, whilst MDMA assisted psychotherapy, and its sister treatments such as Psilocybin therapy do seem to be the future of therapy, with Australia having classified MDMA and Psilocybin as medicines in 2023, the war is not yet won. The FDA rejected MDMA as a viable therapy for PTSD in 2024 due to functional unblinding (participants knew if they were taking MDMA or placebo potentially biasing the effect), ethical concerns and federal regulatory barriers, whilst the UK is yet to review recent evidence, suggesting potentially a long road ahead until the breakthrough therapy truly breaks through.

Thank you for reading!

Until next time,

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“You all did see that on the Lupercal | I thrice presented him a kingly crown, | Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?”

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act 3, Scene 2)

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Welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

I thought I’d get a head start on the Valentine’s festivities and speak on the Roman holiday of Lupercalia. A much misunderstood festival, Lupercalia has been largely, if not entirely, eclipsed by (and hastily conflated with) its Christian successor, Valentine’s Day. It seems to have been absorbed into the ecclesiastical calendar during Christianity’s systematic displacement of pagan ritual from civic life.

At first, such interpretation might seems plausible. The Church has a documented history of appropriating pagan festivals: Yule and Saturnalia have become Christmas; Samhain is now All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween); Eostre has been absorbed into Easter. When we observe Lupercalia occurring on February 13th-15th and Valentine’s Day falling on the 14th, the pattern seems to repeat itself. The assumed connection between the pagan and Christian festivals seems inevitable.

Yet increasingly, scholars resist this narrative. There is calendar overlap, certainly, but calendar overlap does not equal causation. Valentine’s Day, as we know it, bears little resemblance to this Roman festival.

But before I address this apparent disconnect, it is worth outlining exactly what Lupercalia was, and what it wasn’t: if only to clarify some common misconceptions.

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Lupercalia: Myths and Realities

Who or what did Lupercalia actually celebrate?

There is considerable scholarly conjecture around which deity was honoured through Lupercalia. Bacchus, Lupercus, Juno, Pan, Faunus, Lycaeus, and Inuus have all been variously proposed over time.

Indeed, Livy and Plutarch (as well as many later archaeologists and classicists) argue that the roots of this Roman celebration lie not in Rome itself, but in an older Greek festival: the Lykaia.

Held on the slopes of Mount Lykaion (literally, “Wolf Mountain”), the tallest peak in rustic Arcadia, the Lykaia festival is elusive in its details. There was some kind of secret ritual, possibly dedicated to Pan. The festival might have had something to do with the rites of passage for pubescent or adolescent boys (epheboi). However, there may also have been rites concerned with lycanthropy, either calling for protection from werewolves or invoking their shape-changing powers: the precise nature or reasoning behind of any of these practices, remains unclear.

So, when it comes to the Roman version of the festival, Lupercalia, or Feast of Lupercal, much of the mythic framework (with wolf imagery, a pastoral setting, and an emphasis on fertility and liminality) echoes that of the Greek Lykaia.

The Roman festival is thought also to have taken name from Roman Fertility God, Lupercus, and based itself around the cave where Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were alleged to have been nurtured by a she-wolf.

As the aetiological legend goes, in the sixth century BCE, King Amulius, Romulus and Remus’ father, ordered that the infant twins should be drowned in the River Tiber, as revenge for their mother’s violation of her vows of celibacy. The pair were placed in a basket and set adrift, only to be spared by a servant who, moved to pity, called on Tiber himself (the River God) to carry them safely downstream, where they then came to rest caught in the branches of a fig tree.

There, a female wolf discovered the pair. Rather than devouring them, she raised them in her den at the base of Palatine Hill, a cave that would later come to be known as the Lupercal.1

What actually happened at the festival?

Lupercalia was itself a very violent and sexually charged festival, enacted across two locations: first, in the Lupercal cave itself, and then transferring into the Roman public meeting place, the Comitium.

Its goal was mainly to whip up the virility and fertility of Roman citizens— targeted especially towards women wishing to conceive— and marked a symbolic emerging from the dormant hibernation of Winter a season of renewed life and generative potency (much like how we conceive of the coming of Spring now).

