May 2013
11 posts
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TODAY: The Fifth Miracle of the Obama Presidency
Oh, wait. So far there have only been four.
1. Getting elected
Who would have thought that a black man with very little experience, with the middle name Hussein, fathered by a man from Kenya would beat the Democratic powerhouse Hillary Clinton to the nomination and get elected on top of that. That’s more like two sizable miracles in one.
2. Passing Obamacare
With pride now have...
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The Cimbri
This is an interesting article stating quite convincingly that the Cimbri were Celts and not Germans despite the fact that they likely originate from at the time supposedly solid German Northern Europe.
Not all of them left apparently since Augustus later reports that his legions encountered them around a hundred years later on the coast of the Northern sea, living among other German tribes.
...
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Sextus Pompey, the son of Pompey the Great
Sextus Pompey fought together with the rest of the family against Caesar and continued the fight after his father got murdered in Egypt. At the end of the war when his older brother got killed too he managed to escape to Sicily where he laid low until the assassination of Caesar.
What is not well known: the pact of Misenum was sealed aboard of one Sextus’ large warships with a banquet which...
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Ten Things Romans Used for Toilet Paper
Pine cones? Rocks? Good lord.
I know, I know! I’m always blogging about toilets and evil eyes and gladiator-scraping love-potion and suchlike, but I can’t help it. It is all so fascinating! My husband Richard was the one who taught me the first lesson of history: NO TOILET PAPER! So how did the people in olden days wipe their bottoms? This question draws in even the most reluctant...
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Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire
Plague may have helped finish off the Roman Empire, researchers now reveal.
Plague is a fatal disease so infamous that it has become synonymous with any dangerous, widespread contagion. It was linked to one of the first known examples of biological warfare, when Mongols catapulted plague victims into cities.
The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been linked with at least...
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The History and Architecture of Petra
We always have magazines about history and archaeology flying around the house. My wife rarely picks any of them up, not even on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Recently this enigmatic site was on the cover of one those magazines..
Petra was a city of wealth, prosperity, and enormous ingenuity that allowed the Nabataean people to settle and even thrive in one of the harshest environments on earth....
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Nepenthes and Cannabis in Ancient Greece
Look to the sky!
Here I look. But why have you made me do that?
Is your look always the same or is it changed?
It has more light than before and it seems more transparent.
And is your soul still lost?
I cannot understand … but I feel as I have come again in my senses, my thoughts are changed and me too …
Can you hear me and reply to me, and in a clear manner? Can you?
It is...
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A Brief History of Property Tax
Did you know that the Rosetta stone was actually a tax document?
Taxation has existed in various forms since civilization began. In days of old the source of wealth was land and its proceeds. Before the existence of a monetary system, taxes were paid by a percentage of crops raised. Through most of history, the tax assessor and the tax collector were the same person; therefore, “tax...
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Dissecting Rome’s First Triumvirate – Part II
Here’s part 2.
The rule for election of Consuls of Rome required that a man be 43 years of age unless he was of the patrician class and then he would get two years credit and be eligible at 41. Election during the first year of eligibility was on Caesar’s mind as he waited for the end of 60 B.C. and the voting. During his term as provincial governor of Spain, Caesar had acquired...
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Relocating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
I have my doubts that we will be rewriting our history books anytime soon but it’s a very interesting article.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, weren’t in Babylon at all – but were instead located 300 miles to the north in Babylon’s greatest rival Nineveh, according to a leading Oxford-based historian.
After more than 20 years of...
April 2013
21 posts
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On the Roman Diet
Whatever your Classics teacher said to wake up slackers at the back of the class, the Roman diet in ancient times was not always a blow-out of tender larks’ tongues and roasted flamingo followed by a medicinal visit to the vomitorium.
Standard fare came from whatever was available in the larder or by handing over a few sestertii coins at their equivalent of our local chippy or burger...
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Roman Empire in the Netherlands
There are claims that the Chatti when eventually being driven out of the Netherlands took to the British Isles. They managed to establish themselves on the East coast of Scotland and became the ancestors of Clan Keith.
