rogueclassicism

Also Seen: Marcus Aurelius – Read Him!

Not bad item from the Huffington Post … nothing most of our readers wouldn’t already know, but still worth taking a look at:

• Jesse Kornbluth: Marcus Aurelius, Dead for 2,000 Years, Can Set You Straight Today | Huffington Post.

Emperors of Rome: Diadumenian

Adrian Murdoch’s series continues with the first of several kiddie emperors:

#23 Diadumenian: Emperors of Rome

New Issue of CANE Newsletter

Ed DeHoratius posted this on the Latinteach list:

Just wanted to let you know that the new issue of CANE’s newsletter is
available via download from the CANE website (which, if you haven’t seen it
yet, has been beautifully redesigned by Roger Travis of UConn:
http://www.caneweb.org). There is a very amusing article on a classicist
running the Athens marathon on the 2500th anniversary of the battle as well
as an innovative (and successful) JCL fundraiser, among others. Enjoy.

Here’s a direct link to the pdf version of the newsletter

Also Seen: Bibliographies on the Roman Army, Roads and Imperial Cult

At the Ancient World Open Bibliographies page:

• Bibliographies: Roman Army, Roads, and Imperial Cult | Ancient World Open Bibliographies.

Malta Classics Association

Speaking of Malta (see next item), Joseph Anthony Debono writes to inform us that the Malta Classics Association now has a web presence:

• Malta Classics Association

Pondering the Xlendi Shipwreck

From the Independent (Malta):

Outside Xlendi Bay, near the fort, is a spit of land with some salt pans at its tip. The cliff face right outside that promontory descends from just a few metres under sea level to an awesome 60 metres and there, right under the cliff, lies the remains of a Roman vessel that was shipwrecked there around the time of the Punic Wars.

Last Wednesday, an extremely interested audience at Palazzo Santa Sofia in Mdina listened to a graphic account of an expedition conducted on the remains 50 years ago.

The speaker was Professor John Woods. Known internationally due to his expertise in oceanography, for which he has held the professorial chairs in Southampton, Kiel and London, he is the founder of the UK National Oceanographic Centre at Southampton. His research has focused on the physics of the upper ocean and on theoretical plankton ecology. He is emeritus professor of Oceanography and Complex Systems at Imperial College London.

Prof. Woods has had a key role in establishing the contribution that the ocean makes to climate change and has promoted these ideas through membership of international committees such as the World Climate Research Programme, the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (which he co-chaired) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (for which he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Climate change).

Fifty years ago, he led the project to survey the Xlendi Roman wreck. He had a blue chip team of advisers, including the world-renowned marine archaeologist Joan du Plat Taylor, director of archaeology at the Malta National Museum at that time, David Trump, and Capt. Olof Frederick Gollcher.

Those were early days for marine archaeology, certainly at those depths, and Prof. Woods’ team experimented with some rudimentary yet effective help from the RAF, as well as from Martini Rossi, which sponsored the dive.

Interestingly, the dive site was (or perhaps is, for the remains are still there) blocked by rock falls from the cliff, maybe due to the 1693 earthquake.

Underneath the boulders, the team found and rescued a number of amphorae which it examined with a view to obtaining some information about the vessel. In those times, amphorae were never mass produced. On the contrary, each one shows the vineyard, or producer, from which it came.

The amphorae on the vessel are all different. This puzzled the team for quite some time, until they surmised that the amphorae were all second-hand and had been filled with victuals. From this, the team came up with the hypothesis that the vessel was a supply ship, manned by around five seamen, sent to replenish the Roman garrison with much-needed supplies.

The 1961 survey was the first to scientifically survey the scene. Prof. Woods appeared to believe that no one had studied the remains that were brought to the surface by his team, but his listeners helped put him right, and Professor Anthony Bonanno informed him that a number of theses have been written on the subject.

