#Thelxinoe ~ Your Morning Salutatio for September 4, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est pridie Non. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  6 Boedromion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It

Public Facing Classics

Fresh Bloggery

Fresh Podcasts

A boy is born, fated to be one who brings strife. Two sons seek to outrun a family curse. A wife is spared the grisly fates of her husband and son…only if she will marry the one who committed the atrocities. A daughter is saved from certain death…by judgy ducks. These are the stories of the names that would go down in legend: Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clytemnestra, and Penelope, and their lives before the event that would make them all famous: the Trojan War.

Book Reviews

Dramatic Receptions

Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it should thunder today, it portends the downfall of a powerful man and preparations for war.

… 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 ~ Your Morning Salutatio for September 3, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. III Non. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  5 Boedromion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It

An interesting series:

Public Facing Classics

Fresh Bloggery

Book Reviews

Dramatic Receptions

Professional Matters

Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it should thunder today, it portends heavy rains and war.

… 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 ~ Your Morning Salutatio for September 2, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. IV Non. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  4 Boedromion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It

Public Facing Classics

Fresh Bloggery

Fresh Podcasts

Dr Radness travelled to Melbourne recently and met with the fantastic and erudite Dr Rhiannon Evans from La Trobe. Dr Evans is one of the famous voices on the Emperors of Rome podcast. In this special episode, Dr Rad and Dr Evans explore barbarians!

Towards the Tiber River is one of the more stranger tombs found in the city of Rome. Giaus Cestius built his pyramid when Rome’s interest in Egypt was at its peak, and it now stands as the only reminder of a forgotten Roman official.

Guest: Dr Gillian Shepherd (Trendall Centre, La Trobe University)

After a lengthy and unexpected absence, we are back with a new episode. In this episode, we take a break from the narrative and discuss the sources for the Punic Wars. Boring, you say? Not so. The writers on the Punic Wars form a rather eclectic assortment of characters, and the reasons that certain facts have come down to us often seems more due to chance than anything else. Besides the usual grumblings about lost manuscripts, this episode chronicles the various historians to whom we owe much of our knowledge about Antiquity, especially the two greatest historians of the Punic Wars – Polybius and Livy.

How do ancient oligarchies compare with modern authoritarian regimes? How did civil war in oligarchies differ from civil war in democracies? What does the age-old ideological struggle between democracy and oligarchy imply about our future? These are just a few of the questions we discuss on this and the next episode. 

This episode covers: what oligarchy actually is, and how this political form arose in the first place. The next episode – Oligarchy, Part 2: Nemesis – is going to be about the institutions of oligarchic regimes, how they maintained their power, and how they tended to break down in the end.

Joining us is ancient historian Matt Simonton of Arizona State University, author of the book Classical Greek Oligarchy, which won the Runciman Award in 2018. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a chance to win an autographed, hard-cover edition of Classical Greek Oligarchy.

With the death of Seleucus I, Antiochus I Soter assumes control of the gargantuan empire. A Celtic invasion, the First Syrian War and a passionate forbidden romance? Just another day in the reign of the last “King of the Universe”.

Dramatic Receptions

Professional Matters

Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it should thunder today, it portends discord among the common folk.

… 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 ~ Weekend Edition, September 1, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. Kal. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  3 Boedromion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It ~ Long Reads

Public Facing Classics

Greek/Latin News

Fresh Bloggery

Bingeworthy Past Podcastery

Soon to hit the 40-episode mark, the Life of Caesar Podcast is currently about halfway through the principate of Tiberius:

Landscape Modery

 

Reviews

Dramatic Receptions

Professional Matters

Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it should thunder today, it portends a good harvest and good times.

… 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)

Barry Baldwin ~ Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Lying

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Reprinted with kind permission of the author himself, who years ago had to endure yours truly as a student. Errors in transcription accrue to the latter.

