The dangers of the interweb

I know you really can't reduce everything to the worst if its kind, but I found this on a site purporting to help teachers and students:

Virgil’s epic ‘Aenead’ tells the story of two brothers Romulus and Remus, direct descendents of the Trojan prince Aeneas founding the city of Rome on April 21st, 753 B.C. Romulus killed Remus and became the first of the seven kings of Rome. However, another legend suggests that a woman Roma founded Rome.

Keep your students away from such sites!

Try and fly

An interesting little column in the Detroit Free Press (which should please Eric) notes too things that have occurred to me. The first (the derivation of 'flied' in baseball) I've always agreed with, the second ('and' used in place of the infinitive) is one that I considered but discounted, and now I'm reconsidering my position. Leave it to Fowler to find the poetry in a common construction. (The classical connection: hendiadys.)

Epic vade mecum

The BMCR has gotten around to publishing its review of John Miles Foley's A Companion to Ancient Epic (2005), and it's a star-studded behemoth: nearly 700 pages by the likes of Gregory Nagy, Walter Burkert, Michael Putnam, and Craig Kallendorff. The incredible range of topics, the eminence of the authors, and the lack of a single theoretical bias—a plague among most companions—mean that I will definitely purchase of this book—if they ever publish a paperback edition. Unless, of course, some dear reader wants to donate $149.

More on Gladstone

A couple of days ago I mentioned Burkert's reference to William Ewart Gladstone's noticing of the connection between the Enuma Elish and Homer in Burkert's article 'The Logic of Cosmogony'. His footnote to that passage directs the reader's attention to a place in his 1992 book The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, an English translation and revision of a work first published in German in 1984. In that book (pp. 92-3), he writes:

Ti-amat is the form normally written in the text of Enuma Elish for the mother "who bore them all." The Akkadian word which lies behind this, however, is just tiamtu or tamtu, the normal word for the sea. The name can also be written in this more phonetic orthography; but in the Enuma Elish we also find the form taw(a)tu. If one proceeds from Tawtu, then Tethys is an exact transcription. The different reproductions of the dentals, t and th, might disturb the purist; but Sophilos wrote Thethys, which, in normal Greek orthography, would automatically yield Tethys. In fact the Enuma Elish became known to Eudemos, the pupil of Aristotle, in translation; here we find Tiamat transcribed as Tauthe, which is still closer to the reconstructed form Tawtu. That the long vowel a is changed to e in the Ionian dialect even in borrowed words has parallels in Kubaba becoming Kybebe, Baal becoming Belos, and Mada known as Medes. Thus the proof seems complete that here, right in the middle of the Iliad, the influence of two Akkadian classics can be detected down to a mythical name.

In one of the footnotes in this passage [14], we find a reference to Gladstone:

The first to see the connection between Enuma Elish and Homer, Tiamat and Tethys was W.E. Gladstone, Landmarks of Homeric study (1890), appendix... .

'The Roman World: Religions and Everday Life'/Dayton Art Institute

Not sure if this has already been posted elsewhere, but in case it hasn't...

Mosaics to highlight Rome exhibit

By Meredith Moss

Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

This Rome exhibit wasn't built in a day.

In fact, The Dayton Art Institute's first major exhibition on ancient Rome has been in the works since 2005 when Dr. Sally Struthers, a dean at Sinclair Community College, was first approached to serve as guest curator for a collection that would transport visitors back to the ancient Roman Empire.

"The Roman World: Religions and Everyday Life" officially opens to the public Saturday, with a series of preview openings slated this week for the press and DAI members.

"I like this whole idea of visual motifs that meant different things to different religions in the Roman world," says Struthers, who delights in pointing out specific symbols — the peacock, the palm leaf, the shell, the fish — that were adapted and used in ancient times by Polytheism, Judaism and Christianity.

The showcase of the exhibition is a group of colorful mosaic panels that were once part of a synagogue floor discovered in North Africa.

In order to give visitors a better appreciation of the art, the entire mosaic floor has been re-created, with the original mosaics positioned precisely where they would have been originally.

That portion of the exhibit, titled "Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire," is on loan from the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Curator Edward Bleiberg, who wrote the catalog that will be sold in conjunction with the show, will come to Dayton for a lecture Sept. 30. Ancient meets modern when Struthers and Bleiberg provide online streaming audio commentary for the exhibit and a podcast that DAI guests can download and play as they tour it.

