What a Woman Taught

The historical times of my novel Neapolis - The Siren's Recall were perhaps one the happiest for the thinking minds, if we take into consideration the differences and difficulties back then. Greek society was expressing the most advanced fruits of Western thought for the next eighteen centuries: the philosophers.
Among all, Socrates had marked such a strong turn that we distinguish Greek philosophers in pre- and post-socratics, just a bit different from what we do with BC and AD dates.
Socrates did not write anything on his own. All we know about him comes from his disciples, Plato being the first among them.

A Multilingual Land

Campania always was a meeting point for different cultures, and in IV century BC things were not different.
Oscans/Samnites were perhaps the most numerous people, but next to them we could find Greeks (mainly in Neapolis), the Romans who had started to enter the territory (indeed, Acerra had been annexed to the Mescian and Scaptian tribes by the very Quintus Publilius who is so importanto in Neapolis - The Siren's Recall, but Cumaa and Puteolis as well had been taken from the Samnites, and the wealthy Capua literally gave herself to Rome), the Etruscans, the Auruncans, the Volscans…
Any of these peoples spoke its own language, used its own writing, sometimes borrowed the alphabet from others. Is it surprising if Neapolitans gesticulate so much? :)
While writing my novels I also want to face this aspect: how would one live in a land where different ethicities with different languages lived so close together?
I admit that the reply was easier for me who lived in three places where still today there is a situation very similar to the one described.
Right now I live in the area of Barcelona, Spain, Catalonia's capital, where next to Spanish there thrives the Catalan, what remains of a language that, despite its numerous variations, was common to a wide territory from Valencia to Alghero in Sardinia. Influence of Catalan is nowadays recognizable in many spoken languages and dialects well beyond the borders I mentioned, and it would be silly to deny that, but its use has become the matter for political confrontation I don't want to meddle with. From the linguistical point of view, its codification makes it suffer, according to my external and humble opinion, of all the sicknesses of the so-called “dead languages”: lack of spontaneity, expression rigidity, little innovation, fonetical prejudices, etc.
I have also lived for two years in the Netherlands where, next to the official Flemish language, everyone talks a decent English. Foreigners have no problems in asking information or beginning their life in the country, and Dutch people are always nice to the foreigners and try to understand them.
Finally, the third place is Campania itself, an Italian region where, next to Italian, survives with no fear to be forgotten, even with no official economic support, Neapolitan. It survives as a local language, passed by the everyday's life as it is able to express directly, in full, concisely, the ideas of Campanian people.
Stamped for years as “vulgar” (according to the worst of the meanings), it is the language that expressed a first-class musical and opera traditions. Among the first songs coming to mind of foreigners speaking of Italy are 'O Sole Mio and Torna a Surriento; how shocking for them to learn that those are not Italian songs: they are Neapolitan!
Gifted with these experiences, it was easier for me to imagine that the open attitude of the Neapolitans towards foreigners always was the one you can experience while walking along the decumani (the narrow alleys of the historical center): they try to speak, to communicate at all cost, and if they can't use language, they help themselves with gestures, hands, which is a trait that makes you spot an Italian throughout the world.
It is not a little thing, some still see it as a lowly and vulgar thing (“Do NOT gesticulate!” keep on teaching “well-to-do” parents to theatrical sons), but it is a further communication channel, and a further possibility to know different people.
I am not proposing romantic sentences: there are scientific studies on the language development in human babies at different ages, and they show that younger children try to communicate with gestures as well as with sounds, and they finally drop the gestures channel only when they manage to successfully comunicate through speech. It is therefore natural to infer that where gestures language offers expression richness and immediateness, it may easily thrive.
Will you find all of this in my novels? In another post I will explain how I technically faced the problem to let my characters use different languages. In the meantime, I wish I titillated your curiosity on the topic.

Cicero tells…

When one wants that the most innocent sentences are historically sound, historical investigation becomes very crafty. Seldom I found myself reading texts apparently totally unrelated with the topic I wanted to verify, but these are those texts that, en passant, mention the key witness.
This happened with an apparently secondary character in Neapolis - The Siren's Recall, Herennius Pontius. At that time, Herennius was one of the most reknown and respected Samnite chiefs, indeed one of his people very different from the stereotype that history (written by the Roman winners) gave us about Samnites.

Anabasis Alexandri

The Alexander's Expedition, by Greek historian Arrian, is the most ancient tale we have about the expedition undertook by Alexander The Great to conquer the Persian Empire.
Written in II century AD, it is a chronicle, thus devoid of any introspection: it is a collection of events with no explanation of their reasons; as such, it is a very objective work.
While the events in Neapolis - The Siren's Recall happen, on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean a young leader educated by a philosopher (no less than Aristotle) subjugated, in historic battles, the greatest empire at that time.
One of the main characters in my novel is linked with the macedonian leader, and I had thus to learn what could historically have happened to him to later tell that from his point of view.
The excerpts from the “Anabasis” I referred to are tho paragraphs from the first tome

Philogelos

He who knows one's own limitations also knows that those limitations do exist. If he is gifted with goodwill, he can try and exceed them.
I don't think I am extremely “brilliant”: I am more an introverted and more prone to deep meditation than to laughter. My grandpa, who was a writer in Neapolitan language as a hobby, was gifted with a precious comedian style, infinitely stronger than mine! Yet, while writing Neapolis - The Siren's Recall, I felt the desperate need of that very comedian style.
Why?, one might ask. Can one find hilarious moments in a story as violent as the one a siege?
As a matter of facts, the Neapolitan spirit could find any moment good for laughter.
And I had a problem: I wanted to imbue that spirit in the story I wanted to tell, but I missed that very spirit. What to do?