rogueclassicism

Citanda: Interview with Sarah Ruden

• Sarah Ruden: Guggenheim Fellow Translating Tragic Masterpiece at Wesleyan.

Roman Toothpaste?

From the Huffington Post:

We probably don’t know exactly when a substance was first used on teeth. But research suggests that the Ancient Egyptians first developed a dental cream as far back as 3000-5000 BC. This dental cream was comprised of powdered ashes from oxen hooves, myrrh, egg shells, pumice, and water the actual “toothpaste” was likely a powder at first, with the water probably added at the time of use. And while it probably tasted terrible, it likely provided a somewhat minimum level of tooth cleaning, at least in a “scraping away the bad stuff” sense.

Later, in Greece and Rome, we see more abrasives being added to the powder mixture, like crushed bones and oyster shells. More cleaning power, for sure, but still, the taste… Well, maybe it’s not so bad. We know the Romans added flavoring, perhaps to help with bad breath and to make their paste more palatable. This flavoring was more or less powdered charcoal and bark I’m not sure how tasty powdered charcoal really is, though.

via Thomas P. Connelly, D.D.S.: The History of Toothpaste: From 5000 BC to the Present.

Source??? At least they don’t take Spaniards in Catullus as indicative of Roman practice …

Techy Romans

Gizmodo notices the ancient world:

• Overwhelming Proof That The Romans Were Addicted To Facebook | Gizmodo.

Since Gizmodo ties this image to Facebook, I guess the Greeks must have been addicted to MySpace:

via iecclesia

via 'education in ancient greece'

… and of course, the Greeks were already dealing with the problems of students texting in class:

via 'education in ancient Greece'

Bizarre Allianoi Update

Hot on the heels of the most recent calling-attention-to-the-impending-flooding-of-Allianoi, come this bizarre cliam from Turkey’s environment minister via Hurriyet:

Controversy over plans to bury an ancient city in western Turkey with sand ahead of a new dam project was overshadowed Wednesday by revelations from Turkey’s environment minister that the site did not, in fact, exist.

“There is no such place as Allianoi. It is just a hot spring that was recently restored called ‘Paşa Ilıcası,’” said Minister Veysel Eroğlu in response to a reporter’s question about the controversial plans to bury the ancient city, which is located near Bergama in the Aegean province of İzmir.

Eroğlu’s belief in the site’s non-existence, however, has been challenged by archaeologists and the Culture and Tourism Ministry, which describes Allianoi on its website as an ancient site that was noted for its health center.

“Veysel Eroğlu is not an archaeologist. What he said is really ridiculous,” Assistant Professor Ahmet Yaraş, head of the excavations, said Wednesday.

“Allianoi is the most protected hot spring in the world. Some 11,000 coins, around 400 metal artifacts, 400 bone artifacts, 800 ceramic artifacts and around 400 glass artifacts have been found during excavations,” said Yaraş, adding that only 20 percent of the city had been successfully excavated so far.

“We have found a sculpture of Asklepios, who was known as the god of health. Alliaoni has 400 surgical instruments, the highest number ever found, proving that the place was a hospital at the time,” he said.

Allianoi is just a fictional name, the minister said, adding that it had been restored by a former governor and constituted no more than an ordinary hot spring little different from other hot springs that can be observed throughout the country.

A total of $7 million has been spent on restoring the site since excavations began, Eroğlu said, adding that the work was conducted under the supervision of the Culture and Tourism Ministry.

“The ministry is aware of the importance of the historical artifacts and we made all the precautions in order to protect them,” said the environment minister.

Despite care from the Environment Ministry to preserve artifacts from the site – including moving sculptures from the hot spring area to the Bergama Museum and by filling the site with sand before the area is submerged by a reservoir – numerous groups have been lodging complaints about the authorities’ work, Eroğlu said.

“Despite winning 16 courts against the operations, the ancient city of Allianoi will be covered with sand before the waters of the Yortanlı Dam flood the region,” said Yaraş, adding that it was meaningless to debate what material will be used to cover the site since it will disappear forever once the area is flooded.

“Turkey has lost its reputation with the latest development,” said Yaraş.

Meanwhile, Professor Murat Güvenç, head of the History Foundation, also objected to the Eroğlu’s remarks, saying the ministry was preparing to bury the location without evaluating alternative options.

