Seen on the Classicists list:

This conference, organised jointly by King’s College London Classics

Department and the Centre for the Reception of Greece & Rome at Royal
Holloway, will take place on July 5th-6th 2011 in Room G 22/26 at the
Institute of Classical Studies in Senate House, Malet St, London. The room
holds only 60, including speakers, so early registration is advisable.

The conference will open at 9.30 a.m. on the 5th. The conference fee, which
covers refreshments, is £20 per day or £40 for both days; there is no
reduced fee, but thanks to the generosity of the Classical Association and
the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies there are ten full-fee
two-day bursaries available for postgraduate students. To register, please
send a cheque made out to *King’s College London* to Professor William
Fitzgerald, Dept. of Classics, King’s College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
(William.Fitzgerald AT kcl.ac.uk. To apply for a bursary, please apply to him
by email including the name of your supervisor, affiliation, and research topic.

Programme
July 5th
9.30-10.30
Registration
10.30 David Konstan (NYU) Beauty and the Best
11.45 C.J. Rowe (Durham) Social Class and the Idea of Beauty in Plato
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Penelope Murray (formerly Warwick)Inspiration, Craft and Elitism:
Why is There no Muse of Painting?
15.00 Page duBois (UC San Diego) The Aesthetics of Slavery
16.00 Tea
16.30 Thomas Habinek (USC) The Radical Potential of Classical Aesthetics
1800 Drinks Reception
1900 Speakers’ Dinner

July 6th
0930 Pavlos Avlamis (Princeton)Aesop, the Everyday, and Urban Promiscuity
in Imperial Greek literature
1030 Coffee
1100 Alison Sharrock (Manchester) Arachne and Thersites: Genre and
Social Class
1200 Vicky Rimell (Rome, La Sapienza) Latin Literature and the Aesthetics
of the Crowd
1300 Lunch
1400 Joy Connolly (NYU) Freedom, Nobility, and the Sublime from Cicero to
Longinus
1500 Katherine Harloe (Reading) Class and the Genesis of Aesthetic
Philhellenism
1600 Tea
1630 Round Table Discussion chaired by William Fitzgerald (KCL) and
Edith Hall (RHUL)
1800 Close

A bit out of our period (probably) … from the Global Arab Network:

Head of the Excavation and Studies Department, Anas Haj Zaiydan said that just a part of the mosaic painting was found at the eastern side of the church, adding that the painting is 5-meter long and 4-meter wide.

He indicated that the eastern part of the painting is burnt, adding that the part which is located to the west of the marble-made basis is also damaged as well as the northern and southern corners of the painting.

The painting is embroidered with geometric and floral shapes, in addition to some written inscriptions.

For his part, Chairman of Idleb Antiquities Directorate, Nicolas Dabbas, said that two separated Greek texts are written on the painting, the first of which consists of five lines while the second consists of three lines.

The two texts contain prayers and religious supplications, in addition to the name of the church’s owner, and of the person who supervised the painting.

• via Archaeologists: Byzantine Mosaic Unearthed in Syria | Global Arab Network.

A rather unenlightening (in the sense that you really can’t see much of interest) photo accompanies the original article …

The is a good example of why one has to make that extra click and actually read what it is one’s spiders have brought back. Despite the strange headline (see below), what this is is actually a reviewish sort of thing of Christopher Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book, which is all about how important Tacitus’ Germania was for all those Third Reich types (especially Himmler). The online article itself is rather meh, but there’s an attached podcast wherein Lewis Lapham interviews Krebs … very interesting stuff:

• Nazi SS Chief Himmler Had a ‘Little Bunny’ Mistress, No Abs: Lewis Lapham | Bloomberg.