At the Lupercal cave, a dog and one or more male goats, animal representatives of sexuality, were sacrificed by the Luperci priests. These priests, at this stage already naked (for reasons I assume are also grounded in the idea of virility and fertility), would then smear their foreheads with the animals’ blood, using the sacrificial knife. This blood would then be wiped away by a piece of wool soaked in milk (a gesture we cannot help but interpret as symbolically charged: the combination of blood and milk evoking notions of conception and nourishment).

Following on from this ritual sacrifice, the festivities were transferred to Rome, where feasting began. Strips of the animals sacrificed in the cave were subsequently cut to form thongs, referred to as februa, the likely origin of the name of our month of February.

This is when Lupercalia’s possibly most alien tradition took place (if we consider animal sacrifice to be, in this context, comparatively normal).

The naked or near-naked Luperci, some using februa to cover parts of their bodies in imitation of the god Lupercus (himself depicted as partially clothed), ran through the city striking women with the februa. While entirely strange, this was not necessarily a violent act, but rather a ritualistic one. Women wishing to conceive were thought to welcome the blows and deliberately expose their skin to the lashings as part of this fertility rite.

Nor was the violent action aimless. The location of lashings held symbolic significance: a blow to the breast was believed to prompt lactation, for example.

Given the violent and sexual nature of these rites, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Church viewed the pagan Lupercalia with deep suspicion.

Yet, Pope Gelasius I’s 5th-century decision to outlaw Lupercalia and mandate February 14th as a commemoration of Saint Valentine’s martyrdom, and his accompanying lengthy document critiquing the festival, rather than showing any intent on theological displacement or objection to the nature of the festival, focused on corruption and inefficacy of these ritual practices, that had devolved from its proper form. Noble families no longer ran around naked; some celebrants were running around clothed.

The problem, in Gelasius’ telling, was not merely paganism, but degeneration.

So, far from demonstrating continuity, Gelasius’ intervention shows that the supposed Lupercalia–Valentine’s link is a retrospective coincidence, not an intentional act of Christian appropriation.

The Matchmaking Myth: A Modern Interpolation

One other point that forms the basis of claims linking Lupercalia to Valentine’s Day must also be mentioned. That is, the matchmaking lottery that supposedly occurred at the Roman festival. Women’s names were randomly drawn, and men could decide who would couple with whom for the duration of the festival. The intent behind this was that many partnerships would then extent to marriage, post-festivities.

This makes the Valentines-Lupercalia connection far more persuasive.

If it were true.

In reality, it is difficult to find reliable historical evidence for this practice. Dr. Krešimir Vuković, Lecturer in Classics at the University of Oxford, discounts the logistic probability of the event entirely, noting the absence any record of men being paired randomly with women for participation in the ritual, and that the number of women present would have almost certainly exceeded that of the men.

In fact, this matchmaking tradition has an entirely different source. The earliest mention of this “lottery” is in the 1756 CE (not ancient) work of Christian author Alban Butler, Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints. Turns out, he describes a custom observed during certain English and Scottish Catholic spring festivals, not a Roman practice. The matchmaking lottery, in other words, is a later interpolation, projected backwards onto Lupercalia to strengthen a non-existent connection.

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Without the matchmaking ritual, what remains to connect these two festivals? The answer: very little beyond chronological proximity and thematic resonance around fertility and coupling (the latter, as we have seen, being largely absent from the Roman tradition).

There are, potentially, symbolic echoes: Valentine’s Day uses the colour red in its imagery, like the blood sacrifices of Lupercalia. It also uses white, perhaps recalling the milk used in the purification rites, representing procreation. Whether these continuities are intentional or coincidental remains entirely unclear.

Valentine’s Day as we celebrate it, with an emphasis on romantic love, commercial exchange, and sentimental gestures, bears virtually no resemblance to the violent, ritually erotic purification ritual that was Lupercalia.

If there is any connection beyond a coincidence on the calendar, it exists only in the broadest thematic sense: both festivals are founded in the human desire for coupling, for fertility, for new beginnings as winter comes to a close.

