It’s always interesting to see how non-Western cultures deal with our subject matter. This is a book reviewish/hypish thing from the Iran Book News Agency:

Seyyed Abdolhadi Ghazayi said his book deals with the philosophy of Socrates and the backgrounds to the emergence of his philosophy.

Referring to the history of philosophy before Socrates, Ghazayi explained: “Before Socrates philosophy existed in the East and then it travelled to the west. Therefore, we can infer that Socrates is the heir of Eastern philosophies of his time. An analysis of the emergence of Socrates and his remaining works makes another chapter of this volume.”

Ghazayi added: “For this book I have used a simple writing style intentionally avoiding difficult expressions. My stress on simple writing even includes philosophical terms of Socrates.”

His interest in Socrates began with his interest in classical Greek philosophers and added: “A sage should, first of all, be a theologian and so was Socrates. I consider him a divine prophet. God has not revealed the names of all his prophets to us, and since Socrates was a theologian I have no doubt that he has been a divine messenger.”

Ghazayi continued: “Each prophet had a particular mission in his life and the significance of that mission in a historical period made him everlasting in history. Some philosophers do not even regard Socrates as a sage, whereas he was martyred in the path of philosophy and theosophy.”

He added: “Philosophy is a kind of knowledge that departs from theology. Islamic philosophers are not pure philosophers. What was translated into Arabic and given to Arabs of that time was pure philosophy, but Farabi, Ibn Roshd and Ibn Sina mingled it with Quranic sciences.”

He continued: “Ibn Sina’s The Healing is a philosophical text inspired by Islamic tradition and Quran.”

Socrates’s words could not be understood in his time and that was why he was killed by poison, explained Ghazayi. His manners and ideas were unique among his disciples. They used to drink wine whereas Socrates avoided it. In fact, he was the first person that banned drinking and this proves that he had a relative understanding of Divine law.

Ghazayi emphasized: “The surviving works of Socrates show that he stood beyond the ideas of his contemporaries and taught them what was useful for their minds and bodies. Theology had no meaning for the people of that time, but he instructed people of divine knowledge lake a wise prophet.”

“Sage Socrates” is published by Koumeh and Negaran Ghalam Publications in 1000 copies.

• via “Socrates was a prophet” | IBNA.

Another tantalizingly brief item from Novinite:

Bulgarian archeologist announced Friday the latest precious and unique finds in the country, discovered near the village of Mogilets in the area of the town of Omurtag in northeastern Bulgaria.

100 objects have been found during the digs of 5 tombs.

The area around Mogilets is the most researched in the entire Targovishte region because it has a large number of mounds and a villa, dating from Roman times, as a geo-magnetic test had shown.

The place is also among the very few in Bulgaria that have been spared from illegal treasure hunters.

Archeologist, Stefan Ivanov, quoted by the Bulgarian new agency BGNES, says four of the tombs are in close proximity to each other. The way the burials have been done leads to the conclusion the toms date from Thracian times.

The finds need to undergo restoration before being displayed for the public.

• via Archeologists Discover 5 Thracian Tombs in NE Bulgaria: Archeologists Discover 5 Thracian Tombs in NE Bulgaria | Novinite/Sofia News Agency.

Tip o’ the pileus to the Huffington Post who brings up Putin’s dive which we mentioned the other day and links to a video of the ‘adventurer’  on the dive … ecce:

As my late father would say, “Don’t eat that Elmer … that’s bullsh**” … such staged garbage … they’re in less than two metres of water …

Interesting article on the Ars Amatoria up at the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers blog (I thing it’s a blog) which mentions, inter alia:

Then there’s another theory that has bounced around scholars for the last century or so: Ovid never was exiled. The main reason for this theory is that the only record of it is Ovid’s, except for “dubious” mentions by Pliny the Elder and Statius, but no one else until the 4th century CE. He did apparently die in Tomis in 17 CE, however, and has been adopted by Romanian nationalists as “The First Romanian Poet”.

• via The Longest Banned Book? | ILAB-LILA.

I didn’t realize that the ‘phoney exile’ claim was still kicking around — near as I can tell, it hasn’t really been around (i.e. taken seriously)  for at least twenty years or so. For a summary of the scholarship , check out the Wikipedia article’s section on ‘exile’ upon which the above appears to be based. Whatever the case, it’s one of those ‘literary oppositional arguments’ which can stand up because of the nature of our sources, but really is the Classics Department version of a conspiracy theory.

Today it’s a bit different … the Classics Confidential folks are interviewing the folks responsible for staging Seneca’s Medea back in February:

There’s a somewhat disturbing trailer for the production at the Oxford Medea webpage (blog?)  as well … There are also some clips from other productions of Medea (movie treatments) … Pasolini’s has always been a fave of mine …