Month: October 2011

Recent Book Reviews ~ 10/24/11

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From BMCR:

From the popular press:

Circumundique ~ 10/22-23/11

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I might have missed a couple:

This Day in Ancient History: ante diem ix kalendas novembres

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ante diem ix kalendas novembres

  • 31 A.D. — execution of Strabo, son of the Praetorian Praefect L. Aelius Sejanus
  • 51 A.D. — birth of the future emperor T. Flavius Domitianus, better known as Domitian

More Evidence of the Caracalla – Geta ‘Damnatio Memoriae’

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

Found this one lurking in the bottom of my mailbox because I had vain hopes it might get some coverage in the major English speaking press, what with it being about damnatio memoriae and all that … here’s the basic story from the Bucharest Herald:

An inscription carved in stone, proving the political conflict between Roman emperors Geta and Caracalla, and how the latter tried to erase the former’s name from history, was discovered in the town of Alba Iulia, Mediafax reports.

The stone was found by archeologists from the local museum, during digs in the ruins of the building that served as HQ to the officers of the 13th Legion Gemina, located in present-day park Custozza, the head of the National Unity Museum of Alba Iulia, Gabriel Rustoiu announced.

On the stone inscription, the name of co-emperor Geta, actually Publius Septimius Geta, was erased by Emperor Caracalla – “Marcus Aurelius Antoninus” – his brother.

The two sons of Emperor Septimius Severus jointly ruled the Roman Empire after their father’s death in 211 AD, but the same year Caracalla kills Geta and orders his name to be erased from all records.

“Political disputes in the Roman Empire often ended with the death of an opponent… An even tougher sentence, in Romans’ eyes, was the so-called «damnatio memoriae», erasing one’s name from history,” Gabriel Rustoiu explains.

The Alba Iulia fortress was built at the beginning of the 18th Century (between 1714 and 1738), on the ruins of a Roman fort and of a medieval citadel.

What was really difficult for this one was finding a photo of the stone … there seems to be plenty of coverage, but very little with the actual stone in the photo. Citynews.ro comes through, however:

… here is the best one of the lot … there are three others at the original page … the line that has been erased can be clearly discerned:

… looking at the photos, just in case you’re wondering, the stone seems to be dated to March/April of 206 A.D. when Albinus and Aemilianus were consuls —  that’s the “PRILES ALBINO [E]T AEM” in the last capitalized line.

Around the Blogosphere:

A Late Antique Woodstock?

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Nice coverage of the second ’round’ of the the Classics Renewed conference at Brown last week:

For a dead language, Latin showed an awful lot of life at last week’s “Classics Renewed” conference on the poetry and prose of late antiquity. The conference, which ran from Thursday to Saturday, brought 19 speakers from four continents to the Annmary Brown Memorial.

Brown played host to the second of two parts of the conference, which began at Rice University in March. At the close of the discussion, conference organizers Scott McGill of Rice University and Joseph Pucci, associate professor of classics, associate professor of comparative literature and lecturer in the Program in Medieval Studies, said they may turn the conference’s lectures into a book.

The majority of attendees were classicists, though graduate and undergraduate students also attended.

Robin McGill GS said the conference offered an exciting venue for sharing ideas with other scholars. Other attendees said the novelty of the topic made it particularly interesting.

The relevance of the topic to contemporary society and the expansion of the field came up frequently in discussion.

As speaker Mark Vessey of the University of British Columbia put it, “20 or 30 years ago, you had to be a bit odd to get into late antiquity.”

Recently, late antiquity’s role as a bridge between the classical period and the early middle ages — between classics and Christianity — has elevated its importance in academic scholarship. Because it represents a period of transition, late Latin poetry is more disjointed than the staid genres of classical poetry that precede it. At times, it is also both sexually and socio-politically explicit — in one lecture, James Uden of Boston University explored parallels between late Latin poetry and 20th century Beat poetry.

Several conference participants stressed a particular sexiness to the works discussed, jokingly commenting that the paintings of nude women gracing the walls of the Annmary Brown Memorial would make good cover images for the proposed book based on the conference. Because late Latin authors hailed from a combination of Christian, pagan and secular backgrounds, their works offer unique perspectives on the relationships between individuals and lovers, as well as individuals and God.

Scott McGill — whose book on the concept of plagiarism in ancient Rome and its implications for contemporary society will come out next year — referred to the conference as a “Late Antique Woodstock.”

He said late antiquity has traditionally been overlooked in this country.

Conference participants stressed that late Latin antiquity is a new field, which, as Vessey put it, “is only just beginning to be measured out.”

The conference proved that centuries later, ancient material can continue to deliver fresh insight. “Latin isn’t dead,” Pucci said, “It’s not spoken, but it isn’t dead. Any language that can allow you access to a culture isn’t dead.”