I'm not sure where I found that the French journal Methodos was becoming an online thing, but whatever the case, in the latest issue (2004) there is an article (in French, with an English abstract) of interest for Classicists, rogue and otherwise:

Rossella Saetta-Cottone. La parodie du Télèphe entre les Acharniens et les Thesmophories.

9:56:35 AM    

The Center for Hellenic Studies has posted a number of papers from their Theocritus Colloquium, held in May of 2003. The papers are all .pdfs and include:

Ayelet Lushkov, Watching Daphnis: Frustration of Viewing in Idylls 1 and 6

Peter Mazur, Theocritus 11.56-59: Polyphemus as Hellenistic Poet?

David Petrain, The Goatherd's Cup, the Temple of Juno, and a Tradition of Ekphrastic Narrative

Ornella Rossi, Poetry From a Narrow World: Characterization Through Similes in Theocritus' Idylls.

9:53:00 AM    

Classical Studies is the journal of the Classical Society of Kyoto University and has recently posted some abstracts. In volume XIX (2003) there appears:

Yoshinao Sato, On Hermippos of Smyrna F 20 Wehrli.
Koji Hirayama, Homicide Trial and Punishment in Early Athens.

... and in volume XX:

Noriko Yasumura, A Study on Book Eight of the Odyssey.
Naoyuki Hirokawa, The Poetic Techniques in Sappho's Fr. 1 Voigt.
Taro Yamashita, An interpretation of lusus Troiae in the Aeneid.

9:46:59 AM    

TLS has a number of reviews of Classical interest this week, to wit:

Mary Beard reviews a tetrad of tomes about the ancient Olympics

Barry Strauss, Salamis: The greatest battle of the ancient world, 480 BC

John R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual representations and non-elite viewers in Italy, 100 BC-AD 315

Edith Hall reviews a couple of books about Catullus

9:36:30 AM    

An AP piece making the rounds is peppered with ClassCon:

The ancient gods must be having a gloriously raucous time watching all the mortals scurry and worry over the return of the Olympic Games to Greek soil.

Zeus and those other mythic deities on Mount Olympus always were a mischievous and manipulative lot, and one imagines them chortling over the scramble to bring order to a city that has long thrived on chaos -- a fine old Greek word.

Fear not: A miraculously transformed Athens will be ready for the Olympics, even if the last nails are hammered in five minutes before the opening ceremony on Aug. 13 and the final flowers and shrubs are planted a minute later. That's simply the Greek way.

[...]

A cook named Koroibos won the lone event at the first Olympics in Greece in 776 B.C. -- a sprint that legend says Herakles marked off by putting his feet heel-to-toe 600 times toward the altar of his father, Zeus.

Herakles crowned the victor of that race -- the original version of the modern 200 meters called the "stadion" (the root of stadium) -- with an olive branch. Then, as now, the runners were called athletes -- meaning contestants for a prize.

From that humble start as a religious festival in Olympia, where myth holds that Zeus wrestled Cronus for the kingship of the universe and where Apollo raced Hermes and boxed Ares, the Olympics evolved into the world's largest, most enduring tribute to sports and peace.

[...]

The marathon route traces the original path from the battlefield of Marathon, where legend has it that a herald named Phidippides began running to Athens to bring news of the Greek victory over the Persians in 490 B.C., then died on the spot after delivering the message: "We won!"  [...]

What ... no mention of Olympia and the shot put therein?

9:30:35 AM    

Saw this on the Classics list ... it's the conclusion of a piece from the BBC on assorted 'intelligence failures' in history:

One of the main charges against the CIA and FBI post-9/11 was that they failed to join up the dots beforehand - the presence in the US of known suspects, the unusual number of men from the Middle East taking flying courses, the known tactic of al Qaeda to use aircraft, etc.

Finally, a word about that wooden horse.

The key intelligence failure was that the Trojans ignored a warning.

It came from Cassandra, the daughter of Troy's King Priam.

Given the gift of prophecy, she had then angered the God Apollo, who ordained that her prophecies should never be believed.