These are such universal human concerns that finding it in two February festivals can hardly be said to constitute evidence of continuity.

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So this Valentine’s Day, know that you are almost certainly not participating in some sanitised descendant of Lupercalia. Our Valentine’s is something entirely different: equally constructed, equally mythologised, but with its own distinct history. A history that has very little to do with the likes of wolf-caves and ritualised whipping.

Until next time,

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Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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Hello and welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

The moon is one of the most photographed objects in the world. Spanning centuries of documentation in art, literature and music, humanity’s obsession with the moon is enduring.

This manifests in its associated symbolism, especially in reference to madness. Ancient superstition holds that the full moon would trigger insanity or “lunacy” (which famously traces back to the latin word luna meaning moon). This developed into the word lunaticus, referring to those who were “moonstruck” (or affected by the lunar cycles). However, whilst these claims of temporarily induced lunar madness are disproved by science, the moon is aligned with an illusion that even science can’t truly explain (yet!).

The moon illusion

The moon illusion is a fascinating phenomena whereby the moon appears larger when sat on the horizon in contrast to when it is at its zenith. While many would assume that this may be due to the moon being closer to the earth, the opposite is actually true. When sat on the horizon, the moon is 1.5% further away from the earth. If the size of the moon never actually changes significantly, what could explain this?

The history of the illusion

The effect’s first known documentation was in the 7th century BC, with cuneiform inscriptions on clay tables found in the Royal library at Nineveh in ancient Babylon (modern day Iraq). Preserved due to being baked in the fire that destroyed the palace, these tablets demonstrate our ancestors understanding of the same sky that still puzzles us today.

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Aristotle also commented on the illusion in 300 B.C. claiming in his Meteorologica; “the sun and the stars seem bigger when rising and setting than on the meridian”. However, he credited this effect to mist, an idea that was reiterated by Ptolemy 500 years later in his landmark work the Almagest. Whilst the idea that the satellite’s change in size was due to atmospheric conditions is not completely unsubstantiated (the atmosphere does change the colour of the moon), they were misguided.

Thus, in Ptolemy’s later work Optics, he revised this idea and laid roots to the first truly plausible answer to this phenomena: “the apparent distance hypothesis”. This idea was then elaborated by Cleomedes (200 A.D), before being fully developed by physicist Ibn al-Haytham in the 11th century, who claimed in his Optics “sight perceives those parts of the sky near the horizon to be farther away than parts near the middle of the sky.” From Ibn al-Haythams account, this theory remained virtually unchanged across the medieval period.1

The apparent size hypothesis

Essentially, it is thought that our brains rely on intervening objects to make sense of distances (because our visual system is dreadful at estimating raw distances). Therefore, when the moon is high in the sky, there are no intervening objects, so we perceive the distance to be shorter and thus we adjust the apparent size of the moon to match. This aligns with a common illusion known as the Ponzo illusion, whereby two lines across converging lines appear to be different lengths (the upper line being longer as we interpret the converging lines to represent distance, thus making the more ‘distant’ line larger). This trick is commonly used in paintings, using perceptual cues to depict objects being further away, (I could talk a lot more here about the visual field and angles but I think I would even bore myself).

However, there are a lot of issues with this hypothesis. Firstly, It is criticised as being tautological, as it essentially explains a perception by defining it as a perception (the moon looks bigger because it looks further away/ we know it looks further away because it looks bigger). Additionally, there is much variation in how people perceive the moon illusion as some people do not perceive the illusion at all, which confounds this logic further.

The relative size hypothesis

This counter hypothesis suggests that the perceived size of an object depends on the size of the surrounding objects in the visual field. Essentially, when the moon is on the horizon there are terrestrial objects in the foreground that we can compare the size to. The appearance of large objects, such as skyscrapers or mountains, provides fine detail that thus magnifies the size of the moon, an effect that is not utilised when the moon is as its zenith. This is similar to the famous Ebbinghaus illusion, whereby the same circle appears larger when surrounded by smaller objects (in the moon’s case mountains) as to when surrounded by larger ones (the sky).

