Thomas Varenna has provided a nice update to his previous article at the Bible and Interpretation site on those sketchy lead codices from Jordian. It incorporates a number of recent observations by bibliobloggers and the like and is worth reading as the Jordan Codices facebook page claims it will be having a big announcement soon. Get the update here … and in case you missed the video …
An item of interest:
As you may be aware, the Marathon 2500 Project, has been conducting a year-long virtual lecture series to celebrate the 2,500 year aniversary of the Battle of Marathon. Our final lecture with Professor Paul Cartledge, Chair of Greek Culture at Cambridge University, will be taking place on September 21st (on the “actual” 2,500-year anniversary, as best as we can determine) and we would really appreciate your help with getting the word out with your readers.
Prof. Cartledge will discuss “The Context and Meaning of the Battle of Marathon: Why we have been celebrating the 2,500 year anniversary” by reviewing the yearlong lecture series and answering questions from the global audience. Also participating will by John Marincola, Professor of Classics at Florida State University, James Romm, Professor of Classics at Bard College, and Robert Strassler, publisher of the Landmark series of classics.
The lecture is completely free to join and we have participants from around the world signing up. Details of the event are as follows:
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
1:00PM New York Time
Register here for a toll-free number: http://marathon2500-9.eventbrite.comMore information is also available at http://www.marathon2500.org/, along with podcasts of the previous lectures.
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide, and I hope that you will be able to join us for the lecture, as well.
Best regards,
Josh Kirschner
Member, Marathon2500.org
Image via Wikipedia
idus septembres
Things that caught my eye yesterday:
We mentioned the Roman Orders (in the Renaissance) thing in the Guardian the other day … might as well have the section on Greek orders here as well; might be useful for the tyros in Greek civ class:
Adrian Murdoch continues the series with the only Roman emperor who died as a prisoner of a foreign ruler:
pridiem idus septembres
What I was looking at yesterday afternoon:
Tip o’ the pileus to Barnea Levy Selavan for this item from Opti-cal:
The remains of a harbour city that was one of the most important ports in Ancient Rome is to undergo a major surveying project that will allow for complete verification of its established control points and a new GNSS-based coordinate system.
Ostia Antica, which is sited at the mouth of the Tiber River and is a major Roman archaeological site, was prioritised for the survey by the Superintendent of the Archaeological Heritage of Rome due to its historic importance.
The city was founded in 620 BC as a military base and, as Rome’s importance throughout the Mediterranean grew, became the main emporium of Rome, housing a number of important civic buildings.
The results of the survey will aid with the management and planning of archaeological projects at the site in the future. Surveyors have said that the additional information will help with the preservation of the location’s well-preserved ancient buildings, frescos and mosaics.
Precision surveying equipment will be used to check and enhance the control points that currently exist in the site, and will expand the network of points further into the site.
The project will also be used as something of an educational tool for the future generations of Italian surveyors. The survey will be included in a technical and scientific study examining the use and capabilities of modern surveying equipment and techniques in the preservation or areas of archaeological and cultural importance.
Once complete, the study will be presented to a forthcoming congress of a number of Italy’s universities and its archaeological institutes.
We’re starting to get the first reports … from AFP:
Sweating beneath heavy armour, a group of die-hard archaeology fans brought the Battle of Marathon to life this weekend on the coastal plain where the fate of Europe dramatically changed 2,500 years ago.
Gathering from Europe, North America and Australia, the re-enactors staged a three-day event of combat, archaic culture revival and commemoration at Marathon Bay never before seen in Greece despite its rich archaeological heritage.
For many of the participants, it was also a personal pilgrimage after long years of arduous preparation and unfulfilled hope.
“It’s a dream come true after 10 years,” said Hywel Jones, a printer from Wales who came to Marathon with his wife Stephanie to fight as a Greek hoplite, the heavily armed infantry soldier of ancient Greece.
Most of the re-enactors had spent thousands of euros (dollars) on travel expenses just to get to this small town 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Athens that is better known for the long-distance race held here every year.
They brought with them family members as well as hand-made armour and kit crafted over the years at great personal cost.
