Roman History Books and More

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

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

goethe's italian journey

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:

• ItaIienische Reise, vol. 1
• Italienische Reise, vol. 2
• Italienische Reise
• Wiedergeburt in Italien

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

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.

two newly discovered blogs

Just discovered these:

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

rambambashi?

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

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".

from the toynbee convector

Some recent posts over on the Toynbee Convector which may be of interest:

The Disadvantages of A Classical Education. Toynbee's reflections on the deleterious effect of Greek and Latin on his English style.

Divisions of the Roman Republic and Empire. A list of the territorial divisions of the Republic and Empire.

Julian's Failure. Why Julian's attempted restoration of paganism was flawed. The post includes a Coptic icon of St. Mercurius killing Julian.

november at the dnb

The free online Oxford DNB currently has a special article on coin images, with four of the illustrations  (showing Carausius, Allectus, Constantine III, and Magnus Maximus) coming from our period. Click on the image of the coin to read the associated biographical article.

gibbon and effeminacy

Judith Weingarter of Zenobia: Empress of the East and David Derrick of The Toynbee Convector are discussing ancient stereotypes of effeminacy and how Gibbon bought into them. 

boudicca podcast

Not only does the Oxford DNB put up regular biographies and articles for a week or a month at a time, but it also has audio files of biographies being read out loud which you can download and listen to. They seem to stay on the site for much longer. The latest one is their biography of Queen Boudicca. Scroll down to the list of biographies at the bottom of the page: they are in broadcast order, with the most recent at the top.

roman britain at the DNB

The Dictionary of National Biography magazine for June (it seems to have come out a few days early) includes an article on Roman Britain covering the Roman occupation of Britain and its 'recovery' by historians and archaeologists. Unfortunately, although you can read the article, you can't read the linked biographies unless you or your library has a subscription.

tangentially – harry turtledove aka h.n. turteltaub

For Harry Turtledove (known to me mainly as H.N. Turteltaub) fans, a blog and a new alternative history novel: 

Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment & Trial of John F. Kennedy, Written by Harry Turtledove & Bryce Zabel  or:  What if John Kennedy survived Dallas?

Mr. Turtledove holds a Ph.D. in Byzantine History, and according to Wikipedia (obviosuly approved by Turtledove as it's linked from his blog), as H.N. Turteltaub he not only wrote the Byzantine novel Justinian – about the 7th century Justinian – which at one time we discussed in our reading group, but also this 4th century BC Hellenistic Traders Series set shortly after the death of Alexander the Great:

toynbee on historical novels

I'd like to share these observations by Arnold J. Toynbee on historical novels, via David Derrick’s Toynbee Convector:

It is difficult to achieve success in writing “historical” plays and novels, i.e. plays and novels in which the social background is not that of the writer or of the public for whom he is writing.  The effort to resuscitate an alien social background seldom produces effects that do not seem either shoddy or laboured.  The reason is that social facts, when presented as a setting for personal relations, must be sketched in with a touch which is at the same time light and sure;  and this touch is difficult to achieve except when the artist is portraying social facts with which he is intimately acquainted at first hand.

[however…] read on

With today's proliferation of historical novels, the question arises:  Does the above still hold true, and if so, to what extent?

Postscript:  This may be an awkward way to pose this question.  Maybe the observation is more true than ever, given today’s tendency towards “political correctness”?

ancient transportation blog and more…

I had meant to do this for quite a while, and my mind was jogged by David Meadows’ classicarnival of today.

Budding archaeologist Kristian Minck of Denmark has a greatly informative and well illustrated blog,  Ancient Transportation: Roman wagons and beyond.  If you look at the categories, it is nicely organized and also has a separate “still running” bibliography, which however, is largely in German.

All I can contribute to the subject are photos of a reconstructed Roman travel carriage from the Romano-Germanic Museum in Cologne, Germany.  (Click on image for more views.)

This is a latish Roman carriage, bits and pieces of which were found north of Thessaloniki.

agrippina

The huge cast of characters in our current read, The Kingdom of the Wicked, includes Agrippina, niece and wife of Claudius and mother of Nero. Mary Beard's latest blog post muses about writing programme notes for a new production of Handel's opera, Agrippina, and has a nice illustration of a coin with an image of Agrippina. Mary Beard also refers us to the wikipedia page on Agrippina, which has a picture of Ava Gardner as Agrippina in the mini-series A.D.  Anthony Burgess says in the Author's Note to The Kingdom of the Wicked:

Thus, The Kingdom of the Wicked, which was partly written for its own sake, partly in anticipation of A.D., may be regarded both as an expansion of the latter and a literary diversion in its own right.