However, even when NASA astronauts are in space, with a lack of foreground cues to gauge distance, they still experience the moon illusion, suggesting potentially both explanations are inadequate

Conclusion

Ultimately, we don’t have a conclusive answer for why we experience the moon illusion. While potentially infuriating for those scientifically minded, it is, in my opinion, slightly beautiful. After centuries of association with illusion and madness, the moon, in all her mysteriousness, still eludes us.

Testing the moon illusion

If all this sounds a bit strange, I wholly recommend checking the illusion out for yourself. There are a few methods that you can use to experience this perceptual trick at home:

1. Set a camera on a tripod and take multiple photos of the moon as it rises to its zenith: comparing across the sky, the size of the moon will never change.

2. Roll a tube to the exact shape of the moon and view the rising moon; as you have gotten rid of size cues, the moon size standardises.

3. Look through your legs up at the moon (potentially not one to do in public). As your visual system is inverted, the brain cannot rely on its usual visual cues and the moon will return to a standard size no matter where it is on the horizon.

For any stargazers, the best time to try these out is a full moon, the next of which is due to be tonight: the 1st of February 2026!2

Until next time,

“All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles...unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing...better than to follow nature.”

Caravaggio (c. 1604)

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Hello and welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

As part of an ongoing (and happily interdisciplinary) cultural education, Alex and I took a trip to London this week, specifically to the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square. The occasion was the exhibition of Caravaggio’s Victorious Cupid, currently on loan from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, displayed in all its confronting, gleefully cheeky and buck-naked glory.

Before anything else, it seems worth admitting that my knowledge of Caravaggio is, if not deficient, then at least partial. But I think it is precisely this partiality that matters. Because this exhibition—sparse, controlled, and deliberately atmospheric—is not really about Caravaggio’s painting alone. It is about how viewers encounter art; how artworks and their settings anticipate, shape, provoke and urge comparison and critique.

It is these questions of viewership that I find myself returning to.

The Museum, Curated

This exhibition, for all its sparsity (housing only three works alongside the eponymous Cupid), seeks to reanimate the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paragone: the lively debate among artists and collectors over the relative merits of painting and sculpture, of ancient and modern art.

We are invited to step into the world of the Palazzo Giustiniani, the seventeenth-century Roman residence of Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564–1637), Caravaggio’s patron. All works on display were once his. We are, in effect, Giustiniani’s guests, encountering ancient sculpture alongside Caravaggio’s abrasive naturalism, a deliberate challenge to a classically minded audience.

This premise of inhabiting a world, not just observing works, shaped how I viewed the exhibition. Caravaggio’s characteristic disdain for anything that strayed from direct naturalism, and his insistence on working from life, is made abundantly clear. But, crucially, it is made legible through comparison.

The curated space of the collector, and now the museum, places Caravaggio alongside the idealised forms of antiquity that he so decries. Naturalism here is not an abstract principle; it is something we are meant to feel.

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The room with the Cupid is dark, spare, and quiet. There’s a definite theatricality to its presentation: The Cupid doesn’t feel historical or distant. He feels present, confrontational and inviting challenge through a cheeky, direct gaze and stark frontal nudity. There’s no attempt to soften the moment. It demands proximity and clearly means to provoke a reaction.

The space does not neutralise this provocation—it amplifies it. The lighting, the emptiness, and the sense of being guided toward this one image all shape our responses. The display of this painting originally in Giustiniani’s seventeeth-century Palazzo was similar in effect: the painting was concealed behind a green curtain, to be dramatically revealed. You do not just see the painting; you’re placed in front of it, deliberately.

The museum, here, becomes complicit in the act of looking. Viewership is never passive.

Before reaching the exhibition on the basement floor, Alex and I ventured through the rest of the Wallace Collection. Even subconsciously, my viewing of Caravaggio’s Cupid was coloured by the romantic, frilly dreamscape of the French rococo we had just passed through. Fragonard’s famed The Swing (1768) performs a kind of prettified, playful impropriety: illicit love in the soft, decorative idealised mode, its scabrous narrative entirely implicit.

