Year: 2009

A Couple of Claims

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 3 Comments

I’ve seen this first one (from USA Today this time) a couple of times now:

Alexander the Great is also said to have had one blue and one brown eye.

I’ve never managed to find any more details on that one …

This second one — from something called Dream Dogs — strikes me as suspicious:

The Maltese has been depicted on ancient Roman and Greek works of art that dates back to 500 BC. The Roman governor Publius is said to have had a Maltese by the name of Issa and even had a portrait of her painted. Much poetry was written of Publius’ Issa.

Okay … we do know of Issa, of course, from Martial’s epigram (1.109), reproduced here via the Latin Library:

Issa est passere nequior Catulli,
Issa est purior osculo columbae,
Issa est blandior omnibus puellis,
Issa est carior Indicis lapillis,
Issa est deliciae catella Publi. 5
Hanc tu, si queritur, loqui putabis;
sentit tristitiamque gaudiumque.
Collo nixa cubat capitque somnos,
ut suspiria nulla sentiantur;
et desiderio coacta uentris 10
gutta pallia non fefellit ulla,
sed blando pede suscitat toroque
deponi monet et rogat leuari.
Castae tantus inest pudor catellae,
ignorat Venerem; nec inuenimus 15
dignum tam tenera uirum puella.
Hanc ne lux rapiat suprema totam,
picta Publius exprimit tabella,
in qua tam similem uidebis Issam,
ut sit tam similis sibi nec ipsa. 20
Issam denique pone cum tabella:
aut utramque putabis esse ueram,
aut utramque putabis esse pictam.

… but I don’t see any evidence that we’re dealing with something identifiable as a maltese. Can anyone help on the portrait claims? (or the Alexander eye colour claims?)

Breviaria Archaeologica

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Some assorted  items caught in the screen:

Will Bowden is fighting to have a buried Roman villa site in Notthingham preserved from development:

A bit out of the period of our purview, but likely of interest, is a report of a mosaic from a synagogue at Ma’On Nirim being cleaned and open to the public:

Similiter, a Byzantine ‘bath house’ find near a kibbutz:

Strange — to me at least — is this story about archaeologists explaining failure to find a Roman wall in Gloucester as the result of ‘medieval recycling’ (seems plausible; I just find it strange that this would warrant press coverage):

Reassessing the Roman occupation (or lack thereof) in Wigan:

Heritage Lottery funding to tourisify Colchester Roman Circus has fallen through:

Centurion Update

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

An excerpt from Jessica Barnes’ piece at Cinematical:

Centurion centers on the famed 9th Legion fighting for their lives behind enemy lines after a devastating guerrilla attack, and joining Kurylenko for the hacking and slashing are Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds), who plays the title character, Dominic West, and Noel Clarke. Marshall spoke with Empire during a set-visit and he described Kurylenko’s character Etain thusly: “Her family were butchered by the Romans, she had her tongue cut out by the Romans, she’s had a hell of a time and she’s out for Roman blood.” In reality, the 9th Legion were Cesar’s most faithful soldiers who were believed to be lost during their stay in Britain while fighting the Scots — a theory that while the inspiration for plenty of historical novels, has since been debunked. But, true or not, I won’t hold it against Marshall, because it probably made for a much more interesting story than the truth.

cf:

Breviaria 04/04/09

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Assorted items which have caught my eye of late:

The headline says it all:

Some sort of 3d modelling project for the Acropolis was recently undertaken:

We linked to several of Suzan Mazur’s posts relating to Robert Hecht and Marion True a few years ago … her (excellent) articles are apparently now part of some Harvard Law syllabus:

The latest issue of the American Journal of Archaeology is out, with a number of online articles of interest available:

Short item on the Classical Studies Club at the College of New Jersey:

Feature on an historical reenactment group based in Rome called SPQR:

Bulgarian coverage of the recent returns by of a couple of thousand of purloined items from Bulgaria (includes a small slide show of various items):

The Classics folks at Warwick are venturing into the world of podcasting … here’s the first (I’ll hopefully get a chance to listen to it and review it in the near future):

The latest installment of Dear Socrates at Philosophy Now (I still don’t understand how there can be a viable philosophy magazine and there’s no Classics magazine on the newsstands):

Charlotte Higgins was talking about odd Classical etymologies:

The BBC had a feature on Albania trying to cash in on Butrint (and other sites):

Andrew Chugg is involved in a project to reconstruct Cleitarchus’ History of Alexander … the promo book site has a pile of interesting things (including videos and the like not necessarily connected to Cleitarchus) … worth a look:

If you haven’t downloaded the full Gnomon Bibliographical Databank yet:

Discovery News’ Jennifer Viegas recently interviewed Rachel Havrelock about the historical Jesus:

Latest from the Spoof: