The PHurrowed Brow

Yes, I am shamelessly asking you to think of Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy. Set in an alt-America known as Panem, her novels features characters who inhabit and hold assigned places in a malevolent order, one that is maintained and celebrated in a brutal annual spectacle. The residents of a debauched and jaded capital city benefit from this order, one built upon exploitation of the residents and natural resources of the numerous regions which the capital dominates. In the titular games of the novels, the capital city compels pairs of young combatants (aged 12-18, selected in a public ceremony called “the reaping”) to leave their subjugated home regions for deadly combats in a perverse annual ritual that is clearly patterned after imperial Rome’s gladiatorial spectacles. The games, elaborately staged, highly manipulated, and broadcast across Panem, merge ideas of self-sacrifice, regional rivalry, and scapegoating as means to distract the populace from their suffering and to keep them from uniting to oppose the capital’s domination.

Ms. Collins further links her fictional world and Rome by giving the former the name Panem, echoing the famous phrase panem et circenses which appears in the tenth Satire of the poet Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (Juvenal). In this poem, Juvenal, an ancient mocking-J of sorts, jeeringly but sincerely faults Romans (and humans more broadly) for following their fears and desires so blindly that they do not foresee the calamitous outcomes of their unthinking actions.

In the passage that caught Ms. Collins’ interest, two nameless Romans (unidentifiable, but likely upperclass fellows like Juvenal himself) converse cynically about the death of Sejanus (31 C.E). Sejanus, an ambitious upstart, had first ingratiated himself to the emperor Tiberius. As he gained higher position and greater power, he staged a soft coup d’etat, one made all the easier to do by Tiberius’ withdrawal from Rome to pursue personal luxury and vice at his estate on Capri. Juvenal’s unnamed characters reflect on the former’s arrest and execution. Tiberius, then in the fourth of sixteen years consecutive years of pleasure-seeking, had, as usual, left toppling Sejanus to underlings.

It is pertinent to note that these events transpired 80 years after Caesar’s dictatorship put the Julio-Claudian foot on the neck of the Roman Republic. In the timeline of this segment of the poem, references to and mentions of the Republic’s offices and institutions are a nostalgic reminiscence rather than a memory of lived experiences. The two Romans’ imagined conversation occurs as Sejanus’ corpse is dragged through Rome’s streets on a meat hook. It’s in this context that the phrase pānem et circensēs eventually appears.

Here’s the conversation, first in Latin (text quoted from The Latin Library), then in my translation, picking up just as the corpse of Sejanus grinds by:

‘numquam, si quid mihi credis, amavi 68
hunc hominem. sed quo cecidit sub crimine? quisnam
delator quibus indicibus, quo teste probavit?’               70

‘Never, if you believe me at all, did I like this guy.
But on what charges was he convicted? And who
was his accuser? On what evidence? With what
witnesses did the accuser prove his case?’

‘nil horum; verbosa et grandis epistula venit 71
a Capreis.’ ‘bene habet, nil plus interrogo.’

‘None of these things happened; a long-winded
and overwrought letter came from Capri.’

‘Right, gotcha. Nothing more to ask on my end.’

Pausing the conversation on this note of “wink wink, nudge nudge” the poet interrupts to give his take on the events surrounding the death of Sejanus. He scorns the reaction of the common people of Rome, the “populus.” The people once played a central role in the Republic through its voting assemblies, a role memorialized in the emblem of Rome’s government, SPQR (Senātus Populusque Rōmānus, The Senate and the Roman People). InJuvenal’s day, he alleges, they crave only pānem et circensēs. English translators often misrender these words as “bread and circuses,” as if 20th- and 21st-century entertainments with trapezes, clowns, and elephants were the spectacles on offer. Circensēs means (to Juvenal’s Roman readers) any of the three types of entertainments that were regularly offered in Rome’s circī: chariot races, gladiatorial matches, and public executions (through crucifixion or slaughter by animals or as the culmination of forced combats). A circus is a circuit for racing surrounded by seating for spectators, and Rome had multiple such venues, among which the Circus Maximus is best known. Given that Rome’s Colosseum, its first permanent amphitheatre explicitly designed for gladiatorial combat, wasn’t opened ’til 80 C.E., we must understand that the term circensēs functions to denote combats and executions, as well as perilous chariot races. The context of the phrase here shifts it toward the first two types of spectacles. N.B. My translation simplifies
many of the figurative expressions in the Latin.)

