pridie nonas februarias

• 211 -- death of Septimius Severus at York; his son Caracalla assumed the title of pontifex maximus at this time

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:35:56 AM::

Today's selection:

fusty @ Merriam-Webster

pedology @ Wordsmith

nugation @ OED

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:31:46 AM::

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:28:39 AM::

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:22:53 AM::

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:19:19 AM::

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:16:14 AM::

From the Daily Press (Victorville):

Cindy Jones' sixth-grade class looked more like an ancient civilization game show Wednesday than a social studies class.

Students dressed as Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, pharaohs, queens and gods answered questions about their characters and cultures. As the students reveled in their performances and costumes, they also learned their social studies lessons for the year.

"They get so much more involved," Jones said. "They'll always remember who those characters are in history."

The students were divided into three teams representing Rome, Greece and Egypt. As students recited information on their historical characters or facts about the geography, culture and people they earned points for their team.

Kyle Macy was Alexander the Great for the day. Alexander was great because he ruled over a lot of countries. People said he was a great leader and he believed he was great, Macy said.

Macy thought the program was a wonderful way to learn.

"I get to learn more about all the other characters and learn more about other countries," he said.

The teams not only competed on factual information but in games. The students cheered wildly as team members mummified each other with toilet paper as they learned about the ancient Egyptian process to ensure life after death.

Students from four classes raised money selling Avon products to bring California Weekly Explorer's program "Walk Through the Ancient World" to their class. The ancient cultures are part of the California standards for sixth grade, Jones said.

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:11:44 AM::

I can't remember what list it was on, but someone was wondering about when/whether the Ara Pacis would be open to the public again ... from Tandem comes this tidbit:

Renowned American modernist Richard Meier earned high marks for his design of the Jubilee Church for the Roman archdiocese in 2003. The architect is hoping for a similarly positive response to a new museum he designed in Rome's historic centre.

Meier's new building will house the Ara Pacis, or Altar of Peace, a sacrificial altar commissioned by Rome's first emperor, Augustus, in 9 BC to commemorate the end of Gallic and Spanish campaigns. The marble altar sits within a rectangular enclosure and features a bas-relief depicting Augustus, Agrippa, Julius and Tiberius. The ancient monument was unearthed by the government of Mussolini. Architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo designed a new building to house the altar in 1938, but by the end of the 20th century the City of Rome concluded the building area was in need of revitalization, and design plans by Meier were approved in 1995.

The new Ara Pacis Museum is intended to be a very transparent building, which will include public exhibition areas, a small auditorium, a museum shop and offices. The area surrounding the museum, including the nearby Mausoleum of Augustus, has been transformed into a more pedestrian-friendly neighbourhood.

"Although it's very small, I think the Ara Pacis [symbolizes] something about life in Rome moving on into the 21st century," Meier says. "That's the most important thing for me about the building. I think it's extremely important that Rome should not become a museum. It should have not only a rich history, but contemporary life as well."

The new museum, located on the east bank of the Tiber River near Ponte Cavour, is scheduled to open on April 21. [more]

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:08:45 AM::

From IC Coventry:

Coventry's medieval history is well documented, but experts excavating in the city centre have made a discovery which could indicate there was a Roman settlement here hundreds of years before.

A team of archaeologists digging up the site near the Herbert Art Gallery ahead of the construction of the city's new history and archive museum have unearthed a Roman brooch. The find indicates there was Roman activity in the area - and could mean there was a settlement on the site.

The team has already found a number of other objects, including a Tudor salt container, several pieces of medieval pottery and a pit containing cat bones.

The remains indicate a textile production outfit as cat fur was used to make cloth in medieval times.

Christopher Patrick, of Coventry City Council's conservation and archaeology team, said they were now hunting for any other Roman artefacts.

He said: "This is a very important find. "Coventry is known as being a medieval city but this find suggests people were living here far earlier. It is fitting that they are uncovering history while building the museum and, hopefully, this will raise people's awareness of how important Coventry is."

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:06:31 AM::

::Friday, February 04, 2005 5:01:51 AM::

::Friday, February 04, 2005 4:52:02 AM::

Heather van Tress, Poetic Memory. Allusion in the Poetry of Callimachus and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Mnemosyne, Supplementa 258.

Anne Mahoney, Plautus. Amphitryo. Focus Classical Commentary.

Alcock on Conybeare on Goldhill.

Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society and Culture.

::Friday, February 04, 2005 4:45:36 AM::

Via Classics in Contemporary Culture comes this little tidbit ... it's a manga (Japanese comic) version of the Iliad (it is in English, though) by Hiromi Hasegawa. Very rc (time to adjectify the title of this blog) ... make sure you check out the 'alternate endings'. And just to give this post a bit of added value, here's something I dug up from Google's cache which was apparently written by the artist as the project was still getting under way:

Originally, I did not intend to draw such a large scale mythology. "Ilios" was first intended as a parody version of the Trojan War, using the same characters from my other manga (a Japanese word for comics). So, I casted the characters according to their personalities similar to the original, or perhaps opposite from the image to give surprise. (Odysseus is a good example. My original image for Odysseus was short and cunning. But since the character (called Raita in my other manga) was pretty much the opposite, tall and nice, I thought it would be funny to cast him as Odysseus. But I think as a result, the story took different shape and became more interesting. I had to reinterpret the whole story and reconstruct it, using new personalities of the characters and my imagination.

The hard part is the time and page restraint. Since my drawing pace is so slow, I cannot complete more than two pages a week. Even so, I spend an average of 8 days to complete a week's norm. That means, I'll eventually not be able to finish the pages on time. That's why I have to keep drawing whether Tartan is published every week or not.

