Sarah Bond (via Twitter) just made a remark in passing that reminded me that I had come across an interesting set of Youtube videos which show you how to copy hairstyles on assorted Roman statuary. We’ve blogged about the Caryatid Hairstyling Project in the past, so this post can add to your coiffing repertoire: … [...]

From an opinion piece in the Evening Standard: My grandfather, who tutored classics to secondary school pupils after he retired, was horrified to discover that at a top boys’ school, GCSE Latin candidates were advised to learn an English translation of their set texts off by heart, rather than translate the passage from the Latin [...]

An excerpt from a review-article in the New Criterion of D.S.. Carne-Ross, Classics and Translation: That revolution in our notion of a translator’s work has altered both the course of English literature and the place of the Classics in our culture. I can point to two concrete effects. First, readers are now far less critical [...]

From a piece in the Toronto Star, occasioned by the closure of some libraries: Another autodidact remembers playing sports in a freezing rainstorm and being shouted at by his Latin teacher, “Never give up! Stop looking so miserable! Remember the Aeneid!” Who was “Enid,” he wondered. And of course he reads Virgil’s Aeneid now and [...]

Adrian Murdoch continues his series with the guy I always thought was the quintessential Roman emperor for some reason (and no, I really can’t explain why I thought that …): #21 Caracalla: Emperors of Rome

ante diem x kalendas junias Tubilustrium — a purification of the battle trumpets which, like the one which occurred in March, was designed to prepare the troops for war (perhaps … this tubilustrium is somehow connected with the following) Festival of Vulcan 1270 B.C. — Pierre Henri-Archer suggests this day for the fall of Troy [...]

As many of my readers know, I am very active on Twitter and Facebook; Facebook doesn’t seem to get a reaction from people any more, but people often wonder what the point of Twitter is. When I do tell people I’m on Twitter, the “I really don’t care what you had for breakfast” reaction is [...]

Sorry … couldn’t resist: Generate your own memes here …

Not sure how many folks have seen the scattered mentions of the Nero exhibition at the Colosseum that have popped up in various RSS and Twitter feeds, but Martin Conde has a link to the exhibition catalog (as a pdf) as part of his flickr photostream (look for the pdf link about half way down, [...]

The other day we mentioned that Sotheby’s catalog for their upcoming antiquities auction is up and, as might be expected, so is Christie’s. Christie’s, though, has a few items which catch my eye (although all are interesting — whenever these things come out, I am always amazed at how much ‘stuff’ we actually do have [...]

Plenty o’ ClassCon in an interview at BoingBoing with productivity/lifestyle guru Tim Ferriss, e.g.: I came to Seneca by looking at military strategies. A lot of military writing is based on stoic philosophical principles. The three cited sources are Marcus Aurelius and his book Meditations, which was effectively a war campaign journal. The second is [...]

T’other day we mentioned an item wherein some folks got together in New York and retried Socrates … Time Magazine actually devotes quite a bit of space to the trial itself … here’s what you didn’t see in our previous piece; this actually looks like fun (Bogdanos! Wolfe! Celebulawyers!): [...] So the case went back [...]

In various posts in the past — usually ones associated with reportage about spurious claims — I have often pointed out that the folks involved have titles (usually something like “historian” or “archaeologist” or whatever) which they really have no legitimate claim to have (although one might cynically observe no one claims to be a [...]

I’m sure regular readers of rogueclassicism are familiar with the Ancient World Open Bibliographies Project … we regularly post links to bibliographies which are part of that (see the next post, e.g.). I know you all find such things useful and there are perhaps some of you who are thinking, “Hey, rogueclassicist, I’d love to [...]

Bibliographies: Papyrology | Ancient World Open Bibliographies.

I know I’m going to be swamped for the next while and probably won’t get a chance to comment on any of the items in Sotheby’s upcoming antiquities auction (June 11), so you might want to peruse the online catalogue for yourself. There are a handful of red figure items, a few heads, a few [...]

… but this time in Bulgaria … from Novinite: A temple of Ancient Greek goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone has been discovered by a team of Bulgarian archaeologists near the town of Sozopol on the Black Sea. The archaeological team of Prof. Krastina Panayotova found the Ancient Greek temple Tuesday during excavations on the [...]

I’m anxiously waiting for Chasing Aphrodite (about the Getty and its acquisitions policy in the past) to show up at a bookstore I frequent (or as an ebook), but until then, I can listen to things on NPR: ‘Chasing Aphrodite’ And Other Dirty Art World Deals Transcript of the audio segment here …

Seen on Twitter: President Woodrow Wilson was made a citizen of ancient Rome in 1919 by King Emmanuel. Crazy Virginians. We love our antiquity.— Sarah Bond (@SarahEBond) May 17, 2011

ante diem xvi kalendas iunias 303 A.D. — martyrdom of Heradius 1510 — death of Botticelli (Birth of Venus, among other Classical subjects) 1902 — discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism

Somewhat strange item from the Greek Reporter: The Federal Court of New York has acquitted Socrates after 2,410 years. During a historic trial, with ancient Greek characteristics and contemporary views, presented from their legal and humoristic side at the same time, hundreds of people had the chance to experience a wonderful “performance” of the truth, [...]