Roman History Books and More

roman sunbathing

The Romans knew about sunbathing and had a word for it, at least as practised by men: apricatio.

So writes David Derrick in The Toynbee Convector.

And the bikini was known also ...

Bikini Mosaic in the Villa Romana del Casale

two earlier posts on the eruption of vesuvius and mary beard's book

In connection with our current read, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found by Mary Beard, here are two earlier posts of interest:

• the eruption of mt. vesuvius, 79 AD
• did you know that …

common errors in ancient history (via jona lendering)

Browsing through New at LacusCurtius & Livius, I found Common Errors – actually, there is a "Common Errors" tab on top – which Jona begins as follows:

In 2009, I published a little book (in Dutch) in which I discuss more than fifty common errors about ancient history, Spijkers op laag water. Below are some examples, a couple of which are absent from the book. I have presented my subject matter in a sequence that allows the reader to read the book as a narrative history of Antiquity too, albeit a narrative history with some unusual digressions.

Listed are 27 errors. Lots of good stuff, including the Legio VIIII Hispana discussed earlier (#22).

There is a related page, Ancient History and Pseudoscholarship.

glossa, a latin dictionary

A neat new Latin dictionary, online and downloadable to your desktop:
Glossa, a Latin Dictionary

What makes Glossa different from other on-line Latin dictionaries?  Glossa combines a unique interface with a commitment to full exploration of a Latin word's possible meanings. The type-ahead suggest feature allows words to be found easily as you type, and the database gives you full definitions of words, including examples from Latin literature and etymologies. The sidebar shows you where you are in the dictionary, giving you the ten words before the current entry and the ten words after.

Glossa is and will remain free. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Basically, you are free to use distribute or remix this material, provided that you provide proper credit (see details on the download page), do not produce the work for commercial purposes, and allow others the same rights with your new work.

Glossa on Facebook
Go to the dictionary

Hat tip: N.S. Gill

who was mormolyce?

In Caesar's Women, Servilia, after the affair of the infamous letter, is telling at Brutus that Cato "is not all there. He never was, even as a baby.  Mormolyce got at him."

Who was Mormolyce? The Greek Myth Index tells us,

MORMOLYCE  Or Mormolyceion (Mormolukeion), the same phantom or bugbear as Mormo, and also used for the same purpose. (Philostr. Vit. Apollon. iv. 25; Menandr. Reliq. p. 145, ed. Meineke; Aristoph. Thesm. 417 Strab. i. p. 19; Stob. Eclog. p. 1010.)

MORMO was

A female spectre, with which the Greeks used to frighten little children. (Aristoph. Acharn. 582, Pax, 474.) Mormo was one of the same class of bugbears as Empusa and Lamia.

According to the OCD, Mormo was the the queen of the frightful Laestrygones who lost her own children and so murders other children.  The Laestrygones are known to us from the Odyssey.

Odysseus at the Laestrygonians
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

did cicero coin the term populares? not

In Caesar's Women, Colleen McCullough has Caesar intimate that Cicero coined the term Populares, but did he?  That question arose during tonight's book chat.  Though the word seems almost a fixation of Cicero's, the answer is no and can be found at JSTOR:

Cicero and the Word Popvlaris [Cicero and the Word Popularis]
Robin Seager
The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Nov., 1972), pp. 328-338
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/638213

It has by now become a commonplace among the historians of the republic that optimates and populares were not political parties in any modern sense. Nevertheless the ghost of the 'popular party' still lingers in subtle disguises, the most insidious of which is donned whenever populares is translated as 'the populares', with all that the definite article may imply.  It is the aim of this paper to catalogue the principal functions and connotations of the word popularis in Cicero, with illustrative material from other sources, in the hope that such a demonstration may contribute to the final laying of the ghost. The first section is essentially a commentary on the definition of populares given in the Pro Sestio;  the second attempts to expound the various techniques that Cicero uses to combat an opponent who claims to be popularis.
read on

did you know that …

… Julius Caesar tweets?

Julius_Caesar checks in daily on Twitter.

• Name Gaius Julius Caesar
• Location Rome
• Bio Descendent of Venus, conqueror of all Gaul, dictator for life

did you know that …

… Hortensius and Lucullus did not only have their beloved fish ponds, but also game reserves?  (and Varro too)

13 "You know, Axius," Appius continued, "that boars can be kept in the warren with no great trouble; and that both those that have been caught and the tame ones which are born there commonly grow fat in them.  For on the place that our friend Varro here bought from Marcus Pupius Piso near Tusculum, you saw wild boars and roes gather for food at the blowing of a horn at a regular time, when mast was thrown from a platform above to the boars, and vetch or the like to the roes."  2 "Why," said he, "I saw it carried out more in the Thracian fashion at Quintus Hortensius's place near Laurentum when I was there. For there was a forest which covered, he said, more than fifty iugera; it was enclosed with a wall and he called it, not a warren, but a game-preserve.  In it was a high spot where was spread the table at which we were dining, to which he bade Orpheus be called.  3 When he appeared with his robe and harp, and was bidden to sing, he blew a horn; whereupon there poured around us such a crowd of stags, boars, and other animals that it seemed to me to be no less attractive a sight than when the hunts of the aediles take place in the Circus Maximus without the African beasts."

Marcus Terentius Varro, On Agriculture, Book III, Chapter 13
Life and Works of Varro
from LacusCurtius

did you know that …

… Pompeii had one-way streets, and a pedestrian zone around the forum?  This and much more you can discover in Mary Beard's new book, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found.

A similar photo to the one below, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, is one of the many illustrations in the book.  Streets were constructed with raised sidewalks and stepping stones to handle over-flow water.  Space between the stepping stones allowed carts to go through.  In the distance one can see a water tower.

 

Wikimedia Commons has quite a few images of ancient Pompeii, which can be found here, organized by subject.