Roman History Books and More

it’s not you, it’s your books

Have a good chuckle!

Essay

It’s Not You, It’s Your Books

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: March 30, 2008, NYT

Among the bookish, even casual literary references can turn into romantic deal breakers.

robert fagles, translator of the classics, dies at 74

Books

Robert Fagles, Translator of the Classics, Dies at 74

By CHARLES McGRATH

Published: March 29, 2008 NYT

Mr. Fagles was a renowned translator of Latin and Greek whose versions of Homer and Virgil became unlikely best sellers.  read on

Photo: Robert Fagles in 2006. Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

robert fagles’ aeneid translation

before this gets lost in the shuffle: illustrations to ovid's metamorphoses

From The Ovid Project. The text links for the Baur – in German – are next to the plates:

• The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Engravings by Johannes Baur. 1703.
  (A couple of typos:  It should read Verwandelungs Bücher, and the artist is Johann Wilhelm Baur)
• Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished Mythologized and Represented in Figures

Image: Baur Plate 3: Aetas aurea

looking ahead to june chats: ovid translations

In June, we plan to discuss a cross section of Ovid's work.  In our Reading List for 2008, I promised to research good translations.  I still have to check what of Ovid is in print besides Loeb Classical Library and wander down to the library to see what's out there and cull the selections and comment in a later post.

Meanwhile, if you want to look at online editions before you spend any money, there are:

• Perseus (scroll down) various translations from the 16th through early 20th centuries.
• Sacred Text (Metamorphoses 1717, Love Books 1930).
• THEOI, E-TEXTS LIBRARY
• A.S. Kline, Poetry in Translation & Mirror site (scroll down on each) contemporary.  You can either read this online or download.  The site is free but the author would appreciate a donation.  Certainly a lot of work and thought has gone into this.

'the other zenobia' – from judith weingarten's blog

This is too good to pass up:  Judith Weingarten (Zenobia, Empress of the East) blogged another Zenobia:  Treachery in Armenia and the Musical Drama of Johann Adolf Hasse!  Don't omit listening to the aria!

Tacitus, Annals, Book 12.

the death of peregrinus proteus, olympics a.d. 165

Thanks to Peter Stothard for finding this.

Peregrinus Proteus immolated himself at the Olympics, AD 165.  Here is Lucian of Samasota's satire:

The Death of Peregrinus

online sources for footnotes in syme's 'the roman revolution' – I (updated April 2)

Footnotes in Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution are more often than not citations in Latin and Greek, mostly of Cicero, Appian, and Dio in the book's Chapters I through XII, relating to the first of our three chats.  For those who like to explore these more, especially Cicero's letters, here are those available online in the English translation:

• M. Tullius Cicero, Letters (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh)
  (Volumes 3 & 4 mainly)
  
• M. Tullius Cicero, Letters to and from Brutus (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh)
• M. Tullius Cicero, Orations, The fourteen orations against Marcus Antonius (Philippics) C. D. Yonge, Ed.

• The Histories of Appian, The Civil Wars on LacusCurtius
  beginning with Book II
• Julius Caesar's War Commentaries
• Cassius Dio on LacusCurtius beginning with Book 39
• Lucan's Pharsalia
  
• Sallust on LacusCurtius
• Tacitus, Annals

• Plutarch, Lives
• Suetonius: Divus Julius
• Suetonius: Augustus

trajan's column in color?

Colouring Trajan's Column?, via David Meadows, who has his own thoughts on this.

Database of Trajan 's Column

More images on the Wikipedia site

two newly discovered blogs

Just discovered these:

• Maia Atlantis: Ancient World Blogs
• New at LacusCurtius and Livius.Org

rambambashi?

prosopography

Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution, our upcoming chat subject, makes extensive use of prosopography (from prosopon, the Greek word for "character" or "person," together with graphein, the Greek verb "to write"), as defined by G.W. Bowersock:

"the cumulative study of the careers of individual people as a means of escaping from a more abstract, impressionistic, and doctrinaire historiography."

Dictionaries describe it as "a study that identifies and relates a group of persons or characters within a particular historical or literary context," or "a collection of biographical sketches used by social and political historians studying a particular historical period."

major characters in 'the ides of march' – cytheris, lucius mamilius turrinus

There are two more characters of note in the 'fantasia' The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder.

Lucius Mamilius Turrinus is a fictional friend of Caesar, maimed in the Gallic Wars and living in seclusion on Capri.  Never appearing in person nor in writing, he is the dictator's confidant, and The Journal to him is the vehicle of Caesar's thoughts, which do drive the novel.  As posted before, the playwright Edward Sheldon (1886-1946) was the inspiration for the character of Turrinus.

