{"id":1762,"date":"2023-05-18T13:35:52","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T13:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/?post_type=showcase&#038;p=1762"},"modified":"2023-06-06T17:33:56","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T17:33:56","slug":"season-4-episode-3-transcript","status":"publish","type":"showcase","link":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/showcase\/season-4-episode-3-transcript\/","title":{"rendered":"Season 4, Episode 3: Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Season 4, Episode 3: Clesippus and the Candelabrum: Imagining Disability in Ancient Rome\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/1bQZ6oUhhXXshKWxTMjCIh?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>[<em>Reverb Effect\u2019s <\/em>theme music, lively and interrogative, plays behind the voice of a narrator, interspersed with historical clips of other voices]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Narrator [a woman\u2019s voice]:<\/strong> How do past voices resonate in the present movement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Man A:<\/strong> \u2026hear the stories of your parent\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Woman A:<\/strong> yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Man A<\/strong>: \u2026and your grandparents\u2019 and stuff, so I\u2019m living through them or the stories they told.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Narrator: <\/strong>And how do we make sense of those voices?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Woman B: <\/strong>No, and that\u2019s the story of my life [echo]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Man B:<\/strong> And a case has been made!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Woman B: <\/strong>No I am not trying to void the question, I am trying to clarify the position\u2026&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Narrator:<\/strong> What were they trying to say? And whose job is it to find out? This is <em>Reverb Effect.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Music slowly fades out]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hannah Roussel: <\/strong>I want to let you in on a little secret about historians. A lot of us like cemeteries\u2014traversing a hillside dotted with the names of those departed, paying our respects while gleaning hints about their lives from fragmentary narratives adorning their final resting places. But what we can learn without delving too far into the imagined is limited. And sometimes, what we\u2019re left with is silence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is a historical silence? It\u2019s what we don\u2019t know\u2014the negative space around historical narrative\u2014what\u2019s lost to history. Yet, in history and historical writing, silences don\u2019t just happen. In his pathbreaking book, <em>Silencing the Past<\/em>, Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues that silences happen at four key moments: \u201cthe moment of fact production, the moment of fact assembly, the moment of fact retrieval, and the moment of retrospective significance\u201d (26). Silences are curated\u2014sometimes intentionally and sometimes not\u2014based on how sources are created, what makes it into an archive, what past and present researchers ask to look at in archives, and how they analyze past events. History\u2014what we know about the past\u2014is synthesized through a series of choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>History and historical writing builds on itself\u2014that\u2019s historiography. And the process of creating that body can help maintain silences by replicating the sources and analytical choices of the past. A grad student working on a journal article might look to another historian\u2019s bibliography\u2014the sources they used\u2014as a roadmap, but the logic of those choices doesn\u2019t necessarily accompany the bibliography. So it\u2019s up to the student to make inferences and, ultimately, to make their own choices about what to include in their own work. Without mindful attention to historiography, we can further bury those deemed lost. Yet, by excavating what\u2019s not in the historical record and why, we can begin to piece together mysteries from the past and engage in a restorative process that can help illuminate those lives objectified or ignored in and by the historical record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome to season 4, episode 3 of <em>Reverb Effect<\/em>, a podcast brought to you by the University of Michigan Department of History. I\u2019m your host and season producer, Hannah Roussel. In this episode, Dr. Emily Lamond, a recent graduate from our Interdepartmental Program in Ancient History, shows us how to engage in that restorative process, beginning with a funerary inscription. Emily is a historian of ancient Rome, especially interested in disability, gender, and family studies. Her dissertation, which explores dynamics of disability in idealized relationships of the Roman household, is titled \u201cDisability and the Ancient Roman Familia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode, we\u2019ll hear from two voice actors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Theo Mathurin:<\/strong> Hi, my name is Theo Matherin, and I\u2019m a black, chronically ill, non-binary femme with the pleasure of reading for Clesippus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Testorelli: <\/strong>Hi, my name is Scott Testorelli, and I\u2019ll be reading for Pliny the Elder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks so much to Theo and Scott for their help on this project!