Carnivalesque
The latest ancient-medieval carnivalesque is up, courtesy of Gillian Polack.
Nose Job
The Sphinx, famously, is missing its nose. I have always heard that it was Napoleon’s guys who shot it off, although I have never researched it myself and it’s not in my field of study. Troels says evidence for the destruction points elsewhere, to “Islamic clerics in the 14th century.”
Ancient Greek Fabric Discovered
Archaeologists have discovered an ancient piece of fabric in a funeral urn in Greece. The fabric is more than two and a half millennia old. A full analysis of the yellowed and brittle piece will take some time, but the thought of finding something like this is exciting and provides another reminder that the past does not have to remain remote. A little imagination, a few discoveries like this or the Roman cosmetic cream discovered in London a few years ago, and, pretty soon, history comes alive.
Was Homer a Media Mogul?
Clients of Library Thing are encouraged to post reviews of their books. Usually these reviews are of the “read it at the beach and it was great” variety, but every once in a while a real gem shows up, like this one on The Odyssey:
I recently read The Iliad, also in a translation by Fagles, and I was disappointed with The Odyssey. The stories that make up the book feature many of the gods and monsters familiar from Greek mythology, but it seems a far less majestic work, more a rattle-bag of tales published to cash in on the success of The Iliad! Still, it has Cyclops, Sirens, giant cannibals, horny Calypso and the lovely Scylla, so there is much to enjoy….
(Emphasis mine.)
Carnivalesque IX
I just noticed Carnivalesque IX: The past is back to haunt you. It’s a good compendium of ancient and medieval topics recently posted at a bunch of blogs, and includes a link to a Logographer post to boot. (What a nice surprise.)
P.S. While there, try the crossword puzzle.
Computer Programmer Discovers Roman Villa
Nature reports that a computer programmer in Italy seems to have discovered an ancient Roman villa while studying satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth. The programmer, Luca Mori, posted his findings at his blog (in Italian). (This was slashdotted yesterday.)
Barbarians and the End of Rome
A few days ago, Troels Kristensen posted some comments on The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, a new book by Bryan Ward-Perkins. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve put it on my reading list. Kristensen mentions James O’Donnell’s review of the book, who also reviews a similarly titled work by Peter Heather. O’Donnell, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, categorizes scholars of Late Antiquity into Reformer and Counter-Reformer camps.
The main lines of difference between the New and the New-Old are straightforward. The Reformers speak more often of the eastern empire than of the western, show more interest in religious and cultural history than other streams, speak of rises rather than falls, and are at home in dialogue with similar strains of interpretation in other humanistic disciplines. The Counters focus their attention on the western empire, prefer military and political history to religious, have an Eeyore-like preoccupation with declines and falls, and are in the main untouched by “theory” and other broader academic projects.
(This is, as O’Donnell admits, a bit of an oversimplification of scholarly debate.)
I tend to favor the Reformer’s view, but I also favor Heather’s view of Gothic ethnic identity, which is at odds with Herwig Wolfram’s view of ethnogenesis arising from a pre-historic tribal and cultural tradition among the Goths. And, like O’Donnell’s Counter-Reformers, I tend to focus on the western empire, although lately I’ve begun to see the need to bring the eastern (Byzantine) empire into my studies.
Roman Films
Michael Gilleland has found documentary evidence that ancient Romans watched movies, as in films, cinema. Well, maybe not. Don’t believe everything you read, even if it comes from PBS.
On Choosing to Stay
The situation in Louisiana and Mississippi is still incomprehensible. To try to make some sense out of it, I thought I’d take a new look at the younger Pliny’s recollection of the eruption of Vesuvius. On August 24, A.D. 79, when his famous uncle sailed with the navy across the Bay of Naples in an attempt to rescue people fleeing the volcano, Pliny stayed at home with his books. Later in the day, he started to worry about his safety. There had been small earthquakes for several days, but they “were not particularly alarming because they were frequent in Campania.” That evening, however, the tremors became so severe that he and his mother were afraid the house would collapse on them.
Did Pliny move to a safer place? No, he and his mother sat outside. The seventeen year-old Pliny even asked for another book to read and pretended not to be bothered by the situation. And when an old friend of his uncle’s came to the villa and tried to talk them into leaving, he and his mother refused to move.
The next morning, August 25, the risk of a building collapse had become so apparent that the teenager and his mother finally decided to try an escape. As they left the villa, the area was struck by a severe earthquake, accompanied by a black cloud “rent by quivering bursts of flame” from the volcano. It takes another admonishment from Uncle’s friend before mother and son finally get serious about leaving. Now it was almost too late, as Pliny recounted to Tacitus in his letter:
Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. “Let us leave the road while we can still see,” I said, “or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.” We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore. There were people, too, who added to the real perils by inventing fictitious dangers: some reported that part of Misenum had collapsed or another part was on fire, and though their tales were false they found others to believe them. — Pliny, Ep. 6.20.14-16. Loeb ed.
I have been trying to understand why so many people didn’t evacuate New Orleans before the storm hit. They had fair warning, as did Pliny. Of course, some of those stranded in New Orleans are elderly or sick. Others perhaps simply lack a place to go or the means to get anywhere. But even people of means don’t always act in the face of danger for some reason, so it’s not simply poverty or ignorance that keeps people from acting. Pliny was very, very wealthy and highly educated, and he ignored the signs.
The situation on the Gulf Coast is all very sad, and, as I keep saying, incomprehensible on so many levels. I’m not sure Pliny has helped to clarify it. Or has he?