Anthony Burgess of course follows the lurid stories in the ancient sources, but Memorabilia Antonina has a nicely illustrated blog post which gives extensive quotes from the sources and attempts to show that the lady has been much maligned.

zenobia blog

In an addition to the classical and archaeological  blogosphere, archaeologist Judith Weingarten, author of The Chronicle of Zenobia (reviewed here), has started her own blog:

Zenobia: Empress of the East
The Incredible Rise and Fall of the City of Palmyra

Welcome to the crowd, Judith!

for catullus lovers: two poems

With acknowledgement to David Meadows of  rogueclassicism, and as an introduction to Chris Weimer’s blog  Thoughts on Antiquity:

Chris has taken a fresh look at Catullus’ poems and has translated  two of them here, and added a poem of his own, addressed to Catullus.

An earlier blog of mine on T.P. Wiseman and Catullus

*****

books on the Varus battle in the Teutoburg Forest

Readers of my website know of my interest in Kalkriese, the place of the Varus battlefield. The location was a mystery for many centuries. The eminent 19th century historian Theodor Mommsen was convinced that he had discovered it, largely through coin finds in a specific topographical area. He was laughed out of court. Thanks to a British army officer and amateur military historian, Tony Clunn, who began a diligent search for the battlefield in the late 1980s, Mommsen has been vindicated. The result is a large archaeological site at Kalkriese near the German city of Osnabrück, and digging is still going on. Major Clunn has described his story in The Quest For the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield, now available in a revised and updated 2005 edition.You can read my book review.

I was rather disappointed by another book on the subject, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest by Peter S. Wells. Review by N.S. Gill.  It seemed to me that Mr. Wells was simply jumping on the bandwagon. [However, Mr. Wells is the author of the excellent work The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe.]

Now, a new treatment of the story will be on the market soon: Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest by Adrian Murdoch, whom I discovered via rogueclassicism and its classicarnival. Murdoch's blog is called Bread and circuses, and his current emphasis is on the Late Antiquity, as he is working on a book about Romulus Augustus, The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West.

 

Carnivals in the Blogosphere

'Carnivals' are blog round-ups about what's going on in the blogosphere and/or fields of related interest.

There is David Meadows with his daily classicarnival at the rogueclassicism blog. Some of you may know David from his Yahoo! Anthropology and Archaeology Group, The Explorator, with his weekly news roundups. As Phil Harland remarks in his blog, "How does he keep up with it all?"

There is also the Biblical Studies Carnival, and the general gateway History Carnival.

What is a blog carnival?

Having now 'kept up with it' too, I'll return to 'work' work myself …

Wikipedia Portal: Classical Civilisation

A new blog that was brought to my attention, Memorabilia Antonina, lists in its "Links" column this interesting page:

Portal: Classical Civilisation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I too have linked Wikipedia, through various individual pages, in my more recent posts. It seems that they are going into Ancient History and the Classics in a big way.

I am still somewhat hesitant using Wikipedia, so all I can say is, "use it with a hefty grain of salt." I hope that recent untoward events at Wikipeda have made the operators of the site more watchful. But unfortunately, there will always be people with an agenda, pranksters aside.

"Imperial Cults within Local Cultural Life: Associations in Roman Asia"

I came across this excellent blog, Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, by Philip A. Harland of Concordia University, Montreal. It is linked to his website, which contains the full text of several of his published articles.

Imperial Cults within Local Cultural Life: Associations in Roman Asia, Ancient History Bulletin / Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 17 (2003) 85-107, fits neatly into our current subject and has several references to Hadrian and Antinous. (also as PDF)

The Official Rules for Writing Historical Fiction

Have a good giggle about this from another blogger:

The Official Rules for Writing Historical Fiction: Rules for Classical-Set Fiction

Ancient / Classical History Website

Our friend − and fellow book chat member when she has the time − N.S. Gill runs the excellent Ancient / Classical History site at About.com, with a related Forum. Forum access requires (free) registration. She also has a blog, AncientRome.StudyPast.com, which links back to the above site.

A related site is Kris Hirst's Archaeology. A subsection covers Ancient Civilizations.