The 1961 expedition left no detailed record of the dive, apart from a short report, and some notes on the expedition seem to have been lost over the years. And there were people in Prof. Woods’ audience who disagreed that it was a Roman vessel, because transport around the Mediterranean was normally undertaken by non-Roman vessels.

• The tale of a Roman vessel, for 22 centuries at Xlendi | Independent.

Perl and Latin

Allan Terry sent along this link (thanks!)  to a paper by Damian Conway which concludes, inter alia, that “Latin is a surprisingly good fit for Perl.”

• via Lingua::Romana::Perligata — Perl for the XXIimum Century.

Greek Paleography Threatened at the University of Pisa

Seen on the Classicists list:

Greek Paleography has a longstanding tradition of studies at the University of Pisa, where courses held at the Department of Classics have traditionally catered also for students of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Its teaching will be cancelled from next Academic Year. Please consider signing the petition to save the program:

http://www.firmiamo.it/salviamo-la-paleografia-greca-a-pisa

CONF: Andreas Alfoeldi in the Twenty-First Century

Seen on the Classicists list:

Andreas Alföldi in the Twenty-First Century

University of Wales Trinity Saint David

31 August – 2September, 2011

Professor Andreas Alföldi (1895-1981) was an eminent ancient historian, numismatist, archaeologist and epigraphist. His scholarly output was not only immense, it was also extremely diverse, covering archaic Rome, late Republican Rome, the provinces of the Roman Empire (especially the Danube region) and late antiquity. His work was marked by extraordinary erudition, an ability to draw upon all manner of evidence no matter how disparate, and also by great fertility and originality.

Alföldi’s successful academic career took him from Budapest to Debrecen, and then back to Budapest, where he taught until 1947. He subsequently went into exile on account of the political situation in Hungary. He first moved to Switzerland, where he held professorships at Berne and Basle; then, in 1956, he moved to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, where he worked until his death. He maintained an impressive level of scholarly productivity until his final days, despite the trauma of exile and various health problems.

Alföldi died in 1981. 2011 seems the perfect year in which to revisit and reconsider the rich and diverse output of this extraordinary scholar, and also to consider the impact that his own times had on that output. Almost all of the most prominent ancient historians of the twentieth century have received comprehensive scholarly attention. Numerous conferences and publications have already engaged with the careers of other illustrious scholars, such as K. Beloch, A. Momigliano, E. Pais and R. Syme, and the work of G. De Sanctis and M. Rostovtzeff has almost become the object of a sub-discipline within the history of classical studies. While a few important works have appeared over the years (such as K. Christ, Neue Profile der Alten Geschichte, 1990, 8-62 and L. Borhy (ed.), “Von der Entstehung Roms bis zur Auflösung des Römerreiches”: Konferenz zum Gedenken des hundertsten Geburtstages von Andreas Alföldi (1895-1981), 1999), it remains fair to say that comparatively little attention, and almost none in the English-speaking world, has been paid to the no less important scholarship of Alföldi.

This conference aims to address this imbalance, to draw renewed attention to the importance of Alföldi’s work, to discuss the areas in which it made an impact and those in which it is now superseded, and to explore how the historical context in which any scholar works can sometimes be just as important as the historical context of the evidence with which s/he works. One of the main purposes of the conference is also to revisit some of the central problems with which Alföldi’s work engaged. While some of his conclusions may not have stood the test of time, his pioneering approach of drawing not only on the literary evidence, but also the archaeological and iconographic, has remained fundamental to subsequent scholarship.

List of confirmed speakers and provisional titles of papers:

· Géza Alföldy, University of Heidelberg: ‘Andreas Alföldi and the Crisis of the Third Century AD’.

· Lucretiu Birliba, University of Iasi: ‘Andreas Alföldi and the Dacians’.

· Anthony Birley, University of Düsseldorf and University of Newcastle: ‘Andreas Alföldi and the Historia Augusta’.

· Dominique Briquel, University of Paris-Sorbonne: ‘The origins of Lavinium before Aeneas’.

