Not by the Direct Method., Roman baths and the Evil Eye.

Roman baths and the Evil Eye.

There could also be a darker side to the world of beauty and pleasure which the baths create. Excessive beauty, like any other exceptional achievmeent, risks provoking phthonos, the envy which works through the Evil Eye of the envious, with disastrous consequences. Such danger could threaten every sort of human activity, and buildings of every type are found protected by apotropaic inscriptions and symbols; but there is evidence enough to suggest that baths and bathers were especially vulnerable.

Katherine Dunbabin, “Baiarum grata voluptas,” Papers of the British School at Rome 57 (1989).

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Quotes and thoughts I lack the time or energy to pursue more fully and turn into proper blog posts.

Title taken from Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians:

"It is not by the direct method of a scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict that singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy. He will attack his subject in unexpected places; he will fall upon the flank, or the rear; he will shoot a sudden, revealing searchlight into obscure recesses, hitherto undivined. He will row out over that great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity."

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