Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part two in our discussion of burning hair. This topic
Speaker 3: was inspired by a personal experience for me. I actually
Speaker 3: singed a bunch of hair off my arm while grilling
Speaker 3: at a family get together for the Fourth of July.
Speaker 3: Not the first time I've done that while grilling for
Speaker 3: a crowd, and it got me thinking about what happens
Speaker 3: when hair burns. So in the last episode, we talked
Speaker 3: about the distinctive and sometimes overpowering smell of burning hair,
Speaker 3: which seems to be mostly due to the presence of
Speaker 3: sulfur compounds that are formed and released when hair burns,
Speaker 3: a chief one being sulfur dioxide, which is released when
Speaker 3: the keratin of hair is decomposed by fire. Sulfur dioxide
Speaker 3: is also a major part of the characteristic smell of
Speaker 3: a burning matchhead. We also ended up talking about a
Speaker 3: couple of studies of hair catching on fire in space ships,
Speaker 3: specifically addressing the question of whether human hair is a
Speaker 3: fire hazard in environments with higher levels of oxygen than
Speaker 3: Earth's atmosphere, and the answer seems to be yes. In
Speaker 3: oxygen rich environments where things catch fire more easily because
Speaker 3: there's more oxygen, human hair can be a potent fuel
Speaker 3: source and fire can spread quickly over it. So these
Speaker 3: papers ended up talking about strategies to mitigate that risk
Speaker 3: in future spacecraft and space habitation environments that might be
Speaker 3: using elevated levels of oxygen. And then finally we talked
Speaker 3: about stories of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century English
Speaker 3: pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, who famously was
Speaker 3: said to put burning slow matches under his hat, and
Speaker 3: he's drawn with like these slow matches and it kind
Speaker 3: of fuses, sticking out alongside his hair. In some evolved
Speaker 3: versions of this legend, maybe he's said to have the
Speaker 3: burning slow matches in his hair or in his beard,
Speaker 3: And we discussed where these stories come from, how historically
Speaker 3: plausible they are, including considerations of the danger of catching
Speaker 3: one's own hair or beard on fire in general.
Speaker 2: In case you don't listen to that episode, don't try
Speaker 2: any of this at home. Don't set out to do
Speaker 2: anything flammable with your beard or.
Speaker 3: Hair now, kind of Continuing on that theme, I ended
Speaker 3: up pursuing a research trail where I didn't turn up
Speaker 3: quite as much as I expected to, but I at
Speaker 3: least want to report what I did come across. So
Speaker 3: I had a vague idea from somewhere that the powdered
Speaker 3: wigs that were popular in parts of Western Europe, especially
Speaker 3: in the eighteenth century, were prone to catching on fire.
Speaker 3: My impression here may have been formed by seeing older
Speaker 3: illustrations of this, or like cartoons from the period that
Speaker 3: show people with elaborate hair wigs and headdresses catching on
Speaker 3: fire due to a candle placed underneath them or something. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: I found less about this than I expected to, and
Speaker 3: I can't tell if it was actually any more common
Speaker 3: than regular instances of people catching their hair on fire,
Speaker 3: which of course does happen occasionally here and there. But
Speaker 3: just to get into what it did come across, I
Speaker 3: found mentioned in a post on the British Library's Untold
Speaker 3: Lives blog, and I may have mentioned this on the
Speaker 3: show before, but generally I think the British Libraries have
Speaker 3: some great blogs and archives about history and some interesting
Speaker 3: documents in their collections. This post was by Julia Armfield
Speaker 3: from August twenty thirteen, and it's a short post concerning
Speaker 3: how the elaborate wigs that had been so popular among
Speaker 3: the wealthy during the Georgian era, which was about seventeen
Speaker 3: fourteen to eighteen thirty seven, these elaborate wigs began to
Speaker 3: fall out of fashion later on in that period and
Speaker 3: going into the Victiman period, they sort of fill out
Speaker 3: out of fashion after the French Revolution and then especially
Speaker 3: after the eighteen thirties. According to the author, this was
Speaker 3: in part because of changing social perceptions about wigs that
Speaker 3: they came to be seen not just as fashion, but
Speaker 3: in some cases as a kind of undesirable show of
Speaker 3: vanity or as a deception. Which is funny because I
Speaker 3: realized that even today there are like changes in how
Speaker 3: you know, people are always like trying to affect their
Speaker 3: outward appearance. There's like, you know, there's hair care and
Speaker 3: cosmetics and stuff like that in every era, and for
Speaker 3: some reason, you can look at someone trying to shape
Speaker 3: their appearance in a certain way and just say, well,
Speaker 3: that's just fashion, but with just a different kind of
Speaker 3: emotional spin on it. You start to think of it
Speaker 3: as they're trying to look unreal. They're trying to look away.
Speaker 3: They're not supposed to. Now it's a deception.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting to think about. I guess the stigma
Speaker 2: against powdered wigs in particular has pretty much stuck. I think, yea.
Speaker 2: You know, there's certainly there's nothing wrong with wearing a
Speaker 2: wig or a hair piece. But if it is a
Speaker 2: powdered wig or a hair piece like out of the
Speaker 2: period piece, broadly speaking, like, there's a certain air that
Speaker 2: comes with that. I guess there are probably some exceptions
Speaker 2: in the fashion world and so forth.
Speaker 3: Well, like why would wearing a wig be a deception?
Speaker 3: But like wearing clothes that cover your skin is not
Speaker 3: a deception.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, I mean, I guess on one level,
Speaker 2: someone could make the argument, well, the hair supposedly grows
Speaker 2: out of you. The hair is, of course, by its
Speaker 2: very nature, something you put on you. But I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, when you get down to it, why does
Speaker 2: it matter one way or the other. Anyway?
Speaker 3: This blog post mentions, in apart from changing social perceptions
Speaker 3: of wigs, that there were that there were practical problems
Speaker 3: presented by the wigs of the Georgian era. Including the
Speaker 3: fact that some wigs were so huge and heavy that
Speaker 3: they actually caused people wear, daring them to develop sores
Speaker 3: on their scalps. Another thing is infestation by insects or
Speaker 3: other unwanted gritters and parasites. Lice and fleas sometimes would
Speaker 3: get into wigs, and that's also sometimes held up as
Speaker 3: one reason for the popularity of wigs. Is that, well,
Speaker 3: maybe the lice will get into the wig instead of
Speaker 3: getting into your actual hair if you can cut your
Speaker 3: hair short or shave it, and then you know, they
Speaker 3: just get into the wig instead, But then you've got
Speaker 3: lice in your wig. I've read in separate places about
Speaker 3: mitigation strategies for this, including historical trends in wigs that
Speaker 3: would include built in lice or flea traps that would
Speaker 3: be some kind of container with like bait hidden inside
Speaker 3: the hair. But also this British Library post mentions that
Speaker 3: Georgian wigs would be flammable due to the presence of
Speaker 3: palmades made in large part out of animal fats such
Speaker 3: as hogs lard or mutton renderings. Of course, animal fat
Speaker 3: can be quite combustible, and so if you're using that
Speaker 3: as the base of a kind of hair styling material
Speaker 3: or palmade that we would think of today to hold
Speaker 3: the wig, and in its styling shape, you can imagine
Speaker 3: there would be trouble, like you know, combine wigs gelled
Speaker 3: up with animal fat and the use of candles as
Speaker 3: a primary light source, and it just seems like it
Speaker 3: would be a recipe for wig fires. But I wasn't
Speaker 3: able to turn up a lot about this in like
Speaker 3: history books or academic articles about the history of wigs.
Speaker 3: I did find another blog post. This one was on
Speaker 3: a history blog called all Things Georgian by an author
Speaker 3: named Sarah Murden that managed to dig up a handful
Speaker 3: of eighteenth century newspaper reports from England and Scotland of
Speaker 3: young women's wigs or headdresses catching on fire from a
Speaker 3: candle or in one case I think, from a fireplace,
Speaker 3: and in a couple of cases leading to their deaths.
Speaker 3: But again I did not find convincing evidence that this
Speaker 3: was actually a like really common currents or anything. So,
Speaker 3: you know, with candles everywhere and large smeared masses of
Speaker 3: hair bobbing around all over the place, it does seem
Speaker 3: plausible that this would happen a lot, But apart from
Speaker 3: a few reports here and there. I'm not sure it
Speaker 3: actually did. Historians of wigs and hair, if you're aware
Speaker 3: of something I'm not right in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is often weird to look back on times
Speaker 2: when candles were your main form of elimination. There were
Speaker 2: a lot more open fires and less in the way
Speaker 2: of fire safety, And on one level, you just kind
Speaker 2: of think, well, why wasn't everything on fire all the time?
Speaker 2: And certainly fire was a huge threat. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Maybe part of it is we sometimes don't
Speaker 2: give our ancestors enough credit for not catching everything on fire.
Speaker 2: I don't know, we think of them as the way
Speaker 2: we might think of our own children if they're in
Speaker 2: the presence of an open flame.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess sometimes when we think about a historical
Speaker 3: activity or apparatus that came with certain hazards, we imagine
Speaker 3: the prevalence, but without the accustomedness that would accompany prevalence.
Speaker 3: I mean, a world with lots of candles also had
Speaker 3: people who were used to handling candles.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. Now, at this point in the episode, we're
Speaker 2: going to get a little bit into hair of fire
Speaker 2: and flaming beards and so forth, and mythology and folklore
Speaker 2: and literature, and I have to admit this is an
Speaker 2: area where I thought we were going to have more
Speaker 2: to draw from. And certainly, you know, we probably left
Speaker 2: some things off. And certainly, as always right in and
Speaker 2: let us know if you have some great examples to
Speaker 2: bring to mind. But generally I was thinking, Okay, hair
Speaker 2: can burn, and it's reasonable to assume that every fire
Speaker 2: bearing culture would have some experience with this that they
Speaker 2: might further craft into various myths and legends, jokes, you know,
Speaker 2: terms of phrase and so forth. Right, I mean, you
Speaker 2: have fire, hair can catch on fire. Maybe it doesn't
Speaker 2: happen that often, but if it happens once, it's memorable.
Speaker 2: And therefore you might have some traditions. You might have
Speaker 2: some magical creatures, You might have some gods and goddesses
Speaker 2: that have flaming hair. And while this is true, we
Speaker 2: do have some examples to discuss, we didn't. I wasn't
Speaker 2: able to find as many examples as I was expecting.
Speaker 2: I was expecting it to be just a long list
Speaker 2: of creatures and entities, but there's actually a lot of
Speaker 2: like bleed over into other categories that makes it difficult.
Speaker 2: You know, like just characters with red hair or characters
Speaker 2: who have some sort of a halo or an ara.
Speaker 2: But then it's kind of left to exactly what languages
Speaker 2: used as to whether you would call this flaming hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are a lot of examples that
Speaker 3: are arguable or edge cases, but I also was expecting
Speaker 3: there just to be a lot more defined with the
Speaker 3: was just like, here's a figure with fire for hair.
