Ancient Lives Project Update
Wow … it’s hard to believe that the Ancient Lives Project has been around for almost two years now (see our initial coverage: Help Transcribe the Oxyrhynchus Papyri) … according to this interesting video from the Guardian, as of last October they’ve had well over a million transcriptions done in this crowd-sourcing project … check the video out:
From the Mailbag: Septimana Latina Europea
In today’s email:
Mechtildis, Thomas, Petrus, Robertus Amicis Latinitatis Plurimam Dicunt SalutemVos invitamus Amoeneburgum ad Iubilaeum celebrandum!Agimus enim vicesimum quintum annum Septimanarum Latinarum Europaearum.Celebratio habebitur Amoeneburgi prope Marburgum die XVII mensis Augusti a. MMXIII. In prima parte acroases de rebus Latinis a clarissimis coryphaeis praebebuntur. Secunda pars ex relationibus de Septimanis Latinis, colloquiis, convivio constabit.Date quaesumus nomina! Programma et formam inscriptionis in pagina nostra interretiali invenietis: http://www.septimanalatina.org/txt/l/iubilaeum.htmlEtiam hoc anno Septimanas Latinas nostras instituemus, ad quas vos ex corde invitamus:1) Septimana Latina Amoeneburgensis XXV in oppido “Kirchähr” prope Montaborinam (Montabaur) instituetur a die XXVIII m. Iulii ad diem IV m. Augusti.2) Septimana Latina Frisingensis II Frisingae a die I ad diem VII m. Septembris habebitur.Si quid interrogare vultis, mittite nobis quaesumus nuntium info AT septimanalatina.org.Optime valete!
Minoans Were Genetically European
This one is filling my box in various forms … here’s a UWashington press release via PhysOrg:
DNA analysis is unearthing the origins of the Minoans, who some 5,000 years ago established the first advanced Bronze Age civilization in present-day Crete. The findings suggest they arose from an ancestral Neolithic population that had arrived in the region about 4,000 years earlier.
The British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans in the early 1900′s named the Minoans after a legendary Greek king, Minos. Based on similarities between Minoan artifacts and those from Egypt and Libya, Evans proposed that the Minoan civilization founders migrated into the area from North Africa. Since then, other archaeologists have suggested that the Minoans may have come from other regions, possibly Turkey, the Balkans, or the Middle East.
Now, a team of researchers in the United States and Greece has used mitochondrial DNA analysis of Minoan skeletal remains to determine the likely ancestors of these ancient people.
Mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of cells, contain their own DNA, or genetic code. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mothers to their children via the human egg, it contains information about maternal ancestry.
Results published May 14 in Nature Communications suggest that the Minoan civilization arose from the population already living in Bronze Age Crete. The findings indicate that these people probably were descendents of the first humans to reach Crete about 9,000 years ago, and that they have the greatest genetic similarity with modern European populations.
Dr. George Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington professor of medicine and genome sciences, is the paper’s senior author. He believes that the data highlight the importance of DNA analysis as a tool for understanding human history.
“About 9,000 years ago,” he noted, “there was an extensive migration of Neolithic humans from the regions of Anatolia that today comprise parts of Turkey and the Middle East. At the same time, the first Neolithic inhabitants reached Crete.”
“Our mitochondrial DNA analysis shows that the Minoan’s strongest genetic relationships are with these Neolithic humans, as well as with ancient and modern Europeans,” he explained.
“These results suggest the Minoan civilization arose 5,000 years ago in Crete from an ancestral Neolithic population that had arrived in the region about 4,000 years earlier,” he said. “Our data suggest that the Neolithic population that gave rise to the Minoans also migrated into Europe and gave rise to modern European peoples.”
Stamatoyannopoulos, who directs the UW Markey Molecular Medicine Center and who formerly headed the UW Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine, added, “Genetic analyses are playing in increasingly important role and predicting and protecting human health. Our study underscores the importance of DNA not only in helping us to have healthier futures, but also to understand our past.”
Stamatoyannopoulos and his research team analyzed samples from 37 skeletons found in a cave in Crete’s Lassithi plateau and compared them with mitochondrial DNA sequences from 135 modern and ancient human populations. The Minoan samples revealed 21 distinct mitochondrial DNA variations, of which six were unique to the Minoans and 15 were shared with modern and ancient populations. None of the Minoans carried mitochondrial DNA variations characteristic of African populations.
Further analysis showed that the Minoans were only distantly related to Egyptian, Libyan, and other North African populations. The Minoan shared the greatest percentage of their mitochondrial DNA variation with European populations, especially those in Northern and Western Europe.
When plotted geographically, shared Minoan mitochondrial DNA variation was lowest in North Africa and increased progressively across the Middle East, Caucasus, Mediterranean islands, Southern Europe, and mainland Europe. The highest percentage of shared Minoan mitochondrial DNA variation was found with Neolithic populations from Southern Europe.
