Vicki Le?n, the popular author of the Uppity Women series (more than 335,000 in print), has turned her impressive writing and research skills to the entertaining and unusual array of the peculiar jobs, prized careers and passionate pursuits of ancient Greece and Rome.
From Architect to Vicarius (a deputy or stand-in)--and everything in between--Working IX to V introduces readers to the most unique (dream incubator), most courageous (elephant commander), and even the most ordinary (postal worker) jobs of the ancient world. Vicki Le?n brought a light and thoughtful touch to women's history in her earlier books, and she brings the same joy and singular voice to the daily work of the ancient world. You'll be surprised to learn how bloody an editor's job used to be, how even a slave could purchase a vicarius to carry out his duties and that early Greeks had their own ghost-busters with the apt title of psychopompus.
In addition to stand-alone profiles on callings, trades, and professions, Le?n offers numerous sidebar entries about actual people who performed these jobs, giving a human face to the ancient workplace. Combining wit and rich scholarship, Working IX to V is filled with anecdotes, insights, and little-known facts that will inform and amuse readers of all ages. For anyone captivated by the ancient past, Working IX to V brings a unique insight into the daily grind of the classical world. You may never look at your day-to-day work in the same way!
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My roots: convinced I was left on strangers' doorstep in the Pacific Northwest, I fled in my teens and began to fill the first of seven passports. Wanderlust is apparently hereditary; my progeny now busy filling their own passports. My higher education: mostly self-inflicted I collect: pyramids, ancient cemeteries, seashells, foreign languages, long stays in foreign lands. Allergic to: gray skies, household routines, watches, gas-guzzlers. Addicted to: laughter, Spanish aceitunas con anchoas, George Dalaras and other Greek music, foreign films, beach walks, getting a glimpse of animals and birds in the wild. Am a magnet for: odd facts, weird stories, unusual connections (all of them fodder for my writing) Am sustained by: a worldwide web of family, friends, publishing colleagues, and readers
My books: 35 titles (about half of them for readers 10 and up). Many, miraculously still in print.
My GOALS as a writer of nonfiction: 1. Dig deeper to find the whole human history, to illuminate the unsung men and women of long ago 2. Leaven my books with humor and humanity 3. Try to astonish the reader on every page. Astonish, from the Latin attonare, "to be struck by lightning." Thus to write in a way that leaves the reader thunderstruck.
My research: more fun than a whodunit. In fact, I go through a lot of shoe leather even when I'm time-traveling.That's why I call myself (partly tongue in cheek) Vicki Leon, historical detective
For those familiar with the work of Michael Foucault, this work is a little problematic. It basically picks up where Foucault's "The Birth of the Prison" and "The History of Sex" and his other curious titles leave off. Foucault's technique was to examine not the high-falutin literature of the past, or the documents of the haute bourgeoisie, but to look at ordinary systems and attitudes and uncover an archaeology of knowledge and a clearer map of ancient times from alternate perspectives. Because Foucault's technique was subversive, speculative, and academically suspect, many of his conclusions were controversial and his reputation binary. His taste for rough trade and bathhouses didn't help.
Enter Vicki Leon, who does a Studs Terkel ("Working") on the past.
Which is why this is such an excellent book. Leon strips away Foucault's tendency for obfuscation to sound profound (and his rather specialized taste for the louche and bizarre), and doesn't stoop to Terkel's socialist "history" as oppressor and inescapable condition.
Leon's prose is also better than journalists, which makes this a fun read. She doesn't do an exhaustive treatment of jobs in the past: tallow wright (someone who renders cowfat for candles and soap) and grease monkey (a usually samll boy sailor who greased oar gunnels) aren't here. But the ancient world's professions are on full display. My favourites included are: vicarious, nomenclator, fishmonger, purple seller (biblical!), sycophants (yikes), orgy planners, beast supplier, postal worker (now you'll know how going postal originated) and my favourite....psychopompus....
If there is any quibble here (and there really aren't any) Leon is a bit better at jobs typically held by females rather than males: the lives of soldiers, sailors, roughnecks, stevedores, etc. are relatively thin compared to vestal virgins.
This is an excellent, always interesting, highly readable, fun book in the vain of popular economics books sold in airports the world over. Leon is going to make a zillion dollars.Read more ›
Vicki Leon's "Working IX to V" is not a history of wars and rulers. Instead, it looks at, as its subtitle proclaims, "Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World". In other words, it looks at the jobs performed by ancient Greeks and Roman to keep their world running on a day-to-day (or night-to-night) basis. It's a book made for great browsing if you are not in the mood or have the time available for a straight-through reading. The tone is light and breezy, but Ms. Leon's lively prose conveys a sense of authenticity.
Very light in tone; much of information selected for humor. Minor errors of fact. Major problem is that very little substantive information on any occupation. Span of occupations is some 400 BC to 400 AD which destroys most useful value. No real discussion of employment, wages, etc.
The subtitle says it all, except that not all the professions are prized - silver mining, for instance, done by slaves who spent their days on their backs in a "coffin-sized hole" and had a life span of three months, or the hordes of free-born laborers needed for everything from carrying stones to loading ships who earned their daily bread and little else.
But Leon manages to cover a broad range of professions from slave-driver and gladiator to dream incubators and sycophants (who informed on fig smugglers) who have no counterpart in today's world as well as many others that will be around forever in one form or another.
Entries are brief and breezy, but very informative. Leon organizes her jobs and avocations in categories - Slave jobs (the best ones are in aristocratic homes), temple and entertainment jobs, food professions, law and order, entertainment and the arts, etc., giving her sections such titles as "Small-time Operators, Corporate Rackets," and "Doomed Careers and Deathless Pursuits."
There are also brief profiles throughout of people who excelled in one way or another at their posts.
Leon's relentlessly droll style grows a little wearing but she does pack an amazing amount of information in this well-organized, broad-ranging collection, giving a lively, detailed picture of teeming life in the ancient world.
This could have been a really useful book; unfortunately, it isn't. Most annoyingly, the author often lapses into a kind of 'Valley Girl' English that will drive the reader crazy; it is as if she is frightened of sounding intelligent, so whenever she does (and she can write quite clearly) she has to throw in a flippy, with-it word or two; this succeeds in making everything sound stupid. There are also a lot of avoidable mistakes: in the short note on die engravers she says that Kimon's facing head of Arethusa was on a 10 rather than a 4-drachm piece, that Hercules wrestles a lion on a coin of Kyme (he doesn't) and that a head of Lysimachos is on a coin of Pergamum (nope, it's Seleukos I); elsewhere she has Septimius Severus ruling in 190. In short, it is a pity but you can't trust the facts in this book.
