What is luxury? According to any dictionary luxury means something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort and certainly something that is very expensive and/or hard to obtain and can only be enjoyed by a selective few, or the so-called "elites". Luxury is also something that divides societies into the haves, and have nots but luxury is not about something expensive, its always been more... much more! It is about democracy, a social idea, social harmony and because it is so important there has always been more than one definition of what luxury is.
Micheal Scott who teaches ancient Greek and Roman worlds at Cambridge University wrote and presented a two-part series for BBC 4 entitled Guilty Pleasures: Luxury in the Ancient Greek and Medieval worlds. The documentary, which follows the debate about luxury which convulsed ancient Greece from the beginning of the classical era, aired in June and July 2011 as part of BBC 4’s Luxury Season. The shows were filmed across Athens, Sparta and Vergina and explored how past attitudes to luxury still influence us today.
Mr. Scott says that ancient Greece matters in any debate about luxury because it was the first place to try out the experiment of democracy. In Athens, the documentary explores the role of luxury in the beginnings of democracy - how certain kinds of luxury came to be forbidden, and others embraced. A simple luxury like meat could unite the democracy, and yet a taste for fish could divide it. Some luxuries were associated with effeminacy and foreigners. Others with the very idea of democracy.
Yet in Sparta, there was a determined attempt to deny luxury, and the guilty contradictions of this eventually brought what had been the most powerful state in Greece to its downfall.
When Sparta was replaced by the Macedon of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, the absolute luxury of his court set new standards for luxury as political propaganda. Yet the guilty anxiety of ancient Greece could not be suppressed and still affects our ideas of luxury today.
It is no wonder, given the ambiguous ways in which luxury has operated in the past, that we still feel conflicted about it today. After watching the video two things struck us. Firstly, that luxury will and will always be with us and is a fundamental part of who we are as a society. As the ancient Spartan and Athenian examples show, it is better to live with and manage luxury than to actually deny its existence. Secondly, luxury is almost impossible to define, not only because of its nature is always evolving but also because we each have our own personal ideas of what luxury means to us. That makes it a complex thing for society to manage, but also, ultimately, a concept that can be shared in by everyone.
About the Editor - Michael Scott is an Assistant Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, as well as an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. My research focuses on the ancient history and archaeology of the Greek and Roman worlds. Visit his website at www.michaelcscott.com
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