sed quid 73
turba Remi? sequitur fortunam, ut semper, et odit
damnatos. idem populus, si Nortia Tusco
favisset, si oppressa foret secura senectus                75
principis, hac ipsa Seianum diceret hora
Augustum. iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli
vendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim
imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se
continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat,            80
panem et circenses.

But what say
the masses, heirs of Romulus and Remus? They
follow the whims of Fortune, as always, and despise
the losers. If Lady Luck had favored the upstart,
if the inattentive senility of the emperor had been
toppled, why at this very moment, the same body
of citizens would be hailing Sejanus as the new Caesar.
For years now, ever since we haven’t been able to sell
our votes to anyone, citizens have given up caring
about governance: that’s right, the Roman people,
who once distributed executive power, the emblems
of office, legions, all things, holds itself in check and
anxiously hopes for just two things, its dole of
bread and the spectacles of the Circus.

(The conversation of the nameless Romans resumes
as they consider the notion that others may be implicated
in Sejanus’ overreaching.)

‘perituros audio multos.’ 81
‘nil dubium, magna est fornacula.’ …

‘ I hear that many are going to die in the purge.’

‘No doubt about it, the oven’s preheated and
ready to roast them.

The scene ends with the nameless pair confirming plans to speedily follow Sejanus’ corpse down to the Tiber’s banks where it lies on display so that they can make a public display of contempt for the upstart and loyalty to the empreror. They resolve also to each bring along some of their slaves to act as witnesses in case their loyalty is ever questioned. Juvenal’s two Romans, in unthinkingly cruel irony, know that an enslaved person’s testimony, because it is only admissable and valid when extracted through torture (and thus was always so extracted) carries more weight than the word of freemen, including their fellow citizens. To what a depth Rome’s once vital and engaged citizenry has fallen!

I am always eager to seize the opportunity to throw some Latin your way and show how Rome and its language echo nearly two millennia after Juvenal in Ms. Collin’s The Hunger Games. My true purpose in writing, however, is to share my thoughts on a personal matter, hunger on a micro scale. Or rather on a my-cro scale. Speaking more plainly, what follows concerns my appetite, the scale that sits on my bathroom floor, and the mass of me that periodically rests on said scale. My normal practice is to keep my thoughts about my weight (and important associated attributes such as my appearance, fitness, emotions, and mindset) within the bounds of personal meditation, journaling, or conversation with my physician. But reality convinces me that the personal matter of my weight is connected to the thrust of Juvenal’s satire, that discussing this dimension of myself in connection with Juvenal’s ancient critique is justified. Stick with me to see whether you perhaps agree that it is.

Here’s some background about my weight and the habits that contribute to it, without getting embarrasingly specific. For most of my life, I did not prioritize regular and year-round physical activity. And in seeking my recommended daily allowance of enjoyment and pleasure, I more often turned to food (and sometimes alcohol) in quantities that added pounds to my frame. This was especially true during the stress and sleep-deprivation of the school year in my teacher-life. I’d be more active and shed some pounds in summer, of course, but I did not drop to a healthy weight, much less stay at it.

At the end of my career in education, I began to experience and make meaningful changes: increased sleep; increased exercise both on my own and at a gym with a caring coach, decreased alcohol consumption, increasingly effective forethought about what I ate, when, and how much, decreased self-consciousness about how I looked and moved through the gym and through the world. I talked more candidly with my doctor and Carlos, my coach, subsequently implementing or adapting their suggestions as ways to increase activity and decrease consumption.

