CHATTER: Classics in Canada Redux

A couple of observations on the state of Classics in Canada ... first, we get a description of the Troy flick, from Tandem:

The blockbuster season gets a jump-start this year with the release of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy starring Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt. An adaptation of Homer's epic The Iliad, Troy follows the story of the great siege of the titular ancient Greek city. When Paris (Orlando Bloom), the prince of Troy, steals the beautiful wife Helen (Helen Krueger) of King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), he makes quite a dangerous enemy, Menelaus' brother Agamemnon. As king of the Myceneans, Agamemnon (Brian Cox), with the support of Achilles (Pitt) unites all the tribes of Greece to recapture his brother's wife and his family's honour.

Troy is a 'Greek' city? Outside of that, and even more depressing perhaps was a little trip to one of our schoolboard's high schools -- I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned that I teach in one of the few schoolboards in Southern Ontario which does not offer Latin. A few years ago when I was pushing to start a program, I was told that there was no demand for it. So anyhoo, we had to go to the high school to try and figure out how best to teach math to our intermediates so they could handle high school math and imagine my joy when I enter the front doors and see painted in bright blue letters a quote in Latin ... it's from Francis Bacon, but Latin's Latin right? Here's what the quote said, at Assumption High School, in Burlington Ontario:

Ipsa scietia potestas est.

... which I guess would translate as:

Kowledge is power

Luckily, no one seems to notice the spelling mistake except cranky, caffeine-filled rogueclassicists. I wonder how many priests have walked past that slogan ... o tempora and all that.

7:03:36 PM    

CHATTER: Post-Passion Departure

So ... suppose you're Jim Caviezel and you've just spent a pile of time playing a Latin-speaking Jew in one of the more hyped films in recent memory. How do you follow up the performance? By playing Classicist-golfer Bobby Jones, of course:

Bobby Jones starts out scenic and charming, with a young Jones (Devon Gearhart). The film quickly takes us to Bobby at 14 (Thomas Lewis) beating one of his best friends, Perry Adair (David Van Horn), to win the Georgia Amateur Open.

Finally, we wind up with the adult Jones, whom Caviezel portrays as a square-jawed, tight-lipped golfer with a fierce temper on the course. We watch as Jones earns degrees in engineering, classical studies and law by age 24, and romances and weds wife Mary (Claire Forlani). [Sun-Sentinel]

I didn't know about Jones and the Classical Studies thing ... GolfEurope.com says that the degree was in English literature.

6:52:01 PM    

THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

ante diem iii kalendas maias

• ludi Florales ... a.k.a. Floralia (day 2) -- a festival originally ordered in response to an interpretation of the Sybilline books in 238 B.C., it fell into desuetude only to be revived in 173 B.C.; it was a general festival of drinking and other merriment in honour of Flora, who presided over (of course) flowers and their blossoms
• ca 65 A.D. -- martyrdom of Torpes of Pisa
• 259 A.D. -- martyrdom of Agapius at Citra (along with some others)

5:33:39 AM    

JOURNAL: Classics @

The second issue of Classics @, which is an online journal put out by the folks at the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University just hit the ewaves. Here are the contents:

Greg Nagy, Preface.

Christopher Blackwell and Ross Scaife, Introduction: CHS Summer Workshop on Technology.

Deborah Anderson, Preliminary Guidelines to Using Unicode for Greek.

Michael Arnush, The Epigraphic Database for Athenian Democracy (EDAD).

Christopher W. Blackwell, Demos: Challenges and Lessons.

Sandra Boero-Imwinkelried, Vicus Unquentarius: Perfume, Epigraphy, and XML.

Hugh A. Cayless, Directory Services for Classical Informatics.

Susan Guettel Cole, From GML to XML.

Casey Due and Mary Ebbott, As Many Homers As You Please: an On-line Multitext of Homer.

Rebecca Frost Davis, Collaborative Classics: Technology and the Small Liberal Arts College.

Michael Jones, Making electronic publication easier, faster, and more powerful with Hydra, a  drag-and-drop TEI publishing environment.

Martin Mueller, Of Digital Serendipity and the Homeric Scholia.

Bruce Robertson, Improving Ancient History Online with Heml.

Neel Smith, TextServer: Toward a Protocol for Describing Libraries.

Lenny Muellner, CHS Publishing Program and Goals.

All articles are accessible here ...

4:59:57 AM    

BLOGWATCH: @ About.com

About.com has undergone a major change in look and/or CSS, which is a good thing since the last version kept collapsing/crashing because of the popups. Those popups are no longer there (yay!) and one can actually spend some time there. Today, N.S. Gill has a nice little feature of Roman divorce ... worth a look.

4:53:27 AM    

AWOTV: On TV Today

4.00 p.m. |DISCC| Unsolved History: Roman Colosseum
Completed in 80 A.D., the Colosseum was inaugurated with 100 days of
games showcasing gladiatorial contests, wild beast hunts, public
executions and variety shows.

8.00 p.m. |HINT| The Rise of Christianity: The First 1000 Years 
The story of the crucifixion of Jesus, Paul's preachings to the
Gentiles, the crackdown by Roman authorities, the conversion of
Constantine, and the fall of Rome to the Goths in 461 AD. [2 hrs]
 
10.00 p.m. |HINT| The Rise of Christianity: The First 1000 Years
The glory of the Eastern Roman Empire, the challenge of Islam, the
dawn of the Dark Ages, and the coming of the Holy Roman Empire, which
converted Europe to Christianity about 1,000 years after the death of
Jesus. [2 hrs]

Channel Guide

4:45:40 AM