• via: Ancient city does not actually exist, says Turkish minister

The minister probably read the first couple of paragraphs of the Wikipedia article, the second of which says:

One particularity of Allianoi is its being a very recent historical discovery. It was mentioned only once in the 2nd century by the orator and medicinal writer Aelius Aristides in his “Hieroi Logoi” (Sacred Tales) (III.1), one of the key sources for the knowledge on the science of healing as it was understood at that time. No other writer of antiquity nor any epigraphic finding known had referred to Allianoi.

… and decided to ignore the archaeological evidence that he’d have to scroll to the next screen to see …

d.m. Gordon Williams

Gordon Willis Williams, Thacher Professor of Latin Literature Emeritus, has died aged 84. Born in Dublin in 1926, Professor Williams was educated at Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Oxford. Before coming to Yale, he enjoyed a distinguished career as Fellow and Tutor at Balliol College, Oxford and as Professor of Humanity at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. In 1973 he was invited to deliver the Sather Lectures at Berkeley. He joined the Yale faculty in 1974.

Williams’s publications were numerous and influential. A groundbreaking series of articles in the late 1950′s dealing with aspects of Roman social history and the position of women was followed in 1968 by the appearance of the massive and classic work Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry, a book of fundamental importance to which Classicists forty years later are still responding. In quick succession came an edition of the third book of Horace’s Odes in 1969 and then a briefer version of Tradition and Originality in 1973. There followed more major and provocative works of scholarship, Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire (1978), Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry (1980), and Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid (1983).

For many years Gordon maintained a very high profile in the profession, frequently travelling all over the world to give lectures or teach specialized seminars. A great teacher of undergraduates, he directed many dissertations in his quarter century at Yale: his students and students of his students teach in Departments of Classics and of Comparative Literature from coast to coast. He was a great asset to Yale and to the Department of Classics. He will be much missed.

via: Gordon Willis Williams | Yale

Citanda: My hero: Jane Ellen Harrison

Actually, it’s Mary Beard’s:

My hero: Jane Ellen Harrison|The Guardian.

On Scones in Virgil

Interesting item mentioned in passing in the Record, inter alia:

Scones are to the British what bagels are to New Yorkers. Food historians say that scones actually originated in Scotland, first appearing in a 1513 Scottish poet’s translation of Virgil’s “The Aeneid.” In other words, these quick breads have been around a long time.

via: Bounty of baked goods in Pompton Lakes

Presumably this is Gavin Douglas‘ translation of the Eneados … I can’t seem to find the word ‘scone’ in either volume one or two at Googlebooks, but it uses those ‘long s’es (i.e. the one that looks like an f … fcone doesn’t work, just in case you were wondering).

UPDATE (the next day): Tip o’ the pileus to Neils Grotum and David Smart who tracked down the OED reference and from that found the appropriate section; as one might have reasonable guess, it’s the ‘table-eating’ bit from book seven (VII ii 9-28 according to the OED):

Eneas, and othir chiftanys gloryus,
And the fresch lusty springald Ascanius,
Vndre the branchis of a semly tre
Gan lenyng dovn, and rest thar bodeys fre,
And to thar dyner dyd thame all adres
On grene herbis and sonkis of soft gers:
The flowr sconnys war set in, by and by,
With othir mesis, sik as war reddy;
Syne bred trynschouris dyd thai fyl and charge
With wild scrabbis and other frutis large.
Betyd, as was the will of Jupiter,
For falt of fude constrenyt so thai war,
The other metis all consumyt and done,
The paryngis of thar bred to mowp vp sone,
And with thar handis brek, and chaftis gnaw,
The crustis, and the coffyngis all on raw;
Ne spar thai not at last, for lake of met,
Thar fatale four nukit trynschour forto eyt.
Och ! quod Ascanius, quhou is this befall ?
Behald, we eyt dur tabillis vp and all !

Here’s the page via Google Books …

Scaffold Comes Off Athena Nike

From AFP:

Builders have completed another stage of restoration of the Acropolis in Athens with the removal of scaffolding from the temple of Athena Nike, the head of renovation efforts said Friday.

“The entrance to the Acropolis is free of all scaffolding, a sight not seen since the end of the 1970s,” Maria Ioannidou said, urging tourists to take advantage of it before more work begins on the Parthenon.

Overlooking the Propylaea, the small Ionic monument was the last site to be restored under a project which started in 2001 at a total cost of 42.6 million euros (54.7 million dollars).

Work on the temple, which required dismantling it, was delayed by damage to its marbles — inflicted over time and during 19th century restorations.

Separate restorations of the Propylaea and Parthenon were completed in December and May respectively.

