Anyone else discover that gmail seems to have started flagging a pile of legitimate mail as spam? A bunch of stuff relating to our ClassiCarnies was lurking in my spam filter (hence the 'slow news days' of the past couple of days) ... this is a bit of a catch up:

Joel Morrison has been off to see The Lost Echo (an Ovid adaptation) ...

Adrian Murdoch has found a piece by Gore Vidal comparing George Bush to Romulus Augustulus ... there's more about the Ara Pacis too ...

Latest proverbial teaching materials from Laura Gibbs ...

Ed Flinn has a Gallienus/Gryphon ...

Eurylochus had a close shave under the walls of Troy ...

Nathan Bauman is up to book VI of the Odyssey ... (and he's solved his Greek font problem, it appears) ...

Stephen Carlson is working with bishop lists and Eusebius ...

While waiting for a Google Book to download yesterday, I came across a page of downloadable teaching kits ... if you scroll up ten items from the end of the page, there's a teaching kit for the HBO series of Rome (haven't looked at it in any depth); right above that one is one for the History Channel's Rome: Engineering an Empire ...

A couple of items of interest in the October issue of Geology (culled from a press release):


The geological links of the ancient Delphic Oracle (Greece): A reappraisal of natural gas occurrence and origin
Guiseppe Etiope, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Section Rome 2, Rome, Italy 00143; et al. Pages 825-828.

The prophetic powers of Pythia, the woman of the ancient Delphic Oracle, at the Temple of Apollo in Greece, are said to have been induced by hydrocarbon vapors, specifically ethylene, rising from rock and producing neurotoxic effects, including trance and delirium. This study by Etiope et al. completes a trilogy of papers on the link between geology and archeology in Delphi. Gas occurrence, though not ethylene, was confirmed on the basis of detailed surveys of gas flux from soil, gas in groundwater, and isotopic analyses of spring scales. Etiope et al. provide evidence that little methane, ethane, and carbon dioxide are released from a thermogenic (catagenetic) hydrocarbon-prone environment. However, the possibility of significant ethylene emissions is not obvious. In neither the present nor the past could the deep carbonatic rocks of Delphi produce sufficient amounts of ethylene (hundreds of ppmv) to produce smelling vapors or generate neurotoxic effects on humans. The Temple of Apollo may have been the site of increased degassing of methane in the past. If gas-linked neurotoxic effects upon Pythia need to be invoked, they should be sought in the possibility of oxygen depletion due to CO2-CH4 exhalation in the indoor temple. Alternatively, a possible geological explanation behind the natural presence of sweet scents at the temple could be aromatic hydrocarbons, such as benzene, dissolved in the groundwater spring, the production of which in the Delphi rocks is theoretically possible, but remains to be experimentally proved.

Magma chamber recharge at Vesuvius in the century prior to the eruption of A.D. 79
D.J. Morgan, Université Joseph Fourier, LGCA, Domaine Universitaire, Saint Martin D'Hères, Isère 38400, France; et al. Pages 845-848.

The events that led up to the historically important eruption of Vesuvius volcano in A.D. 79 have been investigated and may assist in understanding the volcano in its current dormant state. By analyzing chemical variations within crystals found in A.D. 79 pumice, Morgan et al. have discovered that fresh hot magma rose into the Vesuvius system in at least four pulses before the eruption. These happened about 80 years, 40 years, and then twice around 20 years before the eruption. Morgan et al.'s method is likely to be applicable at other volcanoes and has the potential to reveal the timing of events that can potentially trigger volcanic eruptions.