Speaker 3: Maybe because I'm used to Hades from the Disney movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is a great example to bring up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Greek god Hades in the nineteen ninety seven Hercules
Speaker 2: movie flaming blue hair, voiced by James Woods. He's not
Speaker 2: actually a fire related deity in Greek mythology. This was
Speaker 2: just a visual choice by Disney that actually, I guess
Speaker 2: the exact alchemy of this is they're they're dragging in
Speaker 2: elements often associated generally with the Christian devil, you know,
Speaker 2: fire and so forth, and creating this kind of like
Speaker 2: Haiti Satan combo for their their main villain and making
Speaker 2: like a very distinct visual choice on how to present him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a combination so you associate the Christian
Speaker 3: the Christian Satan with the lake of fire. I guess.
Speaker 3: So there's your fire element, but then you you've got
Speaker 3: to have it like cold, sort of more like you
Speaker 3: would get in Dante's Lower levels of Hell, or like
Speaker 3: you would get I think more often in Greek depictions
Speaker 3: of the underworld is just kind of like a cold,
Speaker 3: dark place. So they make the fire blue, which ironically
Speaker 3: is actually the hottest color of flame.
Speaker 2: Right, So yeah, that's that's a that's a fun example
Speaker 2: to bring up. I mean, there's so many pop culture
Speaker 2: examples of this, and I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: confusing things, is you. I mean, I would assume anyway
Speaker 2: that okay, we have characters like Captain Marvel and and
Speaker 2: and so forth from Marvel comics, and and they have
Speaker 2: like flaming hair at times, then this is perhaps just
Speaker 2: a more modern example of a longer health tradition. And
Speaker 2: then we're gonna have all these other examples and in
Speaker 2: all these different belief systems. But yeah, I found that
Speaker 2: you have certainly have no shortage of things like fire
Speaker 2: elementals in modern fiction and sci fi and fantasy, all
Speaker 2: sorts of creatures and spirits with flaming hair and flaming beards,
Speaker 2: but they're just these seem there's just seemed to be
Speaker 2: less of them when you actually look into folklore and
Speaker 2: mythology and legend.
Speaker 3: As far as the recent pop culture examples go. You
Speaker 3: brought up one in the notes that I didn't think of,
Speaker 3: which is the one from the Wall the movie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, this is the animated Pink Floyd movie,
Speaker 2: and uh, I believe it's Pink's wife and it is
Speaker 2: depicted later on as this kind of like monstrous cannibal
Speaker 2: creature with flaming hair, hair of literal fire.
Speaker 3: I've seen this movie, I mean a long time ago.
Speaker 3: I think I was in high school. But I completely
Speaker 3: forgot about this. The main thing I remember is warning
Speaker 3: for a gross thing about the scene where he shaves
Speaker 3: his nipple off.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot about that. How could you. I
Speaker 2: mainly just remember the hammers like marching around, I.
Speaker 3: Guess, yeah, yeah, the fascist imagery.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen
Speaker 2: I think I saw it when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and you know, on TV parts of it. Anyway, Ultimately,
Speaker 2: the examples of like fire elemental beings are too numerous
Speaker 2: to mention, but I was reminded of that there's one
Speaker 2: in the Dark Crystal. So I picked up my copy
Speaker 2: of The Dark Crystal Bestiaria, and there's a description of
Speaker 2: these things called the Firelings. And I believe these pop
Speaker 2: up in some of the like Dark Crystal Expanded Universe material,
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, in comic books and so forth.
Speaker 2: And I think maybe they were going to be a
Speaker 2: part of a possible film project that never came to fruition.
Speaker 2: But these are supposed to be direct descendants of Gelfling
Speaker 2: exiles who live in the superheated core of the planet Thraw,
Speaker 2: And they're depicted as Gelfling like beings, but they have
Speaker 2: hair of fire. And even then, I found like a
Speaker 2: couple of different images that kind of portray different ideas
Speaker 2: of this. Like in one of them, you can see
Speaker 2: the Gelfling, or in this case, the filing has hair
Speaker 2: that is literal fire, and the others they just look
Speaker 2: like fiery, golden beings. And it's kind of left up
Speaker 2: to your interpretation if their hair is just actual physical hair,
Speaker 2: or if it is like the the chemical emergence, you know,
Speaker 2: this this pyrotechnic experience of fire. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm tempted to speculate that a lot of this modern
Speaker 3: hair as fire imagery and cartoons and stuff specifically comes
Speaker 3: from physical and visual similarities between hair and fire that emerge,
Speaker 3: especially when they're being depicted in human drawing. That you know,
Speaker 3: the ways that you sort of represent say hair blowing
Speaker 3: in the wind, or hair flowing in a like a
Speaker 3: still painting or photo or still painting or drawing can
Speaker 3: very much resemble the kind of wisps of a fire,
Speaker 3: but oriented in the opposite direction. Often. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 3: and that's not a fully formed thought, but something almost
Speaker 3: makes me think that it's something about like modern drawing
Speaker 3: and animation traditions that give rise to seeing these things
Speaker 3: as visually similar and then inviting the mind to make
Speaker 3: a connection where it's not just that hair looks like fire,
Speaker 3: but you have a character with fire fore hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was definitely thinking a bit about like
Speaker 2: how hair appears when it is say, caught by the wind,
Speaker 2: or if one is underwater and you have like footage
Speaker 2: of someone with long hair and the hair is floating
Speaker 2: and so forth, And if that has anything to do
Speaker 2: with I mean that, you know, you could sort of
Speaker 2: link it to the to the history of underwater the
Speaker 2: underwater moving picture, which of course isn't going to go
Speaker 2: back that far, and you could perhaps, I guess, arguably
Speaker 2: enhance comparisons that would be made in general, because of
Speaker 2: course there are always going to be comparisons made between
Speaker 2: you know, reddish hair and fire. You can factor in
Speaker 2: things like you know, length and texture as well. But
Speaker 2: we you know, at the end of the day, we
Speaker 2: do have at least a few examples of creatures and
Speaker 2: entities that I feel like are close enough that we
Speaker 2: can say, okay, we can quibble about the details, but
Speaker 2: these creatures kind of sound like they have fire for hair.