“I don’t think I’d be exaggerating to say that standing around is $1 million in kit and travel fare,” said Christian Cameron, a Canadian novelist and former US navy career officer who headed preparations for the event.
“What you see today is the product of 11 years of work,” added Andy Cropper, a university lecturer from England’s Sheffield region and member of a British historical revival association who arrived with several sets of Greek, Persian and Scythian armour in tow.
“It was worth spending the money because it’s such a unique event, as a Greek re-enactor, to be able to be on the field of Marathon,” he told AFP.
The re-enactors initially had to persuade their hosts in Greece that this was the correct moment to commemorate the 2,500-year anniversary of the 490 BC battle in the bay of Marathon.
“Originally everybody thought it was last year, and of course it wasn’t, as there’s no year ‘zero’,” Cropper noted.
Few in number but no less determined, the group showed they meant business from the start, setting up camp near the presumed battlefield, sleeping on straw-filled mattresses and serving up a simple diet of vegetables, fruit, cheese and water in wooden bowls and cups.
Spare armour was quickly put to good use among the combatants as a set of last-minute cancellations and the loss of a large contingent from Bulgaria left the event badly short of Persian adversaries.
“We would have had 15 more hoplites but what we really missed is that the Bulgarians were Persians, and that would have helped us a lot,” Cameron said.
Organisers had initially hoped for a turnout of 200 but had to settle for 50 battle-ready Greek hoplites and a handful of Persian archers.
They were also refused permission from the Greek culture ministry to access archaeological sites such as the tomb of the Athenian warriors slain in the battle, and the ancient Agora and Acropolis in Athens.
But the municipality of Marathon was more amenable, providing logistical support and allowing the group to hold a memorial ceremony to honour the Greek and Persian fallen at the battle’s victory monument.
“I think the town would like us to come back every year,” Cameron said, though the cost to the participants makes an immediate re-run unlikely.
“I think it would be three years,” he notes. “They want to do it again, we’ll do it better. Fifty people is a start, 500 is an achievable goal.”
One of history’s most famous military engagements, the Battle of Marathon is also one of the first to be recorded by chroniclers.
It gave its name to the world’s premier long-distance running event, inaugurated during the first modern Olympics in 1896 in honour of an Athenian messenger believed to have run back to the city to deliver news of the victory, and subsequently dying of exhaustion.
Although only the citizen armies of Athens and Platea fought against the Persian levies that day, the battle galvanised the warring Greek city-states and demonstrated that the Persian Empire, the superpower of the age, could be defeated.
“People argue that it is the battle where the Greeks saved Western civilisation. People can equally argue that it was the moment at which a great civilisation, the Persian civilisation, lost control of the West,” Cameron said.
… we’ll add any others that come to my attention below
The previous item on the use of Roman architectural orders during the Renaissance, it turns out, comes from a special section in the Guardian all about Renaissance architecture in the blessed isle. Another item in the series mentions in passing:
Ben Jonson lived most of his life as a non-paying guest in the houses of the gentry. In the poem To Penshurst (c1600), he leaves us a record of Penshurst Place as not “built to envious show” but with walls “of country stone”. It praises not a monument, but a household that serves its community, welcomes guests and, most importantly, provides a good table. The literary model for such an exercise was the Roman poet Horace, but the subject was homegrown English. To Penshurst spawned a genre of estate poems that lasted well into the 18th century.
… which was something I was unaware of. Some quick Googling suggests the genre of estate poetry did have numerous ancient influences besides Horace, but a recent work which caught my eye is Jonson, Horace and the Classical Tradition by Victoria Moul (in preview version at Google Books). The blurb therefrom reads:
The influence of the Roman poet Horace on Ben Jonson has often been acknowledged, but never fully explored. Discussing Jonson’s Horatianism in detail, this study also places Jonson’s densely intertextual relationship with Horace’s Latin text within the broader context of his complex negotiations with a range of other ‘rivals’ to the Horatian model including Pindar, Seneca, Juvenal and Martial. The new reading of Jonson’s classicism that emerges is one founded not upon static imitation, but rather a lively dialogue between competing models – an allusive mode that extends into the seventeenth-century reception of Jonson himself as a latter-day ‘Horace’. In the course of this analysis, the book provides fresh readings of many of Jonson’s best known poems – including ‘Inviting a Friend to Dinner’ and ‘To Penshurst’ – as well as a new perspective on many lesser known pieces, and a range of unpublished manuscript material.
