Month: July 2021

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for July 8, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. VIII Id. Jul. 2774 AUC ~ 28 Skirophorion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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The Etruscans were an ancient civilization on the Italian Peninsula that had a distinct language, were skilled at seafaring, and worshiped their own pantheon of deities. Professor Alexandra Carpino, Northern Arizona University, joins the show to discuss this ancient civilization.

Bagram, also known as Begram, has been in the news a lot recently. Over the past couple of days, the last US and NATO troops have withdrawn from Bagram air base, which they have occupied for some 20 years. But this area of Central Asia, situated south of the Hindu Kush mountain range, also has some remarkable ancient history.In the area around Bagram lie the remains of two ancient cities: the cities of Kapisa and Begram. Both cities witnessed several waves of ancient superpowers. The Persians came here, as did Alexander the Great and his successors. But it was during the age of the Kushan Empire (1st – 4th centuries AD) that it appears the rich, ancient city of Begram (and the neighbouring metropolis of Kapisa) enjoyed its golden age.In this fascinating podcast, University of Freiburg’s Lauren Morris brilliantly guides us through Begram’s ancient history and why this site is so extraordinary. Lauren also tells the remarkable story behind the excavations at Begram during the 1930s and how it could be a big hit Netflix show in its own right.Part 2 will be out soon and will be centred on the Begram’s most remarkable archaeological discovery: the Begram Hoard.

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends peace for the region but destruction of the cattle herds and people will be afflicted with a dry cough.

… 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 July 7, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est Non. Jul. 2774 AUC ~ 27 Skirophorion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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Oh say can you see where this one is going? Many people have heard about the influence of the Roman Republic on the shaping of the American government but are perhaps unaware how much deeper the ancient underpinnings go. This week, with Carl Richards’ The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, as their guide, Jeff and Dave take a star-spangled look at the Greeks and Romans read, revered, and almost rejected by the founders of the United States. From the earliest days of the revolution Washington, Adams, and Jefferson (and others) saw themselves and each other through the prism of many an ancient great, both historical and fictional. What did it mean that Sam Adams was the “Palinurus” of the Revolution? Why did Washington see himself as Cato?  Why does Benjamin Rush (boo!) come along and try to pour cold, stale ale over the whole classicy enterprise? And perhaps most importantly, if you don’t have busts of your friends in your personal library are they really your friends?

Waste not, want not! In this episode, learn all about ancient Mediterranean olive oil production and how real people producing this delicious food used the manufacturing byproducts to create a closed-loop, sustainable system. Dr. Erica Rowan, an expert on archaeobotanical (plant!) remains, joins us to explain how the ancient Romans in North Africa, Spain, and Italy used industrial olive oil waste as a fuel source to heat their homes, kilns, bakeries, and even to power the olive presses themselves!

The Tetrarchy was a collegiate form of government when four emperors ruled Rome simultaneously. Dr Roger Rees, University of St Andrews, joins the show again to explain what the Tetrarchy was, how it functioned, and why it was dissolved.

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview Prof. Kate McLoughlin. A Professor of English at Oxford University and Tutorial Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Kate works on the representation of war in literature in many different genres, from the ancient world to the present day. Among other books, she is the author of Martha Gellhorn: The War Writer in the Field and in the Text, which explores Gellhorn’s fictional writing alongside her journalism. She also wrote Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq; and, most recently, Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790-2015. She is currently working on a literary history of silence, partly inspired by her research into veteran experiences and their representation.

It’s time for another episode of The Ozymandias Project with Lexie Henning! Tuck in your togas and hop aboard Trireme Transit for an exciting odyssey as we discuss overcoming creative blocks, trying to balance the history and folklore elements when writing for Odyssey & Valhalla, and whether being involved in the making of video games, in any capacity, could be considered a STEM field.

Elynn introduces the historical geography of the Neo-Elamite kingdom. What do we know about the borderlands and their role in Assyrian-Elamite relations? Why don’t we know where so many places are, and why is that so significant?

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends rain storms harmful to grain.

… 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 July 6, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est pr. Non. Jul. 2774 AUC ~ 26 Skirophorion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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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.