Certainly, this contrasts with Caravaggio’s Cupid.

Yet, the exhibition encourages us to see Cupid as part of a collection, encountered in sequence, in dialogue with other objects.

So, this comparison is crucial. Invited.

Aphrodite, In the Round.

Occupying the entire room to the right of the exhibition is the Giustiniani Aphrodite, a Roman marble based on Praxiteles’ famed Aphrodite of Knidos. At first glance, her inclusion seemed incongruous to me, outside the merely biographical: another object once owned by Giustiniani, another classical foil, Cupid paired with his Aphrodite.

But then I thought about not what I was seeing, but how I was being made to see it.

The Aphrodite is displayed in the round. We circle her. Unlike the Cupid, she does not confront us; she permits our gaze, but on terms that feel furtive, almost illicit. Semi-draped and caught mid-gesture, she offers a different erotic economy found in concealment rather than exposure.

What the exhibition stages, then, are two connected modes of viewing: the confrontational and the voyeuristic.

What Realism does to the Viewer

The exhibition leans heavily on Caravaggio’s supposed rejection of antiquity in favour of pure naturalism. His biographer Bellori records the artist’s denouncement:

Yet this opposition feels overstated. The ancient artists Bellori invokes—Phidias, Praxiteles, Glycon—were themselves obsessed with fashioning likeness. While, indeed, classical art often idealises, this does not negate an intense ancient preoccupation with fashioning things as they were.

Indeed, as Mary Beard writes:

“The supposed pinnacle of [ancient] artistic achievement that there should be no apparent difference between the image and its prototype.”

Pliny the Elder preserves my favourite anecdote on the subject: Zeuxis, a late 5th-century BCE Greek artist, paints grapes so realistic that birds flock to peck at them; Parrhasius, in contest, paints a curtain so convincing that Zeuxis himself is fooled:

The ultimate victory is not fooling animals, but in fooling the artist—a viewer trained to see.

Naturalism’s power, then, lies in reaction.

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Pliny tells another story, albeit a more explicit one. A man becomes infatuated with Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos—the model for the Giustiniani statue in the exhibition—and hides overnight in her shrine.

He uses it to his own pleasure, leaving behind a stain of his “lustful act”. The sculpture, here, does not inspire contemplation; it provokes action.

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Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos, like the Giustiniani Aphrodite, was viewed in the round: the viewer is positioned as a voyeur and encouraged to move, look, and respond.

This context makes the Wallace Collection exhibition’s decision to let us circle the Aphrodite feel deliberate.

This returns me to one final example, far from London, but close in spirit. In the Louvre, there lies this sculpture: a languid, idealised female nude.

You approach this sculpture from the rear, perhaps assuming this sleeping maiden is Venus. Until you are made to walk around to the front.

This is The Sleeping Hermaphroditus, an ancient marble sculpture (resting upon a marble mattress added by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1620) depicting the Hermaphrodite in life size.

Only when you circle to the front does the ‘joke’ land. The body refuses categorisation. The viewer is revealed as presumptive.

The deception is intentional, as is the revelation. The sculpture depends on movement, on the choreography (curated by both the artist and the Louvre) of our gaze.

This is the through-line that links Caravaggio’s Victorious Cupid, Praxiteles’ (and Giustiniani’s) Aphrodite, and the Hermaphroditus alike. The politics of viewing are never accidental. Art has always known exactly where you are standing—and exactly how to make you move.

Until next time,

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“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food”

- Hippocrates

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Welcome to the second edition of This Week I Learnt!

Ultra-processed foods; a term that is as divisive as they come. Since the concept was created in 2009 by Carlos Monteiro, UPFs have been ever present in the nutritional zeitgeist. They have been linked to; obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, depression and anxiety . Additionally, they make up approximately 60% of calorie intake in the UK and US. Such statistics are harrowing, but before you pick up your pitchfork and storm your local tesco, let’s unpack a few things.

What is the UPF classification?

