Some interesting comments by Stephanie Dray:

• Teen Celebs of the Augustan Age by Stephanie Dray | Bookalicious.

Tip o’ the pileus to Richard Campbell for pointing this one out … Sands of Time is one of those online art dealers who regularly sell ancient items and currently they’re offering a very interesting little mosaic which is labelled as first century A.D. and “possibly” coming from Volubilis. So far, nothing overly surprising or exciting … as described, though, the mosaic was once owned by astronaut Alan Bean, who was given the mosaic by the king of Morocco back in 1969. The description has some words from Bean:

“In November of 1969, I became the 4th human to walk on the moon as the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 12. After the flight, Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and I along with our wives were invited to spend the night at The White House by President and Mrs. Nixon.

In the evening, after dinner, The President asked us to visit the leadership of 21 countries around the world, as his direct personal representatives, to relate the story of our moon landing mission. To facilitate this Assignment we would use an Air Force One with two complete flight crews and a number of State Department coordinators. As representatives of The President of the United States we were treated with much celebration and respect everywhere we went.

In Morocco, King Hussan II presented me and my wife Sue with, among many other gifts, a handsome Byzantine Mosaic Panel with an image of a short-legged bird, possibly a Duck. I later learned that the Duck is a symbol of Vigilance and Watchfulness in early Christian Art…”

Photos of the piece at Sands of Time …

Here’s an interesting detail about Mr Assange that just popped into my mailbox:

Mr. Assange’s exploits were detailed in a 1997 book he co-authored called Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. The book chronicles some of the most notorious hacking incidents of the 1980s and 90s – back when Mr. Assange went by the nickname Mendax, from the poet Horace’s “splendide mendax,” or “nobly untruthful.” In his introduction to the book, Mr. Assange quotes Oscar Wilde: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

via CTV News | 2010 may go down in history as the year of the hacker.

…  Classicists will probably recognize splendide mendax as coming from Horace Odes 3.11, which tells the tale of those daughters of Danaus, most of whom ended up as ‘sieval engineers’ in the underworld. The ‘nobly untruthful’ one was Hypermnestra … we’ll have to see if Assange is saved by Aphrodite’s intervention …

Nice article in Scientific American:

• via Archimedes Coins “Eureka!” in the Nude–and Other Crazy Ah-Ha Moments of Science | Scientific American.

From the Waterloo Record:

It was a time of change, a time when the developments of a single culture were felt, as never before, beyond its borders.

The Hellenistic Age spans the roughly 300 years between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC — not an overly-lengthy period of time, but a significant one.

It marked the first time in the western world that the changes within one society — Greece — had lasting impacts on neighbouring cultures and civilizations to come, from Spain to India.

It represented the most cross-cultural interaction that had ever been seen, at every level of life — economics, politics, religion, language, science, culture — said the University of Waterloo’s Riemer Faber.

“This period is particularly rich, both in developments and in ideas,” Faber said.

It is in recognition of the significance of this often-neglected area that a new research institute dedicated to the period has been launched at UW.

The Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies is believed to be the first of its kind in North America to conduct interdisciplinary research focusing on this period, said Faber, its director.

Although it has been operating since the spring, an official launch was held Thursday night to coincide with a three-day workshop that hopes to build a framework for international collaboration in the future.

Faber said the Hellenistic Age has often been overlooked because it wasn’t the time of classical Athens, and it wasn’t the Roman Empire. But more and more, scholars are recognizing its importance — and its historic similarities to the globalization occurring in today’s world.

“It is a period in which precedents were set, or parallels created, that apply today,” Faber said. “The world view, the perspective of people, changed dramatically.”

The institute’s steering committee consists of six faculty members from UW’s Department of Classical Studies who have research interests in the period, Faber said. His specialty lies in the literature and language of the time.

There are already numerous research associates from UW and abroad with a connection to the institute, and Faber said it plans to embark on a number of collaborative projects and publications with other academic centres. There are also hopes to raise funds to support a chair for the institute and to attract visiting researchers.

The institute is developing a resource database and will also launch an online journal in the near future.

• via New Waterloo institute to study a neglected period of history – the Hellenistic Age | The Record.

… which is interesting, given the reports a short while ago that Greek at Wilfrid Laurier — with whom Waterloo shares ‘teaching’ — is threatened. How does this work? Or do the powers that be at WLU figure this Hellenistic Studies thing will pick up the slack and save them (WLU) some money?