· Tim Cornell, University of Manchester: ‘Alföldi, Early Latium and the Latin League’.

· Attila Ferenczi, Eötvös Loránd University: ‘Andreas Alföldi in the history of classical scholarship in Hungary’.

· Peter Forisek, University of Debrecen: ‘Alföldi at the University of Debrecen’.

· Peter Franz Mittag, University of Cologne: ‘Andreas Alföldi and the Contorniates’.

· Mark Humphries, Swansea University: ‘Andreas Alföldi and Late Antiquity’.

· Frederic Hurlet, University of Nantes: ‘Andreas Alföldi et Auguste : une contribution à l’étude de la naissance du pouvoir impérial et de sa representation’.

· Frank Kolb, University of Tubingen: ‘Alföldi, Caesar und die Tradition der deutschen Caesar-Forschung’.

· Arnaldo Marcone, University of Rome III: ‘Alföldi and Rostovzeff’.

· Arpad Nagy, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and University of Pécs: ‘“Der iranische Weltriese”: Alföldi’s interpretation sixty years later’.

· James Richardson, University of Wales Trinity Saint David: ‘Andreas Alföldi and the adventure(s) of the Vibenna Brothers’.

· Federico Santangelo, University of Newcastle: ‘Saturnia regna revisited’.

· Peter Wiseman, University of Exeter: Title TBC.

The conference will take place on the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. For information on how to reach Lampeter, please visit: http://www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/theuniversity/location/travellingtolampeter/

A registration form will be available shortly. In the meantime, please direct any questions to the conference organisers:

James Richardson (University of Wales Trinity Saint David): j.richardson AT tsd.ac.uk

Federico Santangelo (University of Newcastle): f.santangelo AT newcastle.ac.uk

CONF: The Playful Plutarch

Seen on the Classicists list:

Irony and Humour as Imperial Greek Literary Strategies:

The Playful Plutarch
12-13 July 2011
Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles’, University of Oxford.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 12th July 2011

9:00-9:30: Registration

9:30-10:00: Opening words/ welcome:
Christopher Pelling (University of Oxford)
Eran Almagor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem/ University of Leipzig)
Katerina Oikonomopoulou (University of Patras)

10:00-10:45 Session 1: A Playful Plutarch?

Introduction: Frances Titchener (Utah State University)
Luc van der Stockt (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven): ‘Verbal Wit and Practical Jokes. Conditions for and Limits to Humour according to Plutarch.’

10:45- 11:15: Coffee break

11:15 – 12:45 Session 2: Reading Humour

11:15 – 11:45: Eran Almagor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem/ University of Leipzig): ‘The Importance of Being Ironic: Irony and the Unreliable Narrator in Plutarch’s Lives.’
11:45 – 12:15: Mark Beck (University of South Carolina): ‘The Serio-Comical Life of Antony: A Bakhtinian Reading.’
12:15 – 12:45: Alexei Zadorozhny (University of Liverpool): ‘Funny Stuff: Sympotic Teasing and Ethopoetic Strategies in the Banquet of the Seven Sages.’

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Session 3: Plays with Eros

14:00 – 14:30: Aristoula Georgiadou (University of Patras): ‘Plutarch, a Serious Jester? The Case of the Amatorius.’
14:30 – 15:00: Toni Badnall (University of Oxford): ‘Do as I do, not as I say? Tongue-in-cheek Humour in Plutarch’s Amatorius.’
15:00 – 15:30: Aislinn Melchior (University of Puget Sound): ‘’Whose Dog are you?˝ Moral Metabiography and Named Slaves in Plutarch’s Roman Lives’

15:30 – 16:00: Coffee break

16:00–17:30 Session 4: Plutarchan Humoristic Discourse in its Imperial Context

16:00-16:30: Judith Mossman (University of Nottingham): ‘The Humour in Homer: Plutarch’s Gryllus and the Odyssey.’
16:30-17:00: Jason König (University of St. Andrews), ‘Sympotic Smiles and Sympotic Laughter in Plutarch and Macrobius.’
17:00-17:30: Katerina Oikonomopoulou (University of Patras): ‘Imperial Discourses of Laughter in Plutarch and Other Second Sophistic Authors.’