UPFs are classified based on the level of processing the food has experienced. There are 4 categories of processing according to the “NOVA” classification ranging from unprocessed to Ultra-processed. The suggestion being that the processing that occurs on these “UPF” foods confers risk, due to the addition of emulsifiers or preservatives.

Sounds fair right? Until you realise that actually, most plant milks and vegetarian alternatives on the market count as UPFs. Alternatives that are recommended to consume for both health and environmental reasons. In reality, certain kinds of UPFs are actually a key cornerstone of a healthy diet for much of the population. Research has even shown that the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders are significantly reduced in people whose diets are high in UPFs but have high dietary quality.

And it’s not just that. The NOVA classification don’t really take into account texture (UPFs tending to be softer impacting the speed of eating), energy density (calories per gram of food), palatability (high in combinations of fat and carb, factors that have been known to reduce satiety), gut health or fibre intake.

The issues with the NOVA classification don’t just end there. The system receives a lot of criticism for being too broad. French nutrition specialists, when asked to classify 200 foods into their NOVA classification, only placed 4 foods into the same category, whilst 25% were placed across all 4 of the categories!

Additionally, “processing” foods also can increase food safety and prolong shelf life! While increasing nutrient content and availability while making foods more affordable and convenient. This is especially true for low income families, who are substantially more likely to reach for UPFs than minimally processed foods.

Do UPFs relate to weight gain?

This tends to be the key worry for many regarding the overconsumption of UPFs. This is understandable, with Kevin Hall’s 2019 study demonstrating that those who consumed an “ultra-processed diet” gained an average of 0.9kg over two weeks, compared to those who lost 0.9kg on an “un processed diet”. However, the answer is likely more complicated than first thought. Whilst many claim that the diets given to people on clinical trials regarding UPF do control for nutritional composition. They often don’t control for energy density, i.e. the number of calories in the food being consumed. Studies have found that this in of itself could explain the difference in weight lost/gain over the course of the study. Not only that by the attrition (drop out) on these trials was significantly higher than chance from people who ate the minimally processed diet than those who ate the UPF diet. This both skews the data AND suggests (perhaps rather obviously) why we don’t all just eat minimally processed foods all the time. UPFs are yummy!

Summary

In summary, am I giving you the all clear to demolish as many macdonalds cheeseburgers as you like? Not quite. Processing still has some negative effects. Processing meats are labelled as carcinogenic. Is it more complex than it seems? YES! Red meats are also considered carcinogenic (that’s right carnivore dieters). Maybe processing isn’t the only issue, but one that sits amongst many.

What I am giving you the all clear to stop demonising your food. Food at its core is essential; your body needs it. At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with getting a greasy takeout every once in a while or having a protein bar for an on the go breakfast. Life is hard enough without villainising every aspect of your diet and short enough that you should treat yourself every once in a while (without spending at least a quid extra for a shorter shelf life; I’m looking at you M&S).

Until next time,

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“Play is older than culture.”
― Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens

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Welcome to this week’s This Week We Learnt!

Before leaving for Christmas, I wrote my final essay of Michaelmas term on the Ancient Greek symposium.

Specifically, I wrote on the art painted on drinking vessels; how much of it is concerned with depicting the event itself in a distinctly self-aware manner. Cups that show people drinking at the symposium. Vases that stage jokes about excessive consumption. Images hidden inside cups, revealed only when the wine was drained, encouraging the drinker to pour another—or perhaps to slow their pace.

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This was called the metasympotic tradition: images on painted pottery that would depict, comment upon, or reconfigure the symposium from within. Yet, that framing can sound overly abstract. What struck me most was not that these vessels articulated some rarefied psychological theory of selfhood, but how they remained anchored in the lived realities of sympotic practice.

The Ancient Greek symposium wasn’t a philosophy seminar that happened to involve wine. It was, at its core, a drinking party: its pleasures (intoxication, competition, flirtation, humour) created the conditions in which reflection and self-awareness could emerge without ever becoming the point.

