#Thexinoe ~ Weekend Edition for August 25, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. VIII Kal. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  25 Metageitnion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

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In Case You Missed It ~ Long Reads

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Bingeworthy Past Podcastery

This week’s podcast with scores of episodes to catch up on:

Landscape Modery

The Hellenic Society had a conference entitled “Saving Ancient Treasures for the World” … here are the speakers (one is possibly missing?):

Book Reviews

Dramatic Receptions

Professional Matters

Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it thunders today, it portends a shortage of tree fruit during stormy weather.

… 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 ~ Duplicity: Ancient Literary Lapses

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 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.

(Titular honours shared between Julia Roberts and Stephen Leacock. For a larger repertoire, see Joseph Rosenblum: Practice io Deceive: The Amazing Stories of Literary Forgery’s Most Notorious Practitioners, Oak Knoll Press, Delaware, 2000; also Melissa Katsoulis: Telling Tales: A History of Literary Hoaxes, Constable, 2009.)

“I can draw to line between imposture and self-deception” – Fort, Books, p670, apropos fraudulent claims (1924) to have discovered the lost books of Livy’s History, updated FT135:24.

Reflecting upon early records, Thucydides (History, bk1 ch13) warned against their easy fraudulence. On another side of the coin, Quintilian (Institutes of Oratory, bkl ch8) quipped that it was hard to argue against books that had never existed.

Thucydides himself may have been a victim. His Byzantine biographer Marcellinus (para43) says the final book eight of his History was concocted either by his daughter or his successor Xenophon, ruling out the former because a woman was incapable of such a thing – don’t doorstop me, feminists, I’m only the messenger.

Diogenes Lærtius (Lives of the Philosophers, bk5 para92) says Dionysius “The Renegade” composed a tragedy, Parthenopaeus, passing it off as by Sophocles. When the philosopher Heraclides fell for this, Dionysius directed him to the verses “An aged monkey is not easily caught;/ He’s caught indeed, but only after a time,” adding “Heraclides knows nothing of letters, and has no shame.” cf. Jim Schnabel: “Puck in the Laboratory: The Construction and Deconstruction of Hoaxlike Deceptions in Science,” Science, Technology & Human Values, 19, 1994, pp 459–92.

This prefigures the trick played by Bevis Hillier on rival Betjeman biographer AN Wilson, sending him a fake letter from Eve de Harben” (anagram for ‘Ever Boen Had”), containing the acrostic “AN Wilson is a shit.”

Politics as well as personalities played a part. His biographer Plutarch (ch10 para2) says Solon inserted verses into The Iliad to enhance Athens’s early history. X the Unknown knocked out fake diaries (remember the Hitler ones that took in Trevor Roper?) of Alexander the Great to prove him a drunk. The Donation of Constantine (eighth-century) were invented to justify papal earthly authority.

A diary of the Trojan War by ‘Dictys the Cretan’, supposedly found in Nero’s time, took in some later readers, as did its counterpart by ‘Dares the Phrygian’. Mary Byzantines swallowed the theological treatises purporting to be by the New Testament character, Dionysius the Areopagite.

The Augustan History, ostensibly a collection of post-Suetonian imperial biographies by six otherwise unknown writers under Diocletian and Constantine, is now widely regarded as the work of a late fourth-century single ‘rogue grammarian’ (Ronald Syme, author of sundry books and articles thereon).

No shortage of gullible takers. Lucian (Against the Ignorant Bibliophile, para4) mocks his victim for this, while his contemporary Galen had to write a pamphlet On His Own Books to separate literary wheat from chaff, having stumblod on forgeries being flogged in the Sandalarium (Rome’s Charing Cross Road).

Innumerable other examples could be adduced (see Katsoulis and Rosenblum above, also Anthony Grafton: Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Deception in Western Scholarship, Princeton UP, 1990). For easy examples, the 17th-century Nodot fake Petronius fragment, the Ossian business involving Satnuel Johnson, Clifford Irving’s ‘biography’ of Howard Hughes, the Hitler Diaries – like Mrs Thatcher, I want to go on and on…

Of course, if we believe John Ross’s Tacitus and Bracchiolini: The Annals Forged in the XVth Century (London, 1878; cf. “G.G: The Edinburgh Review, 148, 1878, PP-137–69), followed by the French Hochart (1890) and the German Weiner (1920), not to mention Jean Hardouin’s 1685 contention that virtually all Greek and Latin literature was forged by medieval Benedictines, then we are left with little except what the Germans so nicely call Schwindelliteratur”,

Classical Corner 138: Fortean Times 274 (Special, 2011), p. 19.

 

#Thelxinoe ~ Your Morning Salutatio for August 23, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. X Kal. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  23 Metageitnion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It

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 that lightning will strike and warns of slaughter.

… 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 August 22, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. XI Kal. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  22 Metageitnion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

In Case You Missed It

Greek/Latin News

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Fresh Podcasts

In this episode, curator Ken Lapatin and conservator Erik Risser discuss the exhibition Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri at the Getty Villa, which brings sculptures, papyri, frescoes, and other artifacts from the Villa dei Papiri to Malibu

Abandoning fictional ancient history for real ancient history (sort of), Andrew and Dave take a look at director Oliver Stone’s 2004 misfire ALEXANDER, which looks at the life of Alexander the Great. More specifically, the duo look at ALEXANDER: THE FINAL CUT, Stone’s three-hour plus re-edit of the film, which is not, despite the subtitle, the final cut of the film. Will the pair be able to survive the film’s bloated running time? How problematic are the sexual and racial politics of the film? What the heck was Stone thinking while he made this film, anyway? Tune in and find out!

In this podcast I discuss three aspects of Pompeii. I start with what Pompeii was, how it developed and grew. I then look at the mechanics of the eruption. This includes considering the evidence which supports the major cause of deaths there. Finally I’ll deal with what the remains tell us and how they might mislead as much as inform.

In this episode, let’s dive into the lives and times of the women who helped shape Alexander’s Greatness, and accomplished a whole lot of their own along the way. Get ready to enter Macedonia. We’ll face assassinations, intrigue, a little snake worship, warrior women, and an epic battle for an empire that would put Game of Thrones to shame.

Luke joins David to discuss his forthcoming book on public space in Late Antiquity, reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall at the age of 12, how a birthday trip to Hadrian’s Wall had to be postponed so he could have an emergency operation, why Constantine I is one his favourite emperors but he doesn’t have much time for Justinian anymore, studying in Germany, France, Belgium, Turkey and Italy, his thoughts on the current state of late antique studies, and why Scythopolis in the AD500 was a much better place to live than Athens or Pompeii…

Dramatic Receptions

Professional Matters

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it should thunder today, business will be ‘okay’ for an entire year.

… 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 August 21, 2019

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Hodie est a.d. XII Kal. Septembres 2772 AUC ~  21 Metageitnion in the third year of the 699th Olympiad

In the News

Fresh Bloggery

Fresh Podcasts

Sermo centesimus: tria affero carmina, nec non librum recitatum “Ad Alpes” commendo.

Book Reviews

Dramatic Receptions

Professional Matters

Alia

‘Sorting’ Out Your Day:

Today on the Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar:

If it should thunder today, it portends both prosperity and discord among the common people.

… 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)