Roman History Books and More

timelines of art history, metropolitan museum roman republic and roman empire

An e-mail from the MetMuseum today led me to its Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, and the subsections Roman Republic and Roman Empire.  Both pages have related timelines and links to Thematic Essays.

They are interactive in many ways, as the Fresco wall painting from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale shows.

Fresco wall painting in a cubiculum (bedroom) from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale
ca. 40–30 b.c., Late Republican Roman, Pilaster

Image courtesy www.metmuseum.org, click on it for interactive page.

'the singular circumstance of an errant papyrus' (arion)

An entertaining story about the Egypt Exploration Fund in general and Oxyrhynchus papyri in particular.

The Singular Circumstance of an Errant Papyrus by R.J. Schork (Arion)

ancient theater masks rediscovered in pompeii

July 21, 2009 -- A set of 15 mysterious life-size masks, reminiscent of ancient Roman drama, have been rediscovered in Pompeii after being forgotten for more than two centuries, according to Italian archaeologists who have shown them for the first time at an exhibition in Naples, Italy.

Made of plaster, the rather heavy masks were unearthed in 1749 in Pompeii during the excavations promoted by King Charles of Bourbon. They were deposited, along with many other artifacts, in the Royal Palace of Portici, a town on the Bay of Naples.

continue reading Ancient Theater Masks Rediscovered in Pompeii

hat tip: rogueclassicist

tiberius' villas on capri

Robert has more:  Tiberius's Villas on Capri

The emperor Tiberius left Rome in 26 AD never to return.  For most of the rest of his life he stayed on the island of Capri, where he had 12 villas.  Remains still exist of some of them.  The best preserved of them is the Villa Jovis, or possibly Jonis, which was the largest.  CapriWeb has four pages of text and some nice pics of the Villa Jovis, while Oebalus also has informative text and a floor plan.  read on

Imagined reconstruction by Carl Weichardt (c. 1900)
Villa Jovis, Archaeological Institute Heidelberg

musica romana

The Ensemble Musica Romana

…is bringing sounds of times long past to life again. By research of ancient music and reconstruction of ancient instruments they successfully revive archaic sounds and forgotten melodies.

The group Musica Romana was founded in 2001 and unites archaeologists, historians,ethnologist, musicians and interested technicians sharing an interest in Experimental Archaeology, Living History, museal paedagogics and of course, music and dance. We are having a lot of fun researching, planning and reconstructing our instruments correctly in detail, as well as studying, composing and rehearsing our music. We aim to make the music of times long gone comprehensible to our modern audience, to express our love for unconventional and non-commercial music and to respect scientific correctness towards the ancient sources of musical theory as well as towards contemporary research.

German site

Hat tip: Caroline Lawrence

lod mosaic in israel will be re-exposed

 Satisfying my affinity to mosaics …

After 13 Years of Being Covered –One of the Most Impressive and Largest Mosaics in the Country will be Re-exposed  (click on photo to enlarge)

Thirteen years after one of the most beautiful mosaics ever to be seen in the country was covered over, the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the municipality of Lod and its residents, is beginning an archaeological excavation that will re-expose the mosaic, once and for all.   read on

Project details:

The Lod mosaic was excavated in 1996 by Miriam Avissar and it is part of a salvage excavation that was conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Municipality of Lod, which wanted to widen He-Halutz Street. The mosaic dates to the Roman period, to the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century CE. The mosaic was covered over with soil at the conclusion of the excavation after funds were not found for the conservation and development of the site.   read on

Hat tip Adrian Murdoch

City of Lod (also known as Lydda)

Image courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority – click on above photo to enlarge

fabulous gladiator mosaic in north africa, telling the story of games

at livius.org via New at LacusCurtius & Livius:

Villa Dar Buc Ammera, a Roman villa near Lepcis Magna, is famous for its mosaics, which can be seen today in the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli. Especially fine is the Gladiator Mosaic, which shows an entire day of games.

Jona writes:

The most famous of the mosaics of the Villa Buc Ammera is the Mosaic of the Gladiators, which consists of a set of sixteen square fields decorated with geometric designs or representations of several kinds of fish. The edge is decorated with pictures of gladiatorial contests.  It was the floor of a dinner room (triclinium).  It offers important evidence for the way the ancient Romans organized gladiatoral contests in the circus.   read on

I was intrigued by the Musicians panel:

 
click to enlarge

My own photos of a gladiator mosaic from Bad Kreuznach, a completely different take on the subject.

