NUNTII: Frank Snowden Honoured
This one's been posted all over the place, and now here ... Frank M. Snowden Jr. has been honoured with a National Endowment for the Humanities medal. From the NEH site:
Frank M. Snowden Jr. (Washington, D.C.), one of the foremost scholars on blacks in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Italy, is Professor Emeritus of Classics at Howard University in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Harvard, Snowden has served as a member of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO in Paris and as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Rome. As a U.S. specialist lecturer for the Department of State, Snowden delivered lectures in Africa, Egypt, Italy, Austria, Greece, India, and Brazil. His many books on blacks in the ancient Mediterranean world include Blacks in Antiquity (1970), The Image of the Black in Western Art I: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire, which he co-authored (1976), and Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (1983). Snowden’s nominator writes, “Howard students will remember him for his dramatic classroom recitations in ancient Greek and Latin from memory and his plea for the beauty and universality of great literature.”
::Monday, November 17, 2003 9:02:45 PM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
CHATTER: The Evolution of Platonic Ideas
From the Scotsman:
Initially, Edinburgh-based Plato Systems will put 40-inch LCD screens into five filling stations across Scotland, having signed a deal with Osprey Forecourts - owner of some of the largest BP sites north of the Border.
Third-party advertisers will then have the opportunity to sell their wares to thousands of motorists a day.
Kind of puts that allegory of the cave in a different 'light' ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 9:00:31 PM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
CHATTER: Also Seen
The Ann Arbor News' 'social' column has this little 'graph:
Apparently no one had published an authoritative commentary on the first book of Thucydides since the early 1990s - and now here is "Thucydides Book I: A Students' Grammatical Commentary," by H.D. Cameron, U-M professor of Greek and Latin and director of the U-M Great Books Program.
The early 1990s?! Oh the scandal! What with all those authoritative commentaries of Herodotus coming out every other week ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 8:53:33 PM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: And Even More Latin In the News
This one passed along by a rogueclassicism reader (thanks BJ!) from the Bangor News:
Is Latin a dead language? No! Today, thousands of students worldwide study Latin. These students study a "dead" language because of their involvement in Junior Classical League, the largest classical organization in the world with more than 50,000 members.
Junior Classical League, or JCL, is composed of state or provincial chapters in the United States, Canada, and Australia. State or provincial chapters are broken down into local chapters - usually by school. Hampden Academy has one of the most active and powerful local JCL chapters in Maine and in the United States. Seniors and Advanced Placement Latin students Amelia Potvin and Dan LoPotro are the current National JCL secretary and Maine JCL president, respectively.
At the beginning of last school year, Hampden Academy's Latin program was almost cut. After their beloved Latin teacher left Hampden to teach elsewhere, Academy Latin students had to petition the school board to continue searching for a Latin teacher. Luckily, despite the nationwide shortage of Latin teachers, Hampden recruited Benjamin Johnson to carry on Hampden's growing Latin program.
Local JCL chapters can send delegates to state or provincial conventions during the school year. This year, Hampden Academy will be host to Maine JCL's fall convention, because the group's president, LoPotro, is from Hampden Academy. JCL conventions are the ultimate toga parties. Convention activities include contests in academic subjects, Latin and English oratory, graphic arts, spirit and trivia. Winthrop High School is the annual host of the Maine JCL spring convention at Camp Mechuwana in Winthrop.
Let it be known that JCLers are not dorks who lock themselves in their rooms translating old epics (although some JCLers may do that). Take, for example, the theme for this year's fall convention: "Interdum feror cupidine magnarum partium Europae vicendarum." If you say this to someone who understands Latin, you will get a laugh. It means, "Sometimes I just get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe." Try it out on some of your friends.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 8:49:16 PM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: More Latin in the News
This time, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Katie Naylor says she is walking proof that Latin raises test scores.
The Cherokee County High School senior scored a perfect 800 on the verbal portion of the SAT.
"I could never have done as well as I have if I had not . . . put as much energy into Latin as I have for the last three years," Katie said.
Other Georgia students and schools are catching onto Latin, mainly because of the language's test score-raising reputation. About 65 percent of English words have Latin roots, giving Latin students an inside track on vocabulary tests.
Students who took Latin outscored every other language-studying group on the verbal portion of the SAT except those who took Hebrew, according to the College Board's most recent profile of college-bound seniors.
Richard LaFleur, professor and head of the University of Georgia's department of classics, said Latin studies might improve SAT scores. Georgia is 50th in national SAT rankings.
"Most principals, if they've got their heads screwed on straight, are going to be interested in having a Latin program . . . because of the test-boosting factors," LaFleur said. "In terms of immediate payback, if you can study Latin for just two years, you are going to see typically some dramatic improvement in test scores."