Speaker 3: Okay, what'd you come up with?
Speaker 2: Now? A couple of these are from South America. One
Speaker 2: is called the Kuma Conga, and this is a disembodied
Speaker 2: head spirit of Brazilian folklore that I was reading about
Speaker 2: in The Werewolf in between Indians and Whites. This is
Speaker 2: by Mark Harris, and this was published in t PTE,
Speaker 2: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America.
Speaker 2: And in this article, Harris describes this entity as entailing
Speaker 2: aspects of what we might think of as a werewolf,
Speaker 2: you know, in Western folklore especially as well as sightings
Speaker 2: of balls or wheels of fire. So that's another thing
Speaker 2: I saw several examples of. It's like you have sort
Speaker 2: of like fire entities, kind of will of the wisp
Speaker 2: sort of entities, and it depends on how far you
Speaker 2: push that from being like a mere strange light to
Speaker 2: being a flaming entity or a flaming head or something
Speaker 2: with physiology to it. Now, another one that I've run
Speaker 2: across was the Kurapura. I've seen descriptions of this spirit
Speaker 2: from Tupequar knee traditions of Brazil, entailing a beard of fire,
Speaker 2: though Carol Rose doesn't mention this. In her entry on
Speaker 2: the creature in the book Spirits, Fairies, Leprechaus and Goblins
Speaker 2: and Encyclopedia, she describes it as a bright, red faced
Speaker 2: gnome with cloven hoofs, as well as a shaggy creature
Speaker 2: with backward turned feet. It's kind of a forest guardian
Speaker 2: of game. Then there's also an Afro Brazilian tradition of
Speaker 2: the Kurapira that casts everything more as a will of
Speaker 2: the wisp that leads people off track in the forest,
Speaker 2: but maybe sort of bribe with offerings. But I've seen
Speaker 2: some more recent articles that mention either red hair or
Speaker 2: hair of fire. So I can't completely dispute that idea,
Speaker 2: but again, it seems like we often run into this
Speaker 2: territory of there's probably some linguistic drift in some of
Speaker 2: these descriptions, you know, especially when you're dealing with multiple translations,
Speaker 2: So hard for me to tell any way exactly like
Speaker 2: what the tradition actually is. Are we dealing with creatures
Speaker 2: that are thought to have hair of fire or does
Speaker 2: that just sort of get added on somewhere in the chain.
Speaker 3: Or I think, especially the further back you go in history,
Speaker 3: just to kind of blending of the concepts of light
Speaker 3: and fire, that in many cases any light source that
Speaker 3: didn't come from the sky or whatever could be described
Speaker 3: as a fire.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, if you see a strange light in
Speaker 2: the forest, for example, or in the sky, and it
Speaker 2: is of sufficient luminosity, like it's very reasonable to say, oh,
Speaker 2: there was some sort of fire out there, there was
Speaker 2: some sort of Yeah, what else could it be? If
Speaker 2: it's like above, if it's not the moon, if it's
Speaker 2: not a you know, something that is obviously celestial, and
Speaker 2: it's not something that is like a firefly, then you
Speaker 2: might reasonably think in terms of candles and torches and
Speaker 2: so forth. I also reminded of a fireball yo kai
Speaker 2: from Japanese traditions. I think we may have talked about
Speaker 2: this one before and name Ubagabi, and this is more
Speaker 2: of a fireball, but with the face of an old man.
Speaker 2: And I guess if it is an old man's face,
Speaker 2: then you could say, well, the hair is fire, but
Speaker 2: maybe not. Maybe that's adding too much on, you know.
Speaker 2: I've also seen some ideas about Loki from Norse mythology
Speaker 2: having hair of fire or flame hair. This I didn't
Speaker 2: get a real strong feeling off of this either. Hair
Speaker 2: with these two can get kind of complicated, and in general,
Speaker 2: our sort of understanding of them are kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: influenced by Marvel comics now, but you know, Thor sometimes
Speaker 2: had red hair and a red beard, and Loki is
Speaker 2: sometimes depicted with red hair, sometimes arguably resembling a flame.
Speaker 2: And this is where I've seen various commentators, you know,
Speaker 2: pointing out this idea that Loki may be connected to
Speaker 2: the word Logi, which means flame, but is also the
Speaker 2: name of one of the otin who personified fire. So
Speaker 2: again I don't know there's that you could make a case.
Speaker 2: I guess that sometimes Loki was perhaps a fire headed god,
Speaker 2: but maybe not. Now one of the stronger cases I
Speaker 2: came across is there's an Armenian warrior god by the
Speaker 2: name of Vaughan, the Dragon Reaper, who apparently is more
Speaker 2: traditionally described as having celestial fire for hair, a beard
Speaker 2: of flames, and eyes like suns. So this one would
Speaker 2: seem a stronger example. Though it is interesting here too
Speaker 2: that we're getting into like celestial fire here in this
Speaker 2: idea of like a holy flame that doesn't necessarily behave
Speaker 2: like a real flame, and is also kind of like
Speaker 2: a halo, kind of like a holy aura. But I
Speaker 2: feel like this guy, you can make a stronger case
Speaker 2: and say, Okay, this guy has has fire for hair.
