I’m on a bit of a western euro classics kick these days. I have a two-volume set of The Greek Myths from The Folio Society that I got 23ish years ago and never read, though I did read that Daulaires Greek Myths book when I was a kid. But in between the books I’m reading and documentaries I’m watching about Rome, I think I might read some Greek originals.
Maybe put some Polybius on tap next to Marcus Aurelius.
The #workshop "Nomina Omina. Detecting and Preserving Ancient #Greek and #Latin Proper Names in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" will take place at Leipzig University on June 27-29, 2024.
Serious #Downfall vibes in the series finale of #Rome. I’m not an educated classicist and I know they had to change things for the show and its collapsing budget by this point, but I’m a bit skeptical that the real story was like this.
No wonder people see this show as a precursor to Game of Thrones - I may get round to watching that. I’ll have to rewatch season 1 later.
I also just bought Ten Caesars and will read it soon.
Leipzig University is looking for a doctoral researcher on the project "Detecting and Retrieving Lost Historians", which is part of is part of the #MECANO project (Mechanics of #Canon Formation and the Transmission of Knowledge from #Graeco-Roman Antiquity)."
Logged into the dead birdsite and was reminded of this gem. 100/10 for chapter title, no notes.
Alexander the Gay would be a great title for a historical fiction series of erotic shorts 👌
🥁 In the final session of our #DigitalHistoryOFK for this semester, we welcome Thea Sommerschield (University of Nottingham), who will introduce us to the current trends, challenges & future prospects in the field of #MachineLearning and #generativeAI for the study of Ancient Languages and media (from cuneiform to carbonised papyri). Not to be missed!
📜 We had a fascinating conversation w/ classicist Richard Janko & wanted to share "The Vesuvius Challenge" in which he participates as well to unlock and read entire scrolls of the burnt Herculanum Papyri.
The very exciting news today in #classics is that Brent Searles' team read several column-inches of a scroll charred in the 79 CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
The bad news is that it's a deathly dull treatise on pleasure by #Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher of little note.
The worse news is that he was Philosopher-in-Residence at this villa. The scrolls could be mostly or all his writing. Maybe even his drafts. @histodons @bookhistodons
Visitors to Rome's new Forma Urbis Museum on the Caelian Hill can walk across a glass floor with fragments of a massive marble map of Rome engraved in the early 3rd century under Emperor Septimius Severus.
"Traces of Ink. Experiences of Philology and Replication is a collection of original papers exploring the textual and material aspects of inks and ink-making in a number of premodern cultures (Babylonia, the Graeco-Roman world, the Syriac milieu and the Arabo-Islamic tradition)."
Conversations About History, Vol. 1-3 📕 Enhanced 5-part books of in-depth, candid conversations with 100 renowned historians exploring frontline academic research while revealing the personal journeys behind the research.
I had never read this before. And that was a hole in my reading, given I'm in my 6th decade.
1984 is one of those books everyone should read. Yes, it's heavy-handed. No, it's not spectacular writing. Yes, we all need to be aware of giving up too much power to our government. But there are other things too.
the repeated comment about rats and prole babies, the clear feeling that they are always, and shamefully, ignored...) So, he speaks to the need to actually support our weakest. Also, the discussion of how the middle and the top swap power in revolutions, leaving the bottom on the bottom every time. Striking.
Education is key to keeping power from being concentrated in an oligarchy. Orwell speaks to the need to think clearly and critically.
You can see his example of what happens if you don't teach people to think critically in his juxtaposition of Winston and Julia. Only a decade or so apart in age, Julia is an example of someone who doesn't think critically, and though she doesn't like Big Brother, she certainly doesn't see, or care to see, the larger picture Winston sees.
I was particularly struck by the parallels I saw between Big Brother and the ChristoFascist god
being peddled in the United States currently. Rabidly anti-education in general and anti-science in particular, it also relies on the in-group of the saved (the middle) to keep the non-believers (the bottom) out of the power structure by limiting their rights.
I'm so glad I read this, but, geez, it really hit hard.
"Traces of Ink. Experiences of Philology and Replication is a collection of original papers exploring the textual and material aspects of inks and ink-making in a number of premodern cultures (Babylonia, the Graeco-Roman world, the Syriac milieu and the Arabo-Islamic tradition)."
"The breakthrough of the alphabetic script early in the first millennium BCE coincides with the appearance of several new languages and civilizations in ancient Syria-Palestine. Together, they form the cultural setting in which ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and, transformed by Hellenism, the New Testament took shape."