New at LacusCurtius and Livius.Org

[Vortigern Studies]

Thanks Jona!

Maybe it was not an original advice, but it was never followed - Germanic and even Gothic troops continued to be part of the regular army...

[Jona Lendering]

Maybe it was not an original advice, but it was never followed - Germanic and even Gothic troops continued to be part of the regular army...

Maybe this advise was simply a bad one because it had become impossible to organize a large army without Germannic warriors, which may have been cheaper. I do not know. What I do know, however, is that those Germans were not necessarily unreliable.

Meanwhile, Bill has added Bootes (and several other constellations that were not known to the ancients) to Allen's Star Names.

[Bill Thayer]

And for those who don't speak French, an English translation of the article Calcar in Daremberg & Saglio — spurs; with its 7 woodcuts.

B

[Jona Lendering]

Two grand ladies have found their place on my website: Pericles' mistress Aspasia and Augustus' sister Octavia. To be honest, the latter is not very interesting, but -hey!- the photo is lovely.

Continuing with Allen's Star Names, Bill added Cetus (the Sea Monster that attacked Andromeda).

[Bill Thayer]

Also Cepheus, about whom there's a bit of a mystery, not clearly addressed by Allen: was he an African king, or not? It is very tempting (and not, modernists will excuse me — or not — on the oily grounds of "multiculturalism" and other cant-words of our Zeitgeist) to see in that constellation one more link among many between the ancient Mediterranean and ancient Africa. Allen's quick gallop thru the matter brings up the whole business of the two Aethiopias, on either side of Arabia; for which there seems to be some evidence.

In re Aspasia, Jona: her career, so to speak, got better by far in the Middle Ages as we know (as did Alexander's and Alcibiades') — might you consider a second page on that? It would be a very interesting one, I think, and you're the guy to write it.
   A very quick poke around Elfinspell, a quirky but very rich repository of medieval and Renaissance stuff, turns up the statement by the way that "she is said to have studied under Gorgias of Leontini". Any idea what the source of that 19c statement is? If true, might she not have had something to do with coaching Pericles after all, without that being demeaning?
   There's also another passage in Elfinspell about Aspasia reconciling Xenophon and his wife, which sounds plausible enough.... Like I said, disentangling fact and medieval embroidery might be instructive and entertaining.

B

[Jona Lendering]

Bill made available a new article on the Birthplace of Plautus in the Antiquaries' Shoebox. He also published some stuff by the Graeco-Roman sophist/philosopher Dio of Prusa (a.k.a. Dio Chrysostom, 'mouth of gold'): Discourse 7 (great fun: contains a rare description of daily life of ancient hunters who never visited the cities), Discourse 27 (what takes place during a symposium), Discourse 63 (On fortune), Discourse 67 (On popular opinion), and Discourse 74 (On distrust). I will soon add an introduction to this Dio, plus a speech by Synesius that tackles the question whether he ought to be called a philosopher or a sophist.

And continuing with Allen's Star Names, Bill added Lepus (the hare).

[Jona Lendering]

As promised, I wrote an article on Dio Chrysostom. Bill did something similar: he put online the Introduction to the Loeb Translation of the Works of Dio. Some of you may like my new weblog.

[Vortigern Studies]

Some of you may like my new weblog.

Nice! I got one too (but nothing there as yet).

[Bill Thayer]

Jona's piece is far better and more relevant than the Loeb Introduction.

A very minor comment, mind you. Oratio 7 can only be said to "conclude" that the poor can live a good life, in the logical meaning of "conclude", to arrive by deduction at something felt to be true; in the temporal and literary-criticism meaning of conclude, to end, Oratio 7 concludes with a diatribe against pederasty; the final sentence makes things quite clear: guys who go after boys are like people who eat potato chips and dips at cocktail parties. Doubtless some do both.

[Jona Lendering]

A very little update to my article on the Gheriat el-Garbia limes fort. Robert Vermaat (of Fectio) has made a lovely panorama - thanks Robert!

The full photo can be found here.

On my blog, some thoughts about Christianity, modern science, Gnosis, and scholarship.

[Bill Thayer]

And another Discourse of Dio's: #10, "On Servants"; two not entirely unrelated truisms, quickly dealt with: servants are a nuisance, and God is dangerous.

B

[Jona Lendering]

Some time ago, I started a blog, believing it was possible to make new items at LacusCurtius or Livius.Org visible through RSS or on our own RAT newsbot. Since two weeks, it is no longer working. Which is a pity, because many recent items were of special interest to RATs.

