A Globe and Mail writer attended ‘gladiator school’ … here’s the incipit of a lengthy piece: I am clad in a scratchy tunic and sandals, wielding a sword that weighs as much as a small child and peering through the visor of a helmet that threatens to smother me under the Hades-hot Roman sun. The [...]
Archive for July 21, 2009
Peter Green (emeritus, UTexas at Austin) has a lengthy review of Anthony Grafton, Worlds Made By Words and Roger H. Martin, Racing Odysseus in the Times of London. Here’s my favourite paragraph (with favourite sentence highlighted): More immediately accessible is a vigorous (and to me very welcome) defence of humanist Latin as a still-viable scholarly [...]
The Public Domain site enlightens us:
From the Mirror’s celebrity gossip pages: Lindsay Lohan looks like an extra from the blockbuster movie Gladiator as she strides through LA in knee-high black sandal boots. Perhaps ancient Roman is the latest trend or maybe she wants a patterned tan on her legs. Beyonce looks even happier in strappy pumps and nephew Daniel seems [...]
From a press release via Earthtimes: Researcher David Xavier Kenney discovered the inscriptions on the 2nd to 3rd century artifact which was found on a hilltop in Norfolk County, England and is part of his collection. Among the revelations on the lance head (or contos head) is that the real King Arthur may have been [...]
Dan Carpenter in the Indy Star on Sarah Palin last week (inter alia, of course): And the Obama detractors who rejected his assertion that his campaign for office was not about him are content to let her be a kind of Cleopatra in a parka, reclining symbol of lost stature. … interesting mental image …
Excerpts from a piece at Network World … not bad: On a recent excavation, Chris Locke unearthed an amazingly well-preserved fossil of Hilarofustis atarium, commonly referred to as the Atari joystick. This is the most recent “discovery” he has made, but among his Modern Fossils collection you can also spot long-dead boom boxes, aged iPods, [...]
This was the big news last month, but it now appears that mass burial at Dorset contains bodies from the Saxon period, not Roman ….
The Sun has the scoop on the next ‘Big Brother’ (UK presumably) episode: As part of a Greek themed shopping challenge two housemates must dress up like the father and son team for a performance. [sc. Stavros Flatley ~ ed.] Greek Irish fusion dancers Demetrios Demetriou, 40, and son Lagi, 13, will provide the pair [...]
This Day in Ancient History: ante diem xii kalendas sextilias
Posted: July 21, 2009 by rogueclassicist in TDIAHante diem xii kalendas sextilias Lucaria (day 2) — the followup to a similar festival on the 19th commemorating the Sack of Rome by the Gauls; this day marked Rome’s subsquent victory ludi Victoriae Caesaris (day 2) — games instituted by/adjusted by Octavian to honour his adoptive father shortly after the latter’s death (possibly moving [...]