17:30 – 18:00 Tea break

18:00 – 18:45 Session 5: Playing with Plutarch

Christopher Pelling (University of Oxford): ‘Plutarchan Humour: The Story so Far.’
Donald Russell (University of Oxford): ‘A Plutarchan Fragment.’

18:45-20:00 Drinks reception

20:00 Conference dinner

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

9:00–10:30 Session 6: Laughter Between Philosophy and Psychology

9:00- 9:30: Anastasios Nikolaidis (University of Crete): ‘Philosophers do not laugh: Plutarch’s Sense of Humour as Evidence of his Platonism.’
9:30- 10:00: Maria Vamvouri Ruffy (University of Lausanne): ‘Plutarque et le Contrôle du Rire.’
10:00 – 10:30: Katarzyna Jazdzewska (Ohio State University): ‘Communicating through Laughter: Plutarch’s Symposion of the Seven Sages.’

10:30 – 11:00: Coffee break

11:00- 12:30 Session 7: Plutarchan Learned Plays

11:00-11:30 Michael Paschalis (University of Crete): ‘Etymology and Word-play in Plutarch.’
11:30- 12:00: Hendrik Müller-Reineke (University of Göttingen/Corpus Christi College Oxford): ‘Plutarch’s Collection of Apophtegmata as a Source of Educated Wit and Humour.’
12:00-12:30: Jared Hudson (UC Berkeley): ‘Ridentem dicere verum: Humour in Plutarch’s Etymologies.’

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00 Session 8: Wit, Humour and the Plutarchan Statesman

13:30 – 14:00: Delfim Leão (University of Coimbra): ‘The Playful Solon and the Sneaky Athenians: Plutarch on the Salamis Dossier and on the Seisachtheia.’
14:00- 14:30: Mallory Monaco (Princeton University): ‘Folly and Dark Humour in the Life of Demetrius.’
14:30-15:00 Susan Jacobs (Columbia University): ‘Humour in Plutarch’s Lives: A Tool of the Statesman’s Craft.’

15:00- 15:30 Coffee Break

15:30- 17:00: Session 9: Irony and the Comic between Text and Intertext
15:30-16:00: Sophia Xenophontos (University of Oxford): ‘Plutarch’s Use of Comedy in the Lives of Pericles and Fabius Maximus.’
16:00-16:30: Michele Lucchesi (University of Oxford): ‘Laughter in Plutarch’s Sulla.’
16:30-17:00: Johan Vekselius (University of Lund): ‘Humour and Ironic Tears in Plutarch’s Lives.’

17:10 – 17:40 Session 10: The Playful Plutarch

Closing discussion, chaired by Christopher Pelling
Closing Words by Eran Almagor and Katerina Oikonomopoulou

For more information, please contact the conference organizers:
Dr Eran Almagor (eranalmagor AT gmail.com)
Dr Katerina Oikonomopoulou (aikaterini.oikonomopoulou AT linacre.oxon.org)

From the Italian Press: Roman Inscription from San Magno

An interesting inscription from San Magno mentioned in Il Faro … it includes this photo (not sure how long this will be available):

The gist of what follows is that the inscription was found during the renovations of a church and is a dedication of a certain Gaius Pantuleius Epigonus, freedman of Gaiud Pantuleius, and one of the Augustales. Although a date doesn’t seem to be given (I might have missed it), there is ‘excitement’ because this lends support to the local origins of the Pantuleii, who would become prominent under Marcus Aurelius.

