quidquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est
Richard Griffiths sent this one in (tip o’ the pileus!) — I think for my Explorator newsletter, but it seems better here. It’s a nice Picture of the Day from NASA of a phenomenon of the moon being distorted by the Earth’s atmosphere and the image dubbed (by Jules Verne, no less) an Etruscan Vase Moon:
The incipit of a piece in the Melrose Free Press:
The Latin word duco means “to lead” and according to Dr. Laurence Kepple, Latin teacher at Melrose High School, Latin can lead students to the best possible college — and better financial aid offers.
Take for instance “duco,” one of many Latin words used everyday, unbeknownst to its speakers and writers. It can be seen in words such as “induction,” Kepple said, which essentially means to “lead in,” as in an induction ceremony when new members are introduced to a group.
Even a first-year Latin student can learn similar simple building blocks that are used repeatedly in everyday language, using the composition of the word to deduce its meaning, rather than having to memorize a dictionary definition, Kepple said.
“Just a few Latin roots give you the ability to decode hundreds and hundreds of complicated words, whether on the SATS or in more advanced science and technology courses,” he said. “That’s why I call Latin ‘the secret code of western civilization.’ Everything was written in it and the language we use today has tremendous borrowing from Latin.”
There’s more good stuff like this … definitely worth the read.
From Hurriyet:
The statues of Roman emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius are being kept in a depot at the Burdur Archaeology Museum due to a lack of exhibition space.
The statues stirred up international excitement when they were unearthed.
Hadrian’s giant statue, found in 2007 during the now 17-year-old excavation at Sagalassos, was on exhibition from July 24 to Oct. 26, 2008, at the British Museum in London. The statue was returned to Burdur Archaeology Museum on Nov. 7, 2008, where it was put in storage due to the lack of exhibition space.
The statue of Aurelius was found during an excavation in 2008. Archaeology, a well-known American magazine, put the find on its list of “Top 10 archaeological events of 2008.”
Hacı Ali Ekinci, manager at the Burdur Archaeology Museum, said they were looking for exhibition space for the artifacts and were waiting for the planned new site being built near the museum to get underway. Ekinci said when the site is completed the statues of the emperors will be on exhibit alongside other stored artifacts.
See also:
Another one I misfiled, then found a pile of others on the same subject (this is what happens with sausage fingers on an iPod Touch) … Assorted media outlets are reporting that Silvio Berlusconi is trying to move the Riace Bronzes to Sardinia for the July G8 Summit, and as might be expected, there is a great hue and cry over the plans. FWIW, there are a number of Facebook groups on the subject, of which two seem to have some backing (in terms of members):
According to the Facebook pages, Berlusconi tried to do a similar thing when the G8 was held in Genoa (without success). Here’s some of the press coverage (interestingly, it doesn’t seem to have hit the U.S. Press yet):
As I try to cleanup the backlog caused by assorted technical things over the past couple of weeks, I have come across an item I misfiled which I find to be very interesting. The Sunday Herald (February 27, 2009) reports on the ‘sudden’ (for want of a better term) decline in tombaroli. It begins thusly:
ITALIAN POLICE announced on Friday they had recovered a haul of antiquities looted from tombs in the east-central Marche region. The booty, some 1500 objects in all, had been dug up by a team of “tombaroli”, Italy’s tomb raiders, and covered a period stretching from 8th century BC to 5th century AD. Among the most prized items were Hellenistic vases, drinking cups and a bronze statuette of the goddess Minerva.
Some further excerpts:
Pietro Casasanta, a retired tombarolo who lives in the countryside north of Rome, registered the change last week in a disconsolate interview with the Associated Press.
In the past, he worked during the day with a bulldozer, deliberately using the same hours as construction crews to become one of Italy’s most successful plunderers of archaeological treasures.
When he wasn’t in prison, the convicted looter operated for decades in the countryside area outside Rome.
Now, he says, it is becoming more difficult to dig and to sell. “The whole network of merchants has disappeared,” he complained.
[…]
“If the American museums are not buying any more it’s obvious that the market will dry up,” said Maria Bonmassar, a spokeswoman for the Italian culture ministry.
She noted that the psychological climate had changed and Italians now prized their artistic heritage. The people of Morgantina in Sicily, for example, have campaigned actively for the return of a headless statue of Venus stolen from their area that is still in the hands of the Getty Museum.
Bonmassar said: “In the past, if people found antiquities while digging the foundations of a house they would try to conceal them. Now, there is an awareness that this is a part of our cultural patrimony.”
Elsewhere in the article comes the claim:
Last year, the carabinieri art squad discovered just 37 illegal digs, a tiny figure compared with the 1000 or so regularly found in the 1990s.
Okay … this was beginning to sound vaguely familiar, so I poked around my archives and found an item we had mentioned from the International Herald Tribune, in which this same tombarolo is saying pretty much the same things; problem is, the article is from 2007. In that same article, we are told of 40 illegal digs being found in 2007. I can’t find anything else about this bust at Marche, so I’m not sure at all how much of the current item is actually new …
rogueclassicism 