Cavafy on the Emperor Julian

A splendid piece in The New Republic by the always readable Peter Green on the Daniel Mendelsohn translation of the collected poems of Constantine Cavafy. Every autodidact, someone once claimed, can be guaranteed to have a bee in his bonnet somewhere, and this was certainly true of Cavafy, whose bee (pursued in no less than a dozen poems, five of them unfinished) was the improbable figure of Julian the Apostate. It might be thought that a poet who glimpsed the old gods winging it over Ionia would welcome an emperor who aimed to put them back officially on their pedestals; but in fact Cavafy reveals a visceral distaste and contempt for Julian. G.W. Bowersock, in two characteristically erudite and incisive essays....

Read more at Bread & Circuses

All good wishes,

Judith Weingarten
Visit Zenobia's blog at Empress of the East

Saveguarding Zenobia/Halebiye

L.S.,

The city of Zenobia, said to have been founded by Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, and refortified by Justinian, is now in mortal danger from a plans for a new dam on the Euphrates River.  The French-Syrian Archaeological Mission, excavating at Zenobia/Halebiye since 2006, are circulating a petition in the hope of saving this fascinating site.  They do not aim to cancel the project (which is needed for the development of the region) but to have the dam moved so that it will not drown most of the city.  Please help by clicking here and signing the petition:

Please also forward the petition to as many interested parties as you can.  More information on the site and excavations at the Mission's webpage.

And you can read a post that I recently wrote about the city's history here: Where Did Zenobia Die?

All good wishes,

Judith Weingarten

British Library dissertation EThOS

Via History News Network, the British Library's EThOS beta is now available on-line. EThOS stands for Electronic Theses (dissertations) Online Service.  Nearly all British Universities are participating (except Cambridge and Oxford; naturally not). Any thesis ever accepted in Britain is eligible for inclusion in the database, possibly going back to the 1600s.  The theses have been OCRed, not just scanned, which means that you can do keyword searches on the PDFs, for example. And, if you only want an electronic copy, it is free of charge (hardcopy costs, obviously). If the thesis you want hasn't been scanned yet, then you may be asked to contribute towards the cost of that.

Brilliant.

Judith Weingarten

Herodotus is on Twitter!

You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/iHerodotus.

Dido is no longer online

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the Aeneid on Facebook: http://home.comcast.net/~fuuchan/aeneidonfacebookfinal.png



I particularly like the various relationship statuses.

East, Rebecca: A.D. 62: Pompeii

iUniverse © 2003, 292 pages

Miranda, the protagonist of Rebecca East's A.D. 62: Pompeii, is a graduate student studying classical archaeology at Harvard. It turns out that her knowledge of ancient cultures and her relatively small size make her the ideal candidate for a time travel experiment being conducted by unnamed researchers. The science behind the experiment and the particulars of its financing are never spelled out, but our heroine is due to earn a hefty sum as a guinea pig. The plan is for her to be sent back roughly 2000 years to ancient Rome, though the scientists won't be able to pinpoint precisely either her location upon arrival or the exact date. She is to live among the natives for a few days, attracting as little attention as possible, and then return to the 21st century by activating the transmitter that's embedded in her upper arm.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

Cleobis and Biton go bowling

Another story from The Week (November 14, 2008). This one's not funny (unlike this one), but it does call to mind an interesting classical parallel:

"An avid bowler from Michigan bowled his first perfect game after 45 years of trying, and promptly died. Don Doane, 62, had just rolled his final strike, say witnesses, bringing his score to an unimprovable 300, and was accepting congratulations from teammates when he suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. 'It was like a book, a final chapter,' said teammate Todd Place. 'He threw his 300 game with all of his friends, gave each other high-fives, and it's like the story ended. He died with a smile on his face.'"

Readers familiar with Herodotus will immediately see this as a modernized version of the Cleobis and Biton story (Hdt. 1.31). The Athenian sage Solon, asked by the Lydian King Croesus to name the most fortunate of men, named as second most fortunate the brothers Cleobis and Biton. When their mother needed a ride to a religious festival, but the oxen weren't yet available for her cart, they yoked themselves to it and pulled her some five miles. Everybody was impressed: people gathered around and congratulated the boys, and they congratulated the boys' mother on what great sons she had. And she, the mother, prayed to a statue of Hera that her sons might get from the goddess whatever is best for men to receive. Afterwards the boys feasted and then fell asleep and they never woke up again, and so died at the pinnacle of their accomplishments. And, importantly, because they died there was now no chance for misfortune to befall them in the future: fate, being fickle, tends to upend the lives of men given enough time.

Are there Greeks in Philadelphia?

Both these blog posts came through my RSS reader today. The question is, what's inside the real one?

links for 2008-09-16

• A Garden Carried in the Pocket: The Blood of Caesar

links for 2008-09-05

• The Labors of Herakles -- 21st century

links for 2008-09-01

• Counting My Blessings - Sunday Salon: Favorite history books?
  Re. Peter Green
• Powell's Books - PowellsBooks.BLOG - Bright Oblivion

links for 2008-08-29

• Ancient gold treasure puzzles Greek archaeologists - Yahoo! News

links for 2008-08-23

• Et Tu Brute? « Blacklin’s Reading Room Reviews & More
  Re. the UNRV History site

Grene, David: Of Farming & Classics

University of Chicago Press © 2007, 169 pages

The title of David Grene's autobiography reflects the twin passions of his life. He was (I betray the source of my own familiarity with him by giving this half of his life pride of place) a classicist who spent nearly all of his career at the University of Chicago. He is perhaps best known as the co-editor of Chicago series of complete Greek tragedies, but he is widely published otherwise. I will always think of him primarily for his translation of Herodotus, published in 1988: I'm wearing out the second copy of the book that I've owned. Grene divided his time between teaching and farming. He grew up in Ireland but bought his first farm in Lemont, Illinois, in 1940. In later decades he divided his year between Chicago and a farm he owned in Ireland.

Continue reading at book-blog.com »

New Blog from BMCR

The tremendously useful on-line scholarly Bryn Mawr Classical Review

has created a blog for its reviews, beginning with the first review of August 2008, to encourage informal reactions. For comments on older reviews, please e-mail classrev@brynmawr.edu and ask that the review be posted to the blog.

There is a link in each review to take you to the blog, or you can find the blog at http://www.bmcreview.org/. The postings can be anonymous.

This is great news.  How often does one read even the most scholarly review and start foaming at the mouth because you find errors or bias in the review.  Foam no more.  Respond.  Congratulations BMCR: this takes courage.

Judith Weingarten

Visit Zenobia's blog at Empress of the East.

links for 2008-08-03 [delicious.com]

• Neatorama » Blog Archive » 10 Fascinating Facts About the Ancient Olympic Games

links for 2008-08-02 [delicious.com]

• Neatorama: Roman Chariot Bumper Sticker
• Antikythera Mechanism helped Greeks set Olympic schedule - USATODAY.com

links for 2008-07-24

• Neatorama » Blog Archive » Roman Elvis

You've been tagged!

Debra, I'm not sure this makes sense on Blogographos (or anywhere else for that matter), but have a look and see:

http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2008/07/ive-been-tagged.html

links for 2008-07-22

• best of craigslist : Autographed Copy of Plato's Republic
  Great deal!