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please be aware that the following episode contains mentions of violence, ableist language, sexual abuse, and disability slurs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Clesippus:<\/strong><em> <\/em>Clesippus Geganius | mag(ister) Capi[t](olinus), mag(ister) Luperc(orum), viat(or) tr(ibunicius).<em> <\/em>Clesippus Geganius.[1] Leader of the Capitolini, leader of the Luperci, tribunician messenger.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Emily Lamond:<\/strong><em> <\/em>So speaks a funerary inscription, the engraved words of someone who, in the first century BCE, and in the city of Rome, likely wanted his name and his accomplishments to live on in stone, in a monumental tomb. His loved ones might have commissioned the inscription, or he himself might have. We don\u2019t know.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music fades in]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What we do know, what the inscription does tell us, is that whoever erected this monument wanted this person, Clesippus Geganius, to be remembered as someone who had served his community. He had been one of the appointed magistrates in charge of the <em>Capitolini<\/em> and of the <em>Luperci<\/em>, both religious associations, and he had served as a messenger to important magistrates in the city of Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The funerary inscription tells an impressive story. There might, however, be another story, beneath what speaks from this stone: the story of Clesippus before these illustrious honors and administrative achievements. It\u2019s the story of a man who navigated slavery, disability, and the sexual advances of the woman who owned him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the story we\u2019re going to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music fully fades in, then fades down a bit]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This other story of a Clesippus emerges from Pliny the Elder\u2019s many-volume work, the <em>Natural History<\/em>, probably written about a century after Clesippus died. Pliny\u2019s story of Clesippus begins in urine, ends in stone, and has everything and nothing to do with a luxury candelabrum.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wedged amid explanations of candelabra styles and their histories, the following tale peeks out from Pliny the Elder\u2019s <em>Natural History<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music ends]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pliny the Elder:<\/strong> \u2026 nobody is even ashamed to purchase [this style of luxury candelabrum] for a military tribune\u2019s yearly salary, even though it\u2019s named after cheap wax candles.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The free accessory of one such candelabrum\u2014at the order of the auctioneer Theon\u2014was Clesippus the fuller, a man who had a curved spine and a generally foul-looking appearance into the bargain. A woman [named] Gegania[2] purchas[ed] the lot\u2014[that is, the candelabrum and Clesippus together,] for 50,000 sesterces.[3]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When this same woman was showing off her purchases at a dinner party, [Clesippus] was stripped naked, to be an object of mockery. He was received into [Gegania\u2019s] bed because of [her] shameless lust, [and] soon after [he was received] into her will.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a very rich man he worshiped that candelabrum like the gods and\u2014after good custom had been satisfied nevertheless by a noble tomb\u2014he associated this tale with [the famous] Corinthian [candelabrum style], so that, over all the earth, through this [story], the eternal memory of the shameful Gegania would endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Emily Lamond:<\/strong> What Pliny is describing here is a story which became associated with a particularly luxurious candelabrum style\u2014a style that he doesn\u2019t think is particularly worth the money. This story is the tale of our Clesippus, whom we will follow as he goes from being a \u201cfreebie\u201d with spinal curvature, thrown in as a \u201cbargain buy\u201d with this luxury candelabrum, to a freedman who inherited his mistress\u2019s wealth.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As an historian interested in disability in Roman life, and someone with a spinal curvature herself, I was especially drawn in by this story. What you\u2019ve heard, however\u2014the inscription and this tale as reported by Pliny\u2014is all we have of Clesippus, rendering him tantalizingly out of reach.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Pliny, Clesippus\u2019s tale is an afterthought in a discussion about light fixtures. Pliny\u2019s view is that Clesippus \u201cwins\u201d\u2014not only does he make it out of slavery, and out of the control of his former, shameful mistress, but his story also indelibly marks his former mistress with the shame of what she did to him. Is this a case of sweet revenge, of Clesippus extricating himself from the shameful conduct of his former mistress?