Interesting item at the History Undressed blog (now added to my blogroll, of course):

• Guest Author, Stephanie Dray – Bad Girls of the Ancient World: Expanded Edition.

Over at PhDiva, Dorothy King has managed to convince some dead personnages to fill out the Proust Questionnaire, which was originally some sort of personality test/interview format, but is currently more commonly seen in the back pages of Vogue wherein celebs find yet another reason to talk about themselves. Over the past week, though, it has been rather interesting:

• Cleopatra VII of Egypt Answers Proust Questionnaire
• (Another) Cleopatra Answers Proust Questionnaire
• Mark Antony Answers Proust Questionnaire
• Mithridates VI of Pontus Answers Proust Questionnaire
• Zenobia Answers Proust Questionnaire

… interesting how Mithradates and Cleo respond in the same ‘business-like’ font while Mark Antony is rather more, er, ornate …

A couple of interesting items on the benefits of Classics have meandered through my social networks and email this week. First, and most recent (within a few minutes) is an ‘open letter’ in the journal Genome Biology, in which a Science professor smacks down SUNY Albany’s prez for their recent cuts to, among other things, Classics (about which I hope to blog in the near future) … an excerpt, inter alia (the whole thing is definitely worth reading):

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you have trouble understanding the importance of maintaining programs in unglamorous or even seemingly ‘dead’ subjects. From your biography, you don’t actually have a PhD or other high degree, and have never really taught or done research at a university. Perhaps my own background will interest you. I started out as a classics major. I’m now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and English literature. These courses didn’t just give me a much better appreciation for my own culture; they taught me how to think, to analyze, and to write clearly. None of my sciences courses did any of that.

• via: A Faustian bargain | Genome Biology

(tip o’ the pileus to Bill Caraher for that one)

Elsewhere, Bettany Hughes was giving an interview on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour and made a spirited defense of Classics … an excerpt inter alia:

JM: But how impressed do you think an employer would be, with a kid with
straight-As in Latin, Greek , Ancient History, as opposed to the one
whos done Business, Finance, and I.T.?

BH: The fantastic thing, we have some great statistics, luckily, to back
up our campaign. If you talk to Cambridge University, theyll tell you
that of all their Arts graduates, excluding law students, if you call law
students Arts graduates, classicists are the most highly employable. And
actually, if you go to businesses, across the board, particularly
international businesses, they love a classical degree, because it shows
you can deal with quite complex data, it shows that you have an interest
in the wider world, and it also shows that you have a fundamental interest
in humanity, and increasingly, businesses of all kinds are realising that
thats an absolutely essential skill to have.

… full transcript over at Constantina Katsari’s Love of History blog ..

There are a couple of versions of the same article kicking around my mailbox and also being bounced around assorted sources on Twitter (including my own Exploratorraw autobot). The two I’ve come across so far are both ultimately via ANI and purport to be telling us new info in the search for Cleo’s tomb, specifically at Taposiris Magna. Here are the items in question:

• Headless Egypt king statue could give clues to Cleopatra’s tomb | New Kerala

• Headless Egypt king statue could give clues to Cleopatra’s tomb | Sify

… when I finally was in a position to actually connect with the articles (i.e. not at my school’s wonky connection), it turned out these items were just a repeat of a much-ballyhooed piece from National Geographic back in May of 2010:

• Headless Egypt King Statue Found; Link to Cleopatra’s Tomb?

… which we have already commented on:

• More Cleopatra Tomb Stuff

Just sayin’ …

T’other evening on Twitter I was bemoaning the lack  of statuary in an upcoming auction at Sotheby’s … turns out I wasn’t looking at the right auction (that was a smaller auction of items from the Clarence Day collection) … whatever the case, the ‘bigger auction’ catalog is online and my eye was immediately caught by lot 53 which I can’t seem to find a linkable photo for (Sotheby’s has changed their online catalog format). In any event, it is an early Augustan marble (from a group) of a satyr riding a sea-goat. According to the official description, it was found in 1908 in the environs presumed to be the location of the Gardens of Sallust. It appears to be part of a fountain-type grouping, of which another ‘piece’ is likely a similar item in the Vatican (a piece I can’t recall seeing and which I can’t find a photo of either).

via: A Marble Group of a Satyr … | Sotheby’s