cozy short stories where studying Classics sucks: Agatha Christie edition

It’s been a tough week. In addition to wearing my softest clothes, I’ve been getting through it by playing cozy games and reading cozy books. Yes, my reading slump is finally over, although given the choice between continuing the slump under a Harris presidency and this, I’d have chosen the slump in a heartbeat. Oh well.

A lot of cozy books are mysteries, which makes sense. Not all of them — I recently re-read Legends & Lattes, and it still rules — but the book I bought most quickly last year after reading the description was Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, a book that contains incredible descriptions of food, a love letter to SF’s Chinatown, a sweet romance, and a satisfying mystery. And it’s no wonder that so many cozy books are mysteries. A good mystery has a strong sense of place and makes you feel like you live in a world that makes sense and can be figured out. What could be cozier?

For about 25 years, Agatha Christie has been my comfort food reading when I’m sick, depressed, or trying to process the fact that a ton of voters want abortion rights but voted for Trump for some reason. I especially like Christie’s short stories, which are tightly plotted and have a nice mix of mystery and deft character portrait.

The collection The Labors of Hercules follows Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian detective who likes too-sweet desserts and is always either on the verge of retiring or just coming out of retirement. Christie famously grew to loathe Poirot, and honestly, I’m more of a Miss Marple girl myself. But I do enjoy this collection, in which Poirot attempts to finally close out his career by choosing twelve cases that will mimic the labors of his namesake. Obviously, as a classics nerd, I fall right in the bullseye of people whose jam this is.

But the introduction does contain an extremely tropey classics scholar. Reading it reminded me how glad I am that:

a) the discipline isn’t really like that anymore, and
b) I got out, because let’s face it, the discipline is still a little really like that, and it sucks.

The collection begins with Poirot having a chat with the classics scholar, and man, right off the bat this guy kind of sucks:

There was no neatness about Dr Burton. He was plump, untidy, and beneath his thatch of white hair beamed a rubicund and benign countenance. He had a deep wheezy chuckle and the habit of covering himself and everything round him with tobacco ash. In vain did Poirot surround him with ashtrays.

Not a great start, although also, not exactly the caricature of a classics professor these days. I do think that classics professors smoke more than most people I know, but they do it in the courtyards now. Times have changed.

Dr. Burton remarks on the incongruity of Poirot sharing a name with a famously stupid meathead hero:

‘What I understand you to mean is, that in physical appearance I do not resemble a Hercules?’

Dr Burton’s eyes swept over Hercule Poirot, over his small neat person attired in striped trousers, correct black jacket and natty bow tie, swept up from his patent leather shoes to his egg-shaped head and the immense moustache that adorned his upper lip.

‘Frankly, Poirot,’ said Dr Burton, ‘you don’t! I gather,’ he added, ‘that you’ve never had much time to study the Classics?’

‘That is so.’

‘Pity. Pity. You’ve missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the Classics if I had my way.’

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

‘Eh bien, I have got on very well without them.’

‘Got on! Got on! It’s not a question of getting on. That’s the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren’t a ladder leading to quick success like a modern correspondence course! It’s not a man’s working hours that are important – it’s his leisure hours. That’s the mistake we all make.’

THIS GUY. Actually, I think his final point is right on the money and maybe even more true in 21st century grind culture than it was in 1947. But is there any more pompous and asinine declaration than “Everyone should be made to study the Classics if I had my way”?

I still know people like this. People who think that it’s a great indignity for classicists to have to make a case for the value of studying long-dead civilizations when, in the good old days, it was practically a given that every cultured man could quote Thucydides in Greek. They still exist, and, in my opinion, they are a symptom of a deep rot at the heart of the discipline. A rot that I hope isn’t terminal, but honestly, it might be.

Also, is it just me, or is there something a little sinister in the phrasing “should be made to”? Sort of a version of a declaration that one will protect women whether they like it or not? Moving on.

Hercule Poirot then explains to this pompous ass that he has no intention of spending his retirement reading a bunch of old texts, because he has plans: he’s going to start cultivating vegetable marrows, which I take it are some kind of particularly flavorless zucchini? Like when you don’t pick your zucchini soon enough, and they balloon up to the size of a small dachshund and taste like water? But on purpose?

