ante diem iii kalendas decembres

• 257 A.D. -- martyrdom of Saturninus of Toulouse

::Monday, November 29, 2004 5:46:19 AM::

Today's words:

promethean @ Dictionary.com

hibernaculum @ Merriam-Webster

messor @ OED

obvallate @ Worthless Word for the Day

::Monday, November 29, 2004 5:40:38 AM::

I just lost a major post on the Biblioblogs' coverage of the recent SBL meeting ... sausage fingers strike again. I'll have to take a bit of time to reconstruct it later today.

::Monday, November 29, 2004 5:37:07 AM::

::Monday, November 29, 2004 5:18:04 AM::

From IOL comes this news:

Alongside his racy German sedans, car dealer Antonio Barbieri has decided to exhibit the rare second century Roman sarcophagi which were discovered when the foundations were being dug for his new high-tech headquarters outside the northern Italian city of Modena.

Without realising it, Barbieri had chosen land covering a Roman necropolis, or city of the dead, when he decided to build his 9 000-square-metre showroom.

The discovery has set back the opening of the showroom to 2006, but as a keen amateur archeologist, Barbieri is not worried.

He plans to keep the necropolis as he found it and open it to the public free of charge.

"Our soil and our museums are full of such things," said Barbieri's wife, Maria Angela.

But the excavations, which were unveiled to the press on Saturday, "are arousing interest because of their very good state of preservation."

::Monday, November 29, 2004 4:57:32 AM::

Wow ... I had expected a huge flood of stuff on the weekend about Alexander and/or the movie but media interest has dwindled to less than a trickle. As such, we probably won't need to do a 'roundup' after today and even today, it isn't really much of a roundup at all. I should mention two reviews which I've been sitting on for a couple of days: one by About.com's Ancient History Guide N.S. Gill (who is obviously familiar with sources and the like) and one from Empire Online, which was technically the first review of the film from the U.K. (not quite negative)  and passed along by an rc reader (thanks N.L.!). I should also mention a reviewish sort of thing at NPR, in which Elaine Fantham is paired up with some film critic from the New York Times to make their comments.

** this just in: there's also a review online by Victor Davis Hanson***

So now the question becomes: "Does the apparent lack of success of Stone's version of Alexander force Baz Luhrmann to resume his efforts in this area or does it nix the idea completely?"

On a related note, I'm not sure how many folks noted in that long item yesterday on the Ancient World on Film the passing mention that the Vin Diesel Hannibal flick is supposed to come out next year. I can't really find any indication that the thing is any further along than the script stage other than an excerpt from an interview with Diesel at About.com's Action Adventure Movies page. Ecce:

Is Hannibal finally happening? Why are you saying is it finally happening? Have you heard me talk about that? I can tell you some production people that I’m working with. So, did you know that I was riding elephants?

Yeah. Did you know that David Franzoni wrote the script?

No. David Franzoni handed in an incredible script and you know what Franzoni has written, Gladiator and Amistad. Did you know that Sylvaine Dupris, who is Ridley Scott’s storyboard artist and storyboarded Gladiator has been working with me for the last month? Did you know that I was planning to do a multi-lingual version of Hannibal the Conqueror?

Wow, which languages? Italian obviously, Roman for the Romans, an ancient version of French for the Gauls, an old ancient Latin for Spain, for new Carthaginia, a Carthaginian based language that I may use a Maltese language for. And all that in service of speaking to the fact that Hannibal, one of his greatest attributes was that he was able to amass an army of all these broken people to fight tyranny at the time.

I've got a very, very, very bad feeling about this one all of a sudden ...

::Monday, November 29, 2004 4:52:03 AM::

Claude Calame, Myth and History in Ancient Greece. The Symbolic Creation of a Colony. (this is a different review of the same text posted t'other day)

Alexiou on Wright on Alexiou.

::Monday, November 29, 2004 4:28:27 AM::

::Monday, November 29, 2004 4:25:47 AM::