For years I’ve had it in the back of my mind to prepare a study called Posture and Gait in Classical Antiquity. We have a variety of sources that could help us reach conclusions about how various types of people tended to stand and move in ancient times. There are literary descriptions of posture and [...]
All posts tagged Rome
Walking in Roman Culture
Posted by acilius on February 29, 2012
http://losthunderlads.com/2012/02/29/walking-in-roman-culture/
The New York Review of Books, 22 December 2011
I subscribed to The New York Review of Books for years and years. I kept renewing because interesting pieces would appear in it just as my subscription was about to expire. Then it would go back to its usual unrelieved tedium for another 11 1/2 months. Anyway, I saw a copy of the 22 December [...]
Posted by acilius on December 15, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/12/15/the-new-york-review-of-books-22-december-2011/
Some interesting comments by Michael Peachin about a new book on the Emperor Claudius
As a subscriber to Classical Journal, I regularly receive emailed reviews of new scholarly books concerning ancient Greece and Rome. The other day, for example, they sent me Michael Peachin‘s review of Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire, by Josiah Osgood (Cambridge University Press, 2010). The only other notice I’d seen [...]
Posted by acilius on September 21, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/21/some-interesting-comments-by-michael-peachin-about-a-new-book-on-the-emperor-claudius/
Two items of interest to Classics types
When the world was young and I was in grad school, many of my classmates went to Rome to hang out with Father Reginald Foster. Reggie, as they all called him, is an American priest who at that time was in charge of translating official Vatican documents into Latin. His schedule was light in the [...]
Posted by acilius on August 31, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/08/31/two-items-of-interest-to-classics-types/
Gaius Acilius on Praise and Reproof
I teach in a university classics department. A few years ago, a senior colleague of mine received a “Teacher of the Year” award. I congratulated him, then asked some questions. After I asked him who gave the award, how they chose the recipient, and what benefits came with it, I asked him how he would [...]
Posted by acilius on November 23, 2010
http://losthunderlads.com/2010/11/23/gaius-acilius-on-praise-and-reproof/
What is a word for “grandparents of the same child”?
At Language Log, a post asks whether many English speakers use the expression “brothers-in-law” to refer to men whose relationship is that their wives are sisters and “sisters-in-law” to refer to women whose relationship is that their husbands are brothers. So would it be idiomatic to say that my wife and my brother’s wife are one another’s sisters-in-law? Commenters [...]
Posted by acilius on November 20, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/11/20/what-is-a-word-for-grandparents-of-the-same-child/
The Nation, 9 November 2009
For me, the highlight of this issue was a review of Mary Beard‘s The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. Beard’s “down to earth portrait of Pompeii” is informed by her grasp of “the latest research in demography, the history of Roman politics, architecture, ancient economics, feminist and post-colonial studies.” The same issue includes [...]
Posted by acilius on October 24, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/10/24/the-nation-9-november-2009/
How many people lived in Rome in the first century BC?
During the first century BC, Rome experienced a series of civil wars. Dynasts like Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Antony, and Octavian led armies that slaughtered foreigners and Romans alike. Romans responded to these wars by hoarding their wealth. They hoarded some of this wealth by burying coins. Not all of the first-century Romans who buried coins had a chance to dig [...]
Posted by acilius on October 6, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/10/06/how-many-people-lived-in-rome-in-the-first-century-bc/
Weighty matters
About seven years ago, I read G. R. Watson’s The Roman Soldier (originally published by Cornell University in 1969; I read a copy of the 1985 paperback reissue), a handbook summarizing what scholars in 1969 knew about life in the ancient Roman army. One point Watson made that I’ve been thinking about ever since I read the book had to [...]
Posted by acilius on August 27, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/08/27/weighty-matters/
Down with Justinian!
In ancient times, the Romans observed a festival called the Parilia every year on 21 April. We remember this festival as ”Foundation of Rome Day,” since first-century Romans like Ovid believed that 21 April was the day when Romulus laid out the boundaries of the new city. The Romans settled on 753 BC as the year of the city’s founding only centuries after [...]
Posted by acilius on April 21, 2009
http://losthunderlads.com/2009/04/21/down-with-justinian/
-
Who writes this?
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
lefalcon
acilius
believer1