… will have to track that one down, I think (and refresh my knowledge of Ben Jonson from that Renaissance Poetry course I took lo those many years ago) …
Somewhat peripheral to our purview, but interesting in a nachlebenesque sort of way is an item from the Guardian:
The classical “orders” describe a kind of architectural grammar, first developed in Greek architecture then adapted and extended by the Romans. Essentially, the orders determine the shape, proportion and decoration of the basic architectural elements: the vertical, supporting column (with its base, shaft and capital) and the horizontal, supported entablature (divided into three registers, from bottom to top: the architrave, frieze and cornice).
In a satisfyingly symmetrical fashion, the orders were rediscovered and codified in reverse, with a rediscovery of the Roman orders during the Renaissance, only for these to then be shunned in the 18th-century by purists who dug deeper and unearthed what they deemed to be the purer Greek orders.
The Roman orders, as defined by High Renaissance theorists from Leon Battista Alberti to Sebastiano Serlio, comprised the Greek orders revisited (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian) plus their own additions (Tuscan and Composite). They based their definitions on the writings of Roman architect Vitruvius and on first-hand observations of the buildings the latter described in his foundational first-century BC treatise, De Architectura (Ten Books of Architecture). Each successive generation came to the orders with fresh eyes and defined them anew. The 16th-century Italian architect, theorist and archaeologist Andrea Palladio was the most influential, as his I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (Four Books of Architecture, 1570) were published and translated across Europe. Inigo Jones was highly instrumental in spreading and implementing his ideas in Britain.
The Tuscan order is a primitive form suspected to be older even than the Greek orders, but Roman sources do not mention it – only Renaissance writings make reference to it. It is the simplest of all the orders, with a plain smooth column and a simple capital. The Doric order is characterised by squat columns with round capitals and a frieze decorated with alternating triglyphs (three vertical bands separated by grooves) and plain or sculpted metopes (rectangular blocks). Along with the Tuscan, it is the simplest of the orders and is often associated with strength – the Obelix of the pack. The Ionic order is more elegant and matronly – think Boticelli’s Venus – with often unfluted columns, scrolled capitals, friezes that are sometimes adorned with elaborately sculpted bas-relief and dentils – a row of small blocks – below the cornices. The Corinthian order is also very feminine in nature, characterised primarily by its ornate capitals, which sport two rows of sculpted acanthus leaves with small volutes (spiral scrolls) in the corners. The Composite order is the most sophisticated, a combination of Ionic grace and Corinthian ornamentation – a long-legged hermaphrodite. Its columns are tall and slender, its capitals have bountiful acanthus leaves with big scrolls and its entablature sports an ostentatiously sculpted frieze and cornice.
The Renaissance reading of this classical grammar devised a hierarchy for the use of the orders in a building, starting on the lower floors and moving upwards – Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. Not all the orders had to be used and Doric was necessarily used for the lowest floor, but whatever you started with, you moved up in the correct order.
Something to keep you occupied as I catch up on a mini-backlog:
The Google translate version of the obituary from a Universitetet i Bergen press release follows (it’s pretty reasonable) … the original can be accessed at the link at the end:
With Tomas Häggs (1938-2011) died on 11 August is the classical philology in Scandinavia and the historical-philosophical faculty at UIB lost a generation’s most prominent and famous scientists.He became an international household name soon after accession to the Chair of Classical Philology at the UIB in 1977 thanks to his brilliant book on the ancient novel – a research area which just then began to attract interest after living in the shadow of the more “classic “Greek and Roman literature as’ the unpopular popular literature” – one of many lucky Häggs formulations.
