rogueclassicism

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::Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:50:26 PM::
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BLOGWATCH: This Week at Classics in Contemporary Culture

Something else I've been dying to include in rogueclassicism's regular features is a quick overview of what's going on at other blogs with an ancient bent. While I'm still working out the logistics of this one, I'm thinking it might look something like this:

Recent items of interest at "ccc":

A Classical Hallowe'en (in Hawaii) ... Performance enhancement in Sports ... Fiddling while something burns ... (Oct. 25) ... Elliott Smith and the Classics ... Lessons of the Iliad ... More Blogging Byzantium ... A Melting Pot of Dogs (Oct. 23)

I'm hoping to maybe feature one 'watched blog' per day ... Comments welcome!

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:31:54 PM::
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QUERY: Parthenon/Elgin Marbles Beneath the Sea?

A touristy piece about Kythera from About.com's Greek travel guide turned up in the scan today, and it includes this little tidbit:

Whereas Aphrodite has name recognition off the scale, Kythira suffers under a variety of pseudonyms, variants, and alternates. Inhabited since early times and the site of an early Minoan trading post, Kythira was invaded, settled, and then invaded again and again. Placed under Venetian rule by Marco Venieri, who claimed a family descent from Aphrodite under her other name, Venus, this rugged island off the coast of the Peloponnese was called Tsego or Csego. In 1802 near Avlemonas on the coast of Kithira, the shipload of plundered pieces of the Parthenon frieze "lost" 20 crates overboard, sending them to the sea bottom where they still, presumably and hopefully, lie. Another ship (of the 33 needed to cart off the marbles) sank, but some statues were recovered by Greek divers hired by Elgin. (So much for the Brits insisting that they are more careful custodians of the pieces than the Greeks were!).

I had never heard of this tale before, but it seems to be oft-mentioned on the web in relation to touristy pieces on Kythera. Even so, I did manage to track down an online paper by Eleftheria Mantzouka-Syson which was presented to the fourth World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town (1999). In the paper she mentions:

In 1802, skin divers recovered from 60 feet of depth seventeen cases of antiquities sunk aboard the British brig Mentor,commissioned the same year by Lord Elgin.

So the obvious question: are there bits of the Elgin/Parthenon marbles sitting in crates at the bottom of the sea? If so, why haven't they been recovered?

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:18:22 PM::
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CHATTER: Again?

Last week I opined that some journalist had presented those supposed answers by sixth graders to a history test which included such things like "Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock". I complained, of course, because these are very, very old jokes in the Internet world and it's kind of cheesy for a journalist to resort to cutting and pasting to fill his column (note in passing: that's what blogs are for!). In any event, this week, another newspaper columnist -- this time from Barbados -- has similar resort. Maybe we'll keep score on this one ...

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:02:43 PM::
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SAY WHAT? Vergilius Coquus

The Mobile Register has a piece on one of those medieval faire/Society of Creative Anachronism thingies which mentions the following:

The food was prepared by Lisa Blair of Mobile, who gets some of her recipes from the Roman poet Virgil. Saturday's bread recipe was from Pompeii, Italy, she said.

Recipes in Vergil? I guess I missed that class ...

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 6:54:44 PM::
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REVIEW: The Latest from H-Net

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL 1) [CD version; review in German]

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 6:35:16 PM::
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NUNTII: Nuntii Latini

The latest headlines from YLE's Nuntii Latini:

NU saepimentum Israelianorum damnant
Sessio generalis Nationum Unitarum sententiam comprobavit, qua saepimentum ab Israelianis in ...

Novum de stupefactivis scandalum
Novus steroides anabolicus, qui antea nullis probationibus revelari potuerat, in exemplis probativis ...

Ioannes Paulus II pontificatus annum XXV celebravit
Summus Pontifex Ioannes Paulus II, qui mense ...

Mater Teresa beatificata
Mater Teresa, sanctimonialis, quae quinque ...

Mons Albus minus altus
Mons Albus, cacumen Europae altissimum ...

Lege plura ...

Audi ...

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 6:32:24 PM::
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THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

ante diem vii kalendas novembres

ludi Victoriae Sullanae (day 1)
31 A.D. -- suicide of Apicata, wife of the disgraced Praetorian
Praefect Sejanus

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 12:45:23 PM::
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NUNTII: Two Faced Stone

This one was in this a.m.'s "explorator" but has been kicking around for a week and I was sure more would come of it. Alas, it didn't, so here's the intro from a piece at the BBC:

A keen-eyed archaeologist claims to have found some of the oldest artwork ever - carved faces 200,000 years old.
The human images were found in 2001 by Pietro Gaietto on an expedition through the Borzonasca district of Italy.

He claims the rock has been sculpted into faces that look in opposite directions; one is bearded with what Gaietto calls an "expressive face".

If this is genuine, the artist would have been an extinct human species that died out about 150,000 years ago.

Okay ... let's see how "keen eyed" this guy is (of course, the epithet makes us immediately suspicious since we know that archaeologists traditionally "stumble") ... here's the accompanying photo:

Okay ... I suppose a case could be made that you can see a pair of eyes there and perhaps a beard, but it's a bit of a stretch. So let's check out this Pietro Gaietti fellow. Whether he is an archaeologist (in the 'professional' sense of the word) is open to question ... I can't find any university affiliation although he does seem to be the director of Il Centro Culturale Citta di Colombo. He writes extensively for the online Paleolithic Art Magazine, and not surprisingly, perhaps, we find he has a fascination of sorts with these multi-headed pieces.

In Four Headed Hermae of Rome, e.g., he examines a number of sculptures which have four faces (e.g. the sculptures on the 'Fabricio Bridge' in Rome). This seems alright, even if it loses something in translation. Another article looks at a paleolithic 'two headed Venus' from Liguria and compares it to a similar piece from Lombardy (definitely two-headed, not two-faced, but like the above photo, very much open to interpretation, I suspect). Then we find that he seems, alas, to find such two-faced palaeolithic sculptures everywhere ... in Denmark, or elsewhere in Italy, or near Rome, or Mexico ... you get the picture. I suspect my garden is full of them.

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 12:42:32 PM::
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TTT: Interviews With Classicists

The Classics Technology Center -- long a decent source for educational materials and ideas for teaching Classics -- has recently begun to feature interviews with some of the Classicists who provide said materials and ideas. I'm not sure all of the questions have been, well, appropriate, but they do help to put a face to some of the names we regularly see on the web. So far, two have made it to the web:

Roger Dunkle (professor of Classics at Brooklyn College)

Akiko Kiso (professor emerita of Classics at Osaka University)

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 12:00:44 PM::
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REVIEWS: The Latest From BMCR

Mary Ebbott, Imagining Illegitimacy in Classical Greek Literature.

Andrea Ercolani (ed.), Spoudaiogeloion. Form und Funktion der
Verspottung in der aristophanischen Komoedie. Drama. Beitraege zum
antiken Drama und seiner Rezeption, 11.

Herbert-Brown on Weiden Boyd on Herbert-Brown.

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 11:51:55 AM::
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NUNTII: Explorator 6.26

I've just posted the latest issue of "explorator", ad free as always ...

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 9:50:54 AM::
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AWOTV: On TV Today

7.00 p.m. |DISCU| The Real Disciples of Jesus
"Experts investigate the disciples of Jesus, examining new
information about their backgrounds and their relationships to
each other and to Jesus. Find out what Judas' role was among the
Twelve; was he truly a traitor, or just a scapegoat?"

DISCU = Discovery Channel (US)

::Sunday, October 26, 2003 9:49:56 AM::
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