From a Dalhousie University press release:

If your Friday evening featured apocalyptic ramblings, verbose philosophers and an MC-ing Roman legionary, chances are you were at the Pythian Games.

Not the original Pythian Games – those were an Ancient Greek festival celebrating athleticism and artistic prowess, and they were millennia ago, so you’re a little late to get in on that action. Dalhousie’s Department of Classics, however, has resurrected the Pythian Games as an annual showcase where students of all majors can show off their Greek grammar, recite a favourite poem or otherwise indulge their dramatic side. And on March 16, indulge they did, togas a-flapping and tongues planted in cheek.

The Games were hosted by a Roman legionary who, rumour has it, strongly resembled assistant professor Jack Mitchell. “I’m only a humble legionary,” he introduced himself. “I’ve come here to see whether Apollo still breathes!”

The ancient soldier’s troubled soul was set at ease by the evening’s 17 performers, whose offerings ranged from skits to original translations to dramatic readings.

Standouts including Mr. James Campbell-Prager’s Gilbert and Sullivan send-up “I’ve Got a Little List,” a sung inventory of characters “whose loss would be a distinct gain to society at large” (textbook publishers, “idiot guest lecturers,” Helvetica hipsters, and people who eat chips in the library were all named and shamed); Cat Migliore and Sarah Black’s comedy sketch “An Ancient Squabble”, in which a Greek and Roman soldier bickered in oddly Cockney accents; Emily Varto’s Ever-Victorious Second-Year Greek Class performing their original work “The Dicaeopolidea” (subtitle, “a journey in Greeklish”); and Dominic Lacasse’s concluding Ancient Greek performance from The Book of Revelation (the audience, suitably chastened by Mr. Lacasse’s warning of dire days to come, quietly crept out to hide behind the reception’s chip bowls).
Cultural foundations

“I think [the Pythian Games are] a good chance to show what you’ve worked on… it’s a nice arena to do that,” says Zoe Vatter, secretary of the Classics Society and originator of the role of the woebegone farmer Dicaeopolis in “The Dicaeopolida.” Ms. Vatter has a passion for the Classics that goes way back.

“I have always been obsessed with the Greek gods ever since I was a child,” she says. “Classics kind of ties everything together… it’s a very versatile degree because the foundations of the world, I guess, are in Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.”

Ms. Vatter was also kind enough to explain the mysterious “Dicaeopolida.” “[Dicaeopolis] was a character in our Ancient Greek textbook. Anybody who’s taken Ancient Greek would get the irony.”

The inside jokes and community spirit that characterized the Pythian Games is also one of the attractions of Dalhousie’s classics department generally. “I know all the professors and they all know me,” says Ms. Vatter. “Everybody who is very involved in the department was at the Pythian Games.” Best of all, this year’s games raised the bar: “Last year was a little crowded. It was nice to have a bigger space… there was a ton more people this year.”

While the contest winners haven’t been announced yet, prizes up to $250 await some lucky Sappho or Orpheus. And if you missed it this time around, keep an eye open (and a lyre tuned) for next year’s third annual Pythian Games.

• via: A classical experience at the Pythian Games (Dal News)

… can’t believe no one has posted anything on youtube …

Interesting talk coming up … via Seven Days:

University of Vermont classics professor M.D. Usher has a way of getting caught up in regime-change protests. During a conference in Cairo last month, he was hustled out of Tahrir Square, a site that struck him as “a kind of Occupy Wall Street space.” A year ago, in the middle of a monthlong teaching stint at the University of Malawi, he witnessed the campus erupting in blockades and overturned cars in reaction to the African country’s latest ruler.

“Without exaggeration, I can say that I saw it first,” Usher declares of the latter instance.

He’ll be showing slides from both experiences at a talk he’s giving at UVM this coming Tuesday evening. Entitled “Agamemnon in Africa, Ulysses in Ulaanbaatar: Classics Gone Global,” the talk is one of this year’s two public Dean’s Lectures — a series awarded to accomplished faculty with a knack for communicating their academic research to students and general audiences.

Why is a classics prof talking about the likes of the Arab Spring? Usher believes emerging democracies such as those in Egypt and Malawi could learn much from Greek literature, particularly Aeschylus’ triad of tragedies known as the Oresteia.

Aeschylus wrote Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides in 458 BC, when “small Athens had just defeated great Persia,” Usher explains. It was the height of Athens’ experiment with democracy, and new ideas of justice and governing were on the rise. Set mostly in a mythical era, the trilogy concerns the case of Orestes, who murders his mother because she murdered his father. Orestes is ultimately tried by a jury of Athenian citizens, who spare him the death sentence. Reason and democratic processes prevail over the old order’s endless cycle of revenge killings.

Usher isn’t the only classical scholar to deem the Oresteia relevant to ongoing struggles to establish democratic states. His talk will address the work of British classicist George Thomson, who developed the first Marxist interpretations of Greek literature. As Usher will show, Thomson’s late-1930s translation of the Aeschylus trilogy inspired filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1970 documentary Notes Toward an African Orestes, filmed in newly postcolonial Africa.

Though Usher will also comment on Greek epic poetry’s fundamental orality and his own encounter with a still-living oral epic tradition in Mongolia, the bulk of his talk will cast the tragedies as touchstones for political struggles around the world.

“The tendency is to see Western literature as insular and imperialist,” Usher observes. “But if you actually look at these texts with fresh eyes, they do speak to emerging democracies. The Greeks invented democracy, more or less, and if democracy is going to be the new paradigm, you need to look back at Greek literature.”

• via: The Classics Speak to Modern Global Turmoil, According to UVM Prof (Seven Days)

Tip o’ the pileus to Diana Wright for sending in this brief item from Athens News:

Part of an ancient cemetery dating from the Hellenistic and Roman eras was uncovered in Thessaloniki during excavations for the construction of a new metro station.

A total of 75 tombs, 45 of which have already been examined, were unearthed in an area of 500m2 at the site of the Dimokratia station.

Most of the tombs are box shaped, one is circular and others have tiled roofs. A large number of altars used for funerary ceremonies were also found, as well as many funerary offerings dated between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.

• Ancient cemetery uncovered in Thessaloniki(Athens News)

… and it just occurred to me … I wonder if the frequent references to antiquities smuggling arrests in Thessaloniki are connected to the metro construction …

ante diem iii kalendas apriles

• 317 B.C. — death of Phocion (?)
• 117 A.D. — martyrdom of Quirinus at Rome