The courtesan Cytheris has a brief mention in Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology:

CYTHERIS, a celebrated courtezan of the time of Cicero, Antony, and Gallus. She was originally the freedwoman and mistress of Volumnius Eutrapelus, and subsequently she became connected in the same capacity with Antony, and with Gallus the poet, to whom, however, she did not remain faithful.  Gallus mentioned her in his poems under the name of Lycoris, by which name she is spoken of also by the Scholiast Cruquius on Horace. (Sat. i. 2. 55, 10. 77 ; comp. Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. x. 1; Cic. Phil. ii. 24, ad Att. x. 10, 16, ad Fain. ix. 26 ; Plut. Ant. 9; Plin. //. N. viii. 16.) [L. S.]

major characters in 'the ides of march' – julia marcia, cleopatra

Bust of  Cleopatra from the Altes Museum in Berlin, Germany.

Julia Marcia (Julia Caesaris), aunt of Julius Caesar and widow of Gaius Marius, is portrayed as the typical staunch Roman matron.  In real life long deceased, in the novel she is Caesar's contact to the Vestal Virgins with regard to the Bona Dea rites, this particular one, also anachronistically, a part of Wilder's 'fantasia.'

Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology has not much to say of her:

first impression on syme's 'roman revolution'

I spent over two hours in the allergist's office today, mostly sitting around waiting for reactions to various "oral challenge" doses, long enough to read the Introduction and first chapters of The Roman Revolution.

Of course I'd read it in the past. But like so many books I have forgotten, I had to start fresh again.  WOW!

Selected pages of some of these chapters, though not the Preface, can be found at Google Books, otherwise copyrighted.  The 2002 reprint.

In the Reference section of the Google book, there are various links including a Bryn Mawr Review about another book, a review which nonetheless devotes several paragraphs to Syme the person and "The Roman Revolution."

major characters in 'the ides of march' – clodia, catullus

Clodia Pulchra, widow of Metellus Celer, is a major character in The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder's "fantasia" about the last nine months of Caius Julius Caesar's life.  Her brother, the famous/infamous Publius Clodius Pulcher, also makes appearances.

Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology has the stemma claudiorum, a brief entry on Clodia and a lengthy one on Clodius, as well as on the poet Caius Valerius Catullus, a biography cum assessment.

Clodia was Cicero's bête noire and appears in a number of novels/mysteries about Roman history, with various interpretations of her persona.  Probably her most sympathetic treatment is in the Roma Sub Rosa series by Steven Saylor.

a helpful 1948 review of 'the ides of march'and a rather personal biography

From way back when I own the German translation of The Ides of March, and a few years ago I acquired a used copy of the original novel which turned out to be the 1948 edition.

In the book there is an undated leaflet simply labeled "Printed in U.S.A.," containing a review called "A Report by Clifton Fadiman" (Wikipedia biography, handle with care) and "Thornton Niven Wilder" by Rosemary C. Benét, wife of Stephen Vincent Benét.  Googling, I found her name frequently, and among other things she was a reviewer for The New Yorker.  This may have been a Book of The Month Club leaflet. (Update:  the novel was indeed the March 1948 Book of the Month Club selection.)

I scanned it the leaflet, and here it is:   Download The-Ides-of-March-leaflet.pdf

on reading 'the ides of march'

I've started re-reading Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March, our upcoming chat subject (March 26).  It's not the easiest novel to read, not because of the letter format, but of the quite dense content.  This is not a book one can speed-read:  a sentence missed, and one can easily be lost.

So for the members of our group I suggest to start as early as possible.

* * *

On another note:  I wish our newscasters and their writers would be more educated.  On Sunday, a newscaster on one of the cable networks announced – in more or less these words – "Today are the Ides of March, when the Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles."

lauro de bosis and edward sheldon friends of thornton wilder

Thornton Wilder dedication of  The Ides of March reads:

This work is dedicated
to two friends:

LAURO DE BOSIS
Roman poet, who lost his life
marshaling a resistance against
the absolute power of Mussolini;
his aircraft pursued by those of the Duce
plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea;
and to

EDWARD SHELDON

who though immobile and blind
for over twenty years
was the dispenser of wisdom,
courage, and gaiety
to a large number of people.

xkcd - a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

I'm sick and can't get up the energy to create a post, so I was fooling around on the net:

Duty Calls

assassination at asculum and other theatre assassinations

via David Derrick's Toynbee Convector:

Assassination at Asculum

An evening in 91 BC.

The theatre at Asculum, what is now Ascoli Piceno, in the Marche. Roman citizens and the confederate inhabitants of the town gather for a performance.

read on

what the romans did for for the housing market

What the Romans did for the housing market
by Mary Beard, TIMESONLINE

What did the Romans ever do for us? They founded many of the towns and cities expected to weather the current market downturn, for a start.