Il Sindaco di Fondi Salvatore De Meo, l’Assessore alla Cultura Lucio Biasillo ed il funzionario della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio Nicoletta Cassieri rendono noto che una nuova importante iscrizione è andata ad aggiungersi al patrimonio epigrafico di Fondi, fornendo elementi di notevole interesse per la conoscenza storica e archeologica della città romana, soprattutto sotto l’aspetto dell’ordinamento sociale e istituzionale.

La scoperta è avvenuta nei giorni scorsi nella zona di San Magno durante le operazioni preliminari al consolidamento dei resti del piccolo edificio di culto cristiano di epoca altomedievale recentemente portato in luce presso il Casale Mosillo. Tale intervento conservativo è promosso dall’Assessorato all’Ambiente della Regione Lazio in stretta collaborazione con la Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio, rispettivamente sotto la direzione di Claudio Spagnardi e il coordinamento scientifico del funzionario di zona Nicoletta Cassieri.

“L’iscrizione – come evidenzia la stessa dottoressa Cassieri – tracciata in lettere molto curate su una piccola lastra di marmo circondata da una cornice (cm. 40×56 circa) venne riutilizzata nel pavimento del presbiterio della chiesetta, a poche centinaia di metri dal Monastero. Essa conserva una dedica a Caio Pantuleio Epigono, liberto di un Caio Pantuleio non meglio specificato, ricordato in qualità di “Augustale” ossia di membro del collegio addetto al culto dell’imperatore”.

Lo studio è stato appena avviato ma già ad una prima lettura si possono fare alcune osservazioni.
“Innanzitutto – prosegue Cassieri – si tratta di un documento che conferma con certezza a Fondi l’esistenza degli Augustali, potente collegio generalmente composto da ricchi liberti cui erano riservate prerogative che li accostavano per molti versi ai magistrati locali. Inoltre, la rarità del gentilizio Pantuleio fuori della nostra città fa propendere per un’origine locale di questa gens che, tra i discendenti di uno dei suoi rami, arriverà ad annoverare nel 172 d.C., durante il regno di Marco Aurelio, addirittura un senatore che fu governatore della Tracia, l’odierna Bulgaria. ‘Epigonus’ è invece il nome che il personaggio aveva da schiavo”.

Nulla è dato sapere sul contesto cui apparteneva l’epigrafe e dunque se provenga da un edificio ubicato nella contrada o se invece vi sia stata trasportata dal centro urbano in una fase di spoglio dei monumenti romani e di reimpiego dei materiali di pregio come il marmo. Meno incerta invece la sua datazione: non oltre gli inizi del II secolo d.C., e ciò per una serie di indizi significativi soprattutto riguardanti i caratteri delle lettere.

“Il pregevole reperto – dichiarano il Sindaco De Meo e l’Assessore alla Cultura Biasillo – andrà ad arricchire la collezione del Museo archeologico cittadino che proprio in questo periodo è in corso di riallestimento, in vista di una sua prossima apertura sotto la supervisione scientifica della Soprintendenza nella persona della dott.ssa Nicoletta Cassieri”.

• Iscrizione romana affiora dal terreno

… I’m not sure what San Magno would have been called in antiquity.

Solon Can’t Come to the Phone Right Now …

Not sure if that headline makes any sense at all; I’ve been waiting for someone to bring this up … from CNBC:

If the secret to understanding a nation lies in understanding its founding, those trying to understand Greece might want to look to Solon.

Solon is the founder of Greek democracy—which is to say he is the founder of democracy altogether. And one of his most famous acts was the repudiation of debt.

When Solon came onto the Greek scene in 6th century BC, Athens was in disarray. Plutarch tells us that strife had engulfed the city, bringing it to the brink of anarchy. The source of this strife was that “all the common people were weighed down with debts they owed to a few rich men,” according to Plutarch.

Making matters worse, debtors who were unable to make payments when they were due were seized and sold into slavery.

A fragment of Solon’s poetry describes a situation in which many of the poor “have arrived in foreign lands/sold into slavery, bound in shameful fetters.”

