In honor of the first day of classes

Euripides' Bacchae, courtesy of Better Book Titles

Quick update

I have been a rather poor blogger as of late. I do have an excuse, however, as a week ago today I flew back to Portland and have been catching up with friends and preparing for the semester to begin this coming Monday. On top of that, I just moved into an apartment (which I'm extremely pleased about). Regardless, I haven't had as much time to update, which I promise will be remedied soon!

I am currently reading articles for my classes on Tuesday: one on Flavian Rome, two critical essays on art history, two on ideas of ethnicity in the ancient world, and one on Boasian anthropology and cultural boundaries. Really REALLY loving the Flavian Rome one. My classes (Art History: Theories of Visuality; Barbarians in the Ancient World; Greek: Aristotle's Poetics; Latin: Martial) are going to be wonderful.

Playing with Wordle

Wordle is a tool that's quite fun - paste text or enter a URL, and it will generate a word cloud for you. I've tried it for this blog, an old blog of mine, and even several essays. Go have fun with it! Here's one for a paper I wrote last semester:

Pretty obvious what the paper was on, huh?

Ἑλλάς Dreamin'

Our last night in Athens, view from a rooftop

At some point I might write an entry here on my time in Greece last summer (on a dig in Pylos and then in Athens), but for right now, this photo will have to suffice. I cannot begin to describe how much I miss it all.

Slowly dwindling funds via books

Ordered the rest of my course books today. The reading lists look phenomenal and my excited anticipation of this semester has increased tenfold. Only hoping that this (Craig Williams's) translation of and commentary on the second book of Martial's epigrams is worth the $75. This might be a shot in the dark but has anyone read or used it before?

Book recommendation & "Chickpea"

I've been a lazy Classicist, because instead of reading frightfully esoteric texts or working on Pindar translations, I have been devouring Robert Harris's novel Imperium. Although as of late I've considered myself more of a Hellenist than a Latinist, my first love in this discipline was Republican (and early Imperial) Rome, and this delightful book has been feeding that flame.


It is a fictional biography of Cicero, told from the perspective of his slave and secretary Tiro, and follows Cicero through the first 20 or so years of his career. I highly recommend it as a fast-paced, enthralling, and fun read for anyone who loves or is even vaguely interested in Roman history. I was particularly pleased by Harris's treatment of Cicero's prosecution of Verres (which dominates the first half of the novel), as I quite recently read the Verrine orations myself for the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing them appear and be explored here in this kind of context. Harris does a wonderful job in marrying textual evidence to an engaging fictional-historical background.


It's a quick read and worth picking up.

"While Pompeii Crumbles"

The Wall Street Journal discusses the recent Pompeii collapses and funding for archaeological preservation in Italy. Read here.

And it slowly begins

I'm beginning to do research on graduate programs in classics and archaeology. Am rather petrified (will anyone accept me?) and excited (I could finally do work on Linear B!).


But considering how I feel about my discipline, hopefully I'll be okay...

Not quite classics but...

Why Denys Finch Hatton is a hot dead guy. From http://bangabledudesinhistory.blogspot.com/

Things to follow/read online

Archaeology news - The Archaeological Institute of America's news site, updated every weekday. Keep up-to-date on the most recent archaeological discoveries and controversies.


RogueClassicism - One of my favorite blogs/sites ever. Lots of classical news/tidbits/interesting things. Many of my most beloved classical non-sequiturs have been discovered here.


@AlexanderIII on Twitter - Alexander the Great of Macedon. On Twitter. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE!?! Hilarious and smart, check it out!


TextKit - a site to help you learn (or review) Latin and Greek. Quite a number of textbooks or reference books are available for download. I've been trying to review my Greek grammar a bit before the semester starts and since I left my books at Reed, this website has been a great resource.


(From McSweeney's) Suggested edits to the movie 300 for the DVD release of 300: the definitive, historically accurate cut. - Just for fun.


P.S. For all the sites that have RSS feeds, you should get a Google Reader (I've had one for over a month now and it has changed my online reading habits for the better! Follow my shared items there - search for elizisme@gmail.com)

Whee!

Brain slowly going to mush

I have been watching altogether too much television that is intended for children under the age of 14. It's probably attributable to the fact that I haven't felt completely ship-shape the last few days (on and off fatigue and some bumps and bruises here and there - leftover from an unfortunately crazy New Year's Eve - have aided in my complete desire to just plop down on pillows and friend-snuggle with Jen and watch the Disney channel). Regardless, I really REALLY need to get back to reading real things, so that I'm not completely out of my element when I walk into Ellen's class and she assigns 600 pages of historical text. Maybe will start slow and first reread some children's books. Then, on to the reading list.