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the modern historian Saidiya Hartman, I want to use whatever remains in the historical record to try to vivify Clesippus\u2019s narrative. This history, the life of Clesippus, as it \u201creally was,\u201d is lost to time, and any critical fabulation is just that\u2014fabulation. Nevertheless, the experience of attempting the imagining can be productive in itself. What conceptual spaces does this Clesippus occupy in Pliny\u2019s narrative, and what might we imagine goes unsaid? If this is the selfsame Clesippus as the Clesippus who went on to hold important duties as a freedman, what might the silences of his tomb tell us about the world in which he lived?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[transition music fades in]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If the inscription we began with was indeed his\u2014as scholars seem to agree\u2014Clesippus\u2019s spinal curvature and history of slavery played no essential role in his sense of himself as he wanted to preserve it for posterity, nor in his role within his immediate community. His bodily condition might have played an important role in his enslavement, especially because a fashion in owning exoticized, otherized bodies was a real phenomenon at the time among some enslavers. At the same time, Clesippus\u2019s spinal curvature becomes\u2014for Pliny\u2014a convenient literary shorthand: the negative views of this bodily condition at the time allow Pliny to quickly characterize Gegania\u2019s lust all the more negatively, that she would be attracted to a man with such a condition. By placing Clesippus at the center of the story and reimagining his enslaved experiences, we can attempt to see Clesippus as he might have seen himself in that world of values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[transition music fades out]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we meet this Clesippus for the first time, Pliny\u2019s description is meant to turn us off from him, to make Gegania\u2019s \u201cshameless\u201d lust alien, incomprehensible, and therefore all the more worthy of shame. To begin with, Clesippus was a fuller\u2014a textile worker who would wash clothes in urine.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pliny wanted his audience to ascribe a low social status to Clesippus. Regardless of the actual perception of fullers in reality, literary accounts frequently cast aspersions on fullers. They encouraged disgust. In such a profession, Clesippus would likely spend his days ankle deep in a great vat filled with the stale urine of strangers, sweating away in the Mediterranean heat, stomping textiles to clean them or to prepare them for dyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[sloshing sounds fade in and out]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pliny also writes that Clesippus was a man with a curved spine\u2014a <em>gibber<\/em>\u2014a word often translated as the slur \u201chunchback.\u201d People with this physical difference were assumed by many Roman authors to be less attractive than people without it\u2014less desirable sexually or aesthetically, as a partner or as an object purchased by an enslaver. Pliny underscores this by adding that he was \u201cfoul in appearance besides.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[market sounds fade in and out; includes multiple criers advertising their wares, bells ringing, indecipherable crowd noises]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pliny\u2019s tale brings Clesippus out of the laundry vat and into a slave market, likely somewhere in the city of Rome. Well, it was not exclusively a slave market; in addition to enslaved people, clearly luxury goods like the fancy candelabrum were also passing through this space. How Clesippus gets from one place to the other, from the fuller\u2019s vat to the market, is obscured\u2014does he belong to the crier who sells him? To the person wanting to sell the candelabrum? Perhaps like the candelabrum style, he had once come from Corinth in Greece. Or perhaps he and the light fixture were both originally from the city of Rome, but the candelabrum was made after the fashion of Corinth and his Greek name was given to him\u2014for that added <em>je ne sais quoi <\/em>of fashionable \u201cGreekness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Clesippus was waiting to be sold, he might have stood on an auction block, likely nude or half naked. And he probably would have heard the herald or <em>praeco <\/em>yelling out any of his \u201chidden conditions,\u201d so that any enslaver who purchased him would know exactly what he or she was getting for their money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know nothing concretely about the agency of enslaved people in this instance. Historian Dea Boster, who writes about disability and slavery in a nineteenth century American context, draws insights from disabled and formerly enslaved people\u2019s accounts of being sold and explores agency on the auction block. According to her findings, some people who endured slavery would strategically play up or disguise bodily or mental conditions that they might anticipate an enslaver would devalue. It\u2019s hazardous, of course, to make comparanda between such vastly different times and spaces as ancient Rome and the Atlantic slave trade, but it is not without value to consider these voices in imagining ancient experiences. Perhaps people with physical disabilities especially would have done similarly, assessing the stakes in whosoever their future enslaver might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pliny does not tell us how Clesippus reacts, nor how he might have felt, as he was uprooted. What would it mean to him, to have been given away for free, as the deal-sweetening add-on for a luxury light fixture?