So the Trojans rejected what they said was her "windy nonsense".

A myth perhaps, but there is a lesson to be learned.

The trouble is that lessons are not always learned, which is why the list of intelligence failures grows longer.

9:24:50 AM    

Frances Pownall, Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose.

Marjorie Garber, Nancy J. Vickers, The Medusa Reader.

John Davidson, Arthur Pomeroy, Theatres of Action: Papers for Chris Dearden. Prudentia Supplement.

Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich, Wounding and Death in the Iliad: Homeric Techniques of Description. Translated by Peter Jones and Gabriele Wright, with a new appendix by Kenneth Saunders

9:22:38 AM    

I know nothing about Bridge (I'm more of a Yugioh guy) but I'm sure some rogueclassicism readers are and can make sense of this piece from the Philly Inquirer:

The Battle of Actium had been lost, but Marc Antony and Queen Cleopatra refused to cede control of the Roman Empire to the ambitious Octavian. Instead, they challenged him to a bridge match, winner take all.

"You know nothing of any aspect of the game," Octavian sneered. "I'll take an asp as my partner and beat you."

Today's deal arose at the end of the match, with Antony and Cleopatra trailing. Against Antony's slam, Octavian led the jack of hearts. Antony won, drew trumps and led a diamond to dummy's jack.

The asp took the queen and shifted to a club, and Antony felt like taking an aspirin. He could try the club finesse, or he could take the ace and rely on the diamonds to produce three tricks; he couldn't do both. At length, Antony refused the finesse, but when East turned up with the guarded ten of diamonds, the slam failed.

"You're as dense as asphalt," Cleopatra grumbled. "I'd have made it. Being from Egypt, I'd have known enough to pyramid my chances by taking the A-K of diamonds before leading toward the jack. When the diamonds lay badly, I'd know I had to finesse in clubs.

"You'd still be safe if this reptile, who has no more brains than an asparagus, had returned a heart instead of a club," the queen went on with asperity. "You could test the diamonds, then fall back on the club finesse."

The asp didn't like having aspersions cast on his game.

"Brainless, am I?" he muttered as he prepared to strike.

As for Antony, Octavian had him asphyxiated.

9:12:15 AM    

The latest issue of Minerva (July/August 2004) has several items of interest available in its print edition:

Troy: Myth and Reality — by Lesley Fitton
Greek Gold from the Black Sea — by Peter A. Clayton
Colossus Revisited: Greek Pottery from the Sea — by Ann Birchall
Underwater at the National Museum, Alexandria — by Peter A. Clayton
The Road to Olympia — by André Bernand
Sanctuary: Elean Coins of Olympia — by Alan Walker
Spolia: Architectural Salvage in the Age of Constantine — by William Bowden
Barbarian Seas: Shipwrecks of Late Antiquity — by Sean Kingsley

... and online:

Hadrian’s Women at Tivoli — by Dalu Jones
Saving Early Byzantine Art at Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome — by Dalu Jones
The Bernheze Roman Bronze Hoard from the Netherlands — by Ruurd B. Halbertsma
The Girl in Question: Bureaucrats and Slaves in Roman London — by Dr Roger Tomlin The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology — reviewed by Peter A. Clayton
Exhibition Focus: Greek Gold From The Treasure Chambers Of The Hermitage

9:08:16 AM    

From Military History Magazine:

Jonathan W. Jordan, Battle of Pharsalus

9:02:06 AM    

7.00 p.m. |HINT|Time Team: Netheravon, Wiltshire
Our high-speed archaeological team, headed by Tony Robinson
(Baldrick in "Blackadder") and archaeologist Mick Aston, finds itself
inside a partially abandoned army barracks in Netheravon in
Wiltshire, England. In 1907, Colonel Hawley discovered part of a
mosaic in what he believed was part of a Roman villa (circa 300 AD).
Now, for the first time, the British Army has allowed archaeologists
inside the barbed wire to check out the colonel's theory--and they
have only three days.

HINT = History International

8:53:30 AM