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 8:46:33 PM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: Intact Shroud from the Turn of the Millennia
Quite a few smaller newspapers seem to be carrying this one ... a few years ago, participants in a dig in Jerusalem from UNC happened upon a tomb in which the shroud of the deceased was still intact. The way it's being hyped, one suspects, will mean we should see much more coverage of this one:
A discovery that started when North Carolina college students happened on a violated tomb below Jerusalem's Mount Zion has shed light on the burial of a possible contemporary of Jesus, an archaeologist said Sunday.
The group of student volunteers led by professor James Tabor from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte three years ago discovered a recently robbed tomb that yielded the shroud-wrapped skeletal remains of an affluent member of the old city.
"It was only just by chance that this discovery was made," said Shimon Gibson, a senior fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
Gibson plans to discuss the results of DNA analysis, carbon dating and forensic puzzling in a lecture Monday at UNC-Charlotte. He will discuss the findings again Wednesday at the American Schools of Oriental Research conference in Atlanta.
In the spring of 2000, after a morning of excavating and cataloging the day's finds from another dig, Gibson, Tabor and a handful of UNC-Charlotte students went on a hike through Jerusalem's Hinom Valley, a Jewish burial ground for almost 3,000 years.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:48:24 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
CHATTER: The Sport of Kings
I think I've mentioned before the spate of horses with Classically-inspired names which perpetually turn up in my daily scans (there's a pile of 'Romans' in New Zealand, for example). Today, however, even I had to do a double take when this line turned up from a racing summary from Malta:
First it was Linus Car that took the lead but had to surrender first position to Caesar W. which, in turn, was overtaken by Iliad.
... which got me to thinking ... if the ads on Formula One cars and Nascar vehicles are so influential that they can get folks to smoke, perhaps all these 'Classical' equines can steer folks into studying Classics and Ancient History. Now we just have to get all the kiddies to the race track ... [hmmm ... when I was in grade 12 (the final year of high school in Alberta), our teachers went on strike in early May and never came back. I spent the last two months of that school year, and many months besides, down at the racetrack betting on sulkies and thoroughbreds ... I don't remember any Classical names (although my first win was on a horse named Senga Farouk), but I did end up in Classics. QED!]
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:39:34 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
CHATTER: Shanahan-as-Socrates
I'm always surprised when Classical references turn up in the sports pages, and am usually 'rewarded' when I find them by responding, 'huh?'. Todays Denver Post has a piece commenting on the Denver Bronco's win over the San Diego Chargers; a win largely due to the return of quarterback Jake Plummer. Inter alia, the column mentions:
Minus Plummer, [Denver coach] Shanahan's philosophy wasn't Socrates-like. He coached like others in the NFL, acting afraid to lose rather than aggressive to win.
Actually, from what I've seen from the highlight reels, it *was* very Socrates-like ... it relied mostly on responding to what the other team was doing, and generally ended in Socrates-like fashion, which a self-inflicted demise.
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:32:06 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
CHATTER: Bouddica
Ever wonder about the guys who write the things we see on TV, such as the recently-panned BBC thing about Boudicca? Apparently Michael Wood had a scathing criticism of the program (I have not seen it), so Andrew Davies, who wrote the thing, was given an opportunity to respond in the Guardian:
Wood's critique, described in one newspaper as "a scathing attack", was a bit like being savaged by the proverbial dead sheep, but it does raise a few interesting questions. I'll come to those in a moment, but first let me deal with his more abusive remarks. "Off-the-wall period hokum," says Wood. It's a bit like listening to the hollow sallies of an IDS, isn't it? Hokum, eh? That's not a word we often hear these days.
Then the great historian gets down to detail. "The first few minutes said it all," he says. (One wonders whether that was all he saw of it.) "Long-haired Ancient Britons roaring like England football fans, knocking back beer, muddy faces daubed in woad, loose sexual morals... you know the sort of thing. Not the remotest inkling of what an Iron-Age society might really have been like."
Well, they did have long hair: the Romans remarked on it. And not only did they roar as they went into battle, they screamed as well, and danced like dervishes, particularly the priests. Hasn't Wood read his Tacitus? The Iceni, like most warriors, drank a lot to get their spirits up. We didn't say anything about beer - that's Wood's sloppy journalism. Loose sexual morals? What? What sort of suburban moral code is being invoked here? Is it not true that the Iceni, like the other warrior tribes, thought of marriages as being essentially dynastic affairs, business deals, leaving them with a relaxed take on sexual behaviour? That was the historical advice I was given, but I'd be glad to read anything Wood has published on the subject in a refereed journal.