Image courtesy livius.org

'blogging pompeii'

First we had Ostia antica, now there is:

Blogging Pompeii
A blog for all those who work on Pompeii and the other archaeological sites ofthe Bay of Naples. Here we share news and information about Pompeii and the other sites, and we discuss current research.

There is also a related Facebook page Blogging Pompeii.

roman france, three articles in the new york times this weekend

(Hat tip Adrian Murdoch)

Photo Ed Alcock for The New York Times
The Pont du Gard, an aqueduct in southern France.

Travel
Roman France
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: May 17, 2009
From amphitheaters and aqueducts to sarcophagi and statuary left behind by the conquerors, a hunt for what was once Gaul reveals traces of Roman civilization throughout the countryside.
With multimedia slideshow

clickable plan of trajan's harbour in portus (ostia antica)

Ostia Antica presents a clickable plan of Trajan's harbour in Portus

… accompanied by a text-menu (main entry: Portus). The plan that we chose was made by Italo Gismondi and published by Lugli in 1935. We added short descriptions of many buildings and improved the descriptions of buildings that were already online. The ruins of Portus are mostly covered by earth today, after centuries of what we would call today plundering. It is extremely difficult to understand the site, and we hope that the clickable plan will make it a bit easier for you. Clickable plans will be added in the near future for the basin of Claudius and the north part of the Isola Sacra. We will keep consulting the recent publications by the Soprintendenza and the Portus Project, and summarize the results for you. Use Google Earth to get an idea of the tremendous challenge that the Soprintendenza is facing. Portus is "in the shade" of Leonardo da Vinci airport and "strangled" by roads, highways and railways. It is virtually impossible to visit the site on foot. There have been successful protection orders by the Italian State, but part of the site is still private property of the Torlonia family, part of it is rather unprotected. For an analysis of the current situation see especially Lidia Paroli writing in Keay 2005, p. 56.

(from Yahoo Group Ostia-L)

stuff you usually only find on jstor: 'the antiquary's shoebox'

The Antiquary's Shoebox
A Selection of Articles from Various Journals in the Fields of Classics and Archaeology

Courtesy Bill Thayer, who writes:  "The thumbnail I use to indicate this subsite is a colorized version of a drawing that seemed appropriate to me; I found it in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, on p978, s.v. Pyxis."

Hat tip Adrian Murdoch

1000 ancient sites on google maps

From New at LacusCurtius & Livius:

1000 Ancient Sites on Google Maps

Jona Lendering writes:

As I have already written before, I have made a list of ancient sites that can be seen on Google Maps. You can find it here. I have now passed the thousand sites - 101o to be precise.  The list is still arranged topographically, first by countries, and after that by ancient place names (if known).

read on and view an amazing sample!

ostia antica

David Meadows tweeted Berlin-Kent Ostia Excavations, a nice blog, whence I got to this extensive and very active site:

Ostia, Harbour City of Ancient Rome (Ostia antica)

This website is dedicated to Ostia, the harbour city of ancient Rome.  Here you will find information for professional archaeologists and historians, for students of Roman archaeology and history, and for interested lay-people. The site is maintained by the Internet Group Ostia.

There are lots of things to explore, from the introduction with time line, history and maps to ancient texts, an amazing topographical dictionary, computer reconstructions, virtual museum, videos, Yahoo group, and more.

margu – a place in 'winter quarters' (alfred duggan)

In Winter Quarters, the protagonist Camul tells us in the Prologue that he eventually comes to live in a place called Margu.

Vicki C. did some sleuthing and found a Wikipedia link (as usual handle with care): Margu.  The Greek name is Margiana, and Jona Lendering has an entry Margiana:

Margiana (Old Persian Marguš): oasis in the Karakum desert, modern Mary (or Merv) in the southeast of Turkmenistan.

Margiana was situated on the boards of the river Murghab; this river, which was called Margos by the ancient Greeks, has its sources in the mountains of Afghanistan and flows to the north, into the Karakum desert, where it divides into several branches that disappear in the desert sands. The fertile delta (satellite photo) was called Margiana and was already occupied by farmers in about 2200-1700 BCE; their Bronze Age culture is known as the "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex".

