Month: February 2021

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for February 15, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. XV Kal. Mart. 2774 AUC ~ 3 Anthesterion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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Among the many colorful characters of the Wars of the Diadochi, Demetrius I Poliorcetes (“the Besieger”) stands out as one of its most prominent, portrayed by the likes of Plutarch as a skilled commander and larger-than-life personality. Dr. Charlotte Dunn, who recently co-authored a biography entitled “Demetrius the Besieger”, joins the show to discuss her work on the early Hellenistic period. From our sources on the city-taker to his abilities as a king and general, Dr. Dunn helps illuminate one of the main players caught in the struggle for Alexander’s empire.

The Brothers, dated to 160 BCE, is Terence’s last surviving work. We have that date exactly because the play is recorded as being presented at the games held to honour the Roman general Lucius Aemillus Paullus. The first presentation of the play and who was Lucius Aemillus Paullus? The prologue to the play and Terence’s defence of his use of Greek plays to create a new piece. A synopsys of the play The Brothers as a play of ideas and a discussion of it’s main themes about the best way to raise sons. The external influences in an expanding Roman Republic and how they influence the play. The main characters Demea and Micio as more complex and developed characters than have been seen before. The role of Sannio the slave dealer and other minor characters.

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends an air-borne plague and an abundance of wild beasts and mice.

… 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)

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for February 14, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. XVI Kal. Mart. 2774 AUC ~ 2 Anthesterion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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What is history’s take on the future? Oracles, prophecies, apocalypse, scientific projection. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss them all.

The Rest is History brings you the top ten strangest conflicts of all time. Obscure, little-known, downright strange. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland choose five each.

In 73 AD, 967 Jewish rebels against the Romans committed mass suicide atop the Masada Fortress. Or did they? In this second part of Tristan’s interview with Jodi Magness from the University of North Carolina, who co-directed the 1995 excavations of the Roman siege works at Masada, we separate myth from mystery. Jodi weighs the question of Josephus’ sole account of this event against the archaeological evidence, and the external forces which may have influenced the mythologising of Masada.

21st official episode of Spartan History Podcast

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends the loss of progeny and a flood of poisonous reptiles.

… 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)

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for February 13, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est Id. Feb. 2774 AUC ~ 1 Anthesterion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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This episode, Abi and Sarah bring you our interview for Season Two with the wonderful Hardeep Dhindsa (*trumpet fanfare*). In our fascinating chat with Hardeep, we cover issues like the discipline divides in the UK, whiteness and Classics, and why most Classicists are “afraid of post-modernism”. (Honestly, anything this side of the eruption of Vesuvius is all a bit much for us). And we do this, all within an episode that brings you art (just can’t help ourselves), Troy and Troy: Fall of a City, studying in Rome, The Carter’s Apeshit, and Hardeep just generally ticking all of our mythological boxes (we’re looking at you Polyphemus and Sarpedon). The title of this episode was lovingly ripped straight from Hardeep’s own MA thesis (with his kind permission) because we can’t resist a pun.

This episode, we speak with Joel Christensen, author of The Many-Minded Man: The “Odyssey,” Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic – https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501752346/the-many-minded-man/ Joel P. Christensen is Associate Professor and Chair of Classical Studies at Brandeis University. He is coauthor of A Beginner’s Guide to Homer and Homer’s Thebes. Follow him on Twitter @sentantiq. We spoke to Joel about how the Greek epic tradition was not based on the written word, but on large-scale performances in which ancient audiences experienced the stories as a way to think about their own lives, how the Odyssey in particular offered audience a form of folk psychology, and what modern cognitive psychology can learn from Homer.

Alena Sarkissian gives public lecture, subtitled ‘Theatre as a space of Spiritual Contemplation’, on Greek Tragedy in the Czech Republic under Nazi Occupation.

In the first year of his rule, Nero was a big hit. He built a wooden amphitheatre in the Campus Martius, flooded it, and held a naval battle with sea monsters. In his gladiator shows, nobody died, not even criminals. But then… Nero fell in love.

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends abundance, but also civil unrest.

… 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)

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for February 12. 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est pr. Id. Feb. 2774 AUC ~ 30 Gamelion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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In the late sixth-century BC, it became clear that the expanding Persian Empire and the Greek city states in Asia and the Aegean would soon come into conflict…

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends many deaths and unseasonable winds.

… 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)

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for February 11, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. III Id. Feb. 2774 AUC ~ 29 Gamelion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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Inspired by the work I’m doing with CSCP on Pompeii, this is a rant so epic I had to cut it in half to fit each part into ten minutes! Here is the second half of my list of the four most annoying things people get wrong about Pompeii. (And thanks to Dr Sophie Hay who helped with Point 1/4!)

The Greeks engage the Persians at the naval battle of Salamis

Villa Romana del Casale was a large Roman villa in rural Sicily dating to the early 4th c CE. Its scale and opulence speaks to the wealth and power of the villa owners, and it boasts one of the most extensive and impressive collection of mosaics in the Roman empire. Guest: Dr Gillian Shepherd (Trendall Centre, La Trobe University).

After researching Macedonia while working on Alexander the Great, I was left with more questions than answers. Enter Mario of Mario’s History Talks! We discuss Ancient Macedonia’s social structure, the ancient culture’s connection to the modern country of Macedonia, his opinion of Alexander, and so much more!

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of Champollion in deciphering the hieroglyphs on The Rosetta Stone, when the written culture of ancient Egypt opened to the modern world.

Our guests this episode were Chris Mason from Old Songs, Jane Montgomery Griffiths & Diane Rayor. You can learn more about our guests and where to find them on our website. Thank you this week to James Jones for lending us his deep-voice.

Rome. The Eternal City. One of the most recognisable names that many associate with the Ancient Mediterranean World. To provide a detailed run down of this ancient city, Tristan was delighted to be joined by Dr Greg Woolf, Director of the Institute of Classical Studies in London. From its humble beginnings as a group of villages to the infamous slave labour that we must never forget remained at the heart of this city throughout antiquity, Greg covers all these topics in this eye opening chat. Greg is the author of The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History.

According to our literary sources, both of whom are writing hundreds of years after the events they describe, the Twelve Tables are the result of the Struggle of the Orders. This ongoing rift between sections of the Roman population is contentious in its own ways, so it is worth considering the content of the Tables as a point of comparison. The difference between what we might expect of a law code that is the result of a class struggle and the laws themselves is quite something. So that’s just what we’re going to do in this special mini-episode! Join as we dip into the details of the law code and some of the fascinating details we learn from this document

n 1819, John Keats wrote a letter to his brother George and his sister-in-law Giorgiana, who had recently moved from London to America. In the letter, Keats included a poem, which he introduced as “the first and the only one with which I have taken even moderate pains…I hope it will encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit.” The poem was called “Ode to Psyche,” and it has taken its place among five other poems Keats wrote in 1819 and that are now called The Great Odes. In this episode, we follow our conversation with Anahid Nersessian by examining her favorite of the Great Odes, as we explore the myth of Cupid and Psyche and the way Keats’s imagination unlocked the power of an underserved goddess.

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends easy childbirths for women.

… 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)