A key fact

I'm not sure that anyone really knows where the key and lock were invented. Obviously people have been barring doors from the inside since time immemorial (and is probably the reason why to this day, house doors open inwards).  In a world with house slaves you don't need keys and locks very much: the house slave who watches the door (the janitor, in Latin) identifies the visitor and lifts the bar.

The earliest mention of keys that I know of is from Homer, the Odyssey, book 21.  Odysseus after one or two adventures has made his way home to discover an annoying number of men trying to marry his wife.  Penelope goes to collect her husband's weapons (this will not end well for the suitors).

[Penelope] descended the tall staircase of her chamber, and took the well-bent key in her strong hand, a goodly key of bronze, whereon was a handle of ivory.

Here we have a key, at the time of the Trojan War.  Given the likely dating on Homer, the year is at least 600BC and probably well before.  I want to point out the description of the key as "well-bent", and "bronze".  Because in the late 1800s an art collector named Edward Warren, who seriously knew his antiquities, came across this:

credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

You can find this interesting item at the excellent Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  It is exactly like the description from Homer.  The words inscribed in the bronze identify it as the key for the Temple of Artemis at Lusoi, in Akadia. The difference is, this key is dated to the 5th century BC, which is when Nico & Diotima lived. So this is a key as my heroes would have seen them. 

The key fits through a slot in the door, and you then turn it to lift the bar on the other side. 

You can forget about carrying ancient keys in your pocket. This thing is more than forty centimeters long. That's about sixteen inches.

Stadium gigs of the ancient world

It's usually thought that the first stadium gig was the Beatles at the Shea Stadium.

But actually, stadium gigs go back much, much further than that.

The first stadium gig was almost certainly held during the ancient Games at Olympia -- a stadium gig if ever there was one -- at the world's first stadium -- though the musician is not known.

There were all sorts of side contests at the ancient Olympics.  Some of them were definitely music contests.   A few decades after the time of Nico & Diotima for example there was a trumpet blowing contest (and a documented winner).  But there were certainly music contests at the Olympics long before.

The format was probably something like the battle of the bands events you see these days.  It seems inevitable that the winner would have been invited to play at the closing ceremony. 

The earliest stadium gig for which I can find the musician's name is the music contests held at the Pythian Games. The Pythian Games were played at the stadium above Delphi, beginning in 586BC.

The travel writer Pausanias had this to say:

According to the tradition the oldest contest, for which they first offered prizes, was singing a hymn for the god ... in the third year of the 48th olympiad, in which Glaukias of Kroton won (586 BC) ... they added a contest for singing accompanied by a flute and for playing the flute.  As victors were proclaimed: Melanpous of Kephalai in the kithara-singing, Echembrotos of Arkadia in singing accompanied by a flute and Sakadas of Argos in playing the flute. This Sakadas won two more victories at the next two Pythian games.

Thus the ancient Greeks invented the stadium gig, even if we don't know the date or the first muso to get the gig.

Limerick editions of Pericles Commission & Ionia Sanction

A very clever reader named Rebecca Gebhardt Brizi has written limerick editions of both The Pericles Commission and The Ionia Sanction. I discovered these by accident and wanted to share them. 

So here they are, on Rebecca's blog:

The Pericles Commission: a synopsis in limerick!

The Ionia Sanction: a synopsis in limerick!

I'm supposed to write a synopsis for each of my books, when I submit them to the publisher.  I might hire Rebecca to do my next one.

The Singer From Memphis

Nico & Diotima's sixth adventure begins on May 17! 

This time they are called on to escort an aspiring author named Herodotus.  He needs their help with some research for a book he's writing. 

But then, one or two minor details go wrong with that plan.

Zeugma, art and style

There is news of some new mosaics uncovered in Zeugma that are dated to about 200BC.  That puts us firmly in the Hellenistic period.

credit: Ankara University

This is very interesting to me because it's "only" 250 years after the time of Nico & Diotima.  Of course, a lot can change in 250 years -- think how much art has changed between 1750 and today -- but also think how much the art of 1750 is still recognizably ours.

Practically zero paintings survive from the Classical and Hellenistic world.  There are lots of statues, but that's a different thing.  These mosaics are probably close to what you'd see in a painted mural. 

So in Zeugma there is art that is plainly in the Hellenistic tradition.  What's more, we can see how style has changed, because there are earlier known mosaics.  Remember I wrote some time ago about the mosaic in the tomb at Amphipolis?

This mosaic is at least 100 years before the Zeugma one above.  Zeugma is on the Euphrates river, miles from Greece.  Amphipolis is in northern Greece (or Macedonia, depending how you think of it).

They're clearly different artists, but they belong to the same stylistic tradition.   That's possible because Zeugma was founded by a Macedonian guy called Seleukus, who was one of Alexander's Generals.  Seleukus was one of the big winners in the fallout after Alexander's death. 

While most of Alexander's successors met untimely and usually pretty gruesome ends, Seleukus survived to found the Seleucid Empire, which was very, very successful.  It was largely because of the Seleucid Empire that Greek culture kept its position so far across the Middle East.

It's been known for a long time, by the way, that Zeugma has some astounding art.  Up to now the most famous piece has been the Gypsy Girl (not really a gypsy, of course; that's just a name).

This girl is us!  If you met her in the street, you wouldn't blink.

There's a pretty good chance that I'll eventually steal the Zeugma art to describe in a book, when Nico & Diotima visit the home of a wealthy client, or maybe a dodgy but rich suspect.