THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

nonas apriles

• ludi Megalesia in honour of Cybele (day 2)
• rites in honour of Fortuna Publica

5:44:55 AM    

CHATTER: More Crucifixion Coverage

There's a Reuters piece kicking around all about crucifixion and the archaeological evidence therefor:

The graphic portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus in Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" has brought the ancient world's execution method of choice in all its horror to the big screen.

Jesus is the best known victim of crucifixion. But thousands of other Jews were put to death on the cross by the Romans, trying to quash Jewish rebellions in the Holy Land in the first century.

Yet strangely the remains of only one victim have ever been found. He was Yehohanan Ben Hagkol, a Jewish man whose heel bone, excavated by archaeologists near Jerusalem in 1968, still had a nail embedded in it.

"It is the only case ever found in the world where there is indisputable evidence of crucifixion," said Joe Zias, a physical anthropologist who examined the remains of Yehohanan Ben Hagkol.

"We've looked at thousands of skeletons in Jerusalem. Some were decapitated. Others were mutilated. But we've never found another one that was crucified."

"It has to be one of the most obscene forms of death ever invented by man," said Zias of the execution method practiced between 400 BC and AD 400 also by the Persians, Greeks, Assyrians, Carthaginians and other ancient civilisations.

Professor Martin Hengel, a leading scholar of crucifixions from Tubingen University in Germany, said thousands of captured Jewish rebels were crucified by the Romans around Jerusalem during the first century, when Jesus lived.

Crosses dotted the landscape around the city. Zias said that between AD 66 and 702, the Romans at times crucified as many as 500 Jews a day until they quashed what became known as the first Jewish revolt and destroyed the Second Temple.

"Eventually they ran out of crosses and they ran out of space," he said. [more]

5:31:20 AM    

GOSSIP: BBC/HBO Rome Series

We posted a photo from the production the other day ... today, the New York Times has some decent coverage of what's going on:

As everybody knows or can at least surmise, Rome was not built in a day.

But it did rise in just a few months, resplendent in all its plywood, fiberglass and sheet-metal glory. One of the few unfinished civic projects on a recent afternoon was a patch of the piazza near the Temple of Venus, where the cement had yet to dry.

"Watch your step," warned Anne Thomopoulos, an HBO senior executive, but the words came too late. There it was, sullying the classical cityscape and blowing its cover: a size 11 footprint from a shoe that belonged most definitively to a later period.

Ms. Thomopoulos laughed and vowed that it would be repaired. A visitor's clumsy misstep was not about to throw HBO off its latest loopy vision.

The cable network that made morticians sexy ("Six Feet Under") and that just began deconstructing the western ("Deadwood") is now reconstructing and revivifying ancient Rome.

To do so HBO enlisted the BBC as a partner, and together they have committed around $75 million for 12 one-hour episodes of "Rome," a drama scheduled to have its debut in 2005. If the show is successful, a second and even third season could follow.

The series has also set up production in modern Rome, partly on the theory that proximity breeds historical fidelity, or at least a convincing approximation of it.

"They shot `Sex and the City' in New York," Ms. Thomopoulos said. "They shoot `The Sopranos' in New Jersey. There's a texture and verisimilitude you get when you shoot in the actual place." [more ... including a couple more photos]

5:27:19 AM    

REVIEWS: From BMCR

Vibeke Roggen, Intellectual play - word and picture: a study of Nils Thomasson's Latin rebus book "Cestus sapphicus", with edition, translation and corpus of sources. 2 volumes.

Aneziri on Slater on Aneziri

Rainer Zoller, Die Vorstellung vom Willen in der Morallehre Senecas.

5:22:32 AM    

The Ancient World on Television listings are delayed ... apologies ...

5:14:08 AM