Roman History Books and More

the tipsy hero – or how to wreck a symposium

Opinion
Proof: The Tipsy Hero
By By Alexander Nazaryan, NYT
Published: January 30, 2009

There is plenty to learn from the ancient Greeks, for whom drinking wine was a near-sacred activity.

[…] I found a passage in “The Odyssey” that succinctly captures the complexity of the Greek attitude towards alcohol. Odysseus is speaking to a sympathetic swineherd, and though he is in disguise, the words have the unmistakable ring of honesty:

[I]t is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool – it drives the man to dancing…it even
tempts him to blurt out stories better never told.

After two decades away from home, there must have been so much to say, so many bottled-up tales of friends lost and battles won. Somebody get the poor guy another round.  read all

on laser scanning and archaeology

Judith Weingarten posted this fascinating piece of information and puzzle still to be solved:  Laser Scanning the Hung-e Azhdar Rock Relief

This extraordinary relief is carved on a huge limestone boulder at the cliff edge of a remote, not to say 'hidden' valley in the rugged mountains of northeastern Khuzistan … In ancient times, this was the heartland of Elymais, sometimes a small empire, more often a vassal to more powerful states.

At the time this relief was carved, Elymais was under Parthian rule.

Or was it?  read on

Image: The Parthian Empire   

the view from my window

Friday, 7:20 AM

finishing up 'the beginnings of rome' by t.j. cornell, february 4

The February 4 chat is our last session of The Beginnings of Rome: Italy From the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (Circa 1,000 to 264 B.C.) by T.J. Cornell, Chapters 14 & 15:

14  THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF ITALY

1  The outbreak of the Samnite Wars
2  The Latin revolt and its consequences
3  The Second Samnite War
4  The Roman conquest of central Italy
5  The battle of Sentinum and its consequences
6  The invasion of Pyrrhus and the unification of Italy
7  The nature of Roman control in Italy and the dynamics of imperialism

15  ROME IN THE AGE OF THE ITALIAN WARS

1  The transformation of the state
2  The career of Appius Claudius Caecus
3  The Lex Hortensia and its effects
4  Economic developments
5  Epilogue: Roman society and culture on the eve of the Punic Wars

Still serious and dense … and heavy, heavy for my arthritic thumb! 

rogatio, lex, and jus

In tonight's chat we encountered the Licinio-Sextan Rogations of 367 BCE.  So, what is a rogatio?

Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875 (via LacusCurtius) has the answer:  "The word Rogatio (from the verb rogo) properly means any measure proposed to the legislative body, and therefore is equally applicable to a proposed Lex and a proposed Plebiscitum …"

The above can be found in the entry Lex:

Lex is defined by Papinian (Dig. 1 tit. 3 s1):— "Lex est commune praeceptum, virorum prudentium consultum, delictorum, quae sponte vel ignorantia contrahuntur, coercitio, communis reipublicae sponsio." Cicero I (de Leg. I.6) defines it thus:— "Quae scripto sancit quod vult, aut jubendo, aut vetando" (see also de Leg. II.16). A Law is properly a rule or command of the sovereign power in a state, published in writing, and addressed to and enforced upon the members of such state; and this is the proper sense of Lex in the Roman writers.
read on

face of the day

the view from my window

January 18, 2009, 9:35 AM

edwyn r. bevan: the house of ptolemy added to lacuscurtius

Bill Thayer reports that he has added a new transcript to his LacusCurtius website:

Edwyn R. Bevan: The House of Ptolemy, A History of Hellenistic Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty

 He introduces the book thus:

Edwyn Robert Bevan (1870‑1943) was a rarity in the academic world: a top-flight scholar whose only doctorates were honorary, conferred on him late in life, in appreciation for his contributions rather than early in his career as a sign of hope for what he might become. He started by writing mostly history, and by the end of his life devoted himself mostly to philosophy and religion.
The volume transcribed here is the later work of a pair covering the two great powers of the Hellenistic world; the earlier, The House of Seleucus, may eventually find its niche here as well.

Alas, he also reports that the photographic illustrations in the copy he used are of very poor quality and thus he has not yet added them; he is on the look-out for an original edition.

Enjoy!

roman face pots and an obituary: jill braithwaite

The Independent has the obituary of Jill Braithwaite, the Archaeologist who advanced the study of Roman face pots:

Jill Braithwaite established a European reputation in archaeology for her study and interpretation of Roman face pots. Before she started her research, these strange pots had turned up singly or in very small groups throughout the Roman Empire but, with a few exceptions, they had remained isolated and uninterpreted finds. After 15 years of research, Braithwaite had reduced thousands of decorated single sherds and isolated pots to a sensible typology, instilled into the groups and styles a chronology, and begun the work of interpretation of material which stretched from the Black Sea to Spain and the Mediterranean to Scotland.    read on

(Hat tip to Adrian Murdoch)

Fascinating!  I encountered such face pots in Germany:

n.s. gill blogs t.j. cornell for the upcoming january 21 book chat

As we prepare for our upcoming chat on The Beginnings of Rome: Italy From the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (Circa 1,000 to 264 B.C.), Chapters 12 (holdover from last chat), 13, and maybe in to 14, N.S. Gill is way ahead of me with blogging:

Cornell 12, Part I
In chapter 12 of The Beginnings of Rome, T.J. Cornell covers the military and expansionist period of from 509 to 345 B.C. in Italy. Although Cornell as always makes choices between theories of modern historians and Roman legends/history whenever there is a conflict, he makes few new astounding choices in at least the sections up to the Gallic invasion … read on

wine in ancient rome

After picking up the January Wine of the Month selections from my wine merchant this morning I did my usual research in order to know what I'm drinking … there was an Italian red, and a Sicilian one, so that got me thinking about the ancient Romans, who consumed a lot of wine.

Wikipedia (as usual handle with care) has a nicely illustrated Ancient Rome and wine.  Jim Grout has Wine and Rome, and then there is a site Roman Wine: A Window on an Ancient Economy from MASCA (Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Museum), with another page:  the origins and the history of wine from its neolithic origin to Egypt and Mesopotamia.  N.S. Gill at Ancient / Classical History at About.com  has a page, Wine, with a number of links including some of the above.  The Roman Empire also expounds on Wine, and tells us why the Romans drank it:

The Romans drank wine as a staple part of their diet, preferred over anything else. In fact, the quality of drinking water was such that, wine was a typical drink at any time in the day. However, unlike today, ancient wine was almost always consumed mixed in with large percentages of water. The ancient wines were stronger, both in alcohol content and perhaps in flavor, making the watering down of their drinks necessary. 

the view from my window

A glance back to December 12