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Now, the symposium has acquired a reputation as a rather austere, cerebral affair, shaped by modern idealisations of ancient Greek culture as foundational to intellectual innovation. One might picture a roomful of elite Athenian men reclining gracefully on couches, wine cups in hand, discoursing earnestly on love, virtue, and the nature of the good life, actively shaping a cultural legacy.

This image is not entirely wrong, but rather incomplete. It is a picture coloured by the text that has come to dominate modern receptions of sympotic culture: Plato’s Symposium.

In Plato’s hands, the symposium is transformed into a highly managed stage for philosophical performance. Speakers orate in orderly fashion. Arguments grow increasingly abstract. Wine is present, certainly, but is curiously restrained. Intoxication is postponed, controlled, almost apologised for; disorder (usually a defining feature of the symposium) enters only in the final moment, with the drunken arrival of Alcibiades—a moment framed as interruption rather than expectation.

Plato’s is a deliberate literary reimagining of the symposium, one that privileges intellectual coherence over social reality.

It survives because it stabilises the symposium as a setting for philosophical discourse. Actual symposia were perhaps not so accommodating.

Of course, the symposium could be a space for philosophical discussion. It brought together the male citizen elite of Athens— men with the leisure to drink, argue, show off, and be seen doing so. In that sense, it functioned as a kind of social microcosm: competitive, performative, deeply concerned with reputation and status.

But before it was a space for philosophy, the symposium was organised around drinking. And with drink comes not the disciplined rationality we associate with seminars (which is what “symposium” now tends to mean) but something far more volatile: indulgence, play, excess, rivalry, eroticism, and the constant negotiation of behaviour while under the influence.

This volatility wasn’t a problem to be eliminated. It was the point.

The symposium took place in the andron (ἀνδρών), a space dedicated to hosting the symposium, typically small, enclosed and symmetrical. By no means accidental, the room was designed to intensify the sympotic experience: close quarters, shared couches, no easy way to withdraw. Everything unfolded under conditions of enforced intimacy.

At the centre of this space stood the krater (fig. 3): the large vessel in which wine was mixed with water before being distributed to guests. More than a practical object, it was the emotional and temporal anchor of the event. The strength of the mixture set the tone; the pace of refilling regulated the night. Stronger wine loosened conversation. Slower distribution enforced restraint.

Drinking, composed around this krater, was communal, conspicuous, and highly visible. One did not drink; one drank with others, in full view of the room, according to these shared expectations about timing, restraint, and excess. The symmetry of the andron encouraged a sense of equality among participants: each guest was both audience and performer, his behaviour shaped by laughter, teasing, and the threat of embarrassment.

The symposium was a ludic sensorium that appealed to all the senses, teaching through atmosphere, jokes, and pleasure, and embedding self-awareness directly into the fun.

The drinking cups themselves were an essential part of this sympotic choreography. Drinking was not a neutral, absent-minded act; it was made tactile, sensory, and playful, a physical extension of the party itself. Some cups made sounds. Some were adorned with provocative, sexual imagery. Some cups were shaped like male genitalia, turning the act of holding your drink into a literal “fondling” of sculpted testicles (fig. 4).

More fun yet were the drinking games. Kottabos (fig. 5) a flicking drinking game in which players aimed with the dregs of their wine to knock a saucer balanced atop a tall bronze stick, demanded precision and timing. Askoliasmos, a game in which the younger, more agile men in attendance would attempt to stand atop a filled wineskin, was an exercise in coordination and balance (whose success became progressively optimistic as the evening wore on, and likely progressively funnier to observe).

Modern, post-structuralist interpretations of these games read them as metaphors for the “unbalanced” social and psychological state of the symposiast himself.

Well, yes. But it’s difficult not to feel that this risks overlooking the more obvious reality.

Look beyond abstract metaphors. Instead, picture a room of already-drunk men attempting (and failing) to aim with any degree of precision, or wobbling hopelessly atop an unstable wineskin while everyone else laughs. These games were exercises in skill and coordination, yes, but also in spectacle. Success was fleeting, failure conspicuous, and both were collectively enjoyed.

Now think of a party we’ve all attended: watching the antics of your drunk friends, who pull out the Twister mat or karaoke machine, not for any great symbolic reason, but because watching friends lose coordination or scream-sing the wrong lyrics to Dancing Queen is funny.