(Apologies to Gerry & The Pacemakers) Some amiable marginalia to Patrick Mahoney’s excellent piece [FT275.49] on Constantine’s vision

Lactantius’s (c250 – c. 325) Latin account precedes the Greek one of Eusebius. He doesn’t claim Constantine himself as the source,  but must have been close to the Emperor, the latter having appointed him tutor to royal son Crispus c. 317.

Depending which text you read — there has been much editorial emendation (for details. TD Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, Mass. 1981, p309 n146), one (J. Rougé) deleted the entire sign description – the emblem was either the Chi-Rho  Christogram or the Staurogram, already established the third century symbol of the Cross (JL Creed, Lactantius: De Mortibus Persecutorum , Oxford, 1984.119 n9).

Lactantius later (DMP, cb46) claims another miraculous dream, an angel appearing in Constantine’s then colleague and fellow-Christian Licinius prior to another civil war battle. As Mahoney says, these ages abounded in miraculous visions. For easy example, the barbarian general Gainas had an angelic warning during civil strife c. 400; the Virgin Mary made several guest appearances over Constantinople (Virgin on the ridiculous?), and so on.

Barnes (806 1147) suggests the story may also have been inspired by Judas’s dream in 2 Maccabees 15. Other possible parallels could include the Rain Miracle wrought by the prayers of Christian soldiers in Marcus Aurelius’s army (see, ag. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, bks ch5), plus the simple fact that Roman rulers from Romulus on had dreams and visions good and bad at critical moments ( Liry, Roman History, bk1 ch7 para1: Suetonius, Life of Augustus, ca 95 — same vulturine phenomenon.

Incidentally, there was a more fortean moment on the other side at this critical battle. The pagan Greek chronicler Zosimus (New History, bk2 ch16) reports, “When Maxentius had led his forces out of Rome and crossed the bridge, owls in endless number flew down and covered the wall,” a sight that encouraged Constantine to join battle.

Eusebius’s Life of Constantine abounds in dubious details of TG Elliott, “Eusebian Frauds in the Vita Constantini,” Phoenix 45, 1991, 162-71. Discrepancies between this and his Ecclesiastical History have induced some scholars to doubt his authorship of the biography.

Mahoney’s solar-ice particles explanation was anticipated by e.g., AHM Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (1949). p96; Barnes, p306 n147; P Weiss, “The Vision of Constantine”. Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003) pp 237-59. Barnes adduces pictures of solar halos from Sky and Telescope 54 (1977/8), p185 – available to me.

The TV Ancient Rome meteorite notion reflects the theory proposed some years earlier (BBC news bulletin “Space Impact Suvod Christianity” 23 June 2003) by Swedish geologist Jens Ormo who claimed to have found the actual crater and confirmed its right time period by radiocarbon dating.

For some entertaining fictions, see Colin Thubron’s novel Emperor (Penguin, 1991) Fort of course abounds with solar phenomena and meteorites.

Mahoney is right to emphasise links with solar worship, especially Sol Invictus. The latter, previously number one with emperor Aurelian (270-275) was the patron deity of Constantine’s imperial father Constantius (Barnes, pp 12+290,n38 for source references). Constantine, soon after this battle and for several years afterwards, continued to strike coins (above) linking himself iconographically with this solar patron (Barnes, pp36, 48, 309, nn 47,49).

Apart from dreams and visions, Constantine was also beneficiary of a historical fraud, namely the invention by one of his anonymous Latin panegyricists (no6, para2, cf. the Augustan History’s biography of Claudius, ch1 para3. plus Barnes,vpp35, 301 nn60-2) of a family connection with the perfect prince Claudius II (258-70).

Given this and his distinctly un-Christian rule (e.g.,  liquidation of son Crispus and wife Fausta, barbarous punishments for errant slaves, reduction of the peasantry to serfdom), redeemed – the hoped – by death-bed baptism at the hands of Eusebius, we are justified in pronouncing his name CON-stantine.

Classical Corner 138: Fortean Times 276 (June, 2011), p. 19.