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May 2008

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online book chats

Exlibris logo, click for website This blog is an adjunct to The Roman History Reading Group which meets on the first and third Wednesday of each month except August in our chat room (with download instructions for both Mac and Windows users), from 9:30 to 11:00 p.m. US EST.  (This means that in Asia and Australia/Pacific, it's daytime.)  Here is a world time clock as a general assistance for non-USAns.

2008 scheduled reading list (updated April 2)

in association with amazon.com, clickOn April 16 and May 7 & 21 we will discuss The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme. (April 2 was canceled)

This is followed by a discussion of the works of the poet Ovid, June 4 & 18.

Join us!

May 16, 2008

anthony trollope wrote a "life of cicero"

Anthony Trollope, oil painting by S. Laurence, 1865, from Britannica Searching the Internet Archive to see what I could find of Cicero's writings, I discovered that Anthony Trollope (Wikipedia, handle with care) wrote a Life of Cicero in two volumes (Chapman and Hall, 1880):

Finding the time to browse through it is another thing . . .

Anthony Trollope at Britannica
Collection of portraits of Trollope at the National Portrait Gallery, London
The Trollope Society

the correspondence of marcus cornelius fronto online

Internet Archive I just stumbled over this online Loeb's copy (Internet Archive: New York Public Library)

The correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto with Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Lucius Verus, Antoninus Pius, and various friends; (1919-20)

Can be downloaded as PDF or read online as Flip Book. Apparently requires a "Library Card" (free sign-up) for multiple viewing. This is probably old hat for most of you. I wonder what other goodies I'm missing and where one can find a list.

May 15, 2008

a don's life: the face of julius caesar? come off it!

the statue in question And right Mary Beard is!

The face of Julius Caesar? Come off it!

What do you do if you are an archaeologist and you find a nice Roman portrait bust in the bottom of a river?

The answer is simple. You go through every book of Roman portraits and coins until you find some famous figure in Roman history who looks vaguely likely your man. It is laborious and time-consuming. But the principles are simple – it’s like a game of snap.  read on

new julius caesar biography out

in association with amazon.com, clickJulius Caesar by Philip Freeman, Simon & Schuster, May 2008, 416 pages.

Mr. Freeman writes on his website:

Julius Caesar was one of the greatest heroes of human history-or one of its most pernicious villains, depending on who you believe. Many of the American Founding Fathers despised Caesar as the evil genius who overthrew their beloved Roman Republic. The medieval poet Dante assigned him a blessed afterlife among the most virtuous pagans while sentencing his two leading murderers, Brutus and Cassius, to the lowest levels of Hell. Shakespeare tried to have it both ways, praising both Caesar and the conspirators who slew him. Modern scholars have been equally divided concerning Caesar's legacy. Some have seen him as a paradigm of the just ruler, but in the wake of twentieth-century dictators and devastating wars, other historians have turned a cold eye on a man who caused the death of so many and established the rule of emperors over elected magistrates.

Continue reading "new julius caesar biography out" »

May 14, 2008

goethe's italian journey

in association with amazon.com, click More from David Derrick's The Toynbee convector, on one of my favorite reads: Goethe’s Italian Journey.

The book itself in translation:  Italian Journey: 1786-1788 (Penguin Classics)

Online, it's available in German only:

Continue reading "goethe's italian journey" »

the cambridge companion to ovid

in association with amazon.com, click The Cambridge Companion to Ovid seems to be a book worth reading, according to this Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

"The editor of this volume, Philip Hardie, is one of those responsible for the rise in Ovid's fortunes, and many of the contributors that he has recruited for this volume have done their parts as well.  But the essays on the whole do not merely reprise earlier themes;  and Hardie has also recruited some less obvious but highly suitable collaborators, with the result that the collection makes a striking impression and succeeds on two separate fronts.  As a summary of where Ovidian scholarship has been, it is, with perhaps one or two caveats, very successful indeed;  and as an effort to indicate fruitful directions for future work, the volume should have a stimulating effect."

May 13, 2008

on holy ground

Toynbee's reflections on his preference as a young man for the historically significant sites of the Hellenic civilization rather than those of his own Western Christian civilization.

Courtesy David Derrick, The Toynbee convector

website back up

The website is back up.

May 11, 2008

ovid: reading schedule for june

Publius Ovidius Naso in the Nuremberg chronicleWe have two chats planned for June about the works of the poet Ovid (Wikipedia, handle with care).  With the limited time we have, I think it's best to concentrate on his two major works:

June 4     The Metamorphoses
the creation and history of the world
June 11     (optional) other works*
June 18     Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
plus Amores, Remedia Amoris?

