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"An enigmatic message on a Roman gladiator's 1,800-year-old tombstone has finally been decoded, telling a treacherous tale. The epitaph and art on the tombstone suggest the gladiator, named Diodorus, lost the battle (and his life) due to a referee's error, according to Michael Carter, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Carter studies gladiator contests and other spectacles in the eastern part of the Roman Empire." Read more at LiveScience.com…
"Jacques A. Bailly, an associate professor of classics at the University of Vermont, is the department's director of graduate studies. He has also been the official pronouncer of words at the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2003. He won the annual bee as an eighth grader in 1980." Read the interview with Prof. Bailly at The Chronicle of Higher Education's web site.
"NATO refused to say Tuesday whether or not it would bomb ancient Roman ruins in Libya if it knew Moammar Gadhafi was hiding military equipment there. 'We will strike military vehicles, military forces, military equipment or military infrastructure that threaten Libyan civilians as necessary,' a NATO official in Naples told CNN, declining to give his name in discussing internal NATO deliberations." Read more at CNN World online.
The American Philological Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Ellen Bauerle of the University of Michigan Press as Editor, and Dr. Wells Hansen of Milton Academy as Assistant Editor, of Amphora, its Outreach publication, effective January 2012.
Ellen has for several years worked as the editor for classics and archaeology at the University of Michigan Press. She also oversees book production for the not-for-profit Michigan Classical Press, and in the past has created and sold ebooks on the web. Recipient of a BA in Greek and English from Oberlin College, and an MA and PhD in Classics from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, she has been an Eric P. Newman Fellow at the American Numismatic Society and Seymour Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Ellen is delighted that Amphora is evolving to include the latest technologies, as additional ways of reaching its key constituencies among interested nonspecialists, scholars, teachers and students at the secondary level, and administrators.
Read Michael Collier's poem "Laelaps" and a critical essay about it by Lisa Russ Sparr at The Chronicle of Higher Education's web site.
Got Latin? Got Greek?
Delivered by Charlie Bridge (Class of 2011), a Classics Concentrator, at Harvard Commencement on May 27:
Rota Fortunae
Praeses Faust; Decani Professoresque sapientissimi; familiae, amici, et hospites honoratissimi; et tandem condiscipuli carissimi…salvete omnes! Mihi voluptas magna atque honor altus est huius ceremoniae incipiendae in hoc theatro augusto Trecentensimo. Nec solum conventum ultimum classis nostrae, anni duomillensimi et undecimi, sed etiam conventum trecentensimum et sexagensimum huius universitatis hodie celebramus.
Hoc cum animadvertissem gaudebam, propter sensum singularem numeri trecenti et sexaginta. Ne mihi quidem, litterarum antiquarum discipulo, latere potest orbem omnem in partes trecentas et sexaginta esse divisum. Venit etiam in mentem orbis quidam praecipuus, qui vitas nostras hos quattuor annos rexit: Rota scilicet Fortunae Harvardiana. Temporibus antiquis, rota signum erat levis mobilisque naturae fatorum – circuitus vel unus cladem felicissimis afferre atque miseros extollere potest.
"One of the best preserved sculptures from Roman antiquity is about to make its Washington, D.C., debut. Host Scott Simon reports the Capitoline Venus will go on display next Wednesday at the National Gallery of Art." Read or listen to the story at NPR.
"Listening to Cynthia Shelmerdine describe the writing on a Greek tablet from more than 3,000 years ago, it’s like she was looking over the scribe’s shoulder as he worked. She points out details and nuance of technique, the condition of the tablet and what it means, literally, and for the world of Greek archaeology." Read more …
"An ancient Roman shipwreck nearly 2,000 years old may once have held an aquarium onboard capable of carrying live fish, archaeologists suggest." Read more at CBSNews.com.