The success he followed up with an incredible performance in Byzantine literature, ancient Greek culture from the periphery to the south of Egypt, in Nubia, and with considerable work in the Late Antique Greek literature, pagan and Christian, and a series of translations and other dissemination work. Another high point he reached in 2003 with The Virgin and her Lover (2003) who presented a sensational discovery: the ancient Greek novel of Parthenope known from the publicity and individual fragments were Hägg recovered in a medieval Persian accessories. Not only had he made a discovery, but typical of him, he followed it up with a longstanding relationship with a iranolog (Bo Utas) which resulted in the total publishing, translation and commentary on this text walk from the ancient eastern Mediterranean to medieval Persia. Another research culmination, we actually still waiting for the script for a comprehensive presentation of the biography genre in antiquity that came a few months ago and who will appear at Cambridge University Press.
How all these interests were linked, one can read the fascinating intellectual “autobiography” as Hägg wrote as an introduction to a large collection of articles from 2004: Parthenope – Selected Studies in Ancient Greek Fiction (1969-2004).
All this will be available to interested readers and testify Häggs great influence on the interpretation, discussion and learning about these ancient literary topics.
In addition, you must arrange his work in Classical Studies for 32 years at the UIB (1977-2009) which was only visible to those around him – an act that has drawn deep traces of numerous students and colleagues within and outside the profession. Tomas Hägg possessed a unique empathy. This ability to take an interest in real for others and the interests of others hung undoubtedly with his ability to analyze literature from a distant culture – it was actually in its time a radical break with the Swedish classical philology to focus on the literary aspects of the texts instead the linguistic and historical. The environment in Bergen and Norway came to enjoy the great good to the inclusive, friendly, but also demanding attitude Hägg always exhibited with tireless energy. He was more than 30 years, the Bergen academia soul, heart and spine – which is uncontroversial to say directly because no one was jealous of him and his high academic status: he was much too modest and generous. It is certainly not a bold generalization – based on signed experience – to say that most left his office with both invaluable specific technical response and with its priorities very clearly.
As one example of his way to work may include informal seminars Wednesday Hägg organized from 90-years and above (and which still exists today). The Swedish model he wanted to graduate students, PhD students and colleagues could have an interdisciplinary forum where they test ideas for a slightly larger audience than just the supervisor / colleague. This was no easy fomel to transfer from the combative Swedish (and partially in Danish) professional forums for the somewhat more silent western ones. There were allocated two hours for the session, and often it happened that the presentation took 10-15 minutes and then no one dared say anything. This colleague often thought “How is he going to fill the whole two hours?”. Imperceptibly, he succeeded in boosting people with little comments about how to structure a chapter, the balance should be between retelling and analyzing ancient literature, etc. We colleagues took many mental notes.
In all forums – international or Nordic research groups, administrative bodies, excursions, etc. – were Hägg born leader through the knowledge, modesty, authority and confidence that shone out of him. Missing is very large.
Lars Boje Mortensen, professor of Latin at UIB 1992-2007 Professor II at Centre for Medieval Studies 2007-12
Latest gleanings from the Classical Blogosphere and environs
ante diem v idus septembres
From a University of Bristol press release:
A team of runners, sponsored by the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition at the University of Bristol, will be running the Bristol Half Marathon this Sunday [11 September] to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary year of the very first marathon.
As well as increasing awareness of this anniversary, the team also hope to raise £2,500 for a new charity called Classics for All, which aims to increase access to Classics tuition in state schools around the country. The charity will be starting a project in Bristol in January 2012.
The first marathon was supposedly run by Philippides, a Greek messenger, who, having fought in the Battle of Marathon in 490BC, ran non-stop from the battlefield to Athens to bring news of the Greeks’ victory. He burst into the council house, exclaiming ‘νικωμεν’ (nikomen – ‘We have won’) before collapsing and dying from exhaustion.
The account of this run from Marathon to Athens first appears in Plutarch’s On the Glory of Athens in the first century AD and, almost 2,000 years later, provided inspiration for a great, showcase event in the first modern Olympic Games. The first Olympic marathon was run on 10 April 1896, and, as a result, ‘marathon mania’ spread throughout the twentieth century. These days, marathons – and half marathons – take place in cities around the world on an almost weekly basis.
Dr Jessica Priestley, a post-doctoral fellow in Bristol’s School of Humanities, who is leading the team, said: “We are really looking forward to the challenge of running the Bristol Half with Philippides as our inspiration – though, of course, we hope to avoid his ultimate fate!
