Leipzig University is looking for a doctoral researcher on the project "Detecting and Retrieving Lost Historians", which is part of is part of the #MECANO project (Mechanics of #Canon Formation and the Transmission of Knowledge from #Graeco-Roman Antiquity)."
Apropos absolutely nothing ... did #PublicTransport exist in the #RomanEmpire? That is, were there vehicles of any kind that existed solely for the carriage of people plus their personal luggage (but not freight), without regard for social rank, operating regularly along set routes? Excluding #ferries over rivers and the like. #AncientRome#Classics#ClassicalCivilisation#History#Histodons
🥁 In the final session of our #DigitalHistoryOFK for this semester, we welcome Thea Sommerschield (University of Nottingham), who will introduce us to the current trends, challenges & future prospects in the field of #MachineLearning and #generativeAI for the study of Ancient Languages and media (from cuneiform to carbonised papyri). Not to be missed!
📜 We had a fascinating conversation w/ classicist Richard Janko & wanted to share "The Vesuvius Challenge" in which he participates as well to unlock and read entire scrolls of the burnt Herculanum Papyri.
The very exciting news today in #classics is that Brent Searles' team read several column-inches of a scroll charred in the 79 CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
The bad news is that it's a deathly dull treatise on pleasure by #Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher of little note.
The worse news is that he was Philosopher-in-Residence at this villa. The scrolls could be mostly or all his writing. Maybe even his drafts. @histodons @bookhistodons
I love translating poetry. It's a great way to get better with a language, and it lets you verbalize your own personal interpretation of the author's original words. It's fascinating how many different interpretations people have of poems.
Anyway, I spent this morning translating two poems by one of my favorites, Catullus. Including the famous NSFW one.
I have a sonnet about him to post later today too, stay tuned 😃
I've been slowly making my way through Walter Burkert's Greek Religion for the first time. I just finished the section on mysteries, about which I knew little. I have no idea why, but I left the section feeling a little creeped out. Something about how he described some mindsets of the mystery (as distinct from polis) cults reminded me of today, and not in a good way. One of the paragraphs even made me think of incels. 😳 Definitely need to do some more reading to wash that away.
Anyone have favorite recommendations to learn about Greek (Roman, Egyptian too, but definitely closer to antiquity than medieval and later) mystery cults?
I have Hugh Bowden's Thames & Hudson text and Michael Cosmopoulos' work on the archaeology in my own collection. Should I next try Burkert's dedicated work on the mysteries? Anything else? Journal articles? Scholar specialists?