LAST POST: At the Auctions

This one is coming up for auction at Sotheby's in December. It's a late sixth-century Attic  Black Figure lekythos depicting a battle scene (why is everyone wearing the same (Corinthian) armour?):

The official page ...

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:59:26 PM::
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CHATTER: Say What?

From the Las Vegas Mercury:

UNLV ethicist Walton may spend most of his time with his nose buried in Aristotle, but his burly constitution and boyish vigor belie any stereotypes about meek, elbow-patched professors. The philosopher looks like one of those Neoclassicist takes on Socrates--hearty and gray. Little wonder one of his hobbies is building houses by hand. And he approaches his field of study with the same workman's mindset: How can we build a better society?

What exactly would be a 'Neoclassicist take on Socrates'? Some guy with a Yahoo list? Dilbert's garbage man? Aporia abounds ...

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:27:26 PM::
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CHATTER: Noggin Fodder

Front Page has a review of Jean-François Revel, L’Obsession anti-américaine: Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconséquences (The Anti-American Obsession: How It Operates, Its Causes, and Its Lack of Consequence). Inter alia it suggests:

Finally, there is a degree of anti-Americanism that simply goes with the role of being the world’s only superpower. And indeed this is one of Revel’s most keenly observed points.

In Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War, the Athenians with brazenness or honesty — depending on one’s point of view — admit that it is natural for the governing elites of the lesser cities to resent their imperial power. But the Athenians also believe that those same elites should be grateful that the Athenians’ imperialism is gentle and brings benefits for all. When gratitude is not forthcoming, the Athenians are piqued, despite the law of human nature about resentment of power that they themselves acknowledge, and such pique leads to misjudgments of strategy and interest.

Americans, even (and much) more than the ancient Athenians, want to be popular. But popularity may not always be easy to square with the role that the U.S. is now fated to play in the world. Americans should accept a certain degree of unpopularity as at times inevitable. This means, above all, not trying to be popular at the cost of failing to do what is right (the typical argument of the kind of American left-liberals who think we should panic about irritating the French over Iraq).

At the same time, Americans should be dispassionate and clear-headed enough not to resent others who fail to welcome the U.S. with open arms, even if those others themselves stand to gain from America’s global role. We should remember that the French and the Germans and most other peoples with a strong self-concept aren’t mostly interested in being popular — respected, feared, admired, deferred to, envied, yes, but popular, hardly.

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:17:36 PM::
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NUNTII: Excavations in Bhera

Here's a piece from Hi Pakistan, which I reproduce in its entirety, all about recent discoveries at Bhera. It's a sort of stream-of-consciousness-that-got-lost-in-the-translation piece, but still seems to have items of interest:

Antiquities of Iron Age, Achaemenian (553-330BC), Greek (321-184BC) and Mauryan (14Bc) periods have been discovered in an excavation from the Greek city of Bhera.

The excavation has been done by Dr M. Salim of Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations, Quaid-i-Azam University. According to the Institute, the ancient Bhera mounds are known as Barrian, which once flourished on the west bank of the River Jhelum. Recently it was also known as Kot Rajgan and Ahmadabad. Another Mediaeval Bhera near Motorway has Sher Shah Suri Mosque and is a few kilometres from Ahmadabad.

The battlefield of Alexander-Pours appears to be around Jalalpur-Ahmadabad-Mong area. The pottery of 800-600BC has gray ware, red ware and buff ware with red painted designs. A terracotta figure of an elephant has been collected. The Soak wells were made of some 10 feet in height. Such Soak wells and filled with refuse have been found at Bhir Mound at Taxila. When Alexander the Great entered Jhelum Valley, young maidens with shell bangles were filling their pitchers with water from wells and river Jhelum. Further research and excavations can reveal reek stratum with Metropolis centre, coins and Salt Range capital from where salt was exported.

Sir Aurel Stein investigated this site. Cunningham identified old Bhera with the Palace of Sopeithes, where Alexander met his Greek forces. Later the great Chinese traveller, Fa Hien, mentions Bhera in his accounts and Babur in his memoirs. Greek historian Arrian in his Anabasis narrates the palace of Sopeithes.

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:13:12 PM::
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CHATTER: Alexander the Gratuitous

It seems the hype about forthcoming Alexander flicks is beginning to percolate through the American psyche ... a pair of references today ... the first from the Oshkosh Northwestern, commenting on divers Erin and Lauren LeRoy:

It was written that Alexander the Great, when looking at his vast domain, broke down and cried because there was nothing left for him to conquer. And while Lauren’s situation may be a little bit different, the similarities between world domination and being a world-class diver in Wisconsin are there.

Then there's a piece in the Mirror, focussing on the various merits of Wilkinson and Gillette razors:

CLEAN-shaven Alexander the Great, right, ordered his men to shave so enemies could not grab their beards.

We'll keep our eyes open ...

