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Showing posts from 2006

A bioctocentennial*

Prosper of Aquitaine was a contemporary, so I'll let him tell it: ""In the year 406, the Vandals and Alans, having crossed the Rhine, entered Gaul on the day before the kalends of January..." A few years ago, Michael Kulikowski published a paper which made a good argument that the invasion actually began on 12/31/405, but in recognition of the long acknowledged 406 date (and because I wasn't blogging about stuff like this last year), I'll call today the anniversary. Happy Barbarians Day! * For want of an approved term

Roman coins

A mixed lot of Roman coins arrived from an eBay seller today. Six of them are in terrible condition, with only the faintest remnants of a profile or text to suggest that they're Roman at all, but I think the other four have enough text to allow for some kind of identification. VCRC , here I come...

Historical hobnobbing

Last week, I went to the opening lecture of a conference on St. Augustine. My history professor, who suggested that my fellow students and I attend, leans over to me at one point, indicates a guy walking towards his seat, and says, "There's