The analysis also showed a high degree of sharing with the current population of the Lassithi plateau and Greece. In fact, the maternal genetic information passed down through many generations of mitochondria is still present in modern-day residents of the Lassithi plateau.
Here’s the abstract from Nature, for those of you who like genetechy stuff:
The first advanced Bronze Age civilization of Europe was established by the Minoans about 5,000 years before present. Since Sir Arthur Evans exposed the Minoan civic centre of Knossos, archaeologists have speculated on the origin of the founders of the civilization. Evans proposed a North African origin; Cycladic, Balkan, Anatolian and Middle Eastern origins have also been proposed. Here we address the question of the origin of the Minoans by analysing mitochondrial DNA from Minoan osseous remains from a cave ossuary in the Lassithi plateau of Crete dated 4,400–3,700 years before present. Shared haplotypes, principal component and pairwise distance analyses refute the Evans North African hypothesis. Minoans show the strongest relationships with Neolithic and modern European populations and with the modern inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau. Our data are compatible with the hypothesis of an autochthonous development of the Minoan civilization by the descendants of the Neolithic settlers of the island.
- via: A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete (Nature Communications)
… and just to make it more exciting, the article itself is free and can be downloaded from the above link! I suspect this study is going to spark a bit of discussion …
Four Sisters in Ancient Rome
The second in the series of very informative and entertaining videos about folks in ancient Rome … what upper class teen girls would be up to:
… we mentioned the first one a while back, but just for convenience’s sake:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Antigone
Tip o’ the pileus to Bill Jennings on twitter for pointing us to this very engaging item by Daniel Mendelsohn in the New Yorker … I was wondering if other Classicists were thinking about Antigone over the past week or so (I know I was … I was also picturing faceless New Englanders running around with hooks shouting Tamerlan in Tiberim!, but I guess that’s another spin). Here’s a bit in medias res:
[...] It was hard not to think of all this—of the Iliad with its grand funereal finale, of the Odyssey strangely pivoting around so many burials, and of course of “Antigone”—as I followed the story of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s unburied body over the past few weeks. I thought, of course, of canny politicians eyeing the public mood, and of the public to whom those politicians wanted to pander. I thought even more of the protesters who, understandably to be sure, wanted to make clear the distinction between victim and perpetrator, between friend and foe, by threatening to strip from the enemy what they saw as the prerogatives of the friend: humane treatment in death. The protesters who wanted, like Creon, not only to deny those prerogatives to an enemy but to strip them away again should anyone else grant them—to “unbury the body.” I thought of Martha Mullen, a Christian, who insisted that the Muslim Tsarnaev, accused of heinous atrocities against innocent citizens, be buried just as a loved one might deserve to be buried, because she honored the religious precept that demands that we see all humans as “brothers,” whatever the evil they have done.
This final point is worth lingering over just now. The last of the many articles I’ve read about the strange odyssey of Tsarnaev’s body was about the reactions of the residents of the small Virginia town where it was, finally, buried. “What do you do when a monster is buried just down the street?” the subhead asked. The sensationalist diction, the word “monster,” I realized, is the problem—and brings you to the deep meaning of Martha Mullen’s gesture, and of Antigone’s argument, too. There is, in the end, a great ethical wisdom in insisting that the criminal dead, that your bitterest enemy, be buried, too; for in doing so, you are insisting that the criminal, however heinous, is precisely not a “monster.” Whatever else is true of the terrible crime that Tamerlan Tsarnaev is accused of having perpetrated, it was, all too clearly, the product of an entirely human psyche, horribly motivated by beliefs and passions that are very human indeed—deina in the worst possible sense. To call him a monster is to treat this enemy’s mind precisely the way some would treat his unburied body—which is to say, to put it beyond the reach of human consideration (and therefore, paradoxically, to refuse to confront his “monstrosity” at all).
This is the point that obsessed Sophocles’ Antigone: that to not bury her brother, to not treat the war criminal like a human being, would ultimately have been to forfeit her own humanity. This is why it was worth dying for. [...]
