Hodie est pr. Non. Jul. 2774 AUC ~ 26 Skirophorion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad
In the News
- Meet the British Museum’s Monument Men: the team tracking down looted artefacts
- Illegal digs of treasure hunters thrive amid pandemic in Turkey | Daily Sabah
- Scientists reconstruct Mediterranean silver trade, from Trojan War to Roman Republic
- Roman remains found at The Misbourne | Bucks Free Press
- Children find Bronze Age ‘corpse grave’ while playing in sandpit – The First News
- Rome’s House of Vestal Virgins reopens in Roman Forum
- Ancient tombs, relics, architectural vestiges discovered in southern Iran – Tehran Times
- Egypt’s antiquities are a pawn in the Ethiopia dam crisis – Middle East Monitor
- Beautifully Carved Sandstone Relief Uncovered at Vindolanda | Archaeology | Sci-News.com
In Case You Missed It
- 3,000-year-old infinity pool used for religious rituals – The Jerusalem Post
- How were people buried 2,000 years ago? New evidence – The Jerusalem Post
- From Scythians To Goths: ‘Looting’ Russia Strikes Gold Digging Up Crimean Antiquities – Analysis – Eurasia Review
Classicists and Classics in the News
- What Was the Earliest Music?
- Did lead poisoning cause downfall of Roman Empire? The jury is still out | Ars Technica
Greek/Latin News
- [Ephemeris] NAVFRAGIA IN MARI INTERNO
Public Facing Classics
Fresh Bloggery
- PaleoJudaica.com: Fossil-shark-tooth collectors in Iron Age Jerusalem?
- PaleoJudaica.com: Ghost roads on the Madaba Map?
- Laudator Temporis Acti: Children as Mirrors of Nature
- Roman Archaeology Blog: Ancient Roman Sarcophagus Containing Two Skeletons Unearthed in Bath, England
- Some Miraculous Misogyny From the Ancient World – SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
- Mars, not Roma – Liv Mariah Yarrow
- AWOL – The Ancient World Online: Bethsaida Excavations Project
- AWOL – The Ancient World Online: McPherson, D. (1857) : Antiquities of Kertch
- A Sacrifice, Made Twice or Thrice – SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
- Amminadab – Mainzer Beobachter
- PaleoJudaica.com: Ptolemaic date-palm genomics
- PaleoJudaica.com: Cyril and Methodius Day 2021, round three
- Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues: A US Take on Turkey’s Fight Against Cultural Looting
- A Fine Poem on Friendship – SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE
Assorted Twitter Threads
- @DocCromm’s #LatinForTheDay is Ovid, Ibis, 1-6
- @fadeaccompli is reading Stewart, Plautus and Roman Slavery
- @Roelkonijn on the Corinthian War
Fresh Podcasts
A day after Independence Day in the US, we investigate the history of the name “America” and two related cocktails, with some side trips into the sack of Rome in 410 CE and the use of the Fall of Rome as a historical parallel for the United States. This episode completes our mini series on country names, in the season of national holidays in north America.
Socrates thinks that poetry is like candy: delicious but bad for us. If we consume too much, it’ll rot our souls. That’s because the poets just pander to our passions with no concern with or knowledge of the truth. But pandering poets aren’t the problem. It’s us. Socrates thinks that humans have a poetic sweet tooth that makes certain kinds of stories irresistible to us. We let ourselves get carried away by them and start to believe that they’re true. Following our natural taste for art undermines reason and makes us into worse people. So how do we live if we can’t trust our taste?
Honorary Research Fellow at Durham University, Dr Kathryn Lomas, joins the show again to discuss what occurred with Rome during the interregnum between the First and Second Punic Wars (241-218 BCE).
Dividing Sicily from Italy, the Strait of Messina is a small stretch of water with an incredible history that stretches back to ancient times. It was likely here that the mythical sea monsters of Scylla and Charybdis were supposed to have wreaked havoc on Odysseus’ crew. It was an area of the ancient Mediterranean renowned for its whirlpools and vicious currents. And it was also on either side of this strait, that two ancient cities enjoyed a long and connected history: Rhegium and Messana. To shine a light on this waterway’s importance in antiquity, Tristan was delighted to be joined by Dustin Mackenzie from Macquarie University.
It is often the case that it is assumed that it was in ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean that was host to the foundation of European politics, culture, economics and engineering. But in fact, the development of sophisticated civilisations, writing cultures, complex technologies and sciences occurred over millennia in the fertile crescent in the ancient civilisations of Assyria, Sumer, Babylon and the Akkadian Empire. These are the crucible of our world today to champion this often-underappreciated part of human history Moudhy Al-Rashid an Assyriologist from Oxford University. She takes Dan through the history of this vitally important region, how and why writing developed, and why she thinks this part of history has often been neglected.
Fresh Youtubery
- New Discoveries Across the Empire – The Roman Society Archaeology Committee Biennial Conference 2021
- L’hospitalité dans l’Antiquité classique | CAC SCEC
- Peopling the Past Ep 12: Chelsea Gardner talks about ancient Tainaron | Peopling the Past
- Is the Bible a History Book? | Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
- Earth History and Interstellar Diversity: The Reception of Ancient Egypt in Star Trek | Digital Hammurabi
- Marcus Aurelius & the Perilous Plague! : Archae-Facts | Archaeosoup
Book Reviews
- [BMCR] Emanuele Castelli, La nascita del titolo nella letteratura greca: Dall’epica arcaica alla prosa di età classica. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, 148. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2020.
- [BMCR] Alan Bowman, Charles Crowther, The epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt. Oxford studies in ancient documents. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Online Talks and Professional Matters
- Post-Doc Research Fellowships in Ancient Mediterranean Studies
- Two Course Directorships at York University (deadline 8 July) – The Classical Association of Canada
- See what’s happening today in Dr Pistone’s Online Classics Social Calendar
- SCS Calendar: Classics, Ancient History, and Classical Archaeology Webinars
Alia
- The thorny ethics of displaying Egyptian mummies to the public | Ars Technica
- Archaeologist Solves Mystery of the Phaistos Disc in Greece
- Xi Jinping discussed the Thucydides Trap with Malcolm Turnbull, revealing his view of the world today – ABC News
‘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, it portends fatal diseases affecting enslaved persons.
… 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)
rogueclassicism 