Speaker 3: So I was not initially familiar with the dragon Reaper,
Speaker 3: but the Dragon Reaper apparently is like a that's a
Speaker 3: translation of a traditional epithet. But that's it's amazing how
Speaker 3: much that sounds like modern cool. It sounds like something
Speaker 3: out of a video game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is old school cool right here.
Speaker 2: It makes me think I really need to get into
Speaker 2: Armenian mythology more I really don't know much about about
Speaker 2: Armenian myth and lore, but if this is any indication
Speaker 2: that they have warriors with flaming hair that slay dragons,
Speaker 2: then I want to know more about it. Now, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of additional possible examples in Buddhist iconography
Speaker 2: and Hindu iconography where you have things like hair of
Speaker 2: fire going on. But also again sometimes it's maybe more
Speaker 2: akin to a halo or an aura or multiple auras.
Speaker 2: And of course there's often a lot of information that
Speaker 2: is being relayed through these these religious images. But for instance,
Speaker 2: the tantric Buddhist Paul den Momo is sometimes depicted with
Speaker 2: hair of flame. The Hindu got Agny is sometimes depicted
Speaker 2: with hair of fire two varying degrees, but sometimes it's
Speaker 2: more of an aura of flame. So again there's going
Speaker 2: to be a lot of drift here, and a lot
Speaker 2: of it is going to be left to personal interpretation. Now.
Speaker 2: One of the more interesting things to discuss, though, really
Speaker 2: gets us more I guess into the literature end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum, getting into Latin literature here, but are there's
Speaker 2: not one, but there are two instances in Virgils and
Speaker 2: Enid concerning omens of burning hair and or hair that
Speaker 2: becomes or is surrounded by a holy fire. M okay,
Speaker 2: So virgils Ineid has come up on the show before,
Speaker 2: but I thought we should maybe take a moment just
Speaker 2: to ground it properly and talk about what it is. So.
Speaker 2: Virgil was a Roman poet who lived seventy BCE through
Speaker 2: nineteen BCE and served Emperor Augustus. He composed the epic
Speaker 2: poem The Aenead between twenty nine and nineteen BCE as
Speaker 2: an attempt to ground Rome, the Roman people, and the
Speaker 2: rule of his boss Augustus within a deeper mythopoetic tradition,
Speaker 2: because while Romans he certainly had epics such as Homer's
Speaker 2: the Iliad and the Odyssey, they lacked for a true
Speaker 2: national epic and a true founding work of mythic literature.
Speaker 2: So that's what Virgil had set out to do, to
Speaker 2: create one, spinning a saga out of Greek myth and
Speaker 2: the epics of Homer into a Roman history. Now, Virgil
Speaker 2: died at the young age of fifty, possibly due to
Speaker 2: complications from heatstroke. I think maybe there's some back and
Speaker 2: forth over this, but sometimes I see it rather matter
Speaker 2: of factly said that it was probably heat stroke. But
Speaker 2: he dies, and as he is dying, he requests this
Speaker 2: unpublished and unfinished epic to be destroyed. He's like, it's
Speaker 2: not ready yet, I just get rid of it. Please
Speaker 2: destroy it. His orders are not obeyed, though, and Augustus
Speaker 2: having been exposed to some very flattering passages of the
Speaker 2: epic in which the hero, the hero of the tale,
Speaker 2: mirrors and predicts the rise of Augustus, he says, now,
Speaker 2: this work is great. Please make sure that it is published.
Speaker 2: And then it is published. And as we'll get into,
Speaker 2: maybe not every passage of the ania is as flattering
Speaker 2: as those that Augustus initially heard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for more context on Virgil, by the way,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to say we did talk about him
Speaker 3: a good bit in our episode a few years back
Speaker 3: on insect funerals, because there is an apocryphal legend in
Speaker 3: which Virgil and his friends held an elaborate funeral for
Speaker 3: a fly. I think we concluded that this probably did
Speaker 3: not actually happen, but the story arose like within the
Speaker 3: logic of the story, it's something like they're using it
Speaker 3: as a legal loophole to protect a state from being seized.
Speaker 3: But also in that episode, we talked about how Dante,
Speaker 3: the author of The Divine Comedy, thought Virgil was just
Speaker 3: like the coolest guy ever and the best example of
Speaker 3: poetic virtues, which is why he uses him as the
Speaker 3: virtuous pagan character who guides his fictionalized tour of Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, And ultimately that's where I've certainly more
Speaker 2: read on the Divine Comedy than I am on the
Speaker 2: actual works of Virgil. But you end up learning about
Speaker 2: Virgil and his works through Dante, like you end up
Speaker 2: learning about everything that Dante's into as you travel with
Speaker 2: him across the Three Realms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Virgil's really great.
Speaker 2: Did you know this?
Speaker 3: Beatrice is really great too.
Speaker 2: Not only is Virgil really great, but we're basically best friends.
