Bulgarian Bust Followup: It Ain’t Aphrodite
One of the things we posted t’other day detailed the bust of a smuggling ring in Bulgaria who/which had in its possession a two-metre sculpture of Aphrodite. Today Novinite suggests there are questions about that identification: The 2-meter antique statue, which was found buried in the back yard of a Bulgarian village house belonging to [...]
Ozzy’s Classical DNA
This is typical … of the myriad versions of this story — about Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA revealing links to Neanderthals and assorted others, the one I happened to actually read (and post on Facebook) missed out on a Classical connection. Of course the Daily Mail had the part I missed, inter alia: The researchers discovered [...]
More Decapitated Roman Remains
… but this time, from Scotland, and without any of the usual attendant sensationalism. Indeed … the decapitation is mentioned only in passing. From the Scotsman: IT IS a major public sector building project which has been delayed, causing headaches for bosses and the public. But it is decapitated skeletons and 2000-year-old forts rather than [...]
Bits of the ‘Lava Treasure’ Recovered by French Police
From Reuters: French police said on Wednesday they had seized a significant portion of an ancient Roman treasure that was discovered more than two decades ago by Corsican divers who became rich by secretly selling it off. The seizure is the latest chapter in the exploits of a then young Corsican and two friends who [...]
Callimachus Nike Monument ‘Restored’
From the ANA: The Nike Monument erected in honour of the ancient military commander Callimachus after the Battle of Marathon, its various surviving shards reassembled for the first time to resemble the form they would have had in antiquity, was unveiled in the new Acropolis Museum on Tuesday by Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Geroulanos. [...]
Spears and Lohan as Iphigenia?
This is kind of interesting, and I might have to track this book down … from an interview in Newsweek with Tom Payne about his book Fame, inter alia: You bring up the theme of sacrifice—for example, you link Britney Spears’s meltdown with the ritual killing of Iphigenia, who, legend has it, was sacrificed so [...]
d.m. Yannis Sakellarakis
From Athens News: Professor Yannis Sakellarakis was born in Athens in 1936. He studied at the University of Athens and read for a PhD at Heidelberg University. He was an instructor at the universities of Athens, Heidelberg, and Hamburg. He gave lectures and presented papers in symposiums and conferences around the world, including Oslo and [...]
A Major Bulgarian Bust
From the Sofia News Agency … it would be nice to have photos of some of this stuff: Bulgarian police have shattered a crime group trafficking archaeological finds, including breath-taking items such as 2-meter marble statue of Aphrodite. The organized crime group carried out illegal archaeological digs at the ancient Roman city of Ulpia Oescus [...]
JOB: Greek Art @ BU (TT)
Seen on various lists (please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!) Boston University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture invites applications and nominations for a tenure-track position as assistant professor of Greek art and architecture to begin September 1, 2011 (pending final budgetary approval). Ph.D. required; teaching [...]
d.m. Honor Frost
From the Telegraph: During a career that began in the 1950s, she led many excavations in the Mediterranean and was noted for her skills as an illustrator and her work on the technicalities of ancient boat-building and nautical equipment, particularly the use of stone anchors and their typology. Among her most important projects was an [...]
Lady Baba Teaches the Imperfect
Via Francesca Tronchin … this originally was presented at the LJCL meeting apparently: … if I were starting Latin now, I’d probably buy into this … I’m a bit old school, though, and still can hear Dr Yardley’s Cleesesque bam, bas, bat, bamus, batis, bant whenever I’m messing with the imperfect … Update (milliseconds later) [...]
This Day in Ancient History: Ante diem iv kalendas novembres
Ante diem iv kalendas novembres ludi Victoriae Sullanae (day 4)– games held in honour of Victoria commemorating Sulla’s defeat of the Samnites in 82 B.C. 1729 — birth of James Boswell (biographer of Johnson)
This Day in Ancient History: ante diem vi kalendas novembres
ante diem vi kalendas novembres 97 A.D. – The emperor Nerva adopts the future emperor Trajan 312 A.D – Battle of the Milvian Bridge; Constantine I has a vision and defeats Maxentius to become sole emperor [n.b. oddly, in all my years of doing This Day in Ancient History in one form or another [...]
Agrigento Youth at the Getty
Image via Wikipedia From a Getty mailing that just landed in my box: The Agrigento Youth, one of the masterpieces of the Museo Archeologico Regionale di Agrigento in southwestern Sicily, goes on view today at the Getty Villa in a gallery devoted to images of athletes and athletic competition (Gallery 211). On loan to the [...]
This Day in Ancient History: ante diem vi kalendas novembres
ante diem vi kalendas novembres ludi Victoriae Sullanae (day 2) — games held in honour of Victoria commemorating Sulla’s defeat of the Samnites in 82 B.C. 43 B.C. — Marcus Junius Brutus commits suicide in the wake of the defeat at Philippi (by one reckoning) 113 A.D. — the emperor Trajan departs from Rome for [...]
This Day in Ancient History: ante diem vii kalendas novembres
ante diem vii kalendas novembres ludi Victoriae Sullanae (day 1) — games held in honour of Victoria commemorating Sulla’s defeat of the Samnites in 82 B.C. 1656 B.C. — Noah enters the ark (this must be Bishop Ussher again) 31 A.D. — suicide of Apicata, wife of the disgraced Praetorian Praefect Sejanus ca 250 A.D. [...]
This Day in Ancient History: ante diem viii kalendas novembres
ante diem viii kalendas novembres 322 B.C. — death of Demosthenes (by one reckoning) 237 A.D. — martyrdom of Daria and Chrysanthus 250 A.D. — martyrdom of Minias 286 A.D. — martyrdom of twin saints Crispin and Crispian
Also Seen: Defeat of Alesia
I think we get a bit of insight into Rupert Murdoch’s mindset when we read things like this: Nicknamed after Julius Caesar’s victorious siege of Gallic forces in 52 B.C., Rupert Murdoch’s “Project Alesia” was supposed to be his attack against Google News, which he’s always seen as a content-thieving enterprise. [more] via Rupert Murdoch [...]
Talking About Ancient Vampires
This sounds like it would have been very interesting to attend: These days, when an event is billed as vampire related, one might expect the target audience to be mostly made up of adolescent girls. Not so for the considerable crowd that turned out to the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s Rainey Auditorium on [...]
Also Seen: Getting a Classical Education in Italy
The Wall Street Journal had an item of interest … an article comparing US and Italian education systems penned by an ‘urban professional’ from the US working in Rome. Here’s the excerpt that caught my eye: The pedagogy is old-fashioned, with lots of memorization: the despised “rote learning” that American educators have been warning against [...]
