Hebe, ambrosia and shrubs

click photo to enlarge
As far as I can see Greek mythology doesn't figure much in the education or interests of school children today. Yet when I was a child we were taught quite a bit about the subject, including some of the best known stories, and this made us (well, certainly me) want to know more. Alexander Pope said that "a little learning is a dangerous thing", and it certainly can be. However, in the case of me and Greek mythology it proved to be one of the catalysts that inspired a love of words and their origins.

It all started with "Ambrosia" creamed rice, a tinned rice pudding from Devon that first came on the market just before the second world war and was a family staple in the 1950s and 1960s. I discovered that the Greek gods fed on ambrosia and that Zeus and Hera received it (with nectar) from their daughter. It didn't take much research to discover that their ambrosia was unlikely to be the kind with which I was familiar, but the derivation of the rice pudding's name was something I found very interesting.

What has all this to do with a shallow depth of field photograph of a sprig of the plant, Hebe "Red Edge", I hear you ask. Well, the name of the daughter of Zeus and Hera was Hebe. She was the goddess of youth and cup-bearer to the gods until she married Heracles (Hercules to the Romans). When, later in life, I again came across the name Hebe it wasn't in connection with mythology but rather as a very useful, usually hardy, evergreen shrub that originated in New Zealand and South America, one that usually did well in the sort of coastal environment where I was living at the time. It's a plant I've always liked, and a variety that I particularly appreciate is the one shown in today's photograph. The blue-green of the leaf sits well with the red-purple of the leaf edges and makes it an attractive plant all year round. I was photographing our wych hazel when the very structured branches of opposing leaves caught my eye. I composed this shot to hint at the structure and clearly reveal the tip. Incidentally, I have no idea why this particular name was applied to this genus of plant!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 200 Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Artemis, The Huntress

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"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"
from "Monty Python's Life of Brian" (1979)

The Romans have an undeserved reputation for innovation. It's true that they had very good engineering, and that their skills in acquiring, administering and sustaining an empire were formidable. However, as far as actual inventions go their prowess has been greatly exaggerated. The fact is their real skills lay in creative borrowing: taking the inventions of other cultures and improving them. The Romans were more Bill Gates than Alexander Graham Bell.

A single example can serve to exemplify the failings of the Romans when it comes to inventions - or the absence of them. Throughout their period of ascendancy horse power was crucial to the Romans, yet they continued with the same inefficient harness that was used in the Bronze Age. In the second century B.C. the Chinese had horses pulling against a breast strap when they were used with a cart. This allowed them to breath more easily and pull heavier loads. A century later the Chinese had discovered the increased benefits of the collar harness, a device unknown in Europe until many hundreds of years after the Roman empire had collapsed.
 
On a recent visit to Much Marcle in Herefordshire to attend a wedding I was photographing in the snow-covered garden of Hellens Manor, the ancient house where the ceremony and subsequent festivities were to take place. The frozen pond on the south-facing terrace featured a statue of a female hunter. The moss and lichen encrusted figure looked like a good subject for a photograph or two, and so I took some shots showing details and context. This particular view of the garden was taken the day before the main image. It shows the sculpted figure with a snow scarf and cap which had disappeared twenty four hours later. When I came to give a title to today's photograph I had to stop and think whether the subject was Greek or Roman. If Greek, then the statue depicted Artemis, if Roman then it was Diana. When it came to religion the Romans inherited some Greek gods during their early history, came up with some of their own later on, and sought to identify some of these with Greek forerunners due to their fascination with the earlier civilisation. All of which has sown some confusion in the minds of later generations. The sculpture could be Diana, but she looks Greek to me. All of which leads me to think that another thing the Romans did for us was to add a layer of confusion to their mythology that tripped up this photographer when he was a schoolboy, and sometimes puzzles him still.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ovum for Poultry

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When, in the nineteenth century and first seventy five years or so of the twentieth century, manufacturers came to name a new product they frequently delved into Latin or Greek for their inspiration. From these ancient languages they would take a whole word, a part word or a combination of these and from them coin a new word that had a bearing on what it was that they wanted to name. Examples are many:

• automobile - from Greek autos (self) and Latin mobilis (to move)
• submarine - from Latin sub meaning "under" and marinus meaning "of the sea"
• Volvo - from Latin volvere (I roll) - the parent SFK company also made ball-bearings
• Sony - based on the Latin sonus (sound)
• Nike - from the name of the Greek goddess of victory
• Xerox - from xerography which uses the Greek xeros (dry) and graphos (writing)

One occasionally comes across odd hybrids such as Bovril, a British yeast extract and beef stock. This is a combination of the Latin bos (ox or cow) and vril, an invented word that comes from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1870 novel, "The Coming Race". The Vril-ya were a superior race whose power derived from a substance called "Vril"!

Today's photograph shows an enamelled metal advertisement that probably dates from the first half of the last century. It is fixed to an old agricultural building and advertises Joseph Thorley's feed for hens. This was called, appropriately, "Ovum", from the Latin for "egg". Knowing that, what do you imagine the company called the food they sold for rabbits? Here's a clue: the Latin name for the common rabbit is Oryctolagus cuniculus. Bearing that in mind they very sensibly called their rabbit food "Rabbitum"!

These days, of course, names are plucked from the fevered imagination of a twenty something advertising or marketing executive. You want to name a bookseller? Call it Amazon. How about a bank? Goldfish or Egg will do. A telecoms company? What about Everything Everywhere, surely one of the most ludicrous formulations of recent years, or perhaps any year! Today it sometimes seems that it's a virtue to make the company name have absolutely nothing to do with the organisation that it stands for. That being the case one wonders why brand names aren't chosen by opening the dictionary at random and selecting the first noun on the page. But then again, perhaps they are.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 8.8mm (41mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On