THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

ante diem x kalendas decembres

• c. 70 A.D. -- martyrdom of Philemon and Apphia at Colossae (Phrygia)
• 230 A.D. -- martyrdom of Cecilia at Rome

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:59:14 AM::
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REVIEW: From H-Net

Oliver Hekster. Commodus. An emperor at the crossroads. (review in German)

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:51:21 AM::
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GOSSIP: Yet Another Movie

The Telegraph breaks the news of this one:

The Sultan of Brunei is believed to be one of a group of wealthy investors planning the most expensive independent film made in Britain. The backers hope not only to cash in on the fashion for "sword and sandal" epics but also to take advantage of generous tax breaks available to film-makers in this country.
 
The £50 million film, Cyrus, is being financed by a new London-based company called Chayaha, which is co-owned by Marinah Embiricos, a relative of the Aga Khan and a member of the Greek shipping family that controls the Embiricos Group.

But it appears to have grander aspirations than most epics: its backers also hope that it will spread very un-Hollywood messages around the world about goodwill and peace.

The screenplay is based on the extraordinary life of Cyrus the Great, who lived from 580-529 BC and founded the first Achaemenian empire in Persia.

He was a notable warrior but his fame rests upon his decisions to free all slaves in the empire, to tolerate all religions, to allow exiled Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and to order his governors to treat the people as if they were their children.

More ...

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:44:03 AM::
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CHATTER: Or is it a Review?

The Guardian's books section has an "edited extract" from Jamie O'Neill's introduction to Flann O'Brien's The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman and the Brother which has a nice anecdote to start off:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

We "did" this poem at school - and even to my schoolboy's eyes it seemed an unlikely brew. A hotchpotch of names - Keats, Chapman, Homer: they bounce the reader through literature, through time. A giddy geography - we're swept from Apollo's Aegean to Cortez on his Pacific shore. We begin with a traveller who tells of ancient bards, he briefly tries his hand at astronomy, till "silent, upon a peak" he's transformed to the "stout" conquistador. Three poems have we here: Homer's original Iliad, Chapman's rendering of this into English, and rounding it all off, on the page before us, Keats's wonderment on "first looking into" Chapman's translation. All this in 14 lines.

The schoolboy is quite stupefied and who can blame him if once more his arms fold on his desk, he daydreams out the window. Outside it is raining, as it always is for English class on Friday afternoons. The pigeons troop to the windowsill, drooping under the shelter. And slowly a smile forms on the schoolboy's face. On first looking into Chapman's Homer... of course! He giggles; nudges his deskmate to share the joke. Chapman's homer, do you see? - it's a pigeon. A chalk grazes his ear, fired from the blackboard where the teacher glowers.

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:42:22 AM::
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CHATTER: What to Do With A Classics Degree

Another idea:

Laura Breckenridge is an unusual 20-year-old. She is a sophomore at Princeton University majoring in the classics, has appeared on Broadway in "The Crucible," and is currently the star of a new Off-Broadway hit, "The Moonlight Room," by Tristine Skyler. The play looks at emotionally disenfranchised teenagers growing up in single-parent homes, virtually rootless.

The rest of the piece ...

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:27:21 AM::
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NUNTII: Clinton's Favourite Books

Coinciding with the opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., comes news of an exhibition of a list of the erstwhile president's 21 favourite books. Besides his wife's, there are some of Classical interest -- Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and Seamus Haney's The Cure at Troy (a version of Sophocles' Philoctetes).

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:23:34 AM::
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AWOTV: On TV Tonight

Nothing ... it's all Egyptian ...

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:13:14 AM::
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APOLOGIES

Apologies for the lack of posts for the past  day or so ... last night we had a ball hockey tournament to go to (we won!) ... posts throughout today as we catch up.

::Saturday, November 22, 2003 7:12:11 AM::
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