Struthers, who visited Rome recently to photograph ancient sites for the exhibit, also has gathered favorite works from other museums dating from fifth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. and beyond: ancient sculptures of the gods, gold jewelry, coins, vases of Roman glass and textiles so sensitive to light that DAI patrons will lift a protective cloth to view them.

The museum has developed a variety of special programs to complement "The Roman World." Kids will "Meet the Romans" at the Experiencenter, teachers can request learning guides, and there are a number of lectures and special programs.

How to go

WHAT: "The Roman World: Religions and Everyday Life" featuring the Brooklyn Museum exhibition "Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire"

WHEN: Saturday through Jan. 6

WHERE: Dayton Art Institute, 456 Belmonte Park North

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with extended hours on Thursdays until 8 p.m. Closed holidays.

ADMISSION: $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, $7 for youth. $12 for groups of 10 or more. Members free.

TOURS: Docent-led tours at 2 and 6 p.m. Thursdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.

INFO: (937) 223-4ART or www.daytonartinstitute.org

When Politicians Knew Homer

In his article called 'The Logic of Cosmogony', Walter Burkert writes, in a passage regarding how ancients attempted to tell the tale about 'the beginning' of 'everything' (pp. 92-3):

The most common response...is: in the beginning there was Water. This is not limited to the ancient world: it is also reported from America, e.g. the Popol Vuh of the Quiche/ Maya. The Egyptians developed water-cosmogonies in diverse variants, having the yearly flood of the Nile before their eyes; but Enuma elish too has ground water and salt water, Apsu the begetter and Tiamat who bore them all, as the first parents of everything. Surprisingly enough, this recurs in the midst of Homer's Iliad with Oceanus and Tethys, 'begetting of everything'; this may be direct influence. (It was William Ewart Gladstone, better known as British Prime Minister, who first saw this connection.)

Ben Stiller on the Ancient world

"I am really interested in Roman history so if I could travel back in time I'd take look at Roman culture and possibly some Greek biblical history as well. I'd love to check out the orgies too!"

I'm wondering if there's supposed to be a comma between Greek and biblical, or if Ben just that into the OT.

On Mythological Terminology

'Scholars have often found it difficult to distinguish between myth and other kinds of traditional tale: saga, legend, folktale, and fable. It is not always necessary or even possible to draw such distinctions. For speakers of German the term saga (Sage) is more or less synonymous with myth (Mythos): the best known collection of Greek myths is Gustav Schwab's Die schoensten Sagen des klassischen Altertums, and the most influential treatment of Germanic sagas is Jacob Grimm's Germanische Mythologie. In Grimm's usage the two terms are sometimes synonymous, though occasionally he seems to want to restrict myth (Mythus, as he writes it) to antiquity. If distinctions are drawn, they usually have to do with the cultural context in which the tale was generated.'

--Fritz Graf, Greek Mythology (p. 6)

Love of Sea Monsters?

Has anyone else thought this upon spotting a bottle of Cetaphil lotion or cleanser?

Or am I just a dork?

Don't answer that.

I am tired of scholarship.

The reason, I hope, will be plain when you read the title of a book reviewed in the BMCR and the following quotation from the reviewer: Feeling History. Lucan, Stoicism, and the Poetics of Passion.

Francesca D'Alessandro Behr [D.] has produced an excellent and thought-provoking study of the figure of apostrophe and its many implications in Lucan's De Bello Civili. New scholarship on the poem will now need to take account of D.'s examination of the narrator's voice in Lucan. Her basic thesis is that Lucan's narrator intervenes in his own narrative, at the expense of the reader's immersion, in order to guide his audience's interpretation of the events he is recounting.

I wonder first what the title is supposed to mean (what's wrong with 'Apostrophe in Lucan', for example?) and I'm at a loss so I'll just accept it and move on. What of the reviewer's statement?

The only reason we might need someone to tell us what the narrator was up to was if we hadn't read Lucan for ourselves. We haven't. In fact, we haven't read very much literature, have we? And because of that an endless run of PhDs does the reading for us, then pats one another on the back for telling us what they got out of it. They're always 'negotiating' or 'privileging' or talking vaguely about poetics or imputing subversion. In this case, we need more than 200 pages to learn that the poet tried to 'guide his audience's interpretation'. Wow.

This kind of scholarship wearies me, and made me stop caring about graduate school a long time ago. I don't like what it means to be a scholar, and I enjoy teaching all the more because of it.

Doin' tha running man (of many turns)

Three crews of South Korean breakdancers have scored hit shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, underlining the nation's depth of talent and showing hip-hop moves did not die out in the 1980s, an expert said Friday.

