Valuing life in antiquity

From the comments to a PhDiva post on post-traumatic stress disorder in antiquity:

I sometimes wonder if modern scholars think that ancient people just didn't value their lives as much as we do since they did not shrink from casualties as high as 50,000 in a single military engagement or investment of an enemy city. But if you've ever looked at some of the poignant grave goods found in ancient burials or studied the reliefs on ancient funerary monuments I think you will conclude that we are only separated by time not by our shared human nature.

I think this is spot-on. I'm reminded of one of my favorite classical essays, Simone Weil's The Iliad or the Poem of Force:

The bitterness of [violent death] is offered us absolutely undiluted [in the Iliad]. No comforting fiction intervenes; no consoling prospect of immortality; and on the hero's head no washed-out halo of patriotism descends….
Still more poignant -- so painful is the contrast -- is the sudden evocation, as quickly rubbed out, of another world: the far-away, precarious, touching world of peace … [4]

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'I can't bear the movie _300_ because I used to excavate in Sparta'

'Where are the other 299?'

Just discovered the site Dorothy King's PhDiva. It's an absorbing mix of commentary about the author's projects (King published The Elgin Marbles in 2006), personal musings  and delightfully quirky pieces by Sarah Bond (a co-blogger?), such as the recent 'Revolutionary Materials: Furniture and Civil Uprisings in Antiquity'.)

I've added it to the sidebar. Enjoy!

*Quote is from King's 'about' page.

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If Tutankhamun never happened: Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abby

I might be wrong in assuming that many of my readers love Downton Abbey, but it seems like the kind of show that goes hand-in-hand with a love of classics. The spouse and I and even the toddler love it, although she was concerned when Lady Sibyl was caught up in that riot over the elections in season 1. (We stepped up the fast-forwarding after that.)

Over winter break I read Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey. I found it as a Kindle library book after spotting a paper copy at Barnes & Noble. It was really a fun read and makes a lot of little things in season 3 clearer.

For those of you new to this party, Downton Abbey is filmed at Highclere Castle, and the show appears loosely based on the early-20th-century exploits of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, especially the fifth earl. He's the Lord Carnavon who discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun, although not without spending a fortune and contracting a deadly case of blood poisoning.

His wife Lady Almina was the daughter of her mother's lover Alfred de Rothschild, whose fortune assisted in the establishment of a hospital at Highclere Castle during World War I.

The book, by the current Countess of Carnarvon, Fiona Aitken, is solid in the history of the period, but kept from dryness by her affection for Lady Almina and her editorializing about her predecessor's foibles ("Alfred occasionally used to remonstrate gently with Almina, saying, 'Oh, puss-cat, I gave you ten thousand pounds only last week. Whatever have you don with it, my darling child?' But he never refused her; he simply took out his chequebook and unscrewed the lid of his pen." [124])

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Keeping up with the (Indiana) Joneses

A couple of stories to remind us that there's more to scholarship than verb tenses:

1) The Roman shipwreck where the Antikythera mechanism was discovered is about to be re-explored. Apparently there are several large calcified boulders on the sea bed, out of reach of the original expedition, that look exactly like the mechanism did before it was recovered. Marine archaeologist Theotokis Theodolou says tantalizingly, "this was not a normal ship."

2) From the Globe and Mail, a story about the heroic scholars who are going undercover into Timbuktu to save ancient African manuscripts. The facility where many of the texts are held has been turned into a base for Islamist rebels. In surely the understatement of the year, a researcher terms it a "big setback for the institute."

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College Misery: 'An Open Letter to My Spring Students'

College Misery can be over the top, but this entry is both funny and (based on my experience) accurate:

An Open Letter to My Spring Students....
Dear Flakes,
Hi. I've been getting your panicky emails ever since Christmas. Me, too; I'm nervous too!
Here are answers to the top 10 questions:

1. Yes, our MW class meets every Monday and every Wednesday, including the first Monday and Wednesday of the semester. Crazy! 

2.The books are in a building on campus called the bookstore. Take your registration slip, which shows your class number and section, and then move through space and time until you find a stack of books for your class. Buy those. Bring them. 

3. No, I didn't know what a great English teacher you had in high school. It should make our job even easier 

4. If I knew if it was going to snow next week, I'd be on channel 1 

5. It depends. If your class time is 8-9:20 am, then we start at 8 and end at 9:20. If it's another time, then follow the rules set down by the ancient Italian timekeeper Casio Timex and meet me in your classroom AT THOSE TIMES.

Read the whole thing. #1 and #5 sound like the kind of thing that should be made up, but aren't. Strangely, I don't think college students are too stupid to work out when their classes meet (usually), it's just that some of them think they look extra dedicated if they check every tiny basic detail with their profs.

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'What a Saturnalia it's been!"

As i've written about before, the winter date of Christmas is strongly influenced by the Roman holiday Saturnalia, which occurred on Dec. 17. Saturnalia was celebrated with gift-giving, eating and a "carnival atomsphere that overturned Roman social norms," to quote Wikipedia.

Mary Beard, in the character of a Roman priestess, has a 'look back' at this year's Saturnalia. This is pretty much the lecture style I aspire to in introductory classes :) Read her blog entry about the experience here.

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