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, he liked me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So The Eneid is the story of Aneas, who flees
Speaker 2: the destruction of Troy and ultimately conquers Italy to become
Speaker 2: the ancestor of the Romans. The first six books of
Speaker 2: this epic cover his journey to Italy, but it's not
Speaker 2: like a direct journey, like there's a joint through the underworld,
Speaker 2: for example, and that's key as an influence on Dante
Speaker 2: and then books seven through twelve if the Aeneid concerned
Speaker 2: the wars in Italy, so the first book is a
Speaker 2: road trip, very much in the spirit of the Odyssey,
Speaker 2: and the second book is very much in the spirit
Speaker 2: of the Iliad, because it's concerned mostly with this big war. Now,
Speaker 2: to be clear, this in this treatment in others, the
Speaker 2: founding of Rome and the Roman people is greatly embellished
Speaker 2: by myth and literature. I mean, that's again, that's kind
Speaker 2: of basically what Virgil set out to do.
Speaker 3: Right. Virgil is not like Herodotus or Thucydides, people in
Speaker 3: the ancient world who were to some extent concerned with
Speaker 3: trying to create an accurate historical record of events. He's like,
Speaker 3: he's telling a good story and it has a political agenda.
Speaker 2: Right, And that political agenda does, in very strong terms
Speaker 2: concern Augustus. But while Augustus had again heard very apparently
Speaker 2: heard very flattering parts of the work prior to publication,
Speaker 2: it's thought that he might not have heard all of it,
Speaker 2: because there are parts of the work that also cast Augustus,
Speaker 2: or at least his his analog aneas, in a more
Speaker 2: flawed light. You know and idea is that his ascension
Speaker 2: and long term legacy are not completely assured. And we'll
Speaker 2: get into some examples of that as we go, but
Speaker 2: any rate, it's it's a book that's very concerned with
Speaker 2: prophesizing the future of Rome, mostly saying great things are ahead,
Speaker 2: but sometimes with little caveats like bringing up probably great
Speaker 2: things are ahead, but watch watch out for this or that.
Speaker 2: Right And at the end of book two we have
Speaker 2: the omen of Ascanius is burning hair. So Ascanius, who's
Speaker 2: also believed called LULUs at times, he's like a little boy.
Speaker 2: At this point point, he is the he is the
Speaker 2: son of Aneas, he's eventually going to become the king
Speaker 2: of the Latin city state of Alva Longa, and is
Speaker 2: in this respect he's you know, he can kind of
Speaker 2: loop him in as being one of the founders of
Speaker 2: the Roman race. But again, his father Anias is this
Speaker 2: position as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He's the
Speaker 2: hero of Troy. He's fled the burning city of Troy
Speaker 2: with his son after receiving he after he receives this
Speaker 2: omen of the burning hair from the god Jupiter. So
Speaker 2: his son's hair catches a flame, and there's you know,
Speaker 2: some back and forth over this, and and and and
Speaker 2: it becomes like it's like a divine flame, a sort
Speaker 2: of soft, harmless fire that is around his brow like
Speaker 2: a crown. So even here we have some there's some
Speaker 2: room to interpret it. You can think of it as
Speaker 2: a like a crown of flame, hair of flame, halo ara,
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 3: So his son's head appears with flame on it, and
Speaker 3: this seems to be delivering a message from the gods.
Speaker 2: Right, But of course he's not completely sure. So he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, mighty Jupiter, if this is a sign, give
Speaker 2: me another one. And so there's like a shooting star,
Speaker 2: and Virgil, you know, has a lot of fun with
Speaker 2: this poetically comparing the two. But you know, so ultimately
Speaker 2: we also have the connection here to the burning city
Speaker 2: that they are now going to have to escape. But
Speaker 2: it's a great omen a signifier of deliverance, you know.
Speaker 2: And again their direct comparisons to be made between the
Speaker 2: tail the shooting star and a flaming arrow. And again
Speaker 2: there's this idea that y'all got to get out of
Speaker 2: here and go on to great things, in other words,
Speaker 2: the founding of Rome, and so forth Anna Rogerson in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen's Virgils Zoscanius writes that this episode illuminates quote
Speaker 2: the path that must be taken in order ultimately to
Speaker 2: achieve the Roman dream, but she also stresses that the
Speaker 2: fire also carries with it other associations quote, hinting at
Speaker 2: different potential outcomes and reminding us again that his role
Speaker 2: as a sign and are of a Roman future is
Speaker 2: not as secure or as patent as it might seem.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting, especially if I'm interpreting this right. I
Speaker 3: don't know at all if this is what Rogerson is
Speaker 3: getting at, But the idea of like a fire appearing
Speaker 3: around his son's brow could have it. On one hand,
Speaker 3: it could resemble this imagery like halo imagery that we
Speaker 3: see in other cases, where it's sort of like an
Speaker 3: anointing by the gods or a showing of divine favor
Speaker 3: light showing around the head, and I'll mention another example
Speaker 3: of that in a minute. But also the idea of
Speaker 3: fire appearing around the child's head has the has the
Speaker 3: connotations of danger, right, and so it's like both at
Speaker 3: the same time. Do you think that's at all what
Speaker 3: Rogerson is getting at.
Speaker 2: Here that that I believe that. I believe that's that's
Speaker 2: what they're getting at here, And and it does match
Speaker 2: up with with other arguments I've seen, you know that
Speaker 2: that that Virgil is of course talking about the greatness
Speaker 2: of Rome and the greatness of his boss, but also
Speaker 2: adding in these warnings and hints, you know, these uh,
Speaker 2: you know, speaking speaking truth to power at least a
Speaker 2: little bit through the poetry. Interesting, So, Ascanius and his
Speaker 2: father flee Troy, with Aneas carrying his own elderly father
Speaker 2: on his back. There are some great depictions of this,
Speaker 2: you have, like a cross generational trio escaping the burning city.
