The Telegraph has an interview with art critic Brian Sewell … inter alia, some ClassCon:
[…] I travelled in Turkey at great length for a number of years and always carried the same knapsack (pictured). In 1987, while following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, I found an abandoned puppy with a dislocated shoulder and broken foreleg. She was terribly dehydrated and I couldn’t leave her, so I jettisoned as many belongings as I could and carried her in my knapsack for another 600 miles. Eventually I sent her back to England and she was my dog for 12 years. I christened her Mop because I found her on a site named after an Ancient Greek seer called Mopsus.[…]
Plutarch, Arrian, Diodorus, Justin, and other ancient historians report that rumors of
poisoning arose after the death of Alexander in Babylon in 323 BC. Alexander’s close
friends suspected a legendary poison gathered from the River Styx in Arcadia, so
corrosive that only the hoof of a horse could contain it. It’s impossible to know the real
cause of Alexander’s death, but a recent toxicological discovery may help explain why
some ancient observers believed that Alexander was murdered with Styx poison. We
propose that the river harbored a killer bacterium that can occur on limestone rock
deposits. This paper elaborates on our Poster presentation, Toxicological History Room,
XII International Congress of Toxicology, Barcelona, 19-23 July 2010, and Society of
Toxicology Annual Meeting, Washington DC, March 2011.
Those who teach grade-school level math or science are familiar with the concept of a ‘puddle question’. These are usually word problems of some sort which have more than one possible answer. From a teacher point of view, they are designed to assess how a student approaches a problem, comes up with a plan, then solves the problem. They tend to be ‘strange’ things in a math class like “How many raindrops make up a puddle?” (whence comes the name of this type of question) or “How many hours have you spent watching TV your entire life?” In Ancient History, we also have puddle questions, although not known by that name, and possibly the most common/famous one relates to “solving” why Alexander the Great died. Today, Discovery News presents a completely new theory, related to a bacterium from the Styx. Here are some excerpts:
An extraordinarily toxic bacterium harbored by the “infernal” Styx River might have been the fabled poison rumored to have killed Alexander the Great (356 – 323 B.C.) more than 2,000 years ago, according to a scientific-meets-mythic detective study.
[…]
“Indeed, no ancient writer ever casts doubt on the existence of a deadly poison from the Styx River,” Mayor, author of the Mithradates biography “The Poison King,” said.
The researchers believe this mythic poison must be calicheamicin. “This is an extremely toxic, gram-positive soil bacterium and has only recently come to the attention of modern science. It was discovered in the 1980s in caliche, crusty deposits of calcium carbonate that form on limestone and is common in Greece,” author Antoinette Hayes, toxicologist at Pfizer Research, told Discovery News.
Now called Mavroneri, “Black Water,” the Styx originates in the high mountains of Achaia, Greece. Its cold waters cascade over a limestone crag to form the second highest waterfall in Greece.
“Unfortunately, the geochemistry of the river has not yet been studied by modern scientists; therefore, there is no scientific data to support the plausible and interesting calicheamicin theory,” Walter D’Alessandro, hydro-geochemist at the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Palermo, told Discovery News.
Whether Alexander really died from poisoning, as some of his closest friends believed, is pure speculation, Mayor and Hayes concede.
“We are not claiming that this was the poison that killed Alexander, nor we are arguing for or against a poison plot,” Mayor said.
[…]
Retrodiagnoses for his mysterious death have included poisoning, heavy drinking, septicemia, pancreatitis, malaria, West Nile fever, typhoid, and accidental or deliberate poisoning (hellebore, arsenic, aconite, strychnine).
“Notably, some of Alexander’s symptoms and course of illness seem to match ancient Greek myths associated with the Styx. He even lost his voice, like the gods who fell into a coma-like state after drinking from the river,” Mayor said.
The poisoning diagnoses were rejected by many experts because few poisons induce fever. Furthermore, even fewer such poisons were available in Alexander’s time.
However, naturally occurring calicheamicin, which is extremely cytotoxic, could still be the culprit.
“Cytotoxins cause cell death and induce high fever, chills, and severe muscle and neurological pain. Therefore, this toxin could have caused the fever and pain that Alexander suffered,” Hayes said.
According to Richard Stoneman, the foremost expert on the myths of Alexander, the theory offers a good explanation for the Styx’s ancient reputation.
“I personally think that Alexander probably died of natural causes — either typhoid or an overdose of the hellebore used to treat his illness — but other views are possible,” Stoneman, author of “A Life in Legend: Alexander the Great,” told Discovery News.