In 594 BC, Solon was appointed archon of Athens. His solution to his city’s strife was to cancel both public and private debts and end debt slavery.

The freeing of the debt slaves and the cancellation of debt set the stage for the flourishing of the Athenian economy and culture. Freed slaves and unencumbered landowners formed the basis of an agrarian and democratic political culture that gave Greece its military might and helped shape the formation of western civilization.

Listen closely to the protestors in Greece. When they decry austerity plans that “turn workers into slaves,” they are echoing the sentiments of their ancient founder.

• via The Ancient and Noble Greek Tradition of Debt Repudiation – CNBC.

… somewhere along the line, someone needs to say that someone is giving someone else too much credit, then duck for cover …

Strabo Was Right About Piraeus

Tip o’ the pileus (Piraeus?) to Terrence Lockyer for bringing this abstract from Geology to our attention:

The famous Greek geographer Strabo wrote in the first century A.D., that Piraeus was formerly an island and lay ‘over against’ the mainland, from which it got its name. To validate Strabo’s hypothesis, cartographic and historical data were compiled with multiproxy paleoenvironmental analyses and radiocarbon dating from a series of boreholes drilled in the Cephissus coastal plain, southwest of Athens, Greece. The results of this interdisciplinary geoarchaeological research demonstrate the reliability of Strabo’s text by revealing that Piraeus was indeed an island. In early Holocene time, the rocky hill of Piraeus was linked to the mainland of Attica. During the late to final Neolithic Period (4850–3450 B.C.), Piraeus became an island in a shallow marine bay, due to sea-level rise in the Holocene. Between 2850 and 1550 B.C., in the Early and Middle Bronze Age, Piraeus was separated from the mainland by a wide lagoon. In the fifth century B.C., Themistocles, Cimon, and then Pericles connected Athens to Piraeus by building two “long walls” partly built on a residual coastal marsh called the Halipedon. This study reveals an impressive example of past landscape evolution.

• via Piraeus, the ancient island of Athens: Evidence from Holocene sediments and historical archives.

[my problem is that I can't find where Strabo says Piraeus was an island; I'm sure it's there somewhere ...]

Electroformed Reproductions at the Met

Interesting feature up at the Met’s website … here’s a tease:

 The “Mask of Agamemnon” is one of the most famous gold artifacts from the Greek Bronze Age. Found at Mycenae in 1876 by the distinguished archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, it was one of several gold funeral masks found laid over the faces of the dead buried in the shaft graves of a royal cemetery. The most detailed and stylistically distinct mask came to be known as the Mask of Agamemnon, named after the famous king of ancient Mycenae whose triumphs and tribulations are celebrated in Homer’s epic poems and in the tragic plays of Euripides. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s replica of this mask molded by Emile Gilliéron père (manufactured and sold by the Würtemberg Electroplate Company) is an example of an electroformed reproduction, also commonly known as an electrotype—or by the historic term, “galvanoplastic”—reproduction.

Electrotype technique was developed in the nineteenth century and was used to reproduce many different kinds of historic metalworks. It became an important means of disseminating information about historic cultures throughout the world in a time before readily accessible color images and widespread travel. An electrotype reproduction was thought of as a precise replica, even though the method of manufacture and the materials were not the same as those of the original artwork. In A Brief Account of E. Gilliéron’s Beautiful Copies of Mycenaean Antiquities in Galvano-plastic, the sales catalogue for the replicas, they were described as “exact imitations of the objects in Galvano-Plastic, in which the forms, no less than the brilliancy and colours of the metals, are faithfully reproduced.” Gisela M. A. Richter—the eminent Metropolitan Museum curator who was instrumental in the acquisition of many of these reproductions—wrote that the copies were “of sufficient accuracy to give us a vivid idea of the originals.” (more follows)

• via The Mask of Agamemnon: An Example of Electroformed Reproduction of Artworks Made by E. Gilliéron in the Early Twentieth Century.