. . . . .

"Spin Odyssey" takes on a more ambitious narrative -- the Last For One group attempts a loose re-telling of Homer's Greek epic with a few dashes of slapstick humour thrown in for good measure.

Odysseus was the original beta boy.

Housman's Letters

I'm fairly certain that Dennis has already seen this, but just in case and for the benefit of other readers--David Butterfield has reviewed Archie Burnett's The Letters of A.E. Housman, a massive 960-page volume, in BMCR. Here is the lead paragraph:

The name of A. E. Housman (1859-1936) causes an instant reaction in the Classical community. The very intensity, and indeed variety, of sentiments that the letters 'A. E. H.' can evoke is startling when it is considered how few, whether scholars or not, have engaged directly with his Classical work. Housman has never lacked attention from both a deeply respectful following and a firm band, regrettably more numerous, of detractors. It is of course one of the wearying but unsurprising facts of Classical scholarship that each bold and revisionary scholar is met with a less than positive reception. Yet Housman's lot deserves particular attention: why should a man, reserved but polite in company, passionate for accuracy and excellence in print, inspire such strong feelings among academic circles even of the present day? A satisfactory answer to this question remains to be given.

The Spirit of the Anti-Classicist

I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religion/Mythology/Anthropology

Sorry for my absence of late. I now have regular access to the internet again, so thought I'd throw another Google Books post here. The topic can be seen above.

Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion

E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (4th ed., revised), vol. 1 and vol. 2

James Frazer, Totemism

James Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of Kingship

James Frazer, The Golden Bough (2nd. ed., revised and enlarged), vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3

Otto Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte

Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States

W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series: The Fundamental Institutions

Christian Gottlob Heyne, Ad Apollodori Bibliothecam observationes

Travels with Kapuściński

I've finally gotten around to picking up Ryszard Kapuściński's Travels with Herodotus, which I mentioned previously. I'm 25 pages in and there's so much I could quote, but I thought I'd select the following and encourage others to pick the book up as well. The author relates how he purchased a copy of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls to work on his English once he'd settled in India:

I returned to the hotel, opened the Hemingway to the first sentence: "He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees." I understood nothing. I had a small English-Polish pocket dictionary, the only one that had been available in Warsaw. I managed to find the word "brown," but none of the others. I proceeded to the next sentence: "The mountainside sloped gently..." Again—not a word. "There was a stream alongside..." The more I tried to understand this text, the more discouraged I became. I felt trapped. Besieged by language. Language struck me at that moment as something material, something with a physical dimension, a wall rising up in the middle of the road and blocking my way, closing off the world, making it unattainable. It was an unpleasant and humiliating sensation.

We've all felt that way, but Greek and Latin have never left us alone in a foreign land. Even Herodotus, as Kapuściński notes, had the benefit of Greek being the lingua franca, which is why English was so important for Kapuściński to learn. How he did it showed great determination and possibly courage, though he really had no choice. One bit in particular could be taken as good advice by students of Greek and Latin:

I was never without the Hemingway, but now I skipped the descriptive passages I couldn't understand and read the dialogues, which were easier...

How to make Latin seem lame

Something that always drives me nuts is seeing people who care about the same things I do making those things seem lame. Like Star Trek. Watching the interaction between Spock and McCoy isn't much different for me from reading Sherlock Holmes as he invites Watson to join him on a case and says he'll be lost without his Boswell. But then some jerk has to dress up in a costume and get into debates with other jerks about the smallest things, and make me feel like I shouldn't ever confess to liking Star Trek. But there. I said it.

I also like Latin.

And sometimes Latinists make Latin seem so ... dorky.

If you're like me maybe you wouldn't mind seeing the following on a t-shirt:

LATINAM STVDEBAM
ET VNVM ACCEPI HANC
SVBVCVLAM STOLIDAM

It beats some of what I've seen, that I know my students would never be caught dead in, and I can't blame them.

The Haunts of Orthodox Bulldog?

Here's a brief notice of some recent archaeological work in northwestern Turkey, in the region of ancient Phrygia:

"Galleries, negropols, passageways and granaries, dating back to Roman and Byzantine periods, were unearthed during the excavations carried out in Han Underground City of central Anatolian city of Eskisehir," said Ahmet Oguz Alp from Anadolu University's Department of Art History.

"Although it is not clear yet, we think that the city might have been used as a military base in the past. People might have used the city as a place of shelter or to wage attacks in order to protect themselves from Arab and Turkish incursions as well," Alp affirmed.

