- trattoria (Merriam-Webster)
- kinetic (Dictionary.com)
- neuston (Wordsmith)
Month: January 2009
CONF: Late Antique and Byzantine Historiography
Late Antique and Byzantine Historiography
A one day colloquium at Cardiff University
Hosted by the Centre for Late Antique Religion and Culture
Date: 21 January 2009, 10.00am-5pm
Place: Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Room 2.03
Provisional Programme:
10.00am: Mark Humphries (Swansea), Visa vel lecta? Ammianus Marcellinus and the monuments of Rome
10.45: Andy Fear (Manchester), A new chosen people? Orosius and the epic of Rome
11.30: Coffee break
12: Josef Lössl (Cardiff), Prophecy in historiography
Lunch break
2pm: Peter Van Nuffelen (Exeter), Procopius of Caesarea on past and present
2.45: Conor Whately (Warwick), Textual unity in Procopius’ Wars
3.30: Tea break
4pm: Frank Trombley (Cardiff), Michael Attaleiates: professional experience and history writing
For further information please contact:
Dr Shaun Tougher, Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, Humanities Building, Colum Drive,
Cardiff CF10 3XU, tel: 029-20876228, Email: TougherSF AT cardiff.ac.uk
If you wish to attend please confirm by e-mail to:
TougherSF AT cardiff.ac.uk
Oxford Lunchtime Seminars
Special Lunchtime Seminar, Hilary Term 2009:
Recent Archaeology in Turkey
1 pm Tuesdays
First floor seminar room, Ioannou Classics Centre, 66 St. Giles’, Oxford
Programme
Week 2 (Jan. 27) – Burcu Erciyas (Middle East Technical University [METU], Ankara), Komana Archaelogical Research Project
Week 4 (Feb. 10) – Bert Smith (Oxford), Recent Work at Aphrodisias in Caria
Week 7 (March 3), Reyhan Körpe (Çanakkale University/Martin Harrison Fellow, Oxford), Recent Work in the Troad
Week 8 (March 10), Kutalmiş Görkay (Ankara University/Wolfson College, Oxford), Research at Zeugma
Conveners: Prof. R.R.R. Smith (bert.smith AT ashmus.ox.ac.uk)
Dr. Catherine Draycott (catherine.draycott AT some.ox.ac.uk)
Edinburgh Seminars
Edinburgh Classics Research Seminars – Semester 2
All seminars will take place on Wednesdays at 5pm and, unless otherwise
stated, in Faculty Room North, David Hume Tower, George Square, Edinburgh
Week 2 | 21 January
Professor TIMOTHY BARNES (Toronto/Edinburgh)
‘Christians in the Severan Empire’
Week 3 | 28 January
Professor KEITH RUTTER (Edinburgh)
‘Coins and Cultures in Western Sicily’
Week 4 | 4 February
Professor MICHAEL REEVE (Cambridge)
‘The Vita Plinii and other Pliniana’
Week 5 | 11 February
Professor GEOFFREY B. GREATREX (Ottawa)
‘Patriarchs and Politics in sixth-century Constantinople’
Week 6: Reading Week/No Research Seminar
Week 7 | 25 February
Professor MICHAEL FULFORD (Reading)
‘Going down! The Silchester Insula IX Town Life Project 1997–2009’
Week 8 | 4 March
Dr JANE LIGHTFOOT (Oxford)
‘Dionysius the Periegete’
Week 9 | 11 March
Professor GIOVAN BATTISTA D’ALESSIO (KCL)
‘A Greek Lyric Poet from Samos to Ghazni’
Week 10 | 18 March
Professor TIM CORNELL (Manchester)
‘Rome’s First Historian: a Reconsideration’
Week 11 | 25 March
Professor JOSEPH ROISMAN (Colby College)
‘Alexander’s the Great Veterans’
15 April | Conference Room
Professor RICHARD HUNTER (Cambridge)
‘The Gods of Callimachus’
13 May | Conference Room
Professor FRANCIS CAIRNS (Florida State University)
‘Elegiac Geography’
20 May | Conference Room
Professor ERICH GRUEN (Berkeley)
title tba
For further details please contact Ursula Rothe (ursula.rothe At ed.ac.uk).
Ajax
An excerpt from a piece in the Guardian notes, inter alia:
“Blyth Spartans were named after the Greek army,” James Henry points out, before getting to the heart of the matter: “What is the weirdest explanation for a football team’s suffix?”
Blyth are named after the Spartan army, the legendary fighting force of the 6th to 4th centuries BC. This kind of classical allusion wasn’t uncommon in the era of the late Victorian amateur. Corinthian, now Corinthian Casuals, were formed in 1882, their name referencing the mythic Greek code of amateur sportsmanship. This was a common practice across Europe at the time. Ajax of Amsterdam are named after Ajax the Ancient Greek warrior hero from the Iliad (and latterly also inspiration for a popular brand of domestic scouring powder). And the Spartans themselves left an imprint beyond Blyth – Sparta Rotterdam (Holland) and Sparta Prague (Czech Republic), both founded within a few years of Spartans, took their name from the same bunch of Greek hard-cases.
Speaking of Ajax, last summer I was pondering doing a little series of posts on towns in Ontario which seemed to have Classical origins and the one I began with was Ajax (near Toronto). Imagine my chagrin when I thought I had a sure thing, only to find out that Ajax, Ontario was actually named after a battleship — the HMS Ajax — which, along with the HMS Achilles and HMS Exeter, defeated the Graf Spee in 1939. I assume the ships had Classical origins, but it ain’t quite the same …
UPDATE: a number of folks have written in (thanks to all!) to note that the Ajax was a light cruiser, not a battleship. Special mention to Albert Nofi who suggested ” … calling her a battleship would be like calling a liburnian a quiquereme.”
rogueclassicism 