Speaker 2: And so there are all various images where you'll have
Speaker 2: Aneas with this older man, huge older man on his shoulders,
Speaker 2: kind of piggyback style, and then here's the young in
Speaker 2: behind him, kind of like tugging on his clothing a
Speaker 2: little bit like Dad, are we there yet? Have we
Speaker 2: founded Rome yet? And so forth. Now, later on in
Speaker 2: book seven, Aneas's last wife, Lavinia, she has an episode
Speaker 2: with burning hair as well. I told you there was
Speaker 2: going to be a second one. Her hair catches fire
Speaker 2: during a sacrifice at the altar of the gods. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a bit here. This is in
Speaker 2: a translation, of course, from the Aeneid. While the old
Speaker 2: king lit fires at the altars with a pure torch,
Speaker 2: the girl Lavinia with him. It seemed her long hair caught,
Speaker 2: her head dress caught in crackling flame, her queenly tresses blazed,
Speaker 2: her jeweled crown blazed, mantled, Then in smoke and russet light,
Speaker 2: she scattered divine fire throughout all the house. No one
Speaker 2: could hold that site anything but hair raising marvelous. And
Speaker 2: it was read by Sears to mean the girl would
Speaker 2: have renown in glorious days to come, but that she
Speaker 2: brought a great war on her people. And I was
Speaker 2: reading about interpretation of this by John E. Rexen from
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one in fire Symbolism in the Eneid, and
Speaker 2: this author wrote, these flames presented both destructive and constructive aspects.
Speaker 2: Laviniu's people would be involved in the conflagration of war
Speaker 2: with the Trojans, but a marriage torch would unite her
Speaker 2: with Eneas, who had found a new city in Italy
Speaker 2: named Lavinium after her Ah.
Speaker 3: So it's almost that same duality we interpreted with the
Speaker 3: crown of fire around Buscanius's head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think it's really it's really potent
Speaker 2: when you think about it, Like the idea of any
Speaker 2: divine being giving you messages and laying out your course
Speaker 2: for you, you know, making sure that you're walking, you know,
Speaker 2: a conditioned path like that's at both powerful but also
Speaker 2: terrifying because in all these various traditions, you know, we
Speaker 2: know what sorts of fates the gods sometimes lay in
Speaker 2: front of our heroes and heroines. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: all it's not all roses. Sometimes there is a burning
Speaker 2: city and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this actually connected for me to something that
Speaker 3: is in the Iliad itself. We talked about how Virgil
Speaker 3: he bases his epic in part on the epics of Homer,
Speaker 3: But this came up a few years back when we
Speaker 3: did episodes on the religious imagery of the Halo. You
Speaker 3: can look up those older episodes if you want. There's
Speaker 3: a good bit of overlap with what we're talking about today. Actually,
Speaker 3: but this specific connection with the Iliad comes in book eighteen.
Speaker 3: So I was thinking about the passage where the great
Speaker 3: warrior Achilles he finds out that his bosom companion a Patroclus,
Speaker 3: has been killed in battle by the Trojan prince Hector,
Speaker 3: and Achilles reacts sort of by like losing his mind.
Speaker 3: He's filled with grief and rage and a thirst for vengeance.
Speaker 3: And so the Greeks and the Trojans in this part
Speaker 3: of the poem are fighting over the right to retrieve
Speaker 3: Petroclus's body from the field of battle. And then the
Speaker 3: goddess Athena puts this godlike power and aura into Achilles
Speaker 3: so that he will be able to terrify the Trojans
Speaker 3: and drive them into a route. And so this is
Speaker 3: from the translation by Caroline Alexander. Achilles, beloved of Zeus, arose,
Speaker 3: and Athena casts the tasseled aegis about his mighty shoulders.
Speaker 3: She shining among goddesses, encircled round his head a cloud
Speaker 3: of gold, and from it blazed bright, shining fire. Okay,
Speaker 3: so maybe a little bit different. Maybe not hair directly
Speaker 3: on fire, but a cloud of gold around the head
Speaker 3: from which blazes bright fire. It goes on to say,
Speaker 3: and as when smoke rising from a city reaches the
Speaker 3: clear high air from a distant island, which enemy men
Speaker 3: fight round, and they the whole day long are pitted
Speaker 3: in hateful warfare around the city walls. But with the
Speaker 3: sun's setting, the beacon fires blaze torch upon torch, and
Speaker 3: flaring upward, the glare becomes visible to those who live around,
Speaker 3: in the hope that they might come with ships as
Speaker 3: allies against destruction. So from Achilles' head the radiance reached
Speaker 3: the clear high air, and going away from the wall,
Speaker 3: he stood at the ditch. Nor did he mix with
Speaker 3: the Achaeans, for he observed his mother's knowing command, and
Speaker 3: standing there he shouted, and from the distance Pallas Athena
Speaker 3: cried out. Too unspeakable was the uproar he incited in
Speaker 3: the Trojans, as when a clarion voice is heard, when
Speaker 3: cry the trumpet of life, destroying enemies who surround a city.
Speaker 3: Such then was the clarion voice of Eacides. And when
Speaker 3: they heard the brazen voice of Eacides, the spirit in
Speaker 3: each man was thrown in turmoil. The horses, with their
Speaker 3: fine manes, wheeled their chariots back, for in their hearts
Speaker 3: they forebode distress to come. And the charioteers were struck
Speaker 3: from their senses when they saw the weariless terrible fire
Speaker 3: above the head of Pilius's great hearted son blazing. And
Speaker 3: this the gleaming eyed goddess Athena caused to blaze. So
Speaker 3: again it's sort of an edge case because it doesn't
Speaker 3: say directly the hair is on fire, in that it's
Speaker 3: literally being consumed by flame. But it's this more common
Speaker 3: imagery we get of a radiance that appears around or
Speaker 3: over the top of the head and is described as
Speaker 3: burning like fire, or burning like his hair were on fire.
