panem et circenses ...

Recently, someone astutely acknowledged that the title of this blog, Panis Circenses, refers to the Latin phrase “panem et circenses”. Now this phrase comes from the Roman poet Juvenal who remarked in his Satires that the only thing that would placate or distract the discontented people of Rome from revolting were “panem et circenses”, bread and circuses, or food and entertainment.

Now I took this phrase removing the accusative singular and the conjunction to leave it as “panis circenses” for several reasons.

When I started my first blog in May of 2004 I perused all the other Christian blogs that I could find took look for a hidden niche. Most of the Christian blogs I saw dealt mainly with the faith and secular politics. These were the two interests of most Christian bloggers. However, my two interests were the faith and the arts. So I came up with a blog that dealt with faith and art with an appropriate title derived from a Hans Balthasar book.

After the demise of that blog for unmentionable factors, I devised a new blog that would continue my interests. Its name was to be Panis Circenses. Instead of “theology” and “drama” to represent “faith” and the “arts” I chose “panis” to represent the “faith”, Christ being the “bread of life” and “circenses” to represent the arts, because all art is ultimately entertainment.

But the meaning of the words did not stop there. No.

Panis.

The bread of life, which is Christ, the faith which is Christianity.

“Panis” is close in resemblance to “panic”. ‘Panic” is etymologically “terror caused by the god Pan.” The ancient Greeks believed that he lurked in lonely spots, and would frighten people by suddenly appearing, or making noises. He was evidently invoked to account for alarming but natural phenomena, and so the element of “irrantionality” in the English word was present from the beginning.

Circenses.

Circuses. Art entertainment in the form of literature, film, paintings, music, etc.

“Circenses” should really be pronounced “kir-ken-ses”. The Roman pronounced the Latin “C” as a “K”. Incidentally, the Romans pronounced their “V” as “W”. So we have Julius Caesar’s famous phrase Veni, vidi, vici pronounced as “wayny, weedy, weeky”. Not to mention “Wennus”, the goddess of Love.

So “Kirkenses”. When Odysseus was journeying home in book X of the Odyssey, he was only the Isle of Kirke not Circe. And it was Kirke who transformed his crew of men into swine. You will also remember in Matthew 8:28-34, that Jesus cured the demon-possessed men who were in a panic and sent the demons into a herd of swine that rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters, almost like the waters of the abyss.

Also, Kirke reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian and philosopher. No one has affected me so theologically and philosophically positive as Kierkegaard. He was the second Socrates and the last of the great philosophers. His insights into Christianity ignited the neo-orthodox movement which brought down classic liberal theology and saved conservative theology. He was also a great individualist who wrote under many pseudonyms, whose opinions and insight did not always reflect Kierkegaard’s. Also, the name Kierkegaard is Danish for “church yard.” Interestingly, he spent much of the last years of his life attacking the stale and blasé Church that was standard in Copenhagen.



So basically I see this blog as focusing on faith and art and, in the metaphorical sense, exhibiting to distracted people “panicked” artists and churchmen as the swine that they are and sending them off into the watery abyss.