There was a part of me, however, that the strategies above did not enlist in the effort to lose weight and get fitter. That part of me? The pseudo-academic overthinker, the part of me that best engages in repeated conversation with the substantive ideas that can be found in a written text. And yet I was reluctant to select and read any of the overwhelming number of books and articles that tout this or that diet, workout as an approach to weight loss. By chance, though, just months after my retirement, I read an interview of an author who promoted an approach premised on strategies to counteract the emotional factors and behavioral patterns that lead to overconsumption. The book is called Lean & Strong: Eating Skills, Psychology, and Workouts, by Josh Hillis. You may find reviews of the book on Goodreads. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to be leaner and stronger.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll just say that the book filled intellectual, mental, and emotional niches within me. and truly allowed me to moderate my consumption without dieting, deprivation, or GLP-1 drugs. Due to my practice of Hillis’s strategies (in combination with the other helpful behaviors described above), the second anniversary of my retirement found 25% less of me on the scale than would have been on it when I was at my heaviest. What is more important than that indicator of many pounds lost, I was better able to engage in the physical activities which bring me enjoyment, and I had reduced several of the medical risks that troubled me and my doctor.

Fast forward another 15 months, though, and by the end of this most recent September, I had regained some of that weight. I was nearing 80% of that most massive me, and I felt it in my daily life, as well as in my overall fitness. How I had made this unwelcome weight gain was not a surprise: by not exercising regularly, by eating a wealthy itinerant’s diet at restaurants and hotels during extended and repeated travel, and by spending long hours in or on a motor vehicle’s seat. Most crucially, though, I had lost touch with several of the central tenets of Lean & Strong, the most important of which to me is mindful repetition of helpful behaviors by which I choose to eat foods that promote healthy weight loss. The behaviors center around eating healthful foods at suitable times, in suitable amounts, and because of physical hunger. My default, to the contrary, was/is often to eat for emotional reasons, out of boredom, stress, fear of hunger, FOMO, nostalgia, or association with other settings and behaviors, such as family gatherings or watching sports, shows, or movies. And such emotional eating rarely gives rise either to the choice of healthful foods or to suitable amounts.

A solo motorcycle trip to check crop conditions in Kansas ahead of reaping gave me headspace to notice how I was feeling and eating and to contemplate what to do about it. I was again traveling, again spending days in a region and role where my opportunties for exercise were limited. Again, options for healthful variables in my consumption (food types and freshness, quantities, timing of meals, etc.) were more difficult for me to weave into a day’s healthy eating. Beyond my personal concerns, I was thinking about how nutrition can be a challenge for all who live in that part of our country. There can be as many as 60 miles between towns with a store or restaurant that serves fresh food, and vegetables aren’t always an easy item to find on the menu. It’s a painful irony that so very much food is grown in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, but so little of it consists of the fruits and vegetables necessary for a balanced diet. As a visitor, I don’t suffer much, but the damage is real for the families and children who call the region home, as evidenced by the inability of local educational systems to source fresh foods for school meals.

Shades of Ms. Collins’ Panem? Well, let’s not exaggerate. It’s the (in-theory) neutral hand of market forces, along with climate, population, land-use and labor dynamics that lead to impoverished food selections for young people, in both rural and urban settings. There is no malevolent, unelected regime using military force to control people, no capital city sending dozens of young individuals off to deadly combat with the empty and clichéd benediction, “May the odds be ever in your flavor.” Instead we in America hear the call of PepsiCo and its subsidiary Frito-Lay, of Hershey and its high-dollar foundling child Dot’s Pretzels, of General Mills blowing its own horn with Bugles. In ubiquitous ads and in most stores and shops where I stop on such trips, I hear corporations blessing us travelers. “May the chips fall ever in your flavor!” they saltily sing. Whatever we’re craving – Salsa Verde, Honey Mustard, Barbecue, Dill Pickle, Flamin’ Hot, Ranch (Cool or Hidden Valley), they’ve got us covered – covered in tasty, nutritionless salty crumbs, that is. Me, I often end up getting some dust from Hormel’s Chili Picante Corn Nuts on my motorcycle jacket when I stop for hydration and a snack.

