"... and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it. Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas. And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation...."
From "Transcript for Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire – Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443"
The segment on gestures begins here. Or watch the video:
I was listening to this segment of the podcast as I was out on my sunrise run this morning. I made a mental note of a second thing, perhaps because it resonated with the material in the previous post about Sean Combs and his "freak offs."
Speaking about Rome, Aldrete says:
So gladiators... they’re fighting for other people’s pleasure, and dying sometimes for other people’s pleasure. And the Romans had a real thing about this: your body being used for others’ pleasure. Even a humble working person who hired themselves out for labor, the Romans thought that was innately demeaning, because you’re using your body for someone else’s benefit or pleasure. They didn’t have this notion of the dignity of hard labor or something. They thought the only noble profession was farming, okay, because there you generate something and you’re producing it for yourself. But if you work for someone else, you’re demeaning yourself. And gladiator’s the worst of the worst, right? You’re performing for someone else’s pleasure. So on the one hand, they’re very low status. But on the other hand, successful gladiators get famous. People admire them, women find them attractive, they’re celebrities. This is the status dissonance. You have these people who, on the one hand, formally are very low status in society, but yet are very popular on the other hand....
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35 comments:
chuckle chuckle. He has a wife, you know. You know what she's called? She's called... 'Incontinentia'. 'Incontinentia Buttocks'
Some refer to them as grifters or scammers but there are experts of hand gestures hired by the campaigns. The guy who came up with Bill Clinton’s ‘feed the card into the ATM machine’ gesture dined out on it for a long time…
Based on the header and excerpt I really thought this would end up in a discussion of Timmy Walz or his "turn the page!" wife. He's like a windmill when speaking and she looks and sounds like a crazed kindergarten teacher. It is mildly amusing
"They thought the only noble profession was farming"
In many ways, the only noble profession is farming.
Reminded me of this video clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wXjQCEwjEs
I see politicians making unnecessary hand gestures and I think George HW Bush.
This is why actors who hold a cigarette do the best work. No question of what to do with their hands.
Low status, high popularity? You could make a list, and the popularity of formerly low status roles now gets monetized and creates higher status through financial success of the participants. Of similar interest is the high status, low popularity roles, from politicians to CEOs to HOA presidents, where the role creates status but the behavior leads to hatred of those in the role.
Kamala is constantly doing the "I caught a fish this long" gesture. Drives me nuts.
I you sure she's talking about fish?
At least that orator whose gestures looked like he was swatting flies while he spoke was displaying a behavior native to himself and not to a hired coach.
According to Mein Kampf, Hitler's oratorical skills were an undiscovered genius until the day he was sent by the military police to a beerhall political meeting as a spy where he found himself among kindred spirits in need of leadership. An argument erupted among the attendees, and moved by Providence, the obscure corporal spoke up and immediately captured the attention of everyone within earshot and held them as if spellbound on to every word he spoke. It's all bullshit, of course. We know this because photographs survive of Hitler rehearsing his gestures and poses as taught by a professional drama coach hired by the Thule Society (Thule-Gesellschaft), the power behind the Nazi throne, so to speak. The fist-pumping, the heart-clutching, his clumsy, almost banal, opening sentences arching to Olympian heights of passion were all relentlessly coached into the man. Obama's style shows the same purchased-at-significant-price earmarks. Disgusting.
Today's academics are no better -- their hands move as if scooping wisdom from the air and sowing it to the audience first to the right and then to the left with finger-steepling at belly-level in between, insipid and cheaply bought compared to the tailored histrionics of Hillary Clinton.
beat me to it!
Here are a few photos of Hitler studying his lessons: One. Two.
Sergeant (I know nothink!) Walz does some of the same physical comedy, which only fits given their shared goals.
I like Trump's style much better. He drapes himself over the lectern as if it's a picnic table where he sits with everyone else eating hamburgers.
My immediate thought on seeing just the topic was that this was about Kamala and her absurd gesticulations.
I once heard an Italian claim that the reason they use so many hand gestures is because all of the different dialects in Italy made it hard for people from different areas to understand each other just based on their words. I don’t know if that’s true but it’s a good story.
The first time I ever heard this saying was from my Latin teacher in high school. I thought she was just giving a personal opinion at the time, but I still remember her saying it.
