Category: Uncategorized
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The Iceman Cometh: The Birth of Gaius Octavius and Roman Myth-Making
In the interest of continuing to mix things up, I had meant to pivot back away from Rome this week, though those of you who managed get through last week’s nonsense will be incredulous that I was still finding unused Teutoburg memes among my photo files days after posting. But as I was meditating on what to…
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Missteps and Mayhem: The Battle of Teutoburg Forest and the End of Early Roman Imperial Expansion
“There is a sweeping curve of glen, made for ambushes/ and devices of arms. Dark thick foliage hems it in on either hand,/ and into it a bare footpath leads by a narrow gorge and difficult entrance./ Right above it on the watch-towers of the hill-top lies an unexpected level, hidden away in shelter, whether…
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The Flying Was Inside Him All Along!: Gods of Egypt and the Egyptian Pantheon on Film
“This makes Thor AND Thor: The Dark World look like Citizen Kane.” — me, at the hour and a half mark “Rufus Sewell is right, that necklace does look super cheap.” — also me Okay, so I’m writing this up on Labor Day in the US, so I’m admittedly feeling a little lazy vis á vis a serious scholarly…
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More Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 2)
Last week, we talked about myths as half-remembered histories and cultural origin stories through the lens of Egyptian myth. This week we’re going to shift more thoroughly to the Greeks and dissect Plato’s idea that myths-as-stories that are based on the gods having passions and struggles — what he calls false myths — and try…
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Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 1)
Because I spend too much time (i.e., any time) lurking on classical-centric social media, and in this case, especially Twitter, I’ve been thinking a lot about mythology, third-wave feminism, and contemporary scholarship. Mostly, I love the direction of modern academia in the classical world and history in general, where it’s moving towards being more inclusive…
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Barefoot in Rome: The Political Iconography of the Prima Porta Augustus
I’ve been talking a lot about Egypt and Greece for the last month or so, I thought I’d circle back to Rome and talk about some more political art during the early imperial era. Specifically, we’re going to take a deeper look at the the Augustus of Prima Porta, the best-known of Octavius’ portraits and arguably…
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No Business Like Show Business: The Greeks and the Invention of Western Theatre
ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωμιδιώτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων (“[You have become] a quibbler of words, a maker of maxims, a Euripidaristophaniser”) — Cratinus on Aristophanes As case numbers for the delta variant in the US continue to rise, and what would have been the summer concert season draws ignobly to a close, I’ve been feeling nostalgic for live theater, one…
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Inventing (Everything But) the Wheel: Egyptian Innovations & Notable Firsts
When people think of things the ancient Egyptians did first, they’re usually thinking of papyrus, or cat-based theology. But I thought this week, we’d look at a few lesser-known things the Egyptians came up, and perhaps get a better sense of the wide scope of human endeavor we can trace back to the Nile Valley.…
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Glory of the Gods: A Brief History of the Ancient Olympic Games
You must be swift as the coursing river/ With all the force of a great typhoon/ With all the strength of a raging fire/ Mysterious as the dark side of the moon — “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”, Mulan This week, I thought we’d tackle something topical and talk about the original Olympic Games,…
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The Law of Unintended Sequels: Ten Unusual and Obscure Roman Deities
“[E]vidently Forculus [the god of the threshold] can’t watch the hinge and the threshold at the same time.” – St. Augustine Nobody enjoys mocking the Egyptian pantheon for its weirdness than the supposedly straight-laced Romans, so I thought as a companion to last week’s entry, we’d give them a taste of their own medicine and…
Sarah Holz 