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what did Gegania, the woman who purchased Clesippus and the candelabrum, think? Perhaps she was pleased to have obtained an enslaved human being at no extra cost to herself\u2014a significant discount in a Roman market. Perhaps her thoughts turned to the slightly supernatural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[slightly eerie music fades in]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In letters of the time period especially, sent between elite, slave-owning Romans, enslaved people are written about as being purchased for their unique qualities. Such people sometimes occupied a conceptual category somewhere between <em>prodigia<\/em>, things of ill omen\u2014or more succinctly, \u201cfreaks\u201d\u2014and <em>deliciae<\/em>, a sexually or otherwise affectively appealing \u201cpet\u201d or \u201cdarling\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scholars have also observed that people with spinal curvature were not simply treated as physically different but also possibly supernaturally powerful. Representations of people with curved backs in material culture suggest that they were apotropaic, that they (or at least their backs) possessed the ability to ward off the Evil Eye. Across the Mediterranean and across centuries from the Hellenistic period through the early Roman imperial period,<sup> <\/sup>miniatures of figures with spinal curvature were produced in various materials including bronze, silver, and stone. Some of these miniatures have holes, suggesting that they could be strung up on walls and hung outside of doorways, perhaps as good luck charms\u2014or more specifically, charms to ward off bad luck.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[tintinnabula (wind chime) noises; slightly eerie music fades out]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Gegania to purchase an enslaved human being for no other function than for him to be an object of amusement or sexual or aesthetic interest could be hazardous socially, depending on her circle of friends. She could be deemed frivolous by certain moral thinkers at Rome, particularly those of a Stoic philosophic persuasion. In brief, Stoicism was a school of thought, popular among literary circles in Rome in this period, that emphasized the importance of eschewing the ephemeral and material and viewed luxury as morally dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, wealthy Romans, especially in the centuries after Clesippus\u2019s life, were willing to pay vast sums of money to purchase \u201crare\u201d enslaved people for no other purpose than amusement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, so lively was the trade in these \u201crare\u201d enslaved human beings that a specific market at Rome existed to sell them. The <em>terat\u014dn agora<\/em>, literally translated as the \u201cmarket of monsters,\u201d was a popular enough phenomenon that Plutarch, in the second century CE, chastised the moral bankruptcy of those who desired to gawk at people there instead of at people he thought of as beautiful and worthwhile to look at.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is unclear if Clesippus would have been classified as a <em>teras<\/em>, or \u201cmonster,\u201d for such a market, but he would have at least had a great deal in common with the people so classified\u2014as someone purchased like a luxury object, merely to have their body put on display for amusement or ridicule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[household dining noises fade in and out; indecipherable conversations, clanking of cutlery]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clesippus would have had to adjust to life in Gegania\u2019s house. There were different expectations for enslaved people, depending on the kind of slavery to which they were subjected. Enslaved people in the households of the wealthy and fashionable could take on a greater variety of roles than on a rural estate or in a more modest home: in addition to the work of keeping an aristocratic home running, they could serve as aesthetic and\/or sexual objects, status symbols, and possibly even living, apotropaic curiosities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Enslaved people played an essential role in household dining: they could cook, serve, and entertain.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[soimber music fully fades in and then down a bit]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gegania stripped Clesippus naked for the amusement of her friends, showing off the body of a human being she owned\u2014and as Pliny notes\u2014alongside the much more valued candelabrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Pliny this exhibition was a source of shame. Was it shameful because Clesippus was a human being subjected to inhumane exploitation? Or because a woman was vainly flaunting her wealth\u2014in particular, the purchase of a luxury candelabrum Pliny saw no need for?