But the Parthenon will again be covered in scaffolding and surrounded by cranes for work on its western part to transfer six metopes, or sculptured marble blocks, threatened by pollution, to the Acropolis museum.

The Greek government promised in May to continue the restoration, despite a crippling financial crisis, with the help of European funds.

Ioannidou estimates that archaeologists have at least a decade of work ahead of them.

The buildings on the Acropolis, the hill overlooking Athens, date from the fifth century BC, a golden era for Athenian democracy, under leader Pericles.

via: Greece’s Temple of Athena Nike restoration complete | AFP via Google

Royal Burials at Peperikon?

From Novinite:

Bulgarian archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov has discovered two tombs of Ancient Thracian rulers near the famous rock city and sanctuary of Perperikon.

The tombs are dated to 1100-1000 BC judging by the pottery and ceramics found in them, which are characteristic of the later Bronze Age and the early Iron Age.

One of the most interesting finds in the tombs is a bronze coin with the face of Emperor Alexander the Great, dated to the 4th century BC. Prof. Ovcharov believes this is a clear evidence that the tomb was venerated as a shrine by the Thracians in the Antiquity for a long time after its original creation.

The archaeological team stumbled across the two tombs as they were working on diverting a tourist path away from a spot of excavations at Perperikon, the holy city of the Thracians.

The tombs are situation in an east-west direction, with the buried notable facing the rising sun, a clear sign of a sun cult.

The excavations have revealed ritual hearths and others signs of sacrifices that were connected with the traditions of venerating the dead as godly creatures.

via: Top Bulgarian Archaeologist Stumbles Upon 2 Ancient Thrace Tombs

The coverage of this one includes a photo of the tomb … here’s the version from Novinite:

via novinite

See also the one from Standart:

from Standart

Now the report does mention the tomb was ‘stumbled’ upon, and clearly this doesn’t look like a conventional tomb (entrance?), but it’s certainly ‘different’, so how come no one seems to have been curious about this before? (perhaps it was buried?)

See also:

Thracian Ruler Buried in Perperikon 3000 Years Ago | Standart

In Case the Squirrels in Your Area are Hungry …

The subject line is pretty much all the commentary this one needs, although I’m still trying to figure out how the subject of the talk mentioned connects to the info given in the last line:

An attempt to track down the mythical city of Atlantis – the perennial debate – will be made during a talk on Saturday that should attract the believers and the sceptics alike.

Delivered by medical historian Charles Savona-Ventura, Malta: Echoes Of Plato’s Island Atlantis is a review of the story of the destroyed city state and attempts to narrow down its location, correlating the Classical Atlantis texts to the archaeological, biogeographical and geological features of the Maltese-pelagic archipelago during the Copper Age period.

In his paper, Prof. Savona-Ventura maintains that “all the evidence seems to support the fact that some historical reality lies behind Plato’s story”, which traced the catastrophic event that affected the Mediterranean world.

The possible locality for Atlantis has been hotly debated and Prof. Savona-Venture says the problem lies with interpreting Plato’s description about “an island situated in front of the straits which are… called the Pillars of Hercules”. Today, many assume that these refer to the Straits of Gibraltar but Classical writers confirm their presence in the Gulf of Sidra, off the Northern coast of Africa, placing Plato’s island right in the middle of the Mediterranean, straddling two seas.

In his talk, the author points out that the ideal candidates for the remnants of Atlantis are the Maltese and Pelagian islands. He presents his research to prove the point, including geological and biogeographical evidence that suggests the central Mediterranean region south of Sicily was once composed of a large landmass.

Prof. Savona-Ventura explains how this landmass was broken up and submerged by a series of massive volcanic eruptions and tectonic movements, probably in the late centuries of the third millennium BC, leaving only fragments in the form of the Maltese archipelago and the Pelagian islands.

“A strong case can be further made to culturally associate these islands with Plato’s Atlantikos,” he says. In fact, his talk highlights that many features of Malta’s megalithic culture have close parallels to the culture attributed by Plato to “the Atlantoi of Atlantikos”.

The talk is being organised to raise funds to purchase a defibrillator for the Special Rescue Group’s ambulance. It will be held at the Dolmen Hotel in Buġibba at 7.30 p.m.

• Another attempt to locate the mythical city of Atlantis | Times of Malta

Citanda: Plato’s Pop Culture Problem

By way of captatio benevolentiae:

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato.

• Plato’s Pop Culture Problem, and Ours – NYTimes.com.