In the first century BC, sometime between 51 BC and 12 BC, the Batavi migrated from the east bank of the Rhine in what is today Germany to the Betuwe region, in the south central...
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The mafia left Naples in ruins. Can they do the...
Having been buried under ash from Mount Vesuvius almost 2000 years ago, the Roman city of Pompeii managed to rise again – becoming one of the world’s most famous historic sites and tourist attractions.
But over the past decade – under the weight of 2.3 million trampling visitors’ feet every year – it has fallen into woeful neglect and is in urgent need of restoration.
This was amply...
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Early European Farmers Mysteriously Disappeared
As people will be pointing out there are not that many remains from those periods. But can we realistically expect that to change - ever? We work with what we have and get better at interpreting what we have found as our instruments and methods improve over time.
That’s exactly what Cooper did.
People migrated from modern-day Turkey and the Near East to colonize Europe during the...
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Alexandria: Library of Dreams
Anybody remember the TV show Seaquest DSV*? It was about a gigantic submarine, like a battlecruiser under water and Roy Scheider was at the helm. In the one episode that I watched they find the famed Library of Alexandria, It has sunken to the bottom of the ocean but is still intact, sort of, including breathable air and with lots of scrolls in situ.
MY TITLE does not intend to suggest...
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The production of shows in the cities of the Roman...
The “games”–scenic representations, chariot races, gladiatorial combats and athletic displays–played a fundamental role in the Roman world. A great deal has been said on the program and cost of such events, on their social function, on the role of the senatorial elite and emperors as providers of games. These issues, however, can be treated almost only with the city of Rome in view; there is...
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The Eburones
The Eburones are not the only tribe where the ancient classification of a Germanic tribe is being questioned today.
In 57 BCE, Julius Caesar conquered the valley of the Upper- and Middle- Meuse, which, he said, was inhabited by Belgian tribes. Among the members of the Belgic confederation were the Eburones. In his campaign notes, the Roman general mentions them together with three other tribes,...
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APOLLONIUS’ LETTER TO VALERIUS
He was even involved in a miracle it seems.
Apollonius of Tyana, was a Greek philosopher of the 1st century AC, who is about to become one of my favourites!
Apollonius’s life has so many similarities to that of Jesus Christ that he is almost concealed from our official history and philosophy books. Yet he seems to have been a true practical philosopher, especially open-minded and very fond of...
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Roman medicine and the legions: a reconsideration
I remember reading some quite interesting texts about what it was like visiting the first hospitals that were in the Western world, set up in temples in Greece some 2400 years ago, written by the patients themselves. I have to dig those up.
Introduction: Although all general histories of medicine make reference to skilled doctors in the Roman legions, the specialized secondary literature on the...
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App | Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum
There’s an app for that - this time for the highly praised exhibition about Pompeii and Herculaneum at the British Museum. Check it out.
This app uses fascinating objects from the British Museum’s major exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum to transport you to the heart of the life and times of the people of the Roman cities that were destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius...
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Amazons
In order to download the PDF you must login with a Facebook account, but it is worth it and to decipher one of the pages you must stand on your head, but again - it is worth it.
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History (1991)
Introduction: Amazonomachy is a Greek word meaning combat between male and female warriors. In literature such scenes always take place far from the here and now”...
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The discovery of the body: human dissection and...
In the first half of the third century B.C, two Greeks, Herophilus of Chalcedon and his younger contemporary Erasistratus of Ceos, became the first and last ancient scientists to perform systematic dissections of human cadavers. In all probability, they also conducted vivisections of condemned criminals. Their anatomical and physiological discoveries were extraordinary. The uniqueness of these...
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Dissecting Rome’s First Triumvirate – Part I
Sulla had marched on Rome twice, tried to reform the institutions of the Republic.
After Sulla one could say the ruling principle of Roman politics was ‘anything goes’ as long as it didn’t not call that one last thing into question - that Rome was a Republic, however dysfunctional - which it very much was. Everything else was up for grabs.
This first triumvirate was a political...
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Move over, Mythbusters: Was Archimedes an ancient...
I have seen now two episodes of *Mythbusters* where they try to recreate the death ray. The second time it was POTUS himself suggesting they take another shot at it.