Speaker 3: And in fact it come back more towards Virgil's time period,
Speaker 3: the context of the early Roman Empire. You can think
Speaker 3: of cases of imagery like this that appear in say
Speaker 3: the Christian New Testament. So in the New Testament, in
Speaker 3: the Book of Acts, chapter two, we get the story
Speaker 3: of the Pentecost, which is the anointing by the Holy
Speaker 3: Spirit of Jesus's apostles in Jerusalem, fifty days after the
Speaker 3: Resurrection has taken place. And this part says that in
Speaker 3: the NRSV translation quote, when the day of Pentecost had come,
Speaker 3: they were all together in one place, and suddenly from
Speaker 3: heaven there came a sound like the rush of a
Speaker 3: violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they
Speaker 3: were sitting, divided tongues as of fire appeared among them,
Speaker 3: and a tongue rested on each of them. All of
Speaker 3: them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to
Speaker 3: speak in other languages as the spirit gave them the ability.
Speaker 3: So in this case it does not seem intended to
Speaker 3: terrify like it did in the Iliad. But what's sort
Speaker 3: of common in all these stories across the Eneid by Verge,
Speaker 3: across the Iliad, and across the New Testament is the
Speaker 3: appearance of fire or radiance above the crown of a
Speaker 3: human head to show in some way that God or
Speaker 3: the gods have intervened on behalf of this person, either
Speaker 3: to make them powerful in battle, to give them new
Speaker 3: powers of speech or understanding, or to show a kind
Speaker 3: of prophecy about them, to mark them as destined in
Speaker 3: some way.
Speaker 2: And then, yeah, you can imagine there's some cross over here. Certainly,
Speaker 2: we can look to various examples from the Bible too,
Speaker 2: where there's you know, people are in flames but they're
Speaker 2: not hurt, or God speaking through the fire, the burning
Speaker 2: bush and so forth. So yeah, well, once you have
Speaker 2: these images out there, they kind of they do kind
Speaker 2: of brush up against each other and infect each other
Speaker 2: with their ares.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you want to learn more about the
Speaker 3: Halo and the Ara, like I said, we did a
Speaker 3: whole series on that a few years back. You can
Speaker 3: go into our archives and check out. Ultimately, I feel
Speaker 3: like a lot of the examples we were able to
Speaker 3: turn up today, I think think do bleed more into
Speaker 3: the Halo auric territory than into the more literal hair
Speaker 3: burning territory that we were thinking about. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess this episode is one where we turned up
Speaker 3: more dead ends than usual. But maybe that's useful to
Speaker 3: you the listener to hear what it's like when you
Speaker 3: expect to find certain things out there and you come
Speaker 3: up cold.
Speaker 2: Well, at least with the second example from the Anea,
Speaker 2: it seems to sort of at least start off like
Speaker 2: hair catching on fire, where they're like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: our hair's on fire. Wait hold up, just an omen,
Speaker 2: It's okay, put their water jugs down. So there is
Speaker 2: at least a direct connection there.
Speaker 3: I think the anead is the closest we got to
Speaker 3: what I had in mind. But like we said, and
Speaker 3: maybe there were a bunch of great examples we just
Speaker 3: didn't come across.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I don't know, there could be examples
Speaker 2: that are kind of that where we lose that emphasis
Speaker 2: and translation. So I don't know, it's like that the
Speaker 2: comparison of hair to fire and all these various auras
Speaker 2: and halo effects, you know, they do kind of bleed
Speaker 2: together and they confuse the topic of it. And again
Speaker 2: there there's no shortage of modern examples that are far clearer. Again,
Speaker 2: lots of fire, elemental beings and fantasy and probably in
Speaker 2: science fiction as well. I didn't look there as much,
Speaker 2: but you know, so many examples, certainly in the illustrated medium.
Speaker 2: There I ran across, like multiple superheroes that have like
Speaker 2: hair of fire. So I do think you're onto something
Speaker 2: with that possible connection to modern depictions of hair and
Speaker 2: that kind of like propping up more and more examples
Speaker 2: of fire elemental beings with flaming hair and flaming beard.
Speaker 3: Speaking of elementals, this has actually been on my list
Speaker 3: for a bit. I've been thinking we should come and
Speaker 3: do an episode on the elementals, like going back to
Speaker 3: Paracelsis and stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I'd be up for that. Yeah, all
Speaker 2: the way from ancient traditions on up to dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 3: But okay, I think that does it for burning hair
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: All Right, we'll go ahead and close it off then,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on anything we discussed here, or examples
Speaker 2: that we didn't bring up, that we should send them
Speaker 2: in and we'll cover them perhaps on a future episode
Speaker 2: of Listener Mail. We're still doing listener mails, They're just
Speaker 2: not happening every week. They're gonna occur, you know, every
Speaker 2: month or so, and we're gonna they're gonna be longer.
Speaker 2: They're gonna be in the place of core episodes. Our
Speaker 2: Core episodes, of course, are key science and culture episodes
Speaker 2: get published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do
Speaker 2: a short form episode, and on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. We're running those Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: rewind episodes on Mondays now and of course regular Vault
Speaker 2: episodes reruns of Core episodes those occur on Saturdays.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
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