Back in December of 2004, when West Nile Virus was being suggested as a possible cause of Alexander’s death, I said I would present a summary of the various theories ‘after Christmas’. I don’t appear to have actually ever done that but, fortunately for me, in the mean time an incredibly excellent article on the subject has appear in the January issue of Acta Classica and it’s online at the Free Library:
In brief, it presents Alexander’s symptoms, provides a timeline of what happened when according to the ancient sources, and then has an incredibly useful appendix of all the proposed causes of death and their merits or lack thereof. Just to give you an idea of the things that have been proposed:
malaria
alcohol-related problems (this one seems to be the most popular current belief, to judge from some Twitter reactions to the Discovery.com article; recent movies probably contribute to this view)
typhoid fever
West Nile Virus/encephalitis
Schistosomiasis
some water-bourne illness leading to pneumonia
Whatever the case, both the Discovery article and the Acta Classica one are must reading …
Twice in the past I have tried to blog about a project involving Linothorax, and twice the post has vanished into the ether. Hopefully, the third time’s a charm. Anyhoo, Linothorax is not some gruff, activisitic Dr Suess character … it’s a type of armour made from linen which was supposedly light and very strong. It first hit the mainstream press back in January, when the APA/AIA shindig was in the news and some of the ANI coverage hasn’t expired yet:
Alexander the Great’s body armor was made of layers of linen laminated together, according to a new research.
Experts suggest that the conqueror’s soldiers also wore similar attires.
The reconstructive archaeology research hints that the Kevlar-like arurs must have been instrumental in Alexander’s success in conquering nearly the entirety of the known world in little more than two decades.
“While we know quite a lot about ancient armour made from metal, linothorax remains something of a mystery since no examples have survived, due to the perishable nature of the material,” the Discovery News quoted Gregory Aldrete, professor of history and humanistic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, as saying.
He added: “Nevertheless, we have managed to show that this linen armour thrived as a form of body protection for nearly 1,000 years, and was used by a wide variety of ancient Mediterranean civilizations.
“Currently we have 27 descriptions by 18 different ancient authors and nearly 700 visual images on objects ranging from Greek vases to Etruscan temple reliefs.”
According to researchers, the most reliable proof of Macedonian king wearing linothorax is the famous “Alexander Mosaic” from Pompeii.
Aldrete said: “When Alexander was in India, and received 25,000 new suits of armour for his army, he is described as having ordered the old worn-out suits of armour to be burned. This would only make sense if they had been made of fabric rather than metal.”
As part of the research, Aldrede and co-investigator Scott Bartell even developed several complete sets of linen armour to determine its durability and effectiveness.
Aldrete briefed: “The hardest part of the project was finding truly authentic linen. It had to be made from flax plants that were grown, harvested and processed, spun and woven by hand.”
He further revealed that they used glue made from the skins of rabbits and another from flax seeds to stick the layers of linen together.
Aldrete said: “Our controlled experiments basically dispelled the myth that armour made out of cloth must have been inferior to other available types.
“Indeed, the laminated layers function like an ancient version of modern Kevlar armour, using the flexibility of the fabric to disperse the force of the incoming arrow.”
Now the reason I’m persisting in trying to post about this is because the folks over at the very excellent Blogging Pompeii blog have alerted us to a very interesting article in Corriere del Mezzogiorno:
from corriere del mezzogiorno
Lo sapevate che il filato di ginestra ritrovato negli scavi di Pompei ha una tale resistenza da poter essere paragonato ai nuovi filati che vengono usati per i giubbotti antiproiettile? Eppure è così. Il professor Apicella, all’ ottavo forum internazionale di studi «Le vie dei mercanti» (si è aperto giovedì 3 a Napoli nel complesso della facoltà di medicina della Sun nel complesso di Santa Patrizia, accanto all’ospedale degli incurabili e prosegue il 4 e il 5 a Capri) ha presentato una relazione nella quale ha coniugato l’innovazione tecnologica con la ricerca archeologica. Il professore Apicella e la professoressa Luisa Melillo hanno trovato dei filamenti che scavando nelle fonti hanno scoperto che era sottilissimo e molto duttile, ma che aveva tanta resistenza da poter fronteggiare anche la carica dei cinghiali.
«Si pensava ad un errore di traduzione o di trascrizione – ha detto Apicella – poi si è scoperto che il lino di Cuma aveva queste caratteristiche e ancor di più il filato di ginestra che è più duttile, ma ugualmente resistente, dei filati usati per i giubbotti antiproiettile».
The article continues from there to yak about stuff not related to this … something seems to have been cut off. In brief, what is mentioned is the discovery of fabric/filaments which, although pliable, were akin to modern-day flak jackets in terms of resistance to projectiles. They refer to it as ‘linen from Cuma’ … i.e. it’s linen, and seems to have armour-like qualities. Is this a survival of a piece of linothorax?
UPDATE (the next day): I’ve finally tracked down the ‘linen from Cuma’ reference in Pliny (why am I having such difficulties finding things in Pliny lately?). In Book 19 we read (in translation):
via Google Books
… which really leaves me scratching the old noggin, insofar as the fabric shown in the photo that accompanied the original article (it might have disappeared by now) was clearly not a piece of a net. If we’re talking about the fibres that made up ‘linen from Cuma’ being strong, that seems fine, but it does appear that something has disappeared from this article, clarification-wise. Still wondering about linothorax possibilities … it would be nice to know the context in which this fabric was found.
rogueclassicism 