polyphloisboisterous @polyphloisboisterous-blog - Tumblr Blog

So I'm still officially on hiatus, but I just couldn't pass this one up. The pope has started tweeting in Latin!

From the BBC:

"What does the Lord ask of us as we work for Christian unity?" And he answered: "To pray constantly, do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with Him." In his first Latin tweet he asks his followers to pray always for the reunification of the Christian churches - "Orare semper, iustitiam factitare, amare probitatem, humiles Secum ambulare".

So... clearly it's just a translation of his English post, not a request to "pray for the reunification of the Christian churches." Also, really not sure why he used the reflexive pronoun in Secum - is that some kind of Christian Latin thing? Anyway whatever Latin tweets are awesome.

Hi guys. The job market is really doing a number on my free time right now. It's excellent that I'm still occupied with it, of course, at this late phase of the process, but that means I really don't have time to keep plumbing the depths of the interwebs for classics stuff. So, the blog is going to be on a more or less hiatus for the next couple of weeks. I'm sorry to let it get to this, but there's nothing for it just now - hopefully I'll return in a month or so newly employed and reinvigorated for some online klassix fun. For now, valete lectores!

A report at NYT on the excavation of a Hadrianic auditorium beneath Rome's Piazza Venezia, discovered while preparing a new line for the city subway. Really not sure why people keep calling it an "arts center" but hey, it's still plenty cool.

#Archaeology #Classics #Hadrian #NYT #Rome #rogueclassicism

Dino Klassix

#Ryan North #Classics #Klassix #Dino Comic #Icarus #Mythology

Review of Alice Oswald's new "excavation" of the Iliad. She calls her poem "Memorial," and has stripped the Iliad down to just the death notices and some of the domestic similes. It's an interesting experiment - the death notices, those tiny biographies that crop up just as previously unnamed heroes are dying - are one of the strangest and most moving elements of ancient epic, and I actually rather like the idea of a poem that consists solely of them. Sounds like Oswald has been quite free with the "translation" (a word she does not use for her project), but that just makes it all the more interesting.

#Classics #Greek #Homer #Iliad #NYT #Alice Oswald

Essay at TLS on Julia Annas' "Intelligent Virtue," a book arguing for a (surprisingly Greek) conception of virtue as an active practice, not just an absence of sin or immorality. They say all western philosophy is a footnote to Plato - but this at least sounds like a damn good footnote.

#Classics #Greek #Plato #Philosophy #TLS

Archaeologists in Vietnam have discovered the 4000 year old remains of a man who lived at least the last ten or so years of his life completely paralyzed and unable to care for himself. In other words, a disabled man who was cared for by his prehistoric community. People with disabilities obviously had a very hard time in antiquity all over the globe (Garland's Eye of the Beholder is a great look at disability in classical antiquity), but it's nice to see even a little bit of evidence like this to counter the sometimes prevailing assumption that life was "every man for himself" until the past few decades.

#Classics #Vietnam #archaeology #Disability #new york times

Turns out, it went to the University of Chicago by mistake, when postal workers read a label on a bit of film merchandise as an actual address label. What a world. Sounds like Chicago will get to keep the memorabilia though!

uchicagoadmissions

Indiana Jones Mystery Package

We don’t really even know how to start this post. Yesterday we received a package addressed to “Henry Walton Jones, Jr.”. We sort-of shrugged it off and put it in our bin of mail for student workers to sort and deliver to the right faculty member— we get the wrong mail a lot.

Little did we know what we were looking at. When our student mail worker snapped out of his finals-tired haze and realized who Dr. Jones was, we were sort of in luck: this package wasn’t meant for a random professor in the Stat department. It is addressed to “Indiana” Jones.

What we know: The package contained an incredibly detailed replica of “University of Chicago Professor” Abner Ravenwood’s journal from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It looks only sort of like this one, but almost exactly like this one, so much so that we thought it might have been the one that was for sale on Ebay had we not seen some telling inconsistencies in cover color and “Ex Libris” page (and distinct lack of sword). The book itself is a bit dusty, and the cover is teal fabric with a red velvet spine, with weathered inserts and many postcards/pictures of Marion Ravenwood (and some cool old replica money) included. It’s clear that it is mostly, but not completely handmade, as although the included paper is weathered all of the “handwriting” and calligraphy lacks the telltale pressure marks of actual handwriting.

What we don’t know: Why this came to us. The package does not actually have real stamps on it— the outside of the package was crinkly and dirty as if it came through the mail, but the stamps themselves are pasted on and look like they have been photocopied. There is no US postage on the package, but we did receive it in a bin of mail, and it is addressed to the physical address of our building, Rosenwald Hall, which has a distinctly different address from any other buildings where it might be appropriate to send it (Haskell Hall or the Oriental Institute Museum). However, although now home to the Econ department and College Admissions, Rosenwald Hall used to be the home to our departments of geology and geography.