… the article goes on to describe the process … definitely worth a read.

Possible Classics Dream Job?

I’d probably apply for this if I were in London (although I’m not qualified on the sailing and musical side of things) … from the Evening Standard:

Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband Chris Martin are advertising for a private tutor to teach their children ancient Greek, Latin, French and Spanish.

The American actress and the Coldplay singer, who live in London, also want the teacher to be able to sail and play tennis, as well as be Grade 8 qualified in two musical instruments.

The reward for teaching daughter Apple, seven, and Moses, five, for two to four hours a day will be £60,000 a year, free use of a west London flat and global travel with the family, all expenses paid.

Martin, 34, who has a first-class degree in Greek and Latin, and Paltrow, 38, have placed an advert on the Tutors-International.com website and have already interviewed hopefuls.

A friend of the couple said: “They’re looking for someone with amazing qualifications – fluent in languages, able to play two instruments and sporty.

“It’s likely the tutor will be Oxbridge educated.”

• via Wanted: classics teacher for Gwynnie’s Apple | Evening Standard.

I do hope we find out who does get hired for this …

UPDATE (a few minutes later): if we believe the New York Post, we’re all geniuses: Wanted: Genius to tutor Paltrow and Chris Martin’s kids

UPDATE (the next day): The Daily Mail‘s coverage includes this little bit of provocativity:

In their advert, posted on Tutors-International.com, the couple claimed they decided to seek private tuition because the British education system ‘lacks traditional elements of classical thought and learning’.

• Are Gwyneth and Chris advertising for a £60k-a-year multilingual tutor who can also teach sailing and tennis?

Live Fishtank in the Grado Shipwreck?

An item making the rounds and filling my mailbox: Nature reports on an article in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology:

A Roman ship found with a lead pipe piercing its hull has mystified archaeologists. Italian researchers now suggest that the pipe was part of an ingenious pumping system, designed to feed on-board fish tanks with a continuous supply of oxygenated water. Their analysis has been published online in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

Historians have assumed that in ancient times fresh fish were eaten close to where they were caught, because without refrigeration they would have rotted during transportation. But if the latest theory is correct, Roman ships could have carried live fish to buyers across the Mediterranean Sea.

The wrecked ship, which dates from the second century AD, was discovered six miles off the coast of Grado in northeastern Italy, in 1986. It was recovered in pieces in 1999 and is now held in the Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Grado. A small trade ship around 16.5 metres long, the vessel was carrying hundreds of vase-like containers that held processed fish, including sardines and salted mackerel.

Carlo Beltrame, a marine archaeologist at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Italy, and his colleagues have been trying to make sense of one bizarre feature of the wreck: a lead pipe near the stern that ends in a hole through the hull. The surviving pipe is 1.3 metres long, and 7–10 centimetres in diameter.

The team concludes that the pipe must have been connected to a piston pump, in which a hand-operated lever moves pistons up and down inside a pair of pipes. One-way valves ensure that water is pushed from one reservoir into another. The Romans had access to such technology, although it hasn’t been seen before on their ships, and the pump itself hasn’t been recovered from the Grado wreck.

Archaeologists have previously suggested that a piston pump could have collected bilge water from the bottom of the boat, emptying it through the hole in the hull. But Beltrame points out that chain pumps — in which buckets attached to a looped chain scooped up bilge water and tipped it over the side — were much safer and commonly used for this purpose in ancient times. “No seaman would have drilled a hole in the keel, creating a potential way for water to enter the hull, unless there was a very powerful reason to do so,” he writes.

Another possible use is to pump sea water into the boat, to wash the decks or fight fires. A similar system was used on Horatio Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But Beltrame and his colleagues argue that the Grado wreck wasn’t big enough to make this worthwhile. They say that the ship’s involvement in the fish trade suggests a very different purpose for the pump — to supply a fish tank.

