Do you spend time alone contemplating what Life is all about? Ever worry that it has no meaning? Like your efforts are futile? Like your life has become a prison where the hours and days stretch on and on and on and on...? That might sound like the adult working life to some, but the early Christian desert monks had a name for it: Acedia.

If you’ve never heard of it, it’s probably because not too many people have used the term over the past few hundred years. The modern phrase “dark night of the soul” is close, however. Ever the bane of early Christian hermits and solitary monks, one might speculate that it has made a comeback in our own time; assuming it ever left.

The Desert Fathers of early Christianity were the first to report Acedia as a condition among their brothers and sisters. They were the leaders of early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks who exchanged the pleasures of the city for the harshness of life in the desert. By withdrawing from society, they believed that they could become closer to God. Their style of living would give birth to what later became Christian monasticism. While some formed communities, where sharing and working together was the goal, others preferred solitude. These individual contemplatives were the hardest hit by Acedia. 

Acedia had both a physical and psychological dimension, and was said to be the worst in the early afternoon – it therefore came to be known as the “noonday demon”. It was viewed initially as demonic since it aimed to cause the monk to give up on their spiritual lifestyle.  

Acedia’s physical symptoms included chills, headaches, sleepiness, a bodily heaviness, and an inability to pray. Psychologically however, it was much more devastating. A strong sense of alienation, dejection, and listlessness would lay hold of the sufferer, and cause him to see all of his efforts as futile. He might also become hypersensitive and critical of fellow monks or the monastic way of life in general; believing he could do better elsewhere, with different people, with a new teaching. A species of bitter indifference and indignation would begin to permeate his thoughts. This resulted in a form of spiritual inertia: Either in overzealous efforts at asceticism and work, to the point of obsession (what we would call workaholism), or the inability to focus even on a few passages of scripture (boredom or ennui). The sufferer may also indulge in overeating/drinking, oversleeping, or flipping back and forth between lethargy and nervousness. This is why Acedia would later become lumped under the category of the deadly sin of sloth in the Middle Ages, and depression by psychologists. But neither sloth nor depression really captures the nuances of Acedia. 

It was more than both of these actually. Much more existential, as it were. It’s when existence itself gets put on review and there’s little to answer for it. Like looking at life and saying, “Is this all there is?” To which life responds, “Sorry, bruh.” Or worse, doesn’t respond at all. 

One website, “The Hermitary”, which deals with the history of hermits and solitaries, cites John of the Cross (1542-1591) (the same who originally coined the term “dark night of the soul”), when he identifies Acedia as an ailment that afflicts mostly newer monks. He reasons that their thoughtful nature, not yet tempered by experience, causes them to have a lower threshold of “non-virtue”. This means that they are less able to tolerate all the nastiness in worldly culture and essentially become disillusioned with their own pursuits as a result. 

Disappointed dreamers and idealists everywhere, know just how easy this can happen. 

The same site concludes that Acedia is “a personal statement against the contrivances of culture, the hypocrisy of public morality, alienation from the natural patterns of nature and simplicity.”

Does anyone with a conscience NOT feel this way today?

A strong sense of community and fellowship in itself might provide a good enough remedy to this. And it’s why Acedia doesn’t show up all that much in literature dealing with monks who lived in more communal settings. But for the introverted and the overly thoughtful, this was, and is, less of an option. 

In a 2005 article for the Harvard Theological Review, Dr. Andrew Crislip advances the hypothesis that Acedia was in fact, a response to the concept of “anomie”. The renowned sociologist Emile Durkheim first introduced anomie in 1897, in his book, Suicide. In societies where individual achievement is heralded as supreme, when an individual feels he or she is unable to meet the standards set by that society they experience anomie. They become alienated and withdraw from “social norms and obligations.” As Durkheim pointed out, this also results in an increased rate of suicide - hence the title of the book.

When placed in the context of the early solitary monks, Crislip argues that Acedia happens as a result of the anomie they felt when, in their solitude, they were unable to reach the lofty heights of communion with God as quickly as they anticipated. Thus, their anomie gave way to Acedia and life’s purpose became as barren as the desert they lived in. 

Seen in this light, when we translate anomie and Acedia to today, we see conditions for it are fertile. In fact, as recent as the middle of the 20th Century, Aldous Huxley said Acedia was the primary affliction of his age. And it’s only gotten worse. This is not to imply that there’s been a rise in contemporary populations of solitary desert monks,  but rather, with advances in communication technology and the dissolution of traditional sources of community, solitude has become a much more common phenomenon. Meanwhile, the social standards we’re meant to strive for have become ever more artificial and/or hard to reach.
 