I get a kick out of the idea that any Italian wouldn't know how to gesticulate while speaking.
its said of us Latins we gesticulate a lot, well only when needs must
I don't recall gestures in De Oratore but perhaps it wasn't my interest and I ignored it. I do recall online a dictionary of French hand gestures which was pretty good.
I was really surprised this wasn't about Kamala. I didn't listen to the debate but I watched part of it. It was a many years ago that I stopped listening to the debates, I think it might have been the host herself that put that idea into my head.
But primarily I can't stand to listen to any politicians, either they speak nothing but lies or nonsense (Obama, Clinton) or they sound like idiots (W, Trump) so I just watch.
Anyway Kamala has so many outright w... well I won't use that word, but she has some really bad arm language. That pointing to nothing behind her, the downward karate block move. All very different and unpolished comparatively.
If one thinks about it biblically, one of the very first things God tells Adam is (paraphrasing) that you will work the earth and toil by the sweat of your brow. If you want to think about it in more anthropological and archeological terms, the agricultural era really only ended around the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
Growing food, good food, for yourself AND creating a surplus either for your community or commerce is not just necessary but also represents the original act of creating value. The Romans were right. Farming is noble. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise.
Cicero spoke of specific gestures that were august and appropriate to make during oration in the Senate or before the plebs. Specifically, the raising of the right (never the left, even if you were left-handed) arm and hand, palm up, with the toga praetexta draped over the outstretched arm.
There are numerous statues of orators that display this very gesture, so I'm inclined to believe him.
Was wondering when Walz would come up. He even gesticulates with his feet.
At least Hitler did not have a teleprompter. Obama was lost without one.
I'm in love with Greg Aldrete. We've got his Teaching Company lectures on Ancient Civilizations, Rise of Rome, Fall of Rome, snd Decisive Battles.
I read Truman last winter, and there were constant references to his "chopping hands" motion during speeches. Then I saw some clips from him in Congress or on the campaign trail, and it really was his way of emphasis. He did it well.
Today's orators could take some lessons from past masters.
I've noticed that, too. I like it.
Using gestures must be natural. I would go so far as to say that it's unteachable. Less is more. Sometimes NO gesturing is more effective (see Leonard Barr for an extreme-- deadpan-- example).
Aldrete is a treasure. I have couple of his Great Courses and he is a great story teller. Check out his course on Military Blunders. Insightful as to how incredibly smart people can make incredibly bad decisions.
It’s been said that aliens visiting earth for the first time would think Italian is a gesticular means of communication with some vocalizations thrown in.
That idea was nowhere in my comment, in fact, the opposite. The comment was a (perhaps apocryphal) explanation of why they gesticulate so much.
How can you not move your hands when you talk? How will you gather and place all the Air Objects?
“ People admire them, women find them attractive, they’re celebrities. This is the status dissonance. You have these people who, on the one hand, formally are very low status in society, but yet are very popular on the other hand....“
Some things never change.
”So gladiators… they’re fighting for other people’s pleasure, and dying sometimes for other people’s pleasure. And the Romans had a real thing about this: your body being used for others’ pleasure. Even a humble working person who hired themselves out for labor, the Romans thought that was innately demeaning, because you’re using your body for someone else’s benefit or pleasure. They didn’t have this notion of the dignity of hard labor or something. They thought the only noble profession was farming, okay, because there you generate something and you’re producing it for yourself. But if you work for someone else, you’re demeaning yourself.”
Early French visitor to the fledgling (1830's) United States, Alexis de Tocqueville observed this cultural phenomenon—aversion to paid work—in America, in his famous masterpiece Democracy in America; attributing it to be a direct and understandable outgrowth of slavery. This was the anathematical attitude toward paid employment in slave-holding Kentucky—but not in neighboring, slave-free Ohio, located just across the Ohio River from the foregoing slave state. As Tocqueville wrote: {quoting…}
These contrasting effects of slavery and of freedom are easy to understand; they are enough to explain the differences between ancient civilization and modern.
On the left bank of the Ohio {i.e., in Kentucky} work is connected with the idea of slavery, but on the right {in Ohio} with well-being and progress; on the one side it is degrading, but on the other honorable; on the left bank no white laborers are to be found, for they would be afraid of being like the slaves; for work people must rely on the Negroes; but one will never see a man of leisure on the right bank: the white man's intelligent activity is used for work of every sort. {…}
The white man on the right bank, forced to live by his own endeavors, has made material well-being the main object of his existence; as he lives in a country offering inexhaustible resources to his industry and continual inducements to activity, his eagerness to possess things goes beyond the ordinary limits of human cupidity; tormented by a longing for wealth, he boldly follows every path to fortune that is open to him; he is equally prepared to turn into a sailor, pioneer, artisan, or cultivator, facing the labors or dangers of these various ways of life with even constancy; there is something wonderful in his resourcefulness and a sort of heroism in his greed for gain.