On that ride my mind turned over the diminished role of hunger in my own recent food consumption. Since spring I’ve regularly been eating for taste, or due to a schedule, or for emotional rather than physical reasons. As a result, I regularly overate, further diminishing the likelihood that I’d feel hunger before the next meal. Mr. Hillis’ tenets of healthful eating had fallen from my mind and my behavioral patterns, so that both cognitively and sensorially, I had lost touch with physical hunger and gained pounds as a result. Perhaps I am not alone in forgetting that hunger is not the same as malnutrition, famine, starvation. It’s not even the same as running out of fuel 10 miles from the nearest gas station or charging point. It needn’t be feared, prevented, and avoided.

As I rode, I settled on one way of taking the edge off my fear of hunger. I decided to frame my relationship with it as a game. Not a competition, but a set of low-stakes interactions which over time allow a player to learn more about him-/herself while at the same time better understanding the other players through how they approach the game. As I teacher, I very often perceived more about how my students learn and understand concepts and material by observing them in classroom games than I did by grading their tests. In turn I could improve my skills as their teacher. Similar learning is possible when I participate in games with friends and family, though here I can also identify and discover how to navigate my own strengths and weaknesses as a player. What if my appetite and my hunger are both framed as players in a game, I wondered?

My trip ended with me formulating a few ideas about how to start the game:

• Reread and rethink Lean & Strong in order to regain thought processes and behaviors that had helped me lose pounds before.
• Within those thought processes and behaviors, sit down and play with hunger, by intentionally playing with how portion size and exercise increase the frequency and intensity of physical appetite.
• Find my current baseline measures of fitness and periodically (every two-three weeks) measure again to assess progress.

I’m writing this post as I am implementing those ideas. When I went to the gym two weeks ago, my InBody test results showed that over the last six months I had traded lean muscle mass for fat, and at a very unfavorable exchange rate. (Although medical professionals rely on weight and BMI as risk indicators, they are to me excessively obtuse measures of fitness and health; the data that InBody reveals provide sharper insights into my fitness and health.) I’ve commenced re-reading Lean & Strong and reflected on how to incorporate key strategies into my daily thinking and eating. And I’ve begun playing with hunger, now waiting for physical appetite before eating, now shrinking the portion sizes of my standard breakfast and lunch items, now seeing whether varying the sizes and proportions of vegetables, protein, carbs, and fat in my evening meal affects the timing and intensity of my appetite in the morning. Time and commitment will tell how I feel and how much I weigh as autumn progresses into winter.

And now back to bread and circuses. Juvenal begins Satire X with a truism and a rhetorical question:

Omnibus in terris, quae sunt a Gadibus usque
Auroram et Gangen, pauci dinoscere possunt
vera bona atque illis multum diversa, remota
erroris nebula. quid enim ratione timemus
aut cupimus?

In all the lands that extend from Cádiz all the way to
Dawn and the Ganges, few people can distinguish
between true boons and what are quite the opposite
without a cloud of folly obscuring the difference.
For how does reason guide what we fear or what we crave?

( Latin text quoted from The Latin Library with my translation)

Riches, political position and power, military might, eloquence and influence, glory, longevity and beauty, all feature in the satire as pursuits that people vainly undertake without accounting for the limits of what they seek. As a satirist, Juvenal naturally focuses on the negative examples of those who lust for power and end up suffering torments that are both due to and inspite of their tentative grasp thereon. Such famous or infamous examples as Sejanus are easier to cite and mock; far harder (and far less engaging!) is it to articulate how to pursue living life well and with reason. It is hard but will, I hope, be worthwhile to linger on his rhetorical question and keep asking it at a personal level: how will I bring reason and meaningful awareness to the hunger that I fear and the feelings that I crave to satisfy through food and drink? A bit of a game may well help me regain the strategies needed in daily answer of that question.