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clesippus simultaneously occupied the conceptual categories of both human and property. Perhaps Pliny\u2019s sense of shame was incurred by considerations at both levels. On the one hand, he might have objected out of his disdain that a human being\u2014no matter how undesirable Pliny might think him\u2014should be stripped naked for amusement. On the other hand, he might have objected that a human being should be set beside\u2014and indeed valued less\u2014than such a frivolous lampstand by a frivolous woman. Or perhaps, beyond any human versus property distinction, it could be the case that Pliny viewed this kind of entertainment as vulgar, viewing it as reflective of an un-Stoic character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[somber music fades out]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elite male authors react to entertainments like this with disdain, disrespect, shame, and dislike. At the same time, these reactions are diffuse in direction, as they target both the luxurious people putting on the display <em>and<\/em> the enslaved people put on display. These authors disparage the enslaved people as less than fully human even as they cast a judgment over their enslavers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Historical accounts, too, use stories of enslaved people in the imperial household as representations of the emperor\u2019s reprehensible character, as mirrors of one another\u2019s disreputable qualities. The logic of these stories is that \u201cmonstrous\u201d emperors put their inner, moral deficiencies on display by collecting, possessing, and flaunting \u201cunusual\u201d enslaved people for the delectation of their guests. They dehumanized the so-called \u201cmonstrous\u201d enslaved people in two important ways: first, by suggesting that their physical condition somehow renders them less than human. And second, by reducing them to metaphors, rather than people fully realized in the narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not horrifying to a Roman audience for the same reasons, but likely horrifying to us, is Clesippus\u2019 next experience. The dining room and the bedroom of Gegania are not far apart in Pliny\u2019s narrative. The way Pliny writes it, Gegania dragged Clesippus from one to the other, posthaste, to satisfy her immoderate lust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[somber music fades in]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sexual exploitation of enslaved people\u2014no matter their formal role in a household<em>\u2014<\/em>was ubiquitous in ancient Rome. Enslavers often targeted \u201cothered\u201d bodies for sex, fetishizing their differences. This is especially true of eunuchs, for example, enslaved people whom enslavers castrated, in part to preserve their boyish looks. Elite men often purchased eunuchs for their own pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Literary authors like Pliny are particularly obsessed with such exploitation by mistresses. This motif satirizes the \u201cloose morality of women,\u201d and particularly of wealthy, luxuriating women.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On top of the fact that they are luxurious (already a count against in some circles), these women are characterized as so sexually ravenous that they will engage in sexual acts with anyone and everyone. These sexual encounters are used as a measure of depravity. This trope obfuscates what was likely a similar phenomenon in male enslavers: we know that elite men did the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[somber music fades out]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Pliny\u2019s telling, Clesippus\u2019s journey from dining room to bedroom is short. His journey from Gegania\u2019s bedroom into her will is even shorter. Clesippus, after everything he has endured, becomes fabulously wealthy in the wake of Gegania\u2019s death. He begins to worship the candelabrum like a god. It is unclear what this means, or even indeed whether Pliny is relating this fact in earnest. Perhaps Pliny is exaggerating the role the candelabrum played in Clesippus\u2019s freed life. Perhaps not. Indeed, the candelabrum might have adorned an altar in Clesippus\u2019s home, taking a place among his personal ritual devotions. If this account of personal religious fervor is indeed literally true, as it very well might have been, Clesippus\u2019s idolization of the candelabrum is understandable. This candelabrum was with him, a constant and instrumental companion from the slave market to the end of his tale.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Pliny\u2019s view, the infamous association of the scandalous mistress with her absurdly priced candelabrum will live on for all time. But whose shame is it for the reader? Pliny gives shame to Gegania, but he also gives some, too, to Clesippus\u2014he inscribes shame in servitude and spinal curvature and sexual exploitation. He frames Clesippus\u2019s body as disgusting, partly because of his spinal curvature, and therefore uses his disability instrumentally, to heighten Gegania\u2019s shame. In doing so, he casts Clesippus into the position of an abject object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if he is something of a \u201csuccess story,\u201d as Pliny seeks to paint him, Pliny\u2019s version of this \u201csuccess story\u201d is not preserved on the tomb. Again assuming that Clesippus of the tomb and Clesippus of the Pliny story are one and the same person, perhaps we can read the shame of Clesippus\u2019s story into the silence of the inscription.