They came, they saw, they conquered – and they were mad about houses.  Read on

house of augustus opens to the public

From the BBC:

Treasures revealed
The house of Roman Emperor Augustus opens to the public

And here is Mary Beard on this:   The house of Augustus: all mod cons?

a reminder: tacitus essays on bbc radio coming up

BBC Radio Three's The Essay will be discussing Tacitus and his influence in four programmes from Monday to Thursday at 11 pm (GMT) next week. Each programme will be available on the internet for seven days after being broadcast.

original reviews of "the ides of march" by thornton wilder

The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder will be our next read, on March 26. (Please note the deviation from our regular monthly schedule.)

Wilder called the novel  "… a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic... Historical reconstruction is not among the primary aims of this work."

I found a couple of book reviews from the New York Times and Time, and JSTOR – food for thought for our upcoming book chat.

• Books of the Times:  Download books-of-the-times.pdf  (February 18, 1948)
• Mr. Wilder's Roman Fantasia:  Download mr-wilders-roman-fantsia.pdf  (February 22, 1948) 
• Dossier on Julius Caesar  (February 23, 1948)
• Review by classicist Paul MacKendrick in the  The Classical Journal, Vol.44.No.1  (Oct., 1948), pp. 65-67  Stable URL  (restricted  access)

Image courtesy The Wisconsin Historical Society, "Thornton N. Wilder, head and shoulders studio portrait of Thornton Wilder, c.1949."  (Roughly the time period in which he wrote "The Ides of March.")

some philosophers on emotions

Via The Toynbee Convector: Seneca on pity, Epictetus on kissing, and Seneca again on practical compassion.

Full translations of Seneca's "Mercy" and Epictetus' "Discourses".

coleridge and goethe, together at last

Not even tangentially related, but I found it too fascinating to have it go unnoticed:

Coleridge and Goethe, together at last
A provocative new edition of Faustus claims to solve a literary mystery and unite two of Romanticism's greatest poets.

The price is rather stiff though . . .

another timely reprise: two books on the fall of the roman empire

With regard the to the Fall of the Roman Empire, a reminder of two much talked about books published in 2005, which you may find in your public library:

The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
by Peter Heather

The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization
by Bryan Ward Perkins

The books have been reviewed jointly at BMCR.  I was looking for any reviews in JSTOR, byt they are none.  However, apart from the fact that Ward-Perkins is a prolific reviewer himself, putting both book titles in the search box generated a number of papers on the fall of Rome.

   

roman forum no longer free

via About.com:  Roman Forum no longer free

The current Colosseum and Palatine Hill combination ticket will also include admission to the Roman Forum and will now be valid for two days.

What is the world coming too?  <SIGH>

From my experience, one needs more time, i.e., being able to go back at will would be a nice idea.

the salic law

Gibbon in Chapter 38: Barbarian Rule, Laws of the Barbarians, ff., cites the Salic Law. 

Wikipedia (as usual handle with care) has a  good article on the lex salica and it's long-time effects on Europe:

Salic law

 

from britannia to england

As well as the establishment of the Frankish kingdom in France, Gibbon’s Chapter XXXVIII also describes the coming of the Saxons to Britain. The fifth and sixth centuries, what used to be called the Dark Ages because of the paucity of historical knowledge about them, are now commonly called the Sub Roman or Post Roman Period. There is still much we don’t know about developments in this period but the tools of archaeology and genetics have increased our understanding to a certain extent. Just about the only thing that can be said without controversy is that in 397 Britannia was part of the Roman Empire and in 597 the first Christian missionaries from continental Europe arrived to start the conversion of the Angle and Saxon kingdoms of England.

Recent discoveries in archaeology and genetics have provided new evidence, so this well-illustrated book, which serves as an introduction to the late Roman and Anglo-Saxon period as a whole down to 1066, is in some ways out of date even though it was only published in the 1980s. How much this new evidence would cause the authors to present a different narrative of events is another matter.

gibbon – and tacitus – on the gauls

More talking points for Wednesday:

In our current read, Gibbon in chapter Chapter 38: Barbarian Rule begins with:

The revolution of Gaul
THE Gauls, ⁽¹⁾  who impatiently supported the Roman yoke, received a memorable lesson from one of the lieutenants of Vespasian, whose weighty sense has been refined and expressed by the genius of Tacitus. ⁽²⁾

Footnote (2): "Tacitus, The  Histories, iv. 73, 74. To abridge Tacitus would indeed be presumptuous;  but I may select the general ideas which he applies to the present state and future revolutions of Gaul."

Here is the link to Tacitus Online in general, and Histories Book 4 in particular.  [4.73] and [4.74]  relate the the"speech" of the general Cerialis to an assembly of Treveri and Lingones, during the revolt of Civilis and Classicus.