Rough sketches and inking don't take that long. The most time consuming part is cutting and pasting of the screentones (aka zippa tones in the US). Those are basically clear and thin plastic sheets with dots or patterns printed on the surface and glues on the backside. You cut them out with a knife and paste on to wherever you want to have effects on the paper. The page will be more visually appealing with patterns. (That is, if you don't overdo or choose wrong patterns with bad taste.) I spend most of the week scratching my head deciding which patterns to use where as well as cutting and pasting them on to the pages.

I'm hoping to be able to draw a "complete" version of ILIOS someday, drawing in details about the personalities of each character, as well as other well known characters that I could not include in the Tartan version (such as Diomedes). The complete version will also include episodes that I had to skip on Tartan. Two pages a week is simply not enough for adequate character development. I hope I will not end up as a Cliffs Notes, just summarizing the plot.

::Friday, February 04, 2005 4:43:20 AM::

Deadline extended to February 15, 2005

"Exploring Roman Manhood: Formations, Transformations, and Contestations"

Three-Year Colloquium
2006 Annual Meeting of the APA (Montreal)

Call for Papers

Organizers: Jill Connelly, Texas Tech University; Elizabeth Manwell, Kalamazoo College; Mark Masterson, Hamilton College

Ever since the publication of Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves, the study of women has been a prominent feature of classical studies, and courses on women in antiquity have become a staple of college course offerings. The study of men, however, as an outgrowth of women's studies and now gender studies, is a more recent field of exploration and one that has begun to receive attention. Increasingly, scholars of the ancient world have endeavored to problematize understandings of Roman male culture as merely political, military, or voluptuary and to suggest instead that Roman manhood is the dynamic product of social processes of enculturation. The research of Carlin Barton, Virginia Burrus, Maud Gleason, Erik Gunderson, Mathew Kuefler, Amy Richlin, and Craig Williams, among others, has helped to deepen our understanding of masculinity in Rome by focusing on Roman men's formative relationships with sexuality, women/femininity, and the social expectations for viri.

In our colloquium's second year, "Transformations of Roman Manhood," we would like to focus on the various changes to which Roman manhood was subject. Authors are encouraged to construe "transformation" broadly. Papers may approach this topic from various perspectives, including (but not limited to) social/historical, literary, feminist- and/or queer-theoretical, archaeological, art-historical, or anthropological. Questions addressed by individual papers might include:

1. How do concepts associated with Roman manhood change over time?
2. Women can possess virtues (e.g., virtus, fortitudo, etc.) marked as masculine by the Romans. Does this relative independence of masculine virtue from the male body transform Roman manhood? (If so, how and according to whom?)
3. How does the change from a small republic of citizen soldiers to an empire supported by mercenaries alter the realization of Roman manhood? Or, put differently, what effect does the removal of elite males from the ranks of the soldiery have on Roman manhood?
4. What impact does the coming of Christianity have on Roman concepts of masculinity?
5. How do various literary genres (epic, elegy, historiography, drama, etc.) and/or philosophy/theology/rhetoric portray or interact with transformations of Roman manhood?

Abstracts of 500-800 words are due by February 15, 2005. Submit abstracts, by email (preferred) or as a hard copy, to Elizabeth Manwell, Department of Classical Studies, Kalamazoo College, 1200 Academy Street, Kalamazoo MI 49006. Abstracts will be judged anonymously by two referees.

... seen on various lists

::Friday, February 04, 2005 4:32:12 AM::

University of Nottingham
Classics Research Workshop & Additional Classics Seminars
Spring Term 2005

Tuesday 1 February     
Professor Tim Cornell (ICS, London) Back to Basics with Augustus (Thai Lecture Theatre, Trent College, Long Eaton. 5.00pm)

Tuesday 8 February     
Dr A. M. Burnett (British Museum) What were Coins for? (Cecil Roberts Room, County Library, Angel Row, Nottingham. 6.45pm)

Tuesday 15 February    
Dr Mark Bradley (Nottingham) The Importance of Colour on Ancient Sculpture (B7, Archaeology & Classics Building, University Park. 5.00pm. Tea from 4.30pm)

Tuesday 22 February    
Lynn Kozak (Nottingham) Trust Among Warriors (B7, Archaeology & Classics Building, University Park. 5.00pm. Tea from 4.30pm)

Tuesday 8 March Lilia Hachiya (Critical Theory & Cultural Studies, Nottingham) & Matthew Hiscock (Classics, Cambridge)
Theorising Suicide Ancient and Modern (B7, Archaeology & Classics Building, University Park. 5.00pm. Tea from 4.30pm)

... seen on the Classicists list

::Friday, February 04, 2005 4:29:02 AM::

6.00 p.m. |HINT|  The Colosseum
Nothing symbolizes the Roman Empire at its height or Rome in magnificent ruins more than the Colosseum. Built in 70 AD, it seated 80,000 people, boasted a retractable roof, underground staging devices, marble seating, and lavish decorations. It still serves as the prototype for the modern stadium. The complexity of its construction, the beauty of its architecture, and the functionality of its design made it the perfect place for massive crowds to congregate for the bloody spectacles it contained. 

7.00 p.m. |HINT| Constantine: The Christian Emperor
Portrait of the ruler who overcame civil war and barbarian invasions to bring Rome a long period of peace. Nevertheless, the city of Rome itself was facing disaster. In response, Constantine founded the new Roman capital, Constantinople, and also converted his empire to Christianity. 

8.00 p.m. |DCIVC| Seven Wonders of the World:The Magic Metropolis
dna

10.00 p.m. |DTC| Hannibal
No shortlist of the greatest generals in history would be complete without the name of Hannibal, who was both feared and respected by his enemies. Hannibal's tactical genius is illustrated with exciting dramatic reconstructions of his victories.

HINT = History International

DTC = Discovery Times Channel

::Friday, February 04, 2005 4:25:43 AM::