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music fades in]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What lingers uneasily when we consider the tale and the tomb in context is the precarity in which Roman society placed Clesippus\u2019s body. The trajectory of his life was dependent on so many variables. He <em>happened<\/em><strong> <\/strong>to be purchased by Gegania. Gegania, in a way that I think is emotionally fraught for us, <em>happened<\/em> to uplift him out of the condition of enslavement upon her death. Did the real Clesippus, contrary to Pliny\u2019s tale, spare Gegania the kind of judgment Pliny casts at them both\u2014a judgment that flattened their stories and made their true lives unknowable? Perhaps he also honored Gegania for making him wealthy upon her death. After all, he did not immortalize the supposedly shameful story in stone, even though Pliny tells us that he immortalized it in other ways, by associating it with the candelabrum style. If the inscription and the tale describe the same man, all that remains of the Pliny\u2019s account story in the inscription is Gegania\u2019s name: as part of the standard process of manumission, the name of Clesippus\u2019s former mistress was made part of his freed name for all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music fully fades in, then down a bit]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or was the story of Clesippus truly the tale of sweet revenge for the real Clesippus, as Pliny cast it? Perhaps it was the view of Clesippus <em>himself<\/em> that, after enduring exploitations and insults, he had triumphed in the end, in freedom and in wealth. The silence of his tomb on this point might suggest such a view. [contemplative music ends] But we will never know for sure: it is, after all, a silence.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music fades in]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hannah Roussel:<\/strong> Thanks for listening, and a special thank you to our segment producer for this episode, Dr. Emily Lamond. Another thank you to the voice actors in order of appearance Theo Mathurin and Scott Testorelli. Thank you also to Patti Weintraub for their guidance on voice actor introductions. The audio for this episode was edited by Allie Goodman, <em>Reverb Effect<\/em>\u2019s season three producer. Allie started the production on this episode during her time as season producer, and we are thankful for her continued work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our editorial board is Kira Thurman, David Tamayo, Jeffrey Veidlinger, Pragya Kaul, Paige Newhouse, Sophie Wunderlich, and Hannah Tweet. Gregory Parker is our executive producer, and I\u2019m your host and season producer, Hannah Roussel. I hope you\u2019ll join us for our next episode, for more stories about how the past reverberates into the present. This is <em>Reverb Effect<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contemplative music ends]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[1] Cleh-<strong>sip<\/strong>-us Gegg-<strong>ann<\/strong>-ee-us <strong>magg<\/strong>-iss-tur Cap-it-oh-<strong>lee<\/strong>-nuss, <strong>magg<\/strong>-iss-tur Loo-pear-<strong>core<\/strong>-um, wee-<strong>ah<\/strong>-tore trib-you-<strong>nick<\/strong>-ee-us. Cleh-<strong>sip<\/strong>-us Gegg-<strong>ann<\/strong>-ee-us. Leader of the Cap-it-oh-<strong>lee<\/strong>-nee, leader of the Loo-<strong>pear<\/strong>-key, trib-you-<strong>nish<\/strong>-ee-an messenger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[2] &nbsp;Gegg-<strong>ann<\/strong>-ee-ah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[3]&nbsp;<strong>Sess<\/strong>-tur-sees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Reverb Effect\u2019s theme music, lively and interrogative, plays behind the voice of a narrator, interspersed with historical clips of other voices] Narrator [a woman\u2019s voice]: How do past voices resonate in the present movement? Man A: \u2026hear the stories of your parent\u2019s\u2026 Woman A: yeah Man A: \u2026and your grandparents\u2019 and stuff, so I\u2019m living&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/showcase\/season-4-episode-3-transcript\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Season 4, Episode 3: Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","format":[],"categories":[84],"tags":[],"contributor":[],"authors":[],"department_or_unit":[],"funding_sources":[],"project_date":[40],"support_partners":[],"class_list":["post-1762","showcase","type-showcase","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reverb-effect-transcripts","project_date-40","entry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"glparker","author_link":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/author\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"[Reverb Effect\u2019s theme music, lively and interrogative, plays behind the voice of a narrator, interspersed with historical clips of other voices] Narrator [a woman\u2019s voice]: How do past voices resonate in the present movement? 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