Here are the links:
Alexander the Great in the Punjab. A Photo Essay.
Military dust (an essay on dust during battles)
Augustus' Trophee at La Turbie
Morituri te salutant (the famous debunking)
[url=http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/an-early-dedication-to-elagabal/]An Early Dedication to Heliogabalus[url]

And several battles by Caesar, direct links to the photo pages:
Sabis
Huy
Alesia
Zela

And Bill is preparing something that you will all like very, very much.

[Jona Lendering]

Some time ago, I started a blog, believing it was possible to make new items at LacusCurtius or Livius.Org visible through RSS or on our own RAT newsbot. Since two weeks, it is no longer working. Which is a pity, because many recent items were of special interest to RATs.

Here are the links:
Alexander the Great in the Punjab. A Photo Essay.
Military dust (an essay on dust during battles)
Augustus' Trophee at La Turbie
Morituri te salutant (the famous debunking)
An Early Dedication to Heliogabalus

And several battles by Caesar, direct links to the photo pages:
Sabis
Huy
Alesia
Zela

And Bill is preparing something that you will all like very, very much.

[Bill Thayer]

Yes, indeedy: the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Guardabassi's Monumenti dell' Umbria, and the church of S. Maria di Pietrarossa are all coming up....

B

[Jona Lendering]

Here's my little blog article on Harran a.k.a. Carrhae. The main article is here, with photos and a very brief article on the Battle of Carrhae.

[Jona Lendering]

The Newsbot still has troubles catching up what's on our blog, which is a pity because it used to work and, ahem, the blog was meant to make the Newsfeet run automatically. Anyhow, here's a summary of what's new.

The Bosphorus (a small part of some 30 pages on Constantinople that are now almost finished; history, photos); the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae, Latin text of a fifth-century description of guess what, and a review of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Choara (where Darius III was killed); the naval battle of Artemisium; the battle of Chaeronea; the battle of Cynoscephalae; Halicarnassus; Harran and a quick note on the battle of Carrhae; the legendary city/hill of Nysa; the Altar of the Philaeni; the ruins of Segesta.

The Nubian Pharaohs, an article that already provoked a lot of nonsensical mail to my address - afrocentrism has an unpleasant side.

Daniel 11 and the Syrian Wars: an article that speaks for itself.

A review of the Museums on the Teutoburg Forest Musea (i.e., Kalkriese and Haltern), a review of three books on Achaemenid History, and 500 ancient sites on Google Earth (in Dutch, but place names are recognizable).

A LOT of texts by Plutarch:
* On keeping well
* On superstition
* On having many friends
* On virtue and vice
* On Fortune
* Advice to Bride and Groom
* Consolation to his Wife
* On listening to lectures
* Can virtue be taught?
* The education of children

PLUS:
* Suetonius' On Grammarians
* Suetonius' On Rhetoricians
* Ps.-Cicero's Rhetorica ad Herennium

And finally an article on The Image of Moloch. I left out some small stuff, for which you can check our blog.

[Jona Lendering]

Apparently, the Newsbot was shocked about my remarks, as it now has caught up again; which makes the message above some sort of double-posting.

[Jona Lendering]

As long as the Newsbot ain't working, I use this old thread. During our blackout, Bill has put online E.R. Bevan's book The House of Ptolemy. It is a bit old, and the author did not have access to as many papyri as we have, but the main outline of Ptolemaic history did not really change. Bill's own comments are here.

I put online my photos of the Granicus and the town of Issus. It links to an old article on the battle, which I am right now expanding. Finally, I put online a review of D.L. Lewis' recent book God's Crucible, which describes the end of Antiquity and the origins of western culture.

Finally, American history fans can check Bill's second site here.

[Eleatic Guest]

Finally, I put online a review of D.L. Lewis' recent book God's Crucible, which describes the end of Antiquity and the origins of western culture.

On one point, Lewis appears to have believed modern-day propaganda by Iranian royalists and I would not be surprised if some of the information on p.6 was taken from the Wikipedia.

Crazy, isnt it?

[Jona Lendering]

Finally, I put online a review of D.L. Lewis' recent book God's Crucible, which describes the end of Antiquity and the origins of western culture.

On one point, Lewis appears to have believed modern-day propaganda by Iranian royalists and I would not be surprised if some of the information on p.6 was taken from the Wikipedia.

Crazy, isnt it?

Many Wiki-articles are fine, but I would not use the pages on ancient Persia, which have been hijacked by political activists who think that everyone who does not share the propaganda of the late Shah (with Cyrus the Great as illuminated ruler et cetera) is a racist - I am not making this up, there's right now a petition against me which calls me a racist for precisely the above-mentioned reason.