Happy birthday Archimedes! The Syracusan mathematician, engineer and philosopher came into the world in 287BC. We don’t know the exact date of his birth 2,300 years ago, but an appreciation of the twenty-third centenary of his...
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Roman-Era 'Cosmetics' May Have Treated Eye...
In classic antiquity people suffered quite a bit from various eye diseases…
The Roman Empire at its greatest extent in A.D. 117, when Rome controlled much of Great Britain. CREDIT: Tataryn77, distributed by Wikimedia under a Creative Commons license.
View full size image
Roman-era toiletry sets consisting of tweezers, scrapers and other artifacts have long been...
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Film project ‘The Lost Legion’ to show clash...
It’s a fascinating story, but there’s no evidence. There are some places in China now claiming to have been home once to remnants of the Crassus army but there’s no evidence.
This will all change once the movie is out, right?
Brothers has announced they will be making a new epic film that will depict a battle between ancient Rome and China. Kurt Johnstad, who co-wrote the...
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Ancient Kithara – Greek musical instrument –...
In an age when “discovering” music usually refers to new tunes showing up in your Spotify app, a University of Vermont student and professor have pushed that notion of discovery a bit deeper. While we know something of the music of ancient people from surviving texts and images that describe and depict it, we know less about what their music and instruments actually sounded like.
In the case...
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Why Does The Past Matter? Greco-Roman Antiquity In...
Public Forum held at Trinity College Dublin, on October 7, 2010
Public forum organised by Trinity College Dublin School of Histories and Humanities Classics Department to explore the ways in which we use the classical past and to what extent and why it remains relevant today and important for our future.
...
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Sexual Peculiarities of the Ancient Greeks and...
This study looks at ancient Greek and Roman sexual practices from the point of view of their (implied) differences from modern western practices. There are eight major themes: sex and status, the ubiquity of sex, the body, body modification, violence and pain, having sex, viewing sex, and transgressions.
Most of the sexual practices and attitudes of the ancient Greeks and Romans have parallels...
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Dating Homer or the value of statistical analysis
There’s a lot of “truth by consensus” in the sciences.
Several weeks ago, a number of news sites reported on a study undertaken at the University of Reading, which examined the dating of Homer’s Iliad. Some of the headlines included:
“Homeric Epics Were Written in 762 BCE, Give or Take, New Study Suggests”
“Homer’s great literary masterpieces dated by study of Greek language...
The Question of the Inevitability of the Fall of...
Sulla marched on Rome twice. I doubt very much that Caesar would have without this example which seemed to show proof that there could be a life after doing this, even a respectable one.
It is tempting for the modern historiographer, looking back at completed actions, to see the events of the past as having been able to unfold in only one way. According to this view, major episodes in history,...
March 2013
16 posts
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Stratagems, Combat, and "Chemical Warfare" in the...
Arguably the most famous event of it’s kind in antiquity, with the victims of the attack still in situ.
The Sasanian Persian siege that destroyed Roman-held Dura-Europos, Syria, ca. 256 C.E. left some of the best evidence ever recovered for the nature and practices of ancient warfare. Perhaps the most dramatic of the archaeological deposits, excavated in the early 1930s, were those...
How Do Ruins Work?
This is about more than you think. A quote from the article:
To express alienation, I’ve tried first of all to eliminate what is generally called history. That is to say, really, the idea that the ancient world ‘actually’ existed. Thus the atmosphere is not historical but that of a dream world. The ancient world perhaps never existed, but there’s no doubt that we have dreamt it.
Federico...
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Technology and Autonomous Mechanisms in the...
This article does not get into the question why all those technologies were not developed any further in classical times. But if you have never heard about Heron and Ktesebius, this is your chance.
The paper aims at presenting technology and automation advances in the ancient Greek World, offering evidence that feedback control as a discipline dates back more than twenty five centuries.
The...
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15 Interesting Women of Ancient Rome →
archaeology:
In honor of International Women’s Day.
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Politics and Beauty: The Augustan Transformation...
When I think of him there’s always the image of a very ambitious and quite frail young man that was Octavian and the other of a thin old man wearing layers of clothing and large hats for sun protection playing dice.