The researchers calculate that a ship the size of the Grado wreck could have held a tank containing around 4 cubic metres of water. This could have housed 200 kilograms of live fish, such as sea bass or sea bream. To keep the fish alive with a constant oxygen supply, the water in the tank would need to be replaced once every half an hour. The researchers estimate that the piston pump could have supported a flow of 252 litres per minute, allowing the water to be replaced in just 16 minutes.

Tracey Rihll, a historian of ancient Greek and Roman technology at Swansea University, UK, cautions that there is no direct evidence for a fish tank. The researchers “dismiss fire-extinguisher and deck-washing functions too easily in my view”, she says. But although no trace of the tank itself remains, Rihll says the pipe could have been used for such a purpose in the ship’s younger days. Literary and archaeological evidence suggests that live fish were indeed transported by the Greeks and Romans “on a small but significant scale”, she adds.

The first-century Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote that parrotfish taken from the Black Sea were transported to the Neopolitan coast, where they were introduced into the sea. And the second- and third-century Greek writer Athenaeus described an enormous ship called the Syracousia, which supposedly had a lead-lined saltwater tank to carry fish for use by the cook.

However, a fish tank on board a small cargo ship such as the Grado wreck might mean that transport of live fish was a routine part of Roman trade, allowing the rich to feast on fish from remote locations or carrying fish shorter distances from farms to local markets.

“It would change completely our idea of the fish market in antiquity,” says Beltrame. “We thought that fish must have been eaten near the harbours where the fishing boats arrived. With this system it could be transported everywhere.”

• via: Roman ship had on-board fish tank | Nature

FWIW, this really doesn’t quite make sense to me, but I’m not in a position to comment because I can’t read the original article, which is horribly, horribly expensive. The Nature piece has a small picture of what the pump + pipes may have looked like and I still don’t get it. The Wikipedia article on maritime hydraulics in antiquity is still ‘in progress’ or whatever and includes this tantalizing concluding paragraph:

This hypothesis has been disputed, since the wooden box protecting a lead pipe along the longitudinal axis of the hull found on the wreck suggest the existence of a bilge well (Oleson and Stein 2007). Previous ships involved in live fish tank transport, entitled navis vivariae, did not employ a hydraulic system, and for this reason the hypothesis proves especially questionable (Boetto 124). For example, one of the wrecks found in Claudius’s harbor at the modern Fiumicino Airport in Italy was a small fish craft dating somewhere around the 2nd century CE. Archaeologists discovered a fish-well in the middle of the ship that used the hole/plump system bored in the bottom of the boat to fill the tank (Boetto 2006). Other than the Grado wreck no other evidence exists of hydraulic systems being used in the fish industry.

… there seems to be a good bibliography there if nothing else, although most items seem to be in the IJNA …

UPDATE (a couple hours later): Thanks to Kristina Killgrove for sending me a copy of the IJNA article, which is full of tech-term goodness. The fish-tank suggestion seems as good as any to me but I can’t help but question the practicality of it. The authors posit a four cubic meter tank on the deck of the ship, with a pump attached to facilitate changing water in the tank. But when would such a tank be practical? A sea-going vessel is going to encounter waves; a tank full of water on deck would be constantly spilling over, no? Even if it had a lid, the pump system would require some way for air to get into  the tank for the pump to work, which would diminish the capacity of the tank. Perhaps — if things are as the authors suggest — this was just for specialized situations. Otherwise,  I think this one falls into the category of possible, but not probable?

… by the way, Kristina Killgrove uses this article as a point of departure for a rather interesting discussion on the evidence for the Roman diet:Bioarchaeology of Roman Seafood Consumption

Mythos325: An Active Learning Project

Folks might be interested in a new blog started up by Greg Schwendner in which he is thinking out loud, as it were, in developing an ‘Active Learning’ workbook for use with Powell’s Classical Myth. If you are new to the concept of active learning (which is probably known by other names as well), you probably should check out his second post first. Other than that, it definitely seems like a project worth following (and commenting on as it goes).