If you’re an applicant and sent this to us: Why? How? Did you make it? Why so awesome? If you’re a member of the University community and this belongs to you or you’ve gotten one like it before, PLEASE tell us how you acquired it, and whether or not yours came with a description— or if we’re making a big deal out of the fact that you accidentally slipped a gift for a friend in to the inter-university mail system. If you are an Indiana Jones enthusiast and have any idea who may have sent this to us or who made it, let us know that, too.

We know this sounds like a joke/hoax… it’s not (at least, from our end). Any hints, ideas, thoughts, or explanations are appreciated. We’ve been completely baffled as to why this was sent to us, in mostly a good way, but it’s clear this is a neat thing that either belongs somewhere else— or belongs in the halls of UChicago admissions history.

Internet: help us out. If you’re on Reddit (we’re not) or any other nerdly social media sites where we might get information about this, feel free to post far and wide and e-mail any answers, clues, ideas, thoughts, or musings to [email protected] (yes, we did set up an email account just to deal with this thing).

**Update: we have heard from Lucasfilm (nerd sidebar: OMG SO COOL) that this is not some type of viral marketing package for any upcoming Indiana Jones films or events. We have narrowed the likely maker down to the most-accurate Ebay match (seller “Ravenbar”) but have not been able to get in touch with the seller, nor do we have any sense of why this would have made its way to our office. More photos of the journal can be found in the Chicago Red Eye here. We will be placing this in the University of Chicago library’s Special Collections once our mystery has been solved, so to those who have asked if it is for sale, sadly, the answer is no. Thanks to all who have sent tips or ideas (and to all of the news organizations that found this cool enough to pick it up)— please keep the ideas coming!**

polyphloisboisterous-blog

Oh archaeologists, will you never quit?

Translation is always a thorny issue for classicists. We stress the necessity of reading texts in the original languages, but continually ask our students to translate, and do our best to produce readable, loyal, beautiful, useful translations of our texts to share with people who can't or won't learn Latin and Greek. But how best to convey a Ciceronian period to a class of budding Latinists is a challenge that pales in comparison with the thicket of thorns that is religious translations.

This article confronts the recent history of translations of the Catholic Mass. A new English translation is, rather quietly, being phased in throughout the Anglophone church right now. Some value it for its effort to be more faithful to the Latin, others shudder at its painful neologisms. Whether you're interested in the Catholic Church or not, do check out Rupert Shortt's article here for a window into some of the most contentious translating done in English since the sixteenth century.

#Classics #Latin #Roman Catholicism #Mass #Translation

Report on an article in Nature in which archaeologists suggest they have found neolithic cheese-making equipment in Poland dating back to ca. 5500 BCE. This would be the oldest evidence for cheese making in Europe. Apparently they suspect a soft, cow's-milk cheese. Delicious.

#Classics #Archaeology #Poland #Cheese #Food

A beautiful diagram by Ilara Pagin of Zeus' affairs. You can have it show you the affairs mentioned by specifics authors, or for a striking effect, the whole tradition combined. I haven't had a chance to really test the accuracy (and I admit the word "Aeschilus" is a little ominous), but it's a gorgeous graphic and a really neat idea. Check it out!

#Classics #Greek #Zeus #Affairs

Thanks to Joe Farrell for passing along this NYT interview with Arnold - it's mostly rather dull, actually, but it winds up with a shout out to Cincinnatus! Turns out the Governator is a big fan:

"If you could play any character from literature, who would it be?

One of my favorite characters in history is Cincinnatus, and I’ve read everything I can find about him. I would love to play him in a film about ancient Rome. He was given the keys to the kingdom — pure, absolute power! — and he did the job and then went back to his farm. He didn’t get drunk on the power. He did the job he was asked to do, dealt with the invasion and walked away. That is the purest form of public service I can imagine, and it would be fun to try to capture that character on film.

The United States was lucky to have George Washington as a founding father, because he had that same civic virtue, and of course he had read about and admired Cincinnatus."

So, come for the Cincinnatus, stay for the long confession about Harry Potter.

#Classics #Rome #Arnold #NYT

Great post at History Girls about a mysterious plaque from Ostia showing a woman giving birth. This is an extremely unusual and rare image to get from antiquity, and Caroline Lawrence here takes us through a thorough look at the question of its authenticity. Check it out!

#Classics #History Girls #ancient medicine #Women in antiquity #Birth

And that's it...

for 2012! We survived the Mayan Apocalypse, so I'm going to take a little time off here, and resume posting in the new year. Happy holidays everybody and I'll see you on the other side!

Well, as the Rogue Classicist points out, this one's a bit goofy, but it's quite true that ancient Greek toys (at least as represented in children's burials) were very gender specific. It is funny how when archaeologists look at these ancient burials, we talk about how the toys and other objects represent cultural ideals about the buried people, but when we talk about giving children today gender specific toys, it's all about how limiting they are. Everybody seems to turn out ok in the end, though...

#Classics #Greek #rogueclassicism #toys