What about the fifty years in between? Read below.
Introduction: The extraordinary reign of Augustus left the Roman world with a changed order—not just a new system of...
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The Pen and the Sword: Writing and Conquest in...
There are some finer points in here that could make it worth your while.
Abstract: Julius Caesar was remembered in later times for the unprecedented scale of his military activity. He was also remembered for writing copiously while on campaign. Focusing on the period of Rome’s war with Gaul (58–50 BCE), this paper argues that the two activities were interrelated: writing helped to facilitate the...
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The Emancipation of Women in Ancient Rome
Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité, Vol.47 (2000)
Introduction: Only twice in the History of Mankind, have women been considered legally equal to men. As far as we can see, this has occurred but twice : in Rome in Antiquity, and now in North America and Europe. We would like to tell you the amazing story of women’s emancipation in Rome.
We qualify it as amazing, as it began...
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The Construction of Authenticity in the Claudius...
It’s quite enjoyable to read how clever Graves was even if it only is ‘Authenticity’ at the end.
Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society, Vol.2 Issue 3-4 (2001)
Introduction: At one point in Claudius the God Claudius quotes his open letter to the Senate and People concerning his own shortcomings. Towards the end of this document he writes:
You all know the Old...
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Greek and Roman Musical Studies
The articles can be downloaded in PDF format.
Greek and Roman Musical Studies is a new journal that will publish research papers in the fields of ancient Greek and Roman music, including musical theory, musical archaeology and musical iconography in Classical antiquity, as well as on its reception in later times.
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/22129758
...
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Cleopatra's Daughter
This is an interesting article about Cleopatra Selene, one of the children the legendary Queen of Egypt had with Marc Anthony.
The love affair of Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt (69-30 BC), and Marcus Antonius, Roman triumvir (83-30 BC) is legendary. During their own lifetimes their liaison quickly became infamous, the subject of gossip, innuendo and outrage throughout the ancient world. It has...
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Ball sports in the Roman empire
Ball games tend to get a relatively low profile in our accounts of ancient sport. The reasons for that are pretty clear: they were not part of the standard athletic festival programmes, at Olympia or anywhere else.
And yet Roman society was a society obsessed with ball play.
Ball games were standardly played in bath-houses and in gymnasia, for entertainment and for health. The rules are very...
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And saying 'Yes' in Latin
The Romans did not possess a word of affirmation—a ‘yes’ that stands alone. Instead, they used one of two ways to express a positive answer to a question.
1. The first is to repetition the verb of the question, which implies affirmation.
Do you sing?—I sing: canāsne?—canō.
Does your father jog?—Indeed, he does: currit parēns?—currit.
This repetition is particular useful with double...
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Eating the Roman way: dill chicken and mustard...
Pass the Garum? - Rather not. If you know what I mean. This one I will try.
I’ve followed Pass The Garum (an ancient food blog) for a while and this weekend decided to have a go at the recipe on the blog for dill chicken (with mustard beans as a dipping sauce). This recipe is mentioned in the Apicius (an ancient cookbook of sorts) and with a few tweaks we can try it as the Romans once did.
In...
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Saying 'No' in Latin
There are several ways to respond ‘no’ in Latin.
1. The first is to repetition the verb of the question and add nōn, which expresses denial.
Do you sing?—I do not sing: canāsne?—nōn canō.
Does your father jog?—No, he doesn’t: currit parēns?—nōn currit.
2. As with affirmations, there are a number of places where this would get awkward, so the Romans have a variety of negating adverbs to...
Temple of 'Jupiter the Stayer' found - Caesars...
That would be a first, I believe.
Rome, February 28 - The temple built by Romulus to celebrate the hand of Jupiter giving Roman troops their unstoppable force has been found at the foot of the Palatine Hill, Italian archaeologists say. The ruins of the shrine to Jupiter Stator (Jupiter the Stayer), believed to date to 750 BC, were found by a Rome University team led by Andrea Carandini.
...
February 2013
8 posts
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William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of...
How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the Archimedes palimpsest, a Byzantine prayer book containing previously-unknown original writings from ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and others.
William Noel...