The symposiast holding a cup in the shape of male genitalia would be the ancient equivalent of a hen night stocked with penis-shaped shot glasses.

It’s not a philosophical statement, but a shared joke: it reminds everyone that this is a bodily, social, slightly ridiculous affair.

The symposium did not draw attention to itself only as a display of intellectual rigour or a loftier philosophical examination of self and behaviour (the kind later preserved in Plato’s Symposium). Awareness of drunkenness, visibility, sex, and situation existed for the sake of pleasure, laughter, and self-referential humour, not just to be abstracted, systematised, or analysed in discussion.

The symposium worked not because it explained itself, but because it was enjoyable enough to be noticed.

Until next time,

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“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Welcome, all, to the inaugural issue of This Week We Learnt!

So, at last, we took the plunge and started this Substack. This is a long-in-the-works enterprise born somewhere between late-night procrastination and the noble (self-justifying) desire to simply do something with our ever-growing archive of ideas, anecdotes, and indulgently verbose voice notes we send each other from opposite ends of the country. Consider this publication the result of letting curiosity run unexamined and unsupervised.

We are both fortunate enough to be utterly, if perhaps overly, invested in our degrees: and more broadly with learning itself. We hold close the conviction that learning at university is not just about what ends up on the exams. It is, fundamentally, about the abandoned essay tangents, personal resonances, and the slow, oft amorphous process of figuring out how one actually thinks. It is this curiosity and capacity to discover ideas in motion that we quietly fear will atrophy when university ends and working life begins.

This is the philosophy, coloured by a mild trepidation, from which This Week We Learnt was born.

Each week, we’ll take turns writing articles, thought pieces and anecdotes about topics we encounter in the worlds of Classics and Psychology. We are not necessarily concerned with polished conclusions or having the “right” take; it’s about documenting the process of learning as it actually happens: messy, unfinished, and open to revision, critique, and the insights of others. Think of this as the jumbled blurt of notes and tangential thoughts you create long before the finished essay.

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But first, a little about each of us and what you can expect!

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Salve! I’m Olive, a third-year at Cambridge University reading Classics. A subject perhaps both familiar and faintly esoteric to the discerning Substack reader, Classics is the ultimate magpie discipline: literature, art, archaeology, philosophy, language—all things ancient claim my fascination. Though this field is not without its challenges: I must still endure the perpetual low-level horror that is Ancient Greek translation (if anyone can be convinced, Latin is far more intriguing).

What can you expect from me? Long ramblings, inexplicable pretension (for which I could apologise, but I am a Classics student so it comes with the territory), and repeated recourse to Virgilian literature and its timeless wisdom. Classics does not exist in a vacuum (despite rumours to the contrary); its modern echoes are all around, persistent and endlessly relevant, and I do (with great enthusiasm) hope to draw them out wherever I can.

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Hello, I’m Alex! I am a third-year at Cardiff University studying Psychology. Currently, I am on placement in Bristol with the Nutrition and Behaviour Unit! What does this consist of? Well… I struggle to find a concise enough answer at the best of times but think of the realm of eating behaviours and food choice and you’d be in the right ballpark.

Similar to Olive, I am also smitten with Psychology. Despite being a relatively new discipline (two sides of the spectrum here), I firmly believe it has something that anyone could like. Human behaviour never ceases to amaze me with its simultaneous complexity and simplicity. I hope to convince even the staunchest humanities fiends of the beauty of this strange science.

What can you expect from me? The strange and unusual, the used-to-be-common-sense-but-we-gave-a-name-to-it-and-now-its-a-scientific-phenomenon and everything in between! Always with the firm and frequent disclaimer that this is based on current hypotheses which may or may not be disproved in the future. At its core though, studying psychology is, I believe, one of the best ways of understanding ourselves and the way we exist in the world, so I hope to give the brilliance of your brain the reverence it deserves.

So that’s us. And this, readers, is This Week We Learnt.

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Thank you for being here from the start.

Until next week,

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