Hodie est a.d. IX Kal. Nov. 2772 AUC ~ 26 Pyanepsion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

• Excavation in Turkey reveals hidden side of newsworthy nation | The University of Kansas 
• Heuneburg early Celts across classes may have drunk Mediterranean wine in local ceramics | EurekAlert! Science News 
• UC classics professor begins excavations in Sardinia, Italy | Features | newsrecord.org 
• New technique reveals lost splendours of Herculaneum art 
• Dogs show a nose for archaeology by sniffing out 3,000 year old tombs | Science | The Guardian 

In Case You Missed It

• 1,500-year-old Byzantine Church with mosaics discovered in Beit Shemesh – Israel News – Jerusalem Post 
• The fall of Rome was Europe’s lucky break 

Public Facing Classics

• [Peter Jones] Roman funerals had real ‘emotional intelligence’ | The Spectator 
• [Maria Wyke] Iconising the Classical: Pompeii in Silent Cinema – CRASSH 
• [Madeline Miller] Spokane is Reading hosts author Madeline Miller, whose bestseller Circe reimagines a minor female character from The Odyssey | The Pacific Northwest Inlander 

Fresh Bloggery

• A Couple More Manuscripts of Questionable Origins | Variant Readings 
• Manifest Guilt For The Blood He Spilt – SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE 
• AWOL – The Ancient World Online: Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of the Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age
• Podcasting, Performance, and Pedagogy – SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE 
• Join Gina for Short Courses – Classical Studies Support 
• Pumpkinception – SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE 
• Arrian I.3.1-6 | The Second Achilles 

Fresh Podcasts

• De Avis | Sermones Raedarii 

Die domini, avos laudo apud quos nunc liberi versantur

• Spectator Books: Greek myths, reimagined | Coffee House 

This week the Books Podcast leaves its dank burrow and hits the road. I travelled to the southern Peloponnese to catch up with the Orange-prize winning novelist Madeline Miller, where she was hosting a reading weekend at the Costa Navarino resort. Madeline’s first novel, The Song of Achilles, retold the Iliad from Patroclus’s point of view. Her second, Circe, takes on the great sorceress of the Odyssey. She talked about how — as a classicist as well as a novelist — she approached reworking these canonical stories; about taking liberties with Circe; and about how the ‘rape culture’ of Ancient Greece speaks to us in the age of #metoo.

Book Reviews

• [BMCR] Steven J. Green (ed.), Grattius: Hunting an Augustan Poet. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 
• [BMCR] Achim Lichtenberger, Rubina Raja (ed.), Archaeology and History of Jerash: 110 Years of Excavations. Jerash papers, 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. 
• [BMCR] Eirini M. Dimitriadou, Athens: Settlements and Cemeteries in the Submycenaean, Geometric and Archaic Periods. Monumenta archaeologica, 42. Los Angeles: UCLA, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2019. 
• [BMCR] Antony Augoustakis, R. Joy Littlewood (ed.), Campania in the Flavian Poetic Imagination. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019 
• [BMCR] Stéphanie Guédon (ed.), La frontière méridionale du Maghreb: Approches croisées (Antiquité – Moyen Âge). 1. Scripta receptoria, 13. Bordeaux: Ausonius Éditions, 2018. 
• [BMCR] Cécile Durvye, Diodore de Sicile. Bibliothèque historique. Tome XV: Livre XX. Collection des universités de France, 538. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2018. 

Dramatic Receptions

• Bare Theatre Presents THE TROJAN WOMEN 
• California University theater department opens season with Greek parody | Local | heraldstandard.com 
• In Characters Ancient and Contemporary, Women Discover Their Power Onstage – The New York Times 

Alia

• Original handwritten Olympic manifesto to auction at Sotheby’s 
• This Might be Why the Infamous Vesuvius Eruption That Destroyed Pompeii Was so Explosive 
• Greek university offers first classics degree in English 
• Greek Scientists Say Alexander the Great Died of Pancreatic Necrosis | GreekReporter.com 
• Big, bad Boudica united thousands of ancient Britons against Rome | National Geographic 
• One Ring to Rule Them All, 10 Years to Study Its Significance – The Montclarion 
• The professor whose zeal for collecting left a lasting legacy on Tyneside – Chronicle Live 
• Asterix gets update with female heroine in latest outing | News | WKZO 
• Women, once relegated to supporting roles, are becoming the protagonists of their own stories – The Washington Post 
• The Intriguing Greek Origins of Marseille, France’s Oldest City | Greek Reporter Europe /
• What’s the Plural of Quid Pro Quo? – Mother Jones 

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

• Homeromanteion | Online Homeric Oracle
• Sortes Virgilianae (English)
• Sortes Virgilianae (Latin)
• Consult the Oracle at UCL

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, because of the discord of those in power, the common people will oppress others.

… adapted from the text and translation of:

Jean MacIntosh Turfa, The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar, in Nancy Thomson de Grummond and Erika Simon (eds.), The Religion of the Etruscans. University of Texas Press, 2006. (Kindle edition)