[...]  In 53 BCE, Antiochia in Margiana received new settlers: ten thousand Roman soldiers, taken captive by the Parthians at Carrhae. They must have found the conditions of their captivity easier than they expected; a few years later, the Greek topographer Strabo of Amasia praises Margiana as a country especially blessed by nature, and he must have received this information from the captives.   more

for german speakers mainly, interactive: römer in germanien

Römer in Germanien (ZFD Fernsehen), including:

Der Limes - Grenzwall gegen die Barbaren
Eine schwer befestigte Grenzanlage zieht sich vor beinahe 2000 Jahren quer durch ganz Europa. Ein Bollwerk von Nordbritannien bis zum Schwarzen Meer. Doch wovor fürchtete sich das Imperium Romanum?

     Slightly over dramatized, IMO, but interesting, lots of archaeology.

Hat tip Chris P.

bookplates of scholars in ancient studies

Chuck Jones, on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog, presents a wonderful collection of bookplates:

Bookplates of Scholars in Ancient Studies

This posting originated on The Oriental Institute: Fragments for a History of an Institution: A collaborative project intended to focus ideas and thoughts on the history of the Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago, and was first posted there on 2/14/08, and was updated on 2/28/08 and 3/14/08. Since it has now gone beyond the mission of that blog, starting August 13, 2008, I'll maintain it here in more neutral territory. It was updated on September 22, 2008 with the addition of twenty bookplates collected by Peter Pamminger and Kirsten Konrad. It was updated again on March 24, 2009 with the addition of the ISAW Vermeule bookplate.       read on

View all and enjoy!

Image Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

archaeological roman presence in germania east of the rhein

Update 1 (for German speakers mainly, but nice photos): Römerlager Hedemünden, for which I could not find a link before. Hat tip Adrian Murdoch.

===========

Both authors of the books in our upcoming book chats on the battle in the Teutoburg Forest, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest and Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, as well as the German book Die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald: Arminius, Varus und das römische Germanien, discuss to a greater or lesser extent the Roman presence in Germania east of the Rhein in Augustan times (more on provincia later).  Jona Lendering has useful pages on most of them on his Germania Inferior site map.  I list them here more or less geographically, beginning closest to the Rhein and going east and south (the names are modern, the map image is from Jona's site, click to enlarge). Other than that, I found only German language sites.

Dorsten-Holsterhausen (livius.org)
Holsterhausen und die Rőmer (nice pics)
Haltern (livius.org)
Altertumskommission fűr Westfalen (scroll down to Haltern)
Oberaden (livius.org)
Altertumskommission fűr Westfalen (scroll down to Oberaden)
Römerlager Beckinghausen
Uferkastell (PDF, nice pics)

a thesis on 3rd century a.d. coinage – free download

"...Achieved Nothing Worthy of Memory".
Coinage and Authority in the Roman Empire c. AD 260-295.
by Ragnar Hedlund

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.03.11

Ragnar Hedlund, "...Achieved Nothing Worthy of Memory". Coinage and Authority in the Roman Empire c. AD 260-295. Studia Numismatica Upsaliensia 5. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2008. Pp. ix, 267. ISBN 9789155471200. $89.50.
Reviewed by Clare Rowan, Macquarie University, (clare.rowan@students.mq.edu.au)

This book is available online for free download.

Hedlund's book is a published form of his doctoral thesis, submitted at Uppsala University in 2008.

Hat tip to Adrian Murdoch

'cleopatra, arsinoe, and the implications'

Kudos to David Meadows for Cleopatra, Arsinoe, and the Implications.

Just before bed last night I was deluged with bloggables, chief among which was a report in numerous newspapers about tests having been done on the bones of someone believed to be Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s murdered sister.  This one presents numerous difficulties and the press might be jumping the gun (once again), although it is clear this is hype for a television program masquerading as news …

A  lot of leaps have been taken in and by the media. I think everyone should take a deep breath.  Not ... likely!

archaeology as modern art?

Archaeology as Modern Art?
An exhibition at the Guggenheim reveals how archaeological sites, sacred temples, and ancient art served as sources of inspiration for 20th-century sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

Stepping inside the Guggenheim Museum on Manhattan's Upper East Side is like entering a giant, hollowed-out dollop of whipped cream. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building--stark white inside and out, with its upward spiraling ramp and flanking galleries--is a treat in itself, a big part of any visit. The structure's sleek, clean lines serve as an ideal backdrop for a wide variety of paintings, sculptures, and multimedia installations.

But a noteworthy new photography show, Noguchi: The Bollingen Journey, 1949-1956, has quietly opened along a hallway in the museum's understated ground floor, accessed by the "Annex Elevator," far from the chic, bustling rotunda ... read on

from archaeology.org/