Burton is, of course, horrified by the idea of this brilliant man becoming one of those TikTok garden girlies:

‘But seriously, Poirot, what a hobby! Compare that to’ – his voice sank to an appreciative purr – ‘an easy-chair in front of a wood fire in a long, low room lined with books – must be a long room – not a square one. Books all round one. A glass of port – and a book open in your hand. Time rolls back as you read:’ he quoted sonorously:

μήτ δ᾽ αὖτε κυβερνήτηζ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ
νῆα θοὴν ἰθύνει ἐρεχθομένην ἀνέμοισι

He translated:

‘“By skill again, the pilot on the wine-dark sea straightens
The swift ship buffeted by the winds.”

Of course you can never really get the spirit of the original.’

For the moment, in his enthusiasm, he had forgotten Poirot. And Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt–an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become acquainted with the Classics… Long ago… Now, alas, it was too late…

If you read Greek, then you’re probably thinking two things: “looks like a kind of generic passage from Homer,” (that doesn’t scan, because the first word should be μήτι) and “that can’t be right, it can’t possibly say κυβερνήτηζ. Surely she meant to write κυβερνήτης.” But I swear, that’s what it says:

Also, unless my eyes deceive me, that’s a diaresis and acute accent in οἴνοπι? But let’s move on. Agatha Christie didn’t have an editor who knew anything about Greek, and that’s fine. I’m not the kind of person who thinks everyone should be made to study the Classics. Myth Takes only supports fun, consensual Classics nerdery!

The quote is a pretty generic two lines, to my eye. Maybe an actual Homer scholar, like

Joel Christensen

, could immediately place it (it’s Iliad 23.316-7, Nestor coaching his son Antilochus on how to succeed in the races at the funeral games Achilles is putting on for Patroclus). But I couldn’t. And all I had was this blurry screenshot.

So I stuck it into ChatGPT to give me an OCR and tell me where it was from. It did a pretty decent job at the former task and an abysmal job at the latter. Seriously, it gave me five (!) different wrong answers and took me on a wild goose chase through the entire Homeric corpus. First:

I double-checked that and found, obviously, that it was wrong:

That “or sometimes numbered as line 386 depending on the edition” is a nice touch, but, I cannot stress enough, a total fabrication.

We’re getting colder.

That’s actually pretty close — only a few lines off from the actual text. But at this point I was sort of almost enjoying yelling at the LLM.

At that point I got tired of being shuttled between the Iliad and the Odyssey and just Googled the text and immediately found the passage. Let this be a reminder to anyone reading: ChatGPT cannot do your Greek homework for you. I promise. It also gave this stunningly bland assessment of why Christie included this particular Greek passage: “It ties into the theme of overcoming difficulties with expertise and intelligence, which aligns well with the themes of Christie's work, especially as it involves Hercule Poirot tackling his own labors.” Wow. What a rich insight.

Poirot then has his secretary send him some material on Hercules so he can do some research. At first, he’s discouraged with his namesake — “What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!” Which is a fair cop, to be honest. But he changes his mind: “Yet there was between this Hercule Poirot and the Hercules of Classical lore one point of resemblance. Both of them, undoubtedly, had been instrumental in ridding the world of certain pests…”

Finally, he concludes:

There should be, once again, the Labours of Hercules — a modern Hercules. An ingenious and amusing conceit! In the period before his final retirement he would accept twelve cases, no more, no less. And those twelve cases should be selected with special reference to the twelve labours of ancient Hercules. Yes, that would not only be amusing, it would be artistic, it would be spiritual.

THIS I can get behind. Classical reception should be amusing, artistic, even spiritual. It doesn’t need to be about guys shedding ashes everywhere, talking about how everyone should be made to quote the most generic lines of Homer. It should be fun and joyful and experimental. That’s the spirit of this newsletter, and also the spirit of the rest of the Labors of Hercules collection, where the Nemean Lion maps onto a Pekingese.

Although I have to admit, Burton’s word-picture of a long room with a fire surrounded by books does sound cozy as hell in a way I can absolutely get behind.