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Date:
Wed, 26 May 1993
From:
William Turpin
Subject: Romans' left and right hands
Maybe
this is a stupid question, but here goes. I was reading something
this semester, probably Tacitus or Suetonius, which suggested that
for a Roman wearing a toga to use his left hand was not only
improper, it was downright disgusting. So one question is, was this
really a serious thing? (I've never known as much about "rank
and gesture" as I should, Richard Brilliant and Peter Brown
notwithstanding). The embarrassing question is, was the left hand
supposed to be concealed for the same reason that--and this too is a
dim memory--Moslems (or Arabs?) traditionally only eat with their
right hands, viz. that the left is used for personal hygene? I don't
suppose this matters much, but I found it troubling that I didn't
know. It does rather affect one's image of Daily Life.
Date:
Thu, 27 May 1993
From:
Lowell Edmunds
Subject:
Re: Romans' left and right hands
On the Romans' left hand: did you check Marquardt - Mau?
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1993
From:
David Meadows
Subject: Re: Romans' left and right hands
At one time I too would have thought that the reason for keeping the
left hand covered was because of associations with personal hygiene,
but I can't recall anywhere where such an association is made in
Roman times. Of course, Ovid (Met. 13.111) and Catullus (12.1 but
cf. 33.3) suggest that the left hand is the one traditionally used
for theft. But I suspect that the real reason it was considered a
nasty thing for someone clad in a toga to uncover their left hand
was because, in the case of an advocate or rhetor or politician or
whomever else might find an occasion to be so attired, it would lead
to excessive gesturing which, it seems was offensive to refined
sensibilities. Whoever wrote the *ad Herennium* 3.15.26 sez
`Convenit igitur in vultu pudorem et acrimoniam esse, in gestu nec
venustatem conspiciendam nec turpitudinem esse, ne aut histriones
aut operarii videamur esse'. [the note to the Loeb edition notes
that Quintillian 2.3 provides a fuller treatment of gesture] So it
seems to be a `class thang' rather than a hygiene thang.
Date:
Wed, 2 Jun 1993
From:
DONALD LATEINER
Subject:
Re: Romans' left and right hands
For the Romans, excessive gesture was an ethnic give-away as well as
a social-class indicator. The Romans associated gesticulation with
inferior types (less modestia, or incontinentia) and with the
stigmatics of theater (again, see Edwards' recent _Politics of
Immorality_, also Graf in Bremmer and Roodenburg (misnomered)
_Cultural History of Gesture_). Of course North Atlantic rim types
also connect limb and facial expressiveness with inferior types (not
only Greeks, Syrians, and Jews, but (irony of ironies) Italians,
Spaniards, African-Americans in a previous epoch --in fact anyone
trying to make him/herself understood to a blockhead Northerner
aiming a gun at them/him/her). Not only ad Herennium (the best Loeb
your $16.50! can buy; take it from a student of Harry Caplan), but
de oratore, as well as Quintilian and Senecae (sic) discuss the
inappropriateness of gesture that makes you look like an actor, a
woman, a foreigner (three lesser forms of life in Roman discourse;
again Edwards discusses this). |
| Culled
from
classics.log9305
and
classics.log9306 |
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