*If anyone wishes to discuss the other works, I offer another chat in between, on June 11. I'm especially interested in the poems and letters from exile (Tristia, Ex Ponto, Ibis).  And there are also the Fasti.

Continue reading "ovid: reading schedule for june" »

website temporarily down

My website is temporarily down, I hope to fix this tomorrow, Monday.

May 08, 2008

ovid at britannica online: testing webshare feature

Britannica Ovid
Roman poet
Latin in full
Publius Ovidius Naso

(now, if only JSTOR would follow suit)

May 05, 2008

elliott carter still going strong and composing at almost 100

The amazing Elliott Carter, who will be 100 in November:

Published: May 1, 2008
The playful qualities of Elliott Carter’s music outnumbered potential hazards on Tuesday night in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at the Juilliard School.

Elliott Carter discusses his new clarinet quintet
Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

The composer Elliott Carter, far right, discussed his new “Clarinet Quintet” with Ara Guzelimian, the dean of the Juilliard School, on Tuesday after the Juilliard String Quartet and the clarinetist Charles Neidich performed the piece.

May 04, 2008

how well do you know marcus didius?

Three quizzes on the adventures of Marcus Didius Falco:

My First Falco Quiz covers The Silver Pigs and Shadows in Bronze.

My Second Falco Quiz covers "Falco On His Metal", the omnibus volume containing Venus in Copper, The Iron Hand of Mars, and Poseidon's Gold.

My Third Falco Quiz covers "Falco On The Loose", the omnibus volume containing Last Act in Palmyra, Time to Depart, and A Dying Light in Corduba.

May 02, 2008

cartimandua

In their series of articles for May 2008, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has an article on Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes, mainly based on Tacitus' account.

April 26, 2008

coin hoards from the times of the civil wars and the triumvirs' proscriptions

in association with amazon.com, click hereJosiah Osgood, in his Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire, an excellent complement to Syme's The Roman Revolution, writes about coin hoards during the time of the proscription.

These hoards have been discovered in Italy and he points out the obvious: The increased frequency of finds from the times of upheaval indicates that buried coins were not recovered because their owners most likely perished.

He cites M. Crawford (1969) "Roman Republican coin hoards."

Continue reading "coin hoards from the times of the civil wars and the triumvirs' proscriptions" »

April 24, 2008

ovid: 'full view' google books

Google Books has a number of 'full view' books of and about Ovid, the former mostly 19th century translations.

[Blog: Inside Google Book Search]

April 23, 2008

more on hermann broch's 'death of vergil'

in association with amazon.com, clickI said earlier that Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil is a difficult and ambitious book.  In the appendices to my German edition, the author discusses his work at length at various stages and revisions.  He worked on it for seven years, from 1938 to 1945.

There is a brief description of the novel (or poem as the author insists it is) at Wikipedia (as usual, handle with care).  English readers will have the comfort to know that the translation by Jean Starr Untermeyer, a friend of Broch's, was closely supervised by the author.  He himself also addressed the difficulty of translating this work in the above appendices.

Continue reading "more on hermann broch's 'death of vergil' " »

theoi e-texts library of classics

In connection with yesterday's post on Virgil I discovered this great site:

The Theoi Classical E-Texts Library

"A collection of works from ancient Greek and Roman literature in translation. The theme of the library is classical mythology and so the selection presented consists primarily of ancient poetry (epic, lyric, bucolic, et. al.), drama and prose renditions of myth."

Explore it and enjoy!  Don't miss the Gallery.

April 22, 2008

ovid translations online updated

See my update

reading about the augustan era: novels of virgil

in association with amazon.com, check for availabilityAgain, I'm spending time in doctors' and hospital waiting rooms, drinking vile stuff – well actually no so vile, nowadays they mask the barium with a fruit smoothie taste – and waiting for the stuff to work through my body before a CT-scan.  In circumstances like these, ambitious nonfiction is not the thing to read.  (My apologies to Mary B.)

However, keeping in with the "Roman Revolution" theme, I grabbed an old favorite, David Wishart's I, Virgil – unfortunately it seems to be seriously out of print right now.  For those readers who know Wishart only from the Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus mystery novels, with their wine-swilling hero and his anachronistic modern gumshoe language, this 1995 novel would come as a real surprise.

Continue reading "reading about the augustan era: novels of virgil" »

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