FRESHERS’ISSUESeptember 2014
SATYRICA Does my bum look big in this?
The Drunken Alcibiades urgently Interrupting the Symposium, 1648
Sine Qua Non: Why Satyrica Matters Fun daytimes to The Sunday Times By Clio Williams
Why does Satyrica matter?! Well, can you imagine being a King's Classicist without Satyrica? Where else would you air your geeky jokes, poems or cartoons? Or indulge in silly punnage, rip-off established columns in national papers and broadcast (like Desert Island Discus and catty agony aunt Domina Millus)? Or write about important cultural - and political, where Boris Johnson is concerned - issues of the day to an appreciative audience? To study Classics is to bathe in a sea of ideas, stories and histories that shape our traditions and laws today; to study the blueprint of the Western tradition of story-telling. How can a Classicist not be inspired to do something creative? I'm very honoured to be one of the "midwives" who delivered this paper into existence. Satyrica came into being as a reaction to the journalistic desert my year stumbled into when we joined King's in 2006. There was the glossy magazine Roar, which, truth be told, was a bit of a joke, and The London Student, which then was a tad impersonal. After a term of working on a joint venture called Muse with the History Department, it became clear that the quality of writing and subject matter
coming from the Classicists contributing had more spark, and enough substance to fill a publication of its own. (I remember Ella Blunt, a fellow founder of Satyrica, and I decided we had to make our own rag when Muse printed a sushi recipe on the back page. The word 'sushi' became our code word for 'dead in the water' from then on). By the time I handed over the reins to heir apparent Fran Paterson, we had more than 40 contributors and a solid editorial team of six people. We chose the name Satyrica, based on the title of Petronius's satire Satyricon, because we felt the word summed up what we wanted the paper to be: bawdy, a mixture of prose and poetry, fact and fiction. But it wasn't all japes and frivolity. We did serious stuff too, including articles about Classical influences in Nazi insignia, the true origins of the celebration we call Christmas and heralded the return of the Hellenic drape on the Paris catwalk. Satyrica created a community in which we could all share ideas, observations, jokes and euphemisms (like, the phrase "taking the dative" vb. to have sexual
intercourse with, originating from the Latin word futuō, futuere, futuī, futūtum, which takes the dative!). This community brought geek-chic back with pomp and revelry, and more importantly (I hope) encouraged younger, budding writers to take part, which then in turn allowed the madness to continue. The very existence of Satyrica matters a lot, and working on it has given me a strong grounding for what I do today as a journalist. After all, the currency of the newsroom is ideas, and the ability to create and curate content that will delight or enlighten your target audience is the formula for a successful publication. The truth is you never stop learning, and the sooner you can master how to juggle facts, deadlines, exhaustion and hangovers, the better. Clio was the original Founder and Editor of Satyrica (2007-9). Since October 2009, she has risen through the journalistic ranks of photocopying and coffeedelivering to become the Sunday TImes Magazine’s Digital Editor.
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