Category: Uncategorized
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Beyond the Plagiarism: (Almost) Ten Things Actually Invented by the Romans
“You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and you…
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Stuff That Doesn’t End in ‘-ology’: Ten Lesser-Known Greek Innovations
I was thinking back on my post from last year about ancient Egyptian inventions, and like many of my list entries, I realized I should circle back and do a couple more on at least the other two main hobbyhorses of this blog, Greece and Rome. So while I spend an extra week trying to…
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Frozen in Time While Moving Forward: Museums As Agents of Cultural Exchange & Contextualization
Here for us in Pittsburgh, when our local museums stage non-art-specific traveling exhibitions, they are usually held at the Carnegie Science Museum, rather than the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH)/Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA). I think this is for space reasons, as the science museum has a dedicated exhibition hall, while the other two…
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Purple Reign: The Cross-Cultural History of Murex
“The most favourable season for taking these [shellfish] is after the rising of the Dog-Star, or else before spring; for when they have once discharged their waxy secretion, their juices have no consistency: this, however, is a fact unknown in the dyers’ workshops, although it is a point of primary importance.” – Pliny the Elder, Natural…
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East Meets West: The Unexpectedly Diverse History of the Parthian Empire
Getting back in into harder history, I thought after talking a little bit about the Roman Republic’s greatest enemy, Carthage, last week that this week we’d shift forward and look at the Roman Empire’s most stubborn foe: Parthia. Despite ruling a majority of the Middle East from Turkey to Afghanistan for nearly five hundred years and…
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Carthāgō iterum dēlenda est: Salammbô and The Mercenary War
“The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: ‘They are not men but oxen!’ and the multitude round about repeated: ‘Oxen! oxen!’ The…
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Love Consumes All: Mary Herbert’s Antonius & Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
“The less her wrong, the less should be my woe;/ Nor she should pain, nor I complain me so.” – Antony, Antonius (III, line 229-30) [couplet by Mary Herbert added to the Garnier text] Back in November, I made you all listen to me natter on about Mary Wroth’s Urania and in the course of that discussion, I introduced…
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Obligatory Sales Post (+ a Preview!)
I know I’ve been doing a lot of sales pushing here recently, and I promise that’ll settle down again after this week, but I’m so excited to say that my third book, Children of Actium, is live and available for purchase at the digital provider of your choice and in paperback via Amazon! Links are below,…
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Sanity and Succession: Pre-Modern Mental Health and Courts in Crisis
“On the thirteenth day, Heaven and Earth clashed and the sun and the moon turned black. When this calamity happened, how could I desire to live one second longer!” – Lady Hyegyong, The Memoir of 1795 “Dispute not with her, she is a lunatic.” – the Marquess of Dorset on Queen Margaret, Richard III (I, sc. 3) Oy,…
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Curses, Corpses, and Cheops: The Surprisingly Feminine Origins of Mummy Literature
“He saw it rise gradually—he heard the dry, bony fingers rattle as it drew them forth—he felt its tremendous grip—human nature could bear no more—his senses were rapidly deserting him; he felt, however, the fixed steadfast eyes of Cheops still glowing upon his failing orbs, as the lamp gave a sudden flash, and then all…
Sarah Holz 