He has a general point about language which is worth taking up. We know how Austen's characters talked, he says, because Austen writes their dialogue, with a very sharp ear. What should we do about the characters in Boudica? Wood offers no opinion, though clearly he doesn't like the way I handled this knotty problem. The Romans spoke Latin, of course. We're not sure how the Iceni spoke, because they left no record: theirs was an oral culture. Their language would probably have been a bit like Welsh. To go for complete fidelity (besides being a doomed project) would have meant an awful lot of subtitles and a couple of big roles for interpreters too, because of course the Romans and the Iceni wouldn't have been able to understand each other. That's a device that has been used occasionally in the past (brilliantly in a few scenes of Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans), but it would get awfully cumbersome throughout a whole screenplay.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:23:11 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: Karanis Papyri
A handful of unpublished papyri were discovered by a student in UMichigan's collection of papyri from Karanis:
A University undergraduate has unearthed a collection of unpublished ancient Egyptian manuscripts forgotten among the musty library shelves of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library.
LSA junior Rob Stephan discovered more than a dozen unpublished texts during an independent study with classical studies Prof. Arthur Verhoogt. His find almost doubles the size of a previously known and extensively studied archive of papyrus. An archive is all the papyrus — hand-printed ancient documents on paper made from reeds native to Egypt — found in a single house during an archaeological excavation.
“Michigan has the biggest collection of papyrus in the Western Hemisphere, so it’s very possible that they just got overlooked somehow,” Stephan said. The University collection contains more than 12,000 individual fragments of papyrus.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:18:50 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: Latin at Coweta
Saw this one from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentioned on the Latin list (I appear to have missed it a week or so ago):
Clint Beland, 11, already is preparing for his fallback career in case Major League Baseball doesn't work out.
Clint is taking Latin at Smokey Road Middle School as part of a Coweta County schools pilot program.
"One day I would like to be a scientist if I didn't make it in Major League Baseball," said the sixth-grader, who pitches for the Sharpsburg Tigers.
Coweta school officials want to see whether learning Latin at a younger age benefits students, said Pat Hodge, assistant superintendent for curriculum. Coweta high school students already can take Latin at the Central Educational Center.
Latin helps students decipher English words, understand other Romance languages such as Spanish and French, and develop problem-solving skills in other areas, said Bob Patrick, the county's Latin teacher. He has taught the language since 1989.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:12:36 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: Pompeii Thefts
According to a piece in the Telegraph, Italian authorities are going to be making copies of artifacts at Pompeii due to a rash of recent thefts:
Italian authorities are so alarmed by a spate of thefts from the ruins of Pompeii that they are planning to remove to safety "all the antiquities not nailed down".
Some of Europe's most important Roman mosaics and other decorations - including ancient storage jars, capitals and columns - are to be replaced with copies to protect them from thieves operating out of the neighbouring crime-ridden city of Naples.
Officials are drawing up a list of the most easily removed items from the open-air site - where security is notoriously lax - and plan to move them to museums and stores after the third serious break-in in six months.
In the most recent case, thieves removed the stonework of a first-century AD Roman well, weighing 150lb, from one house during the night. The entrance to the building was found to have been forced, as were the entrances to two others - from which nothing was taken.
Italian authorities are so alarmed by a spate of thefts from the ruins of Pompeii that they are planning to remove to safety "all the antiquities not nailed down".
Some of Europe's most important Roman mosaics and other decorations - including ancient storage jars, capitals and columns - are to be replaced with copies to protect them from thieves operating out of the neighbouring crime-ridden city of Naples.
Officials are drawing up a list of the most easily removed items from the open-air site - where security is notoriously lax - and plan to move them to museums and stores after the third serious break-in in six months.
In the most recent case, thieves removed the stonework of a first-century AD Roman well, weighing 150lb, from one house during the night. The entrance to the building was found to have been forced, as were the entrances to two others - from which nothing was taken.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:05:35 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: Latin is Alive and Well
A rogueclassicism reader sent this one along (thanks BJ!) and I see it's also being discussed on the Classics list ...
The Latin club scene is hotter than it's been in decades, but the attraction isn't J.Lo.
It's Cicero.
After a nearly half-century lull, studying Latin is cool again. Enrollment is up in high schools, including in Indiana. U.S. college enrollment in Latin is the highest it has been since the Modern Language Association started keeping track in 1958.
The 2,500-year-old language is becoming a pop culture phenom.
The first Harry Potter tome has been translated into "Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis (the sorcerer's stone)." Irish singer Enya performs Latin tracks on four of her CDs. In the 2001 season finale of "The West Wing," a grieving President Bartlet had some choice words in Latin for God.
More ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 5:02:52 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
NUNTII: Nuntii Latini
As I was horizontal for most of yesterday, I've got a bit of catching up to do (i.e. many of this a.m.'s links would normally have been put up Sunday) ... here's the latest headlines from Radio Finland's Nuntii Latini:
Violentia in Iraquia et in Arabia Saudiana crudecit
Voyager in confinio systematis solaris
Stalin redivivus
De ursis in Finnia stratis
Status rerum in Burundia
Andreotti culpa absolutus
lege plura ...
audi ...
::Monday, November 17, 2003 4:50:25 AM::
Comment on this post @ Classics Central
|
|
