Okay, okay … I know yesterday I was doubting whether that pot in a London (Ontario) museum was Roman, but after watching a zillion folks trying to figure it out yesterday and today on Twitter and Facebook, it suddenly struck me: it’s an octopus trap. Here’s a detail from a famous fishing mosaic in the [...]

Deep in my ‘to blog’ file is an item clipped from the Telegraph, inter alia: Polar bears have been kept in menageries for millennia. The Egyptian king Ptolemy II kept one in Alexandria in the third century bc. via: Ten facts about polar bears To which I naturally responded, “Whaaaaaaa?” … some poking around, though, [...]

Don’t buy this for a second, but we should probably put it on record in case it pops up again (and it’s fun to say ‘Samoan Minoan’): SAMOAN MINOANS FROM ANCIENT CRETE: The Origin of Polynesia | Scoop News.

Very interesting item from Spiegel, although there does seem to be some ‘playing to the crowd’ in this one: When the prefect Flavius Cerialis hosted a banquet at Vindolanda, a Roman fort in what is now northern England, the aroma of grilled chicken, goose and venison, seasoned with pepper from India, filled the air. Plenty [...]

The Classics Confidential folks talk with Christopher Lillington-Martin about his work with Procopius:

We mentioned Vladimir Putin’s little aquatic adventure at Phanagora t’other day, and it (the ‘adventure’, not our mention) garnered quite a bit of media attention. Rosemary Joyce has a nice oped on the whole spectacle, which concludes with some interesting views on archaeology in Russia nowadays: [...] Nationalist politics puts a special spin on the [...]

From Hurriyet (with some egregious typos in regards to names): New excavation work in the ancient city of Tlos in Muğla’s Fethiye district has unearthed several ancient sculptures of Roman emperors. The archaeological team found sculptures of Roman emperors Hadrian; Antonius Pius and his daughter Faistinaminor; Mareus Aurellus as well as the Goddess Issis, according [...]

Interesting article by Christopher Krebs (of A Most Dangerous Book fame) in History Today: via Tacitus: The Continuing Message | History Today. … responding/reconsidering this item from back in 1981 in the same publication by Irene Coltman Brown: Tacitus and A Space for Freedom

ante diem xiv kalendas septembres Vinalia — the second major wine festival of this name celebrated by the Romans 43 B.C. — the future emperor Octavian enters his first consulship; Octavian’s adoption by Julius Caesar formally recognized 14 A.D. — Augustus dies at Nola 232 A.D. — birth of the future emperor Probus 304 A.D. [...]