Definitely worth a read … could be useful in a classroom discussion …
CAMWS Audio
Over at the CAMWS page there are a couple of items of audio which may be of interest:
- 2013 Ovationes declaimed in Iowa City by CAMWS Orator James May
- “An Archaeology of Reading,” the 2013 Presidential address given in Iowa City by President Peter Knox
… you’ll have to go to CAMWS’ news page to listen
Pie Charting Imperial Demises
Sarah Bond has put together a couple of interesting items and shared them via Twitter … click on the images to get a clearer look at the causes of death:
Chart I put together showing the causes of death of Roman emperors 193-476 CE. In conclusion: stay away from daggers. http://t.co/cxigiBwWE8—
Sarah Bond (@SarahEBond) May 12, 2013
And then I made this chart of the overall deaths of the 77 emperors between 27 BCE-476 CE. Once again: daggers bad. http://t.co/oyn86mAd7i—
Sarah Bond (@SarahEBond) May 12, 2013
Justinian’s Plague Redux ~ Yersina Pestis Confirmed
Back in December, we reported on an article in PLoS about a genome-based study suggesting Justinian’s plague was very likely caused by Yersina pestis (Also Seen: Justinian’s Plague ~ Yersina Pestis?) … the latest PLoS now has a study confirming it:
Keep with out previous post’s style, here’s the abstract:
Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of the disease plague, has been implicated in three historical pandemics. These include the third pandemic of the 19th and 20th centuries, during which plague was spread around the world, and the second pandemic of the 14th–17th centuries, which included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death. Previous studies have confirmed that Y. pestis caused these two more recent pandemics. However, a highly spirited debate still continues as to whether Y. pestis caused the so-called Justinianic Plague of the 6th–8th centuries AD. By analyzing ancient DNA in two independent ancient DNA laboratories, we confirmed unambiguously the presence of Y. pestis DNA in human skeletal remains from an Early Medieval cemetery. In addition, we narrowed the phylogenetic position of the responsible strain down to major branch 0 on the Y. pestis phylogeny, specifically between nodes N03 and N05. Our findings confirm that Y. pestis was responsible for the Justinianic Plague, which should end the controversy regarding the etiology of this pandemic. The first genotype of a Y. pestis strain that caused the Late Antique plague provides important information about the history of the plague bacillus and suggests that the first pandemic also originated in Asia, similar to the other two plague pandemics.
- via: Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague (PLoS Pathogens)
Also Seen: Dr Johnson Studies
A review from the TLS of a couple new studies (I don’t think they’re quite biographies) of that guy who keeps coming up in Classics departments every now and then:
Making Greek Pottery
… no, not poetry, like I originally typed. Interesting project at the University of Arizona:
On a sunny morning on the University of Arizona campus, art student Steve Carcello, dressed in a clay-spattered T-shirt and sunglasses, steps up to what might look to the casual passerby like a round wooden table. In moments, the “tabletop” becomes a spinning blur, propelled by Carcello’s clay-coated hands.
Slowly, a pot begins to take shape in the middle. As the form grows, a fellow UA student stands alongside the wheel, taking measurements with a handheld tachometer, recording the wheel’s number of revolutions per minute.
The students are engaged in hands-on research exploring how ancient Greek pottery was created, using a replica of an ancient hand-operated wheel.
With no known ancient Greek potter’s wheels surviving from that era – just artists’ depictions of what the wheels looked like – Carcello, a Master of Fine Arts student, made his own wheel, constructed from spruce and oak.
Unlike modern electric pottery wheels, which are equipped with foot pedals to make them spin, Carcello’s wheel is operated entirely by hand. As suggested by Greek artists’ renderings from about 600 B.C. to 450 B.C., potters would turn the wheel by hand themselves or with the help of an apprentice.
Carcello built the wheel last semester as his research project for a Greek pottery class taught by Eleni Hasaki, UA associate professor of anthropology and classics.
“It was an unexpected success,” Carcello said.
Now, under Hasaki’s guidance, Carcello is part of an interdisciplinary research project exploring the art and technology of ancient Greek pottery.
While Carcello recreates Greek vessels on the wheel, Dan Pont, a senior majoring in biology and minoring in classics, focuses on the math and science behind the wheel, measuring how many revolutions per minute of the potter’s wheel are required to create pieces of different sizes. With the help of Mike Jacobs, archaeological collections curator at the Arizona State Museum, Pont has also measured the weights of several ancient Greek pots to examine the correlation of pot size and required speed of the wheel.
Meanwhile, Katherine Bare, a freshman honor’s student majoring in linguistics, has been studying ancient Greek drinking vessels as part of an honor’s project, creating her own replicas in the School of Art’s ceramics studio with assistance from Aurore Chabot, UA professor of ceramic art.
Together, the students are gaining insight into how ancient Greek potters achieved what they did.
“Through hands-on experience, they get an understanding of the techniques and challenges ancient Greek potters faced, and how these tools and these pots were used in society,” said Hasaki, a native of Greece.
Much of the students’ work is done at the in the School of Anthropology’s Laboratory of Traditional Technology, an experimental archaeology lab, founded in 1983 by Michael Schiffer, Fred A. Riecker Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Hasaki and anthropology professor Dave Killick are in line to take over the lab next year following Schiffer’s retirement. A potter himself, Schiffer recently successfully formed several pots on the replica wheel.
“The students are using replicas to emulate what was being done 2,500 years ago,” Hasaki said.
In addition to the hand-operated potter’s wheel replica, the UA also owns and maintains replica of an ancient Greek kiln, housed at St. Augustine High School in Tucson. Funded by the Archaeological Institute of America, the kiln has been fired 10 times since its completion in 2004, and Hasaki hopes to use the kiln to fire some of the pieces created on the replica potter’s wheel.
She says: “We’re slowly recreating an entire potters’ workshop.”