So what’s the antidote to Acedia? Older sources advocate perseverance, courage, and detachment. In modern parlance, one might translate this to the phrase, “keep on keeping on.” The Hermitary, proposes that gratitude for living and consciously altering one’s “threshold for non-virtue, in the ability to seek contentment” might do the trick. One might also consider some honest soul-searching and holding fast to teachings and traditions that are enduring and offer meaning. They do exist, but in the modern “winner-take-all”, disposable, culture we live in, they are largely forgotten or ignored. Regardless, we can take solace in knowing that even though the Noonday Demon has visited countless people throughout history, for those who persist, he eventually goes away.

Sources

“Acedia, Bane of Solitaries.” Hermitary, http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/acedia.html

Crislip, Andrew. “The Sin of Sloth or the Illness of the Demons? The Demon of Acedia in Early Christian Monasticism”.  The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 143-169.

Norris, Kathleen. “Got Acedia? Who Cares?” The Washington Post, September 16, 2008. http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/09/got_acedia_who_cares.html

 The history of gladiators and gladiatorial combat is one that conjures to mind crowds cheering for blood and the armed athletes in the arena who would oblige them. In short, we think of the violence. But outside of the arena gladiators sometimes doubled as husbands and lovers; even to some of Rome’s highest-ranking women.

Gladiators were viewed as belonging to the lowest of social classes: prisoners of war, criminals, and slaves. Even free-born citizens who volunteered to fight as gladiators, called auctorati, were considered little more than pimps or actors, “selling their blood”, as it were [i]. Despite this, as athletes held to the highest physical standards, perhaps in all of history, they would have been paragons of masculinity. As such, they were just as popular in Roman society as modern professional athletes are today; their power over women equally as strong. Girls or women would scratch graffiti on the walls of gladiator schools declaring their love for those who had captured their hearts. Graffiti in Pompeii, for example, identifies “Creces, with his trident, who catches the girls at night in his net” and who is the “lord of the girls”. And “Celadus, the Thracian, who makes the girls’ hearts beat faster”[ii].

Some gladiators took mistresses and even wives. In the gladiatorial school of Pompeii, the bodies of eight men and one woman were found. Expensive jewelry lay next to the woman, allowing us to hypothesize that she was a woman of means engaged in a rendezvous with a gladiator lover [iii]. This, along with other accounts, tells us that female members of the Roman aristocracy were just as vulnerable to their charms as anyone else.

SENATORS' WIVES AND EMPRESSES

One curious case involves a gladiator named Sergius and the wife of a senator, Eppia. Eppia fell in love Sergius and ran off with him to Alexandria. Their story is documented by Juvenal. He begins by asking,

“Was it good looks and youthfulness set Eppia on fire?
What did she see in him to endure being classed with
The gladiators? After all, her Sergius had already begun
To smooth his throat, an injured arm presaged retirement;
And his face was seriously disfigured, a furrow chafed
By his helmet, a huge lump on the bridge of his nose,
And a nasty condition provoking a forever-weeping eye.”

Sergius was decidedly not a looker. Juvenal can only justify Eppia’s attraction to him by saying:

“He was a gladiator, though. That makes them Hyacinthus;
That’s why she preferred him to children and country,
Husband and sister. They love the steel.”[iv]

His description captures what must have been a common sentiment among “ordinary” Roman men at the time – that were it not for the fact that they were gladiators, no one would have looked once in their direction.

Another story involves Faustina, the daughter of Emperor Antoninus Pious (AD 86-161) and the wife of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180). It was said that she had fallen in love with a gladiator and that she grew obsessed with him. When she confessed this to her husband, he consulted with Chaldean soothsayers on how best to remedy her obsession. They advised him that the gladiator must be killed and that Faustina needed to bathe in his blood. According to the Historia Augustina, “When this was done, the passion was indeed allayed, but their son Commodus was born a gladiator, not really a prince;…[and that] Many writers, however, state that Commodus was really begotten in adultery, since it is generally known that Faustina, while at Caieta, used to choose out lovers from among the sailors and gladiators.” [v] Cassius Dio (AD 155-235) likewise describes how another empress, Messalina, third wife of Emperor Claudius (10BC – AD54), intervened to save a defeated gladiator who was one of her lovers. [vi]

Although we mostly think of gladiators in terms of their activities in the arena, like modern professional athletes, they held a strong appeal to women from all walks of life. Their claim to definitive masculinity (all modern gender theories aside) gave them a halo that many found hard to resist. It also allows us to consider them in a more nuanced light. They were more than just fighters engaged in life and death spectacle. They were the male sex symbols of the Roman world. And they were the ones who got all the girls.

END NOTES

[i] Nossov, Konstantin. Gladiator: The Complete Guide to Ancient Rome’s Bloody Fighters, Lyons Press, 2011, p 148.
[ii] Meijer, Fik. The Gladiators, Thomas Dunne Books, 2004, p 70.
[iii] Nossov, 155.
[iv]Juvenal. The Satires, translated by A.S. Kline, 2011, web.ics.purdue.edu/~rauhn/Hist_416/hist420/JuvenalSatirespdf.pdf, SatVI:82-113.
[v]“The Life of Marcus Aurelius: Part 2.” Historia Augusta, Loeb Classical Library,
1921, penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Marcus_Aurelius/2*.html, 19.
[vi] Cassius Dio. Roman History. Vol. VII, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1924 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/60*.html Book 60, 28.

“Toxic Masculinity” is a hot topic these days. A minority even imply that all masculinity is “toxic” and that there’s too much of it. Upon reflection, exaggerated arrogance, aggression, and ignorance are what they really seem to be describing; though these qualities are hardly limited to men. What is clear is that we are experiencing a cultural crisis of masculinity. As traditional values fade and men are increasingly being left without any clear direction of how to be in the world, it begs the question: is there a healthy masculinity? One that is worth saving?

The Romans experienced a similar crisis of masculinity in the 1st Century BC. For them, masculinity was defined by their concept of virtus. Unlike today’s critics of masculinity, they saw the problem as there not being enough of it.

VIRTUS = ROMAN MASCULINITY  

Virtus is where we derive our own word, virtue, but the two are not the same. Virtue covers a much wider set of qualities than virtus alone. To the Romans, virtus was among the most noble qualities a man could possess and was often counted as the single most important moral quality that made Rome and Romans superior to other nations and peoples. It represented nothing less than the Roman national character.

The basic definition of virtus is “manliness”, or “the qualities of a man at his best”. In early Roman history, it meant prowess in battle, courage in the face of the enemy, honesty, and self-control. While the military connotation of virtus would remain throughout Roman history, strength of character, readiness for action, and service to the state came to be key qualities of it for civilians as well as soldiers. Further, as the state developed and politicians and orators held greater influence, virtus also came to include courage in the face of shame. The satirist Lucilius (180-103 BC) also tells us that having a strong sense of morality was essential. He writes:

 “…[a man should] be an enemy and hater of bad men and bad habits…a defender of good men of good habits or morals, to make much of these, to wish them well, to live with them as a friend, and, beyond these traits, to think of one’s fatherland, then of one’s relatives, and third and last of our own interests.”

In short, there was no room for thuggery in virtus. Rather, it was held as the quality by which a man could face life’s challenges bravely, responsibly, and morally.

Sources
Adams, Mark. Meet me in Atlantis. Dutton, 2015.
Ancient History Encyclopedia. “Tartessos.” www.ancient.eu/tartessos/.
Bartos, Nick. “Beyond the Pillars of Hercules – Excavating an Iron Age seat of power.” Current World Archaeology, www.world-archaeology.com/issues/beyond-the-pillars-of-hercules-excavating-an-iron-age-seat-of-power/.
Celestino, Sebastián and Carolina López-Ruiz. “Sacred Precincts: A Tartessian Sanctuary in Ancient Spain.” Archaeology Odyssey, web.archive.org/web/20031203010404/http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_AO/bswbao0606f1.html.
Chamorro, Javier G. “Survey of Archaeological Research on Tartessos.” American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 91, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 197-232.
Daughtrey, Peter. Atlantis and the Silver City. Pegasus Books, 2013.
Kühne, Rainer W. “Tartessos-Tarshish was the model for Plato’s Atlantis.” 2011, vixra.org/pdf/1103.0040v1.pdf.
López-Ruiz, Carolina. “Tarshish and Tartessos Revisited: Textual Problems and Historical Implications.” in M. Dietler and C. López-Ruiz (eds.) Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and Indigenous Relations, The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 255-80.
Pithom. “Why Semitic Tarshish is Greek Tartessos.”  1 Jan 2011, againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/tarsh-tart/.
Villarías-Robles, Juan J.R. and Antonio Rodríguez-Ramírez. “The Representation of the Kingdom of Tartessus by the Ancient Greeks Revisited: New Evidence for a Forgotten Cause.” International Conference: Ancient Greece and Contemporary World: The Influence of Greek Thought on Philosophy, Science and Technology (Ancient Olympia, Greece, 2831 Aug 2016).
Primary Sources can be found at:
“Tartessos (Spain) 65 Huelva? – Ταρτησός.” ToposText, Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation, topostext.org/place/373000PTar.