ante diem xvi kalendas apriles

• Festival of Mars continues (day 17)
•  Liberalia -- a festival of general merriment and wine drinking in honour of Liber Pater (another name for Bacchus)
• Agonalia -- the rex sacrificulus would offer a ram to various deities
• 45 B.C. -- Julius Caesar defeats Pompey's sons and Labienus at Munda
• 136 A.D. -- the future emperor Marcus Aurelius dons the toga virilis
•  180 A.D. -- death of Marcus Aurelius at Bononia
•  461 A.D. -- death of Saint Patrick (traditional)

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 6:12:44 AM::
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Today's selection:

cabal @ Dictionary.com (sort of)

doctrinaire @ Merriam-Webster

pluterperfect @ Worthless Word for the Day

And over at AbleMedia, the My Word feature features "Power Players"

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 6:06:25 AM::
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Suffragia Moldovae (11.3.2005)

In suffragiis parlamentariis in Moldova factis communistae victoriam pro opinione reportaverunt, cum ex una et centum sedibus quinquaginta sex sedes ceperunt.

Foederatio democratica in novo parlamento duodetriginta delegatos, factio prasina undecim habet.

Res nova fuit, quod communistae cum Unione Europaea, democratae cum Russia solidiores consuetudines sustentabant.

Tuomo Pekkanen
Nuntii Latini, Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE)
(used with permission)

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 5:28:47 AM::
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I haven't mentioned Hobbyblog in a while, but the coins continue to be posted ... today's coin particularly caught my eye with its extremely clear image of Maximinus Thrax -- who looks like he's smiling (maybe it's gas)! Not exactly the sort of expression one would associate with the Thrax ...  (nice example of what military standards looked like too) ...

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 5:15:53 AM::
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The APA site has put up the society's February newsletter ... they've also put up their job listings for March (by the way, in case folks haven't noticed, I've started putting job listings, calls for papers, etc. up at our incipient forum Classics Central ... if you haven't visited yet, the grand opening will probably be next week, but there's already a pile of stuff in the Bulletin Board section. The calendar is also filling up with events ... please feel free to post events at your institution ... the goal of the calendar is twofold: to serve as a central place to find out what's going on, and to show to those outside academe how 'active' the Classics Community really is).

[I note the APA has also finally acknowledged the existence of rogueclassicism at their website ... thanks!]

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 5:10:57 AM::
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Is this true? An excerpt from a St. Patrick's Day piece in the Orlando Sentinel:

Once scorned for their emphasis on language and literature rather than pragmatic skills like business and engineering, the Irish turned their heritage of literacy into a powerful tool. Few people now make fun of the fact that during the 19th century even the poorest Irish children studied the classics in outlawed hedgerow schools, and farmers deep in the countryside used Homeric Greek to auction their cattle and pigs.

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 5:04:22 AM::
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4.00 p.m. |DISCC| Superweapons of the Ancient World: The Claw
History says that Archimedes created a terrifying secret weapon that plucked Roman warships from the sea and smashed them against the rocks; could such a devastating weapon have been built using available technology in 213 BC?
 
5.00 p.m. |DISCC| Superweapons of the Ancient World: The Ram
The team, including top military engineers from the U.S. military academy at West Point, re-creates a Roman tortoise ram and tests it by trying to demolish a specially re-created replica of an ancient six-metre-high, 3.5-metre-thick city wall.

DISCC = Discovery Channel (Canada)

::Thursday, March 17, 2005 4:59:03 AM::
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