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:10:44 PM::
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CHATTER: Perceptions of Bartsch

So what's the University of Chicago's Shadi Bartsch working on? The Chronicle enlightens:

People today say they understand things by seeing them; they gain insight by ‘seeing the point’ or ‘illuminating a topic’ and found knowledge on ‘objective observations.’ But, says Shadi Bartsch, Chair and Professor of Classical Languages & Literatures and the College, while the ancients shared this vocabulary, they may have had a radically different notion of what it meant to see something, and thus what it means to understand something.

Bartsch is working on a new book on the relationship between vision, love and knowledge in the classical world. What she has learned so far suggests that understanding the thinkers of the past requires seeing through their eyes in a literal and sometimes shocking way. The book reveals a world very different from ours “in which the laws of physics, vision and love share an intimate connection.”

Bartsch starts from the premise that ideas about philosophy and science-indeed, any meaningful knowledge of the world-are affected by how people talk about those ideas: that in fact, metaphors matter. But the Greeks and Romans, according to Bartsch, experienced vision as a kind of actual physical contact. Our philosophical ancestors saw vision as a tactile experience, in which the eyes sent out rays that touched the object, or the object emitted copies of itself that actually touched one’s eyes. No wonder the Greeks thought of learning and sexuality as connected, and the Romans thought sight was entangled in moral problems.

Bartsch realized she needed to ask completely different questions about what knowledge was for the ancients in order to relate their thought to contemporary thought. “It’s only when you ask questions whose assumptions are alien to our culture that you can find answers whose truths are alien to our culture. If the assumptions of the question are alien, the truths you find will be alien.” The questions have serious consequences. Bartsch cautions against “treating the visual language of philosophy as if it were independent of the culture that generated it.”

More ...

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 7:58:34 PM::
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WEBCAST: BMCR Forum

I hope some rogueclassicism members will take part in this one:

A reminder that at Bryn Mawr College, on this coming Friday, November 7,
we are hosting a Forum entitled "Jews and Christians Reading the Bible".
This will be  a conversation which takes its starting point from Mark
Vessey's review of David Dawson's book on Christian Figural Reading (BMCR
2002.11.16). Mark Vessey will be present; so will David Dawson and Rachel
Havrelock. The style will be very informal, and audience participation
will be warmly invited.

Readers of BMCR worldwide are included in this invitation: we shall be
webcasting the Forum live, and inviting questions and responses from you
electronically. Please log in at 13:30 EST (18:30 GMT). We will be
"streaming" earlier in the day, if you would like to test your ability to
receive the webcast.

This is the first time we have hosted such a venture. If the Forum is a
success, we shall be looking out for subsequent reviews
from which to develop, and webcast, such conversations.

For further information on the Forum, and how to participate, please go
to: http://www.brynmawr.edu/classicsforum. Edited clips from the
proceedings will be available on the website after the event.

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 7:54:56 PM::
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THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

ante diem viii idus novembres

• ludi Plebeii (day 3)
• 15 (or 16) A.D. -- birth of Julia Agrippina ("the younger"),
  daughter of Germanicus, sister to the emperor Gaius (Caligula),
  mother of the emperor Nero, wife of the emperor Claudius

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:51:26 AM::
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SCRINIA: From the Journals

One of the reasons rogueclassicism came to be was because I wanted to convert many of my email lists housed at Yahoo to a form that was somewhat more aesthetically-pleasing, free from ads for printer cartridges, and less of a threat to my readers for future spam. One of those lists is called Scrinia, which presents tables of contents from journals of interest to Classicists, Ancient Historians, and Classical Archaeologists. Again, since it is a slow news day, this seems like a good time for a debut. Here's the latest TOCs that have arrived in the rogueclassicist's mailbox (I've made a separate category for them so they can have their own XML/RSS feed and can form a sort of database ... they'll now be properly picked up by the major search engines too!):

American Journal of Philology 124.3 (2003)

American Journal of Ancient History 2.1 (2003)

Classical Antiquity 22.2 (2003)

Main Scrinia Page ...

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:42:08 AM::
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TTT: Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project

Many folks are probably aware of this one already, but it was recently mentioned on several lists and passed along to me (Thanks JM-Y!), so I saved it for a slow news day like today. The gang at Stanford has digitized the whole Severan Marble plan (which dates from the opening of the third century) and have been put into a well-organized, informative database. I've been planning to incorporate it into my "This Day in Ancient History" things, and hopefully that will come soon, but until then, it is worth checking out.

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:18:45 AM::
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AWOTV: On TV Tonight

7.00 p.m. |HINT| The Rise of Christianity: The First 1000 Years, Pt. 2
"Covers the years between 312 AD, when the Emperor Constantine
converted to Christianity, and 461 AD, when Rome "fell" to the
barbarian Goths. They were heady days that saw the birth of the
monastic movement, the codification of the faith, and creation
of the New Testament canon as we recognize it today."

8.00 p.m. |DCIVC| Meet The Ancestors: The Lost City of Roman Britain
dna

HINT = History International

DCIVC = Discovery Civilization (Canada)

::Thursday, November 06, 2003 4:26:53 AM::
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