Alp also noted that the city had a great importance, as it was used as a military route before the Ottoman Empire and a route for pilgrimage afterwards.

The excavation work at the historical site will end on August 22nd.

By 'negropols' is meant necropoleis (or, if you prefer, necropolises).

This just makes me wonder whether this 'Han Underground City' (about which I can find nothing else) is Dorylaeum (Δορύλαιον), which was the see of Eusebius of Dorylaeum, not to be confused with the more famous Eusebius of Caesarea.

This Eusebius is remembered for his support of Catholic orthodoxy and his doctrinal battles with the Nestorians and with Eutychus who espoused something like the monophysite doctrine. The latter controversy saw him physically abused, threatened with death, condemned, and removed from office. He found solace in Rome with Pope Leo I, and later participated in the Council of Chalcedon where he was fully vindicated, he helped to author the definition of faith, and his condemnation was annulled. The Catholic Encyclopedia article ends with this:

Flavian said of Eusebius at Constantinople that "fire seemed cold to his zeal for orthodoxy", and Leo wrote of him that he was a man who "had undergone great perils and toils for the Faith". In these two sentences all that is known of him may be fitly summarized.

This is about as clever as a Nashville lyric

The Rockae, music and lyrics by Peter Mills, adapted from Euripides' The Bacchae by Peter Mills and Cara Reichel, directed by Cara Reichel.
"Pent-up King Pentheus takes on Dionysus and his frenzied female fans when the god of wine and theatre returns to Thebes. Get ready for moshing Maenads and thrashing catharsis in this rock musical adaptation of Euripides' classic, The Bacchae. Drama Desk-nominated writer Peter Mills fuses the intensity of heavy metal with the violence of ancient Greek tragedy. The Rockae will be presented as a partner event of the 4th Annual New York Musical Theatre Festival."

Two Articles on Rome

The first is about the excavation of an ancient tannery outside of Rome that now stands in the way of progress, in the form of a rail line with only 109 yards to go for its completion. Either the rail line must be stopped, or the ancient complex will have to be moved to preserve it. My money is on the latter. Here is the lead:

ROME --Archaeologists excavating an ancient tannery believed to be the largest ever found in Rome said Tuesday they might need to move the entire work site, which is being threatened by railroad construction. The 1,255-square-yard complex includes a tannery dating to the second or third century, as well as burial sites and part of a Roman road.

At least 97 tubs, some measuring more than three feet in diameter, have been dug up so far in the tannery, archaeologists said.

In other news, Italian P.M. Romano Prodi is pushing for the restoration of the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.

THE ancient road on which pilgrims travelled from Canterbury to Rome could soon become a vibrant thoroughfare again.

The Via Francigena was first mentioned in the third century and is Europe's oldest route of pilgrimage.

After leaving England, it winds for roughly 600 miles through Arras, Rheims and Lausanne before reaching Tuscany and some of Italy's most beautiful landscapes.

The earliest map of the road was made in around 990 by Sigeric the Serious, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

However, the Via Francigena is much less famous than its Spanish counterpart, the Way of St James, which pilgrims use to visit Santiago di Compostela. Last year, around 100,000 Catholics registered with the church in Santiago but only about 8,000 people walked the Via Francigena. Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister and a devout Catholic, has vowed to restore the Via Francigena to its former glory. Before the arrival of the motorcar, the Francigena, which means "born in France", was Italy's transport spine.

I'm guessing there must be a nautical component to the road somewhere between, say, England and France. And I think everyone will agree that its first cartographer had an absolutely first-rate name. The earnestness implied by his name is evidenced in his effort in map-making--an activity which, to be sure, would never be undertaken by someone called, e.g., Gaiseric the Frivolous. I'll leave you with a quote from Mr. Prodi:

"It really makes me angry that we do not have pilgrims walking towards Rome any longer."

Latin Rules in Jingles

From the same issue, sent in by one Eva Johnson, a first year student at Ballard High in Seattle, we find a helpful set of rhyming couplets to memorize the dative with special verbs:

Credo, credere, to believe or trust
Faveo, favere, to favor all just,
Pareo, parere, to obey and do right,
Noceo, nocere, to injure in fight.
Studeo, studere, to be eager for a's,
Resisto, resistere, to resist low grades,
Persuadeo, persuadere, to urge or persuade.
To memorize these will be of great aid,
With all these verbs the Dative is used,
But by students of Latin they are often confused.

Any suggestions for other verbs?