RETURN TO THEROS: MAGIC THE GATHERING'S "CLASSICAL WORLD"

                                                           

For those in the gaming community, this weekend marks an important event in the on-going history of Magic: The Gathering. In case you don't know, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) is a strategy card game created in 1993 by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and marketed by Wizards of the Coast. Currently the world's most popular trading card game, MTG outpaces both Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon and was recently recognized to be the "world's most complex game." The comprehensive rule-book currently runs to nearly 200 pages.

MTG, as its name implies, involves players acting as dueling mages who cast their spells by playing various card types (creatures, instants, sorceries, enchantments, artifacts, etc.) and managing resources (mana, energy) in the hopes of outmaneuvering and defeating their opponents. These spells can be cast at different times and at different speeds, leading to an intricate web of card interactions. Moreover, even though there is a complex set of rules governing gameplay, individual cards frequently allow players to violate those rules on a conditional basis--adding to the game's complexity. A variety of MTG formats exist (both 1v1 and multiplayer) which allow players to use cards from different card sets (in both paper and online versions). Several of these sets are released each year, which both add to the evolving dynamics of the game and continue to develop its rich mythologies and story-lines. Lore and aesthetics are important aspects of the game's enduring appeal. 

 

This weekend the newest set is being released--Theros: Beyond Death--which marks the return of the game to Theros, a realm of the MTG multiverse modeled on the Graeco-Roman past. Although much of the game's early story-line took place inside its own self-generated sci-fi fantasy universes (such as Dominaria and Phyrexia), later expansion sets came to be inspired by various world cultures--such as medieval Japan (Kamigawa), early modern Europe (Innistrad), colonial South America (Ixalan), central and south Asia (Tarkir and Kaladesh), and, in the case of Theros, classical antiquity. 

Are these depictions historically accurate? No. To be clear, the realm of Theros is an alternate classical universe. There are gods, demigods, archons, titans, satyrs, centaurs, gorgons, and hydras, as well has human cultures loosely based on Athens and Sparta. The gods make war with one another, as do the various sentient beings that populate this classical corner of the Magic multiverse. The fact that Theros is only an approximation of the ancient world allows for more creative license on the part of the games developers than would be the case with a more strictly historically accurate depiction. 

If anything, this quasi-classical world might inspire players to look more closely at the historical period it is meant to reflect. In my view, this is a plus. There are many areas of popular culture--gaming included--in which the ancient world is represented with varying degrees of accuracy. Assassin's Creed is another prime example. For the most part, the target audience of such productions are not classical scholars, but the general public. Yet, for many people, film, television, novels, and gaming are their first point of contact with depictions of the ancient world. Academics, instead of dismissing them as "inaccurate" and "popular," would do well to pay attention to how how antiquity is engaged with by means of such cultural products. They provide important opportunities for learning and debate both inside and outside the classroom. 

So, this pre-release weekend, if you're a classics nerd or gamer (or both), you might want to take a moment to investigate or reflect upon Magic: The Gathering's creative and intriguing take on the Graeco-Roman world.  

 

 

  

THE QUESTION OF QUOTATION IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Citation and quotation by ancient authors is an issue that remains poorly understood. All too often, modern scholars tend to assume that the ancients worked and wrote like we do, with multiple books at hand, scrupulously checking references and carefully rendering quotations. Such a scenario seems highly unlikely in antiquity. In spite of the gradual penetration of literacy in ancient societies, most information continued to be transmitted orally. Even information that existed in written textual form was most often received aurally. In fact, the ancient relationship to written text was a unique one, at least from the modern perspective. At the composition stage, authors tended to dictate to scribes, while at the reading stage, texts were mostly read aloud. So, for instance, someone in Alexandria might dictate a letter to a local scribe, the text of that letter is then transmitted to its addressee in Antioch. The addressee, when receiving the letter, either reads or has it read aloud to gain access to its contents. The physical letter itself is simply a vehicle by which an act of oral communication can be reproduced in another space and time. Even writers who did not use scribes would often speak the words they were transcribing.[1] As Paul Achtemeier has put it, “late antiquity knew nothing of the ‘silent, solitary reader’.”[2] The same could be said for the silent, solitary scholar. After all, ancient books and scrolls were cumbersome and difficult to use even for the literate. The lack of punctuation, paragraph or line division, made reading itself burdensome, let alone looking up and verifying passages one wanted to cite. Moreover, ancient memories seem to have been far more robust than our own, with memory exercises forming a key part of the rhetorical curriculum,[3] even from the earlies stages of education.[4]  

            As a rule, Graeco-Roman authors only cite other writings to criticize them, for instance in philosophical literature. Otherwise, material that the author agrees with is often recycled without attribution.[5] At the same time, authors would sometimes alter the material cited in order to re-enforce their own arguments. There was little interest in representing the actual words of either an opponent or an ally. As a result, when an ancient author uses the verb phēmi, this often amounts to little more than the attribution of an idea or opinion.[6] Even instances when the phrase kata lexin is used should be treated with caution.[7] As Geoffrey Lloyd has written, “when a Greek writer tells us what one of his predecessors ‘says’, phesi, this has often to be taken not as a record of what that predecessor wrote, let alone of words that he spoke, but rather in the sense of what he meant or could be represented as meaning.”[8] After all, did not the great historian Thucydides famously remark that he intended to reproduce not what was actually said in his subjects’ speeches but what “ought” to have been said (1.22)?

            How then does this relate to the question of biblical citation? Presumably the same pattern applies. It is unlikely that ancient Christian authors used actual textual copies for their citations of scripture—with the exception perhaps of biblical commentaries. It is more likely that they relied on their familiarity with key verses and passages gained through repeated liturgical performance.[9] The same holds true today for many Christians whose familiarity with the Bible is derived primarily from liturgical contexts, not personal reading. As a result, as Achtemeier notes, using biblical citations in early Christian authors as evidence for variant textual traditions is often an exercise in futility.[10] Moreover, it is based on an assumption that a definitive canonical text existed in antiquity, which the church fathers either quoted exactly or deliberately altered or misquoted. This assumption has driven a fair amount of modern research into the “text” of the New Testament among early Christian writers and, in my opinion, constitutes one of the greatest misuses of patristic literature by biblical scholars. How the texts are used and interpreted is often set aside.   

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[1] Paul Achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109,1 (1990) 3-27.

[2] Achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat,” p. 17.

[3] George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 123-127.

[4] Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1982, p. 154.

[5] Geoffrey Lloyd, “Quotation in Greco-Roman Context,” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 17 (1995),148-9. A major deviation from this patter is Eusebius, who extensively quotes and compiles sources in what seems to be an attempt to create a “documentary” history of the church.

[6] Lloyd, “Quotations,” p. 142.

[7] Lloyd, “Quotations,” p. 143.

[8] Lloyd, “Quotations,” p. 143.

[9] This was certainly the case in medieval monasteries where authors used “hook words” drawn from a kind of internal concordance. See Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. C. Mirashi, New York, Fordham, 1961, p. 74-75.

[10] Achtemeir, “Omne verbum sonat,” p. 27.