rogueclassicism

LAST POST: At Sotheby's

Going to auction this week is a 2nd/1st century B.C./B.C.E. terracotta of Attis, clad in pants (!) and sporting a Phrygian cap. That's a syrinx he's holding to his mouth:

The official description page ...

::Monday, October 27, 2003 9:13:13 PM::
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ALSO SEEN: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 62.4 (October 2003)

Over on the ANE list it was mentioned that the latest issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies was available online (thanks CJ!). It has a number of items of interest to Classicist (all as .pdf's, so you need Acrobat Reader):

Article

F. S. NAIDEN. Words of the Alewife at Line 42 of Hesiod's Works and Days

Reviews

SAMUEL KOTTEK and MANFRED HORSTMANSHOFF, From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature: Papers of the Symposium in Jerusalem,


LUCY GOODISON and CHRISTINE MORRIS, Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence


WOLFGANG GÜNTNER, Figürlich bemalte mykenische Keramik aus Tiryns

::Monday, October 27, 2003 8:57:12 PM::
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REVIEWS: Scholia Reviews

I'm pleased to announce that we'll now be featuring reviews from Scholia Reviews as well ... Scholia Reviews is an online subset of reviews featured in Scholia, the journal of the Classics Association of South Africa. Here's three reviews to get us started:

Harold Newman and Jon O. Newman, A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology

Simon P. Ellis, Roman Housing

John Henderson, Pliny's Statue: The Letters, Self-Portraiture and Classical Art

::Monday, October 27, 2003 8:48:09 PM::
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THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

ante diem vi kalendas novembres

ludi Victoriae Sullanae (day 2)
43 B.C. -- Marcus Junius Brutus commits suicide in the wake of the defeat
at Philippi [date unconfirmed]
113 A.D. -- the emperor Trajan departs from Rome for his war against the
Parthians

::Monday, October 27, 2003 5:27:45 AM::
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GOSSIP: HBO and BBC Making Drama About Rome

I suspect this will be either really, really good or really, really awful (I'm not an Upstairs, Downstairs fan ... see below)... HBO and the BBC are teaming up to produce a drama set in ancient Rome:

"Rome" is a saga revolving around the lives of two ordinary Roman soldiers, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, and their families and is set against the backdrop of the tumultuous last years of Gaius Julius Caesar's reign, which marked Rome's transition from a Republic to an Empire.
The series picks up in 51 B.C., eight years after the First Triumvirate -- Caesar's strategic alliance with two other leading politicians, Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey) Magnus -- signalled the end of the Roman Republic and two years after Crassus was killed in battle.
"Rome" finds Caesar at the end of a string of military successes in Gaul, Germany and Britain. Defying a Senate order to disband his loyal army, he brought his legions across the Rubicon River in 49 B.C., easily securing control over most of the troops under Pompey's command.
Jealous of Caesar's success and terrified by his populist agenda for radical social changes, Pompey attempts to foment mutiny against his alliance partner, which is thwarted by Vorenus and Pullo.
The feat earns the two plebeian officers Caesar's gratitude and access to the luxury life of the upper class. In addition to Caesar, Pullo and Vorenus also cross paths with Caesar's chief lieutenant Mark Antony, Egyptian queen Cleopatra and Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son Octavianus, who, following Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C., would become the first emperor of Rome.
"It's very much an 'Upstairs, Downstairs', piece, and the audience will be able to experience what life was like in ancient Rome from all points of view," said Anne Thomopoulos, HBO's senior vice-president of original programming. "It's historical but highly entertaining."

More ... See also the coverage from the Guardian ...

::Monday, October 27, 2003 5:06:14 AM::
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NUNTII: Atlantis Redux

Apparently some folks have a pile of money to search for Atlantis (imagine what a Classics program could do with the money being used for this). Check this out from today's Telegraph:

For more than two millennia, many of the world's greatest adventurers, explorers and thinkers have sought the fabled Lost City of Atlantis.

Next month, an expedition to hunt for its remains among submerged Gibraltarian islands will be unveiled at the Royal Geographical Society, London, by a renowned geologist, Prof Jacques Collina-Girard, and the leaders of the Titanic expeditions.

[...]

Now it is to be sought by the Deep Med One expedition, planned for next summer by Prof Collina-Girard, of the University of Provence, with Commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet and George Tulloch.

The team will search a location about 20 miles south west of Tarifa, Spain, and 12 miles north west of Tangier. Using a submersible capable of reaching depths of 3,200ft, the expedition, backed by private investors and corporate sponsors, will look for signs of temples, buildings and prehistoric artefacts, such as tools and weapons.

[...]

Prof Collina-Girard believes that generations of Atlantis obsessives overlooked the most obvious location: Plato's account suggests Atlantis lay before the Pillars of Hercules - today's Strait of Gibraltar.

The professor came to this conclusion after studying the patterns of human migration from Europe into North Africa at the height of the last ice age, 19,000 years ago. To see if Stone Age people could have crossed the strait, he made a map of what the coastline looked like at that time, when the sea level was 420ft lower than today. This revealed an ancient archipelago with an island "in front of the Pillars of Hercules".

This island is now a shoal, called Spartel or Majuan Bank, which lies to the west of the strait, also as Plato described.