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

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)

#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for July 5, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. III Non. Jul. 2774 AUC ~ 25 Skirophorion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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It is one of the most remarkable ancient sites in the World. Situated east of the Zagros Mountains in modern day Iran, Persepolis was an important urban centre of the Achaemenid Persian Empire for almost two centuries. From the stunning, rich variety of imagery depicted on the walls of the Apadana to the complex sewer system, the art and architecture of this site is astonishing, snippets of which can today be seen at the V&A’s newest exhibition, ‘Epic Iran’. In this fascinating podcast, ancient Persia expert Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from Cardiff University returned to the Ancients to explain all about this awesome ancient site. Stay tuned for a follow up podcast in due course with Lloyd on the other Achaemenid urban centres! Lloyd is the author of ‘Persians: The Age of the Great Kings’, out in 2022.

400 – 100 BCE – Classical cultures flourished very quickly during this period.  Empires grew to significant proportions and this time, not just in one area of the world.

Author, classicist and historian Professor Paul Rahe was kind enough to sit down with your host for this instalment of Spartan History Podcast. Paul has authored several books on the Lacedaemonians and his work, the Spartan Regime, is incredibly poignant to our current narrative. Focusing on the archaic formation of the Spartan institutions and character, it has been a great help to me as I’ve tried to reconstruct the various elements of what would constitute the classical Sparta so heavily romanticised. The Professor takes us back to the bronze age briefly, and we work through the consequent dark age and into the early period of the Dorian migration into Laconia. It is, I hope, a great summarisation of our journey so far and hope you all enjoy the conversation  as much as I did.

In his account of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, the historian Herodotus goes out of his way to give an account of Artemisia, female tyrant of Halicarnassus, before, during and in the aftermath of the battle Salamis in 480 BC. This account, and Artemisia herself, are remarkable for a variety of reasons but the idea of a woman commander, one as clever as a man, had a great impact on the ancient world.

Drawn by the prospects of providing service to the Ptolemaic government in either the bureaucracy or the army, or perhaps seeking to settle and farm some of the most productive land in the world, tens of thousands of Greeks would immigrate to Egypt in pursuit of a better life. Thanks to the abundant papyrological record, we are able to get an intimate look into the lives and careers of those who now to called Egypt home: those such as the deeply religious devotee of Serapis named Ptolemaeus, or Kleon, the hard-pressed chief engineer of the Fayyum reclamation project of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

Learn the documentary history behind how the Catholic Church was founded and set up as an organization, together with some of the works of the earliest church fathers.

In Late Antiquity, Ravenna became one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean, including becoming capitals of the Western Roman Empire and Byzantine Italy at different times. Dr Veronica West-Harling, University of Oxford, joins the show and explains.

What are the cultural legacies of visualising war through wargames?  Wargames are not a new phenomenon; in military exercises, as tactical plays tested on maps and as entertainment spectacles, wargames have been with us from ancient times. Studying wargames allows us to better understand the fog of war, as well as giving us nuanced insights into the processes by which military strategy is visualised and drilled into the martial and civilian body. How do we game war? And what does the history of wargaming tell us about its use today?

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends an abundance of grain but the downfall of a virtuous ruler.

… 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 July 3, 2021

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. V Non. Jul. 2774 AUC ~ 23 Skirophorion in the fourth year of the 699th Olympiad

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a quiet Saturday

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On the 27 May 2021, the British Museum opened their newest exhibition on the absolute OG of scandalous, dastardly Roman Emperors: Nero. He also happens to be Sarah’s personal passion project, so Abi just joined her to get all the juicy tidbits and nod along. We thought we’d try something a bit different and podcast ‘live’ in the exhibition … but it was not the smooth ‘tour-like’ experience we imagined. So in this special episode, we reflect on the highlights and our expectations, with some pro editing magic bringing in snippets from the original recording throughout.

Heus, you want to learn Latin? Salve sodalis, you have come to the right place. This is a Latin podcast for beginners. With the series “Litterae Latinae Simplices”, you will set up for a journey into Latin literature, in easy spoken Latin.

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Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

[Saturday] If it should thunder today, it portends a harsh winter.

[Sunday] If it should thunder today, the winds will be turbulent and from them will come scarcity.

… 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)