“Our run aims to show that the study of Classics is as relevant today as it has always been. By raising money for Classics for All, it will help to introduce more young people to the delights of this fascinating and richly rewarding subject.”
Running the Bristol Half Marathon is the culmination of a number of activities held by the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition to mark this anniversary year, including public talks and a competition for schools.
To help the team reach their £2,500 target, please visit their fundraising page.
From a Standford University Press release:
The dusky grouper has been a popular target for Mediterranean fishermen since prehistoric times – their bones have been found in human settlements dating back more than 100,000 years. It’s a slow growing, flavorful and, with the advent of modern sport fishing, endangered species.
In an effort to reverse the decline of multiple species, including groupers, a number of no-take marine reserves have been established across the Mediterranean. But it’s proven difficult to evaluate the success of these protected areas precisely because humans have had an impact on the species for so long. Ideally, reserve biologists would compare modern fish to groupers hundreds or thousands of years ago, before the advent of large-scale commercial fishing.
“When we consider a species recovered, they may still in fact be altered relative to their original baseline,” explained Fiorenza Micheli, a professor of marine ecology at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station.
Now, in an effort to look farther back into the grouper’s history than traditional ecological methods allow, Micheli and Paolo Guidetti of the University of Salento in Italy have looked to art history. Using depictions of the fish in Roman mosaics, the researchers suggest that groupers should be much larger and should be found at shallower depths than they are today. The paper appears this week in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Fishing scenes were not uncommon sources of inspiration for coastal Mediterranean artists. Micheli and Guidetti found hundreds of Etruscan, Greek and Roman artworks involving sea creatures. Fish depicted in mosaics were often detailed enough to be recognizable as dusky groupers.
But unlike today’s animals, the groupers in Roman mosaics are depicted as being enormous – in one case, large enough to eat a fisherman whole.
Though the researchers pointed out that this example could be a case of artistic license, the depictions imply that groupers were large enough to be considered “sea monsters.” By comparison, groupers in unprotected waters today range from 50-60 centimeters (20-24 inches) in length.
Even more surprising, mosaics show men fishing for groupers with harpoons at the water’s surface. Today, this would be unheard of – modern sport fishermen spearfish groupers in deep water. But writings from the time corroborate this Roman view of the grouper as a shallow-water fish – the Roman writers Pliny and Ovid both describe angling for groupers from shore.
“It’s particularly interesting that there are children fishing from the boats,” said Micheli in reference to the Louvre’s “Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite,” which depicts cupids harpooning a grouper. “One interpretation would be that it’s so easy to fish them that kids could do it.”
The good news is that grouper populations in no-take reserves show signs of returning to these historical numbers and sizes. Reserve biologists report that populations that haven’t seen fishing for years do begin to move into shallower waters. Groupers in protected areas achieve population abundances five to 10 times greater than those in the rest of the Mediterranean, and can reach sizes of 90-100 centimeters.
Unfortunately, these advances mainly highlight the failed recovery of dusky groupers at large. Because the average size of many grouper populations is smaller than the size of sexual maturity, current conditions appear unsustainable.
“One extreme suggestion would be to place a moratorium on grouper fishing, because they’re not recovering outside of a few small marine reserves,” said Micheli. “But this would be an unpopular measure.” Sport fishing is a major tourism draw in the Mediterranean, and one of the primary targets is grouper.
But ignoring historical, qualitative sources of ecological data, Micheli pointed out, creates the risk of producing a drastically distorted view of baseline conditions.
“At the moment, we’re missing a major player in Mediterranean shallow-water ecosystems,” she said.
Interesting application of Roman mosaics outside our field, although I’m not sure they (mosaics) do depict ‘literal truth’ in many situations …
Oh no! RT @thDigitalReader: RIP Michael Hart (1947-2011) – Founder of Project Gutenberg—
Gary Corby (@GaryCorby) September 07, 2011
For folks who don’t recognize the name, Michael Hart was the guy who set up Project Gutenberg, which was one of the first efforts to make out-of-copyright versions of various texts available in the early days of the interwebs. A great number of those texts, of course, were Classics in our sense of the word and we should acknowledge his contribution to our discipline …
Quiet day around the Classical blogosphere yesterday:
