Lecture | Patrick Hunt: Hannibal’s Secret Weapon in the Second Punic War
The blurb:
Dr. Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, speaks. Hannibal, a Carthaginian commander who lived ca. 200 BCE, is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His use of the environment in his warfare against Rome in the Second Punic War—often called the Hannibalic War—set precedents in military history, utilizing nature and weather conditions as weapons to complement his generally smaller forces. This strategic marshaling of nature could be described as a “second, secret army,” as demonstrated in his battles at Trebbia, Trasimene, and Cannae.
Mary Beard and Robert Harris Discuss Pompeii
Interesting little video chat over at the British Museum Channel (didn’t know they had one!):
Lecture | Jeremy McInerny on Thermopylae
The intro:
Dr. Jeremy McInerny, Professor of Classical Studies, examines the tactics and strategy of the Battle of Thermopylae (in present-day Greece) in 480 BCE. Why was the battle fought at this location and was it, as it is often portrayed, a turning point in the confrontation of East and West? This lecture puts the Battle of Thermopylae into the context of the Persian Wars, and examines the battle’s significance for the Greeks as well as for Europeans in later periods, in art and poetry.
Lecture | Laura Ambrosini ~ ‘Sports in ancient Etruria’
From the Sport and Competition in Ancient Greece and Rome series last June:
Lecture | Reinhard Senff on’Ancient horse races and the hippodrome at Olympia’
Another one from the Sport and Competition in Ancient Greece and Rome conference this past June at the British Museum:
Lecture | Robin Osborne ~ The origins of the non-competitive sports day
From the Sport and Competition in Ancient Greece and Rome conference at the British Museum in June 2012:
Lecture | Dr. Alan Peatfield on ‘Greek combat sports: from image to technique’.
From the Sport and Competition in Ancient Rome conference in June 2012 (this paper was read by Hazel Dodge):
Lecture | Oliver Taplin: Competition and the spread of Greek Theatre
From the Sport and Competition in Ancient Greece and Rome conference:
Lecture | Vivienne Lo ~ Perfect bodies:sports medicine and immortality
From the Sport and Competition in Ancient Greece and Rome conference, June 2012:
Lecture ~ Hazel Dodge:Victory and Spectacle in Roman Circus Mosaics
This is another one from the Sport and Competition in Ancient Rome conference last June at the British Museum:
A Futuristic Look Through Ancient Lenses: A Symposium on Ancient Greece
This is actually pretty impressive … last October/November the folks at Eastern Illinois University held a symposium on assorted Greek themes (they’ve previously done one on ancient Egypt) and the whole thing is available at Youtube. There are 30+ videos here to occupy your time on various themes:
Lecture: Greece and Asia in the Late Bronze Age: The Historical Background of Homer’s Iliad
The intro:
Dr. Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, Director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, speaks. In 1924, Swiss archaeologist Emil Forrer announced a new discovery relating to the Trojan War. After examining texts found at Hattusa, once the capital of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor, he identified the Hittite words for Troy (Wilusa) and Mycenaean Greece (Ahhiyawa), and concluded that there was evidence for conflict between them. While Forrer’s “Greek Hypothesis” was once widely attacked by other academics, recent research and excavations have confirmed his theory, which offers exciting insights into the historical background of Homer’s Iliad.
Lecture: Olga Palagia ~ The Motya Charioteer: An Alternative View
Another one from the Hellenic Society’s Olympics conference a while back:
Lecture: Ian Jenkins on the Discobolus
Another one from the Hellenic Society/Olympics conference at the British Museum (also poorly labelled):
Lecture: Jason König ~ Philostratus’ Gymnasticus and beyond
This one is poorly-labelled at Youtube, but it appears all these Hellenic Society videos come from the Sport and Competition in Greece and Rome conference at the British Museum a while back:
Lecture: Hans Van Wees on Fighting Over the Olympics
Another one from the Hellenic Society:
Lecture: Chris Pelling on Herodotus and the Olympics
From the Hellenic Society:
Lecture: Jodi Magness on the Siege of Masada
From UPenn Museum:
The Siege and Fall of Masada
In the 1st century BCE, King Herod the Great fortified the mountain of Masada, located near the southwest shore of the Dead Sea. Seventy years after Herod’s death, Jewish rebels occupied Masada during the First Jewish Revolt against the Romans, holding out even after the fall of Jerusalem. In this illustrated lecture, Dr. Jodi Magness, Professor of Religious Studies, UNC Chapel Hill, examines the archaeological and literary evidence for the Roman siege of Masada, including information from the 1995 excavations that she co-directed.
Video: Edward Cohen on Ancient Greek Crises
The blurb:
Edward E. Cohen, Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Trustee Emeritus, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, will discuss the relationship between the current Greek, European, and American financial crises while examining what can be learned from the experiences of the ancient Greeks.
Recreating the Kithara Followup
Last week we mentioned how John Franklin et al had a project to recreate the ancient Greek kithara (Recreating the Kithara) … a few days later, he gave a talk on the process:
Video ~ David Mattingly: Romans and Libyans
David Mattingly delivers the second annual Ure Lecture:
Jenny Strauss Clay et al, “Mapping the Catalog of Ships”
The Digital Classicist people are definitely in the forefront of putting conferences online … over the next few days we’ll post their latest efforts (the conference was in December 2012), beginning with this one, which includes the abstract to the talk, a video of the talk, and video of the discussion afterwards:
ASCSA Videocast: Mapping the Ancient Environment
Alain Touwaide from the Smithsonian speaks on:
Lod Mosaic Lecture
… by Christopher Lightfoot, of the Met:
Carin Green on Tutulina, Sessia, and Messia
- Image via Wikipedia
I think this will be the last one from the Toledo series that I post today … one could kill a lot of time with these:
The Circus Maximus is generally considered a place of spectacle where emperors indulged an impotent public with displays of power and largess to ensure public complacency. Romans gave up their freedom for “bread and circuses” Juvenal famously says. It makes good copy (or Juvenal would not have said it), but it overlooks the importance of the goddesses whose place on the spina, the central spine of the Circus, put them at the heart of the drama, both in the races and in the theater, that took place there. Three goddesses, the protectress Tutulina and her companions Sessia and Messia, goddesses of Rome’s vitality and wealth, and the goddess Victory, all had shrines on the spina, which, not coincidentally, marked the sacred boundary of Rome. Rituals and ritual drama of crisis, sacrifice, and triumph, performed by the Vestal Virgins, among others, throughout the year at these shrines taught the audience about the power these goddesses had to defend Rome. The significance of the Circus as the place in which protection and safety were reified by divine power in feminine form was so much part of Roman culture that even after non-Christian rites were officially suppressed in Rome (ca. AD 380), Romans turned to it in times of crisis. Both St. Augustine and Pope Leo bitterly lament the fact that when the Goths sacked Rome in 410, and for decades after, the Romans sought the reassurance of the Circus at the times of the old rituals, rather than attending to the martyrs’ churches. Interestingly, the earliest martyrs’ churches in Rome seem to have been built in imitation of the layout of the Circus.
Carin M. C. Green is Professor and Chair of Classics at the University of Iowa. She received a B.A. in Latin from San Jose State College, an M.A. in Latin from the University of Texas, and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Virginia. She teaches courses in Latin composition, Augustan poetry, Roman religion, Lucan, and Greek prose. Her book, Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. She is currently—when not occupied with departmental administration—working on a monograph about the Roman deity Consus and the Vestal Virgins.