The American on the left bank scorns not only work itself but also enterprises in which work is necessary to success; living in idle ease, he has the tastes of idle men; money has lost some of its value in his eyes; he is less interested in wealth than in excitement and pleasure and expends in that direction the energy which his neighbor puts to other use; he is passionately fond of hunting and war; he enjoys all the most strenuous forms of bodily exercise; he is accustomed to the use of weapons and from childhood has been ready to risk his life in single combat. Slavery therefore not only prevents the white men from making their fortunes but even diverts them from wishing to do so.
The constant operation of these opposite influences throughout two centuries in the English North American colonies has in the end brought about a vast difference in the commercial capabilities of southerners and northerners. Today the North alone has ships, manufactures, railways, and canals. {…}
Antiquity could only have a very imperfect understanding of this effect of slavery on the production of wealth. Then slavery existed throughout the whole civilized world, only some barbarian peoples being without it.
{/unQuote}
(Emphasis added. Written 1835-40.)
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Backtracking to the subject of ancient Roman times, with regard to the payment occurring then for pleasurable activities, historian Paul Veyne writes about Roman practices in antiquity, in his intriguing History of Private Life, Vol. I, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium: {quoting…}
The social and institutional character of the Roman economy was so different from that of our own that it is tempting to call it archaic. It sustained, nevertheless, a high level of production and was as dynamic and ruthless as capitalism. For, if Roman aristocrats distinguished themselves by their culture and their interest in philosophy, they were still avid for profit.
The greatest nobles talked business. Pliny, a senator, in letters intended to be specimens of the finest in the genre, held up his behavior as a wealthy landlord as an example for others to follow. When a noble wished to get rid of old furniture or building materials, he held a public auction. (Auctions were the normal way for private individuals to sell their used belongings; the emperors themselves auctioned off unwanted palace furniture.)
Money was not supposed to lie idle. Even loans to friends and relatives earned interest (not charging interest on such loans was considered a mark of special virtue). A woman's father had to pay interest to her husband if transfer of her dowry was delayed.
Usury was a part of daily life; modern anti-Semites might have made ancient Rome the object of their obsession instead of the Jews. In Rome commerce and money-lending were not left exclusively to professionals or to any one class of society.
Any toil, no matter how pleasurable, merited payment. One picturesque aspect of amorous customs among the Romans was that the female partner in a high-society affair was paid for her trouble. A matron who deceived her husband received a large sum or, in some cases, an annual income from her lover. Some cads reclaimed these gifts when affairs were broken off, and on occasion the courts became involved.
The practice of accepting gifts from lovers was considered not prostitution but work for hire. The woman did not give herself because she was paid, the jurists held; she was rewarded for giving herself of her own free will. She who loved best was most handsomely paid. Women sought the wages of adultery as eagerly as men sought dowries. {…}
The usurers of the time were not bankers but notables and senators. Every family head kept a strongbox, or kalendarium, which contained a calendar of due dates on loans along with notes of hand and cash awaiting borrowers. The Roman expression for “setting aside money for loans” was “put it in the kalendarium.”
Every man had his own strategy when it came to money-lending: some lent only a small fraction of their wealth, others a much larger proportion; some lent small sums to many borrowers, others large sums to a few borrowers. Notes passed easily from creditor to creditor, either by formal dation or, more simply, by outright sale. They served as a means of liquefying debt and as an object of speculation: an expandable supply of currency. A man could bequeath his kalendarium and, with it, claims on his debtors and capital intended for usury to one of his heirs.
Usury was considered a noble means of acquiring wealth, the same as farming, dowries, and legacies.
{/unQuote}
(Emphasis added.)
____
References:
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835 & 1840 [12th Edition, 1848], edited by J. P. Mayer, translated by George Lawrence, Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1969; pp. 344-348.
2. Paul Veyne, Chapter 1: “The Roman Empire,” Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, edited by Paul Veyne, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, A History of Private Life, the Belknap Press [of Harvard University Press], Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987; pp. 146-149.
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