- via: UA Students Study Ancient Greek Pottery Techniques (University of Arizona)
Classical Review Ruckus
This item from the Evening Standard (wow!) was mentioned over at Classics International:
Spears are being hurled in the classical world after a new book about Euripides was given a lukewarm write-up in the well-respected Classical Review.
Cypriot author had spent eight years researching the play Rhesus, attributed to Euripides, for his new academic work published by the Oxford University Press. Liapis concludes that it’s not by Euripides but the authorship issue is not the problem. It was the review by Donna Zuckerberg, a little-known classicist doing a PhD at Princeton, who bakes by night and also happens to be the younger sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Not many in the classical world share Zuckerberg’s opinion that Liapis “fails utterly” in writing a proper appreciation of the play, nor her view that he betrays “persistent and pervasive negativity”. The Classical Review has already received complaints about the quality of Zuckerberg’s review and dismissive comments. Another classical journal, the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, had given Liapis a rave write-up, saying he offered “ a wealth of intelligent, well-balanced discussion”.
Professor Colin Leach, formerly at Oxford University, whose enthusiastic review is due to be published in the Journal of Classical Teachers later this year, expressed his surprise that Classical Review did not allocate so important a book to a senior academic. He also notes: “Zuckerberg used the ‘word’ hapaces, which purports to be the plural of hapax. But hapax is not a noun, but an indeclinable adverb, meaning ‘once’, and hapaces does not exist. It may be a feeble joke, or even an Americanism.” God forbid.
- via: Classical battle over Facebook founder’s sister (Evening Standard)
If you don’t have access to Classical Review, you can get a taste of Zuckerberg’s comments here (it’s the first paragraph). The BMCR review by David Sansone is here. Simon Perris’ review for Classical Journal is generally positive. Judging from those (and the above), I strongly suspect the Standard was experiencing a bit of a slow news day and wanted to do some Zuckerberg bashing of some sort (perhaps they’re trying to stir something up analogous to Simcha Jacobovici v Joe Zias … or Simcha Jacobovici v Yuval Goren (but see also …) … disagreements of this sort aren’t really new to us and, as far as I’m aware, don’t generally make the newspapers. On the other hand, it’s interesting to note that Zuckerberg’s sister is pursuing a PhD in Classics!
Catching Up With the Classicists
Over the past few weeks a number of Classicists have been mentioned in various news outlets for various reasons … I think I’ve mentioned most of them in my Explorator newsletter, but have been too swamped to mention them here efficiently, so here’s a compendium:
Robert Kaster was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences:
- FACULTY AWARD: Eight named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Princeton News)
Feature on David Soren and his Art History and the Cinema course:
- UA professor forever a performer (Arizona Daily Wildcat)
Candida Moss is getting attention for her book about the ‘myth’ of Christian martyrdom:
Barry Strauss was talking Spartacus at the AAR:
Henry Bayerle was interviewed about teaching ancient languages:
Patricia Johnston was talking Aeneid:
Guy Hedreen got a Guggenheim:
… as did Kyle Harper:
Angelos Chaniotis was talking Greek graffiti:
Steven Tuck was talking gladiators:
Eric Robinson was talking Spartans:
Timothy McNiven was talking monsters:
Mary Beard received a nice post:
Pondering Plutarch
Interesting OpEd from the Portland Daily Sun … the incipit:
Fascination with the lives of our societal leaders began centuries ago, scratching a voyeuristic itch in the reading public. Knowing a good thing, publishing houses keep churning out fresh interpretations of these profiles. While such biographies remain popular today, the seeds of this frenzy were planted several millennia ago by Plutarch.
Already the premier essayist of his time, Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) was a philosopher, teacher, and one of the high priests of the Delphic Oracle. However, he left his mark on history with an account of 50 famous Greeks and Romans, “Parallel Lives.” Breaking from the accepted biographical template of the classical period, Plutarch added three unique elements to his style which remain influential, as well as spur controversy.
First, instead of listing chronologies and events, Plutarch added the dimension of behavior and thought to his subjects. As far as scholars know, he was the first biographer to attempt this maneuver.
For example, getting inside Antony’s head to evaluate his love for Cleopatra and the context in which it existed to satisfy her political ambitions is one thing. Telling us he ruled the eastern Roman provinces, and had a fling with the queen of Egypt is quite another. While such an interpretation is problematical to modern historians given the lack of Plutarch’s primary sources, it remains visionary, and added much needed spice to an otherwise bland recipe.
Next, Plutarch used comparative analysis. At the conclusion of his 50 short biographies, he formed 18 pairs, one Greek and one Roman in each, chosen for similar time periods or official roles. He then scrutinized their similarities, differences, and related effects.
From there, he examined the psychology for why one subject chose a particular course, while the second subject chose another. This was another unheard of technique, which opened the gates to his final motive.Plutarch always drew ethical conclusions from the behavior of famous leaders, which is consistent with his background as a priest and his other writings, such as the widely read “Moral Essays.”
While this served his era well, it has run Plutarch into trouble today. In an increasingly relativistic world defined by ethical gray areas and the constant vacillation of religion’s relevance, many postmodern scholars chided Plutarch’s judgmental approach.
Nevertheless, the ancients were concerned with identifying right from wrong, even if they didn’t always practice it. Unlike Thucydides, Plutarch didn’t consider politics and warfare as bodies of work from which to provide future governing models. “Parallel Lives” focused on the struggle of living rather than the lives themselves. Plutarch cared more for why statesmen and soldiers do what they do, so that his readers could understand their rulers — a populist rationale.
And enduring. Embattled college classics departments survived the postmodern scourge and in the last decade have experienced a renaissance. The influence of “Parallel Lives” in the great works of literature and government is legion, and provides a solid foundation for human philosophy in both creative and pragmatic endeavors.Fascination with the lives of our societal leaders began centuries ago, scratching a voyeuristic itch in the reading public. Knowing a good thing, publishing houses keep churning out fresh interpretations of these profiles. While such biographies remain popular today, the seeds of this frenzy were planted several millennia ago by Plutarch.5-3-oped-TK-plutarch
Already the premier essayist of his time, Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) was a philosopher, teacher, and one of the high priests of the Delphic Oracle. However, he left his mark on history with an account of 50 famous Greeks and Romans, “Parallel Lives.” Breaking from the accepted biographical template of the classical period, Plutarch added three unique elements to his style which remain influential, as well as spur controversy.First, instead of listing chronologies and events, Plutarch added the dimension of behavior and thought to his subjects. As far as scholars know, he was the first biographer to attempt this maneuver.
For example, getting inside Antony’s head to evaluate his love for Cleopatra and the context in which it existed to satisfy her political ambitions is one thing. Telling us he ruled the eastern Roman provinces, and had a fling with the queen of Egypt is quite another. While such an interpretation is problematical to modern historians given the lack of Plutarch’s primary sources, it remains visionary, and added much needed spice to an otherwise bland recipe.
Next, Plutarch used comparative analysis. At the conclusion of his 50 short biographies, he formed 18 pairs, one Greek and one Roman in each, chosen for similar time periods or official roles. He then scrutinized their similarities, differences, and related effects.
From there, he examined the psychology for why one subject chose a particular course, while the second subject chose another. This was another unheard of technique, which opened the gates to his final motive.Plutarch always drew ethical conclusions from the behavior of famous leaders, which is consistent with his background as a priest and his other writings, such as the widely read “Moral Essays.”
While this served his era well, it has run Plutarch into trouble today.
In an increasingly relativistic world defined by ethical gray areas and the constant vacillation of religion’s relevance, many postmodern scholars chided Plutarch’s judgmental approach.
Nevertheless, the ancients were concerned with identifying right from wrong, even if they didn’t always practice it. Unlike Thucydides, Plutarch didn’t consider politics and warfare as bodies of work from which to provide future governing models. “Parallel Lives” focused on the struggle of living rather than the lives themselves. Plutarch cared more for why statesmen and soldiers do what they do, so that his readers could understand their rulers — a populist rationale.
And enduring. Embattled college classics departments survived the postmodern scourge and in the last decade have experienced a renaissance. The influence of “Parallel Lives” in the great works of literature and government is legion, and provides a solid foundation for human philosophy in both creative and pragmatic endeavors. [...]
- via: Why Plutarch matters (Portland Daily Sun)
Mysteries at the UPenn Museum
From Penn News:
A select group of local young authors is looking to unlock a mystery.
Following in the footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who penned Sherlock Holmes, or Agatha Christie, who wrote Murder on the Orient Express, a small group of up-and-coming mystery writers headed to the Penn Museum in April to research a historic whodunit: “The Mystery of the 26 Helmets.”
In the 6th Century B.C., Etruscan traders set out on a journey to transport 26 new solid cast bronze helmets manufactured in the City of Vulci (northwest of Rome). They were headed to the town of Negau, located in what’s now Slovenia, which is situated to the north and east of Italy.
They made it past the Alps. And they were never seen again.
The traders disappeared – and so did their 26 helmets.
That is, until the 1800s, when a German archaeologist was digging in a nearby forest. The archeological dig yielded the untouched 26 bronze cast helmets, carefully packed in a wooden chest and buried six feet under the forest floor.
What happened to the Etruscan traders? How could they just simply vanish? What would cause them to bury these 26 helmets so deep underground in the forest? Was foul play involved? Were shenanigans afoot?
The mystery writers-to-be are planning to answer those questions and more.
As a part of a new, 90-minute interactive educational program, seven fifth-grade students from the Henry C. Lea Elementary School were selected for this special activity. Their goal was to visit the artifacts in the Penn Museum’s Etruscan Gallery and strengthen their creative writing skills by tying in elements of mystery and historical fiction based on actual events.
These seven were chosen from among 30 students in two 5th grade classes at Lea.
According to their teacher, these students have really grown as writers.
“They were really excited about creative writing, but more importantly, they represent Lea’s shining stars,” says Lindsey Coyne, a fifth- grade teacher at Lea Elementary. “We’re so thankful that Penn has opened its doors to us,” she adds.. “We walked here, and we’re exposing them to all of this history and culture at the museum, just a few blocks away.”
Penn’s many activities involving the Lea School reflect President Amy Gutmann’s institutional priorities, including the University’s commitment to local engagement.
The students will weave historical facts throughout their mysteries, and what they learned at the Penn Museum will help them to generate ideas for their story settings, characters and plot developments.
Benjamin Ashcom, a docent for the Etruscan Gallery and Roman Gallery at the Museum, provided background information to the students about the Etruscans and their culture. He talked about how the Etruscans did not have an organized military, but if the city was threatened, all males would serve as soldiers to defend it. He told the students of the Etruscans’ resources, how they had access to the copper mines to make bronze armor, art and hardware and how the society had many factories to produce shoes, fabrics, gold, jewelry, pottery, ships, chariots and wagons.
Ashcom delved into how implements of war and their production and manufacturing were highly profitable – and how the Etruscans were an entrepreneurial bunch, selling their wares to the Greeks, Romans and even their sworn enemy, the Gauls.
Now the students are armed with a review of the facts, it’s up to them to “fill in the blanks” in this unique creative writing activity, which is a part of a mystery-writing unit, based on the common-core standards.
Ashcom provided printed background information, including photographs of artifacts, and regional maps to encourage the students to start thinking like historians –- or, at least, like historical fiction writers –- in order to recreate the story leading up to the disappearance of the Etruscan traders and their 26 helmets.
“Your imagination is the only thing that counts,” Ashcom told the class.
He distributed faux coins featuring the Greek goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom, inspiration and the arts, so that students could have them nearby to stimulate creativity as they write their stories. And, he gave each student three passes for free admission to the Penn Museum, so they can share the source of their mysterious, historical, creative-writing adventure with their loved ones.
Ashcom says that he’s looking forward to reading each version of “The Mystery of the 26 Helmets,” which may be on display in the Penn Museum or at the Lea School.
The students plan to start writing their stories this week.
- via: A Mystery Unravels in the Penn Museum (Penn News)
… and interesting assignment … the Wikipedia article on the Negau Helmet will give you some more background on the actual artifact(s) …
The National Archaeological Museum in WWII
Tip o’ the pileus to June Samaras on the Classics list who posted a very interesting link to an article about what the National Archaeological Museum did to protect all that wonderful stuff during World War Two … plenty o’ pix too (there might be some ‘inappropriate’ links to other articles):
Pass the Fig Leaf
The incipit of an AFP item (via Google):
Greece has pulled two ancient statues from an ongoing Olympic Games exhibition in Qatar in a dispute over nudity, a culture ministry source said on Tuesday.
“The statues have already returned to Greece,” a culture ministry source told AFP, adding: “Organisers in Qatar wanted to cover up the statues’ members with black cloth. So they were never put on display, they went back into storage and returned on April 19.”
The statues — an archaic-era Greek youth and a Roman-era copy of a Classical athlete — are both nude, the manner in which Olympic athletes competed in antiquity.
Greece’s junior minister for culture Costas Tzavaras had travelled to the Qatari capital of Doha for the opening of the exhibit on March 27, saying it opened a “bridge of friendship” between the two countries.
According to the culture ministry, Greece has contributed nearly 600 exhibits from the National Archaeological Museum, the Numismatic Museum and the Museum of Olympia, birthplace of the Games.
The Doha exhibit runs to June 30.
A similar exhibit had previously been hosted in Berlin.[...]
- via: Greece pulls statues from Qatar Olympic show over nudity (AFP via Google)
… and just for comparanda: It Doesn’t Play in San Antonio Redux (October, 2012).
Latin Gets Things Done!
Interesting item from the Art Newspaper … some clipping along the way:
In 1937, the Warburg Institute, recently arrived in London from Hamburg, found itself homeless. Permission was given for it to move into the Imperial Institute, but there was no shelving, which made the library unusable. Month after month, the director Fritz Saxl sent letters to the senior civil servant at the Office of Works, Frederic Raby, asking him for shelves to be provided.
Now Raby was also a considerable scholar of Latin poetry of the Middle Ages; finally, Saxl asked Ernst Gombrich to write Raby a request in Latin poetry in case that might move him to action. Here is that poem, in the style of the “Wandering Scholars”.
The effect was instantaneous: Raby sent back a poem in the same rhyme-scheme saying that they could have their shelves. As Sir Ernst said in sending these opuscula to The Art Newspaper, “The whole stands as a nostalgic tribute to a vanished tradition of the Civil Service”.
The Gombrich Plea
Stella desperantium, miserorum lumen
Rerum primum mobile, nobis quasi numen
Audias propitie supplicantem sonum
De profundis clamitat studii patronum
Otium molestum est, et periculosum
Menses sine linea vexant studiosum.
Statum hunc chaoticum noli prolongare
Animam et domum nos fac aedificare
Libros nostros libera turri de seclusa
Quibus mus nunc fruitur gaudeat et Musa.
O, duc nos ad gratiae sempiternum fontem
Unde tibi lauri frons coronabit frontem.
Qui in Bibliotheca Warburgiana
studiis se dedere ardent
—Frederico Jacobo Edwardo Rabio[...]
Raby’s reply (addressed to Fritz Saxl)
Doctor disertissime, rector venerande,
Omnibus amabilis semper et amande,
Congemiscens audio verba deprecantum
Imo corde vocibus tactus eiulantum.
Set nunc tibi nuncio gaudium suave,
Te et tuos liberans studiosos a ve.
EANT LIBRI LIBERE. Deus sit tutamen
Libris et legentibus in eternum. Amen.
- via: From The Art Newspaper Archive, May 1993 (The Art Newspaper)
… the original article includes translations … Both verses almost sound ‘Carmina Buranaish’ …
Celebrating Rome’s 2766th
Yesterday’s celebrations resulted in some GREAT photos of assorted folks in assorted period costumes (most are Getty images of some sort) … here’s some of the better coverage I came across:
- Rome celebrates its birthday (Stuff … slideshow; this one has most/all of them I think)
- When in Rome: The Eternal City takes a step back in time as it celebrates 2,766th birthday(Daily Mail … some overlap with the above; tip o’ the pileus to Richard Campbell)
- Romans Celebrate the 2,766th Anniversary of Their City (Just a photo)
- Romans Celebrate the 2,766th Anniversary of Their City (ditto)
- 2766° Natale di Roma(a very nice Flickr set)
Upcoming Latin Chat on Twitter
The next #latinlangchat happens Tues., 4/23 at 6pm PST. We'll be discussing traditional and non-traditional methods. #latinteach—
Moss Pike (@mosspike) April 19, 2013
Also Seen: Greek and Latin Plurals in the News
Not really sure if I (personally) would call these pretentious, but your mileage may vary (insert smiley here):
Roman Cosmetics and Eye Disease?
Interesting item from Stephanie Pappas of LiveScience … excerpts:
Roman-era toiletry sets consisting of tweezers, scrapers and other artifacts have long been interpreted as beauty aids. But it’s possible the tools had a more gruesome use: to treat a type of Chlamydia that infects the eye.
The tools are found across Great Britain and date back to around A.D. 43 to A.D. 410, a time when much of the island was under Roman control. They do bear resemblance to modern-day cosmetic kits, but they’re also similar to tools used in folk treatments of trachoma, the leading cause of preventable blindness around the world today, said Wendy Morrison, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
[...]
The tool kits in question typically consist of tweezers; small spoons, possibly used for the removal of earwax; fingernail cleaners; files; probes; and grinders that may have been used to crush substances to make cosmetics. The kits are often found with loops for hanging, Morrison said.
[...]
A Sightsavers image of a Kenyan woman wearing tweezers around her neck first inspired Morrison to investigate the tool kits further. Trachoma has been infecting humans since prehistory, with evidence of the disease found on the bones of Australians dating to 12000 B.C. The disease, or one very much like it, was also present in Roman-era Britain, Morrison said. Researchers investigating a 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck reported in January that they’d found medical tablets,possibly used for the treatment of eye diseases.
[...]
Morrison envisions distinctly non-beauty-related uses for the grooming-kit tools — for instance, tweezers to pluck inwardly turned eyelashes, and nail cleaners to scrape rough growths off the inside of the eyelids. “Cosmetics grinders” could have been used to crush up medicinal herbs and other substances to make salves to sooth eyelid pain. And earwax scoops could have been used to apply those salves.
For now, this interpretation is just a guess. So far, no one has been able to unearth a cosmetics grinder with testable material still clinging to it. If archaeologists were to find something like that, they might be able to determine what, exactly, Roman-era Britons were grinding up. A discovery like that, or of a newly translated text referring to the objects, could strengthen the trachoma theory.
“I won’t be holding my breath,” Morrison said.
Still, Morrison said she hopes to explore the kits further in the future. Trachoma thrives in certain conditions, so if grooming kits are found to be more common in trachoma-friendly areas, that finding may support the idea that the grooming kits were used to treat eye disease. Morrison published her theory in the May issue of the Oxford Journal of Archaeology.
- via: Roman-Era ‘Cosmetics’ May Have Treated Eye Chlamydia (LiveScience)
… of course, it’s not really an ‘either-or’ type of thing; things might have a dual purpose.
Happy Birthday Archimedes (?)
This just in … the Register is marking Archimedes’ birthday (2300 … just the year, exact date unknown) with a lengthy feature, noteworthy for printing Greek in a non-Greek newspaper, if nothing else (I think this is Doric too!). In any event, here’s the first couple of paragraphs:
Happy birthday Archimedes! The Syracusan mathematician, engineer and philosopher came into the world in 287BC. We don’t know the exact date of his birth 2,300 years ago, but an appreciation of the twenty-third centenary of his birth seems apt.
Archimedes is most famous for four things. His utterance “Give me a [firm] place to stand and I will move the earth” (ΠΑ ΒΩ ΚΑΙ ΧΑΡΙΣΤΙΩΝΙ ΤΑΝ ΓΑΝ ΚΙΝΗΣΩ ΠΑΣΑΝ*) means he’s credited as a pioneer of the study of leverage and mechanical advantage. That expertise is the reason for his second claim to fame, namely some rather nifty weapons deployed in the siege of Syracuse – most famously a crane-type “Claw” and, according to legend, “The Death Ray”, an array of mirrors (possibly polished shields) used to focus sunlight on approaching ships, apparently resulting in said ships bursting into flame. He also devised the first law of hydrostatics** during his “Eureka” moment in the bath. His screw for lifting water is also noteworthy. [...]
YLE’s Nuntii Latini in the News!
This one was mentioned on the Classics list last week … YLE’s Nuntii Latini was the subject of a feature in the New York Times. Here’s the first bit:
Leah Whittington, an English professor at Harvard, catches the news bulletins on her iPod while strolling to classes. Daniel Blanchard, a professional countertenor in Paris, used to listen on shortwave radio, but now he uses an iPod, too. The BBC? NPR? No, it’s a weekly summary of world events and news broadcast by Finnish state radio — not in Finnish, but in classical Latin.
Nobody knows exactly how many listeners the Latin program reaches. “Tens of thousands is my wild guess,” said Sami Koivisto, a reporter in the station’s news department. But it seems clear that the Internet is injecting new life into a language often described as dead.
No, there are no traffic reports from the Appian Way, nor does the station assign a political reporter to the Forum. But, on Friday evenings before the main news broadcast, the Finnish Broadcasting Company presents five or six short news stories in Latin. In recent weeks, the subjects have included the financial crisis in Cyprus, an unusually brilliant aurora borealis and the election of Pope Francis.
“There are no scoops,” Mr. Blanchard, 37, said recently, over coffee. “But it is a great way to hear the news.” A request to the French national broadcaster to do something similar, he said, failed to produce a response.
Not even Vatican Radio, which broadcasts some prayers each day in Latin, reports the news in the ancient tongue.
Tuomo Pekkanen, a retired professor of Latin who helped start “Nuntii Latini,” or “Latin News,” as the program is known, said the language is very much alive for him and for many educated Finns of his generation deeply influenced by Edwin Linkomies, his Latin professor at Helsinki University and prime minister during the difficult years of World War II. For them, Latin was a part of Finnish identity as well as of a sound education.
“In order to be educated,” said Mr. Pekkanen, 78, who is proficient in not only Latin but also ancient Greek and Sanskrit, “it was once said that a real humanist must write poetry in Latin and Greek.”
Mr. Pekkanen helped start the news program almost on a lark, then saw it steadily gain popularity. “Picking the subjects, that is the most difficult part of it,” said Mr. Pekkanen, who in his spare time has translated all 22,795 verses of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, into rhymed Latin verse. “One principle is that we don’t want to count the bodies of how many were killed in this or that country,” he said. “That is dull.”
It may be no coincidence that the broadcast began in 1989, the year Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Finns turned toward Western Europe. For educated Finns, Latin had long been the country’s link to Western culture, and they were required to study the language in school.
“It’s a brilliant idea,” said Jukka Ammondt, a university lecturer in English and German who dabbles in Latin and regularly tunes in to the broadcasts, even though he confesses that he cannot understand everything.
Mr. Ammondt, 68, has certainly done his part to promote Latin — and Finland. After a difficult divorce two decades ago, he turned increasingly to the songs of Elvis Presley, an idol of his youth, for consolation. For the fun of it, he began singing them in Latin. [...]
- via: Latin Makes an Appearance on Finnish Radio. News at VI. (New York Times)
… scroll down a bit for the latest edition; from this point on, all the ‘Nuntiis’ will appear as part of the regular Monday offerings at rogueclassicism (in the hopes that Latin teachers might incorporate them into their lessons)
Eidos | In Which I Live Blog a Marathon Weekend Reading of Plato’s Republic
In Which I Live Blog a Marathon Weekend Reading of Plato’s Republic
- via Eidos
Classics Confidential | Judy Hallett: American Women and the Study of the Classics
The Intro:
This week’s Classics Confidential vodcast features Professor Judith Hallett of The University of Maryland talking about her work on American women’s engagement with the classics. She discusses the difficulties that women faced in gaining entry into higher education and in establishing their scholarly role and position. And she talks about the fascinating case of Edith Hamilton, who taught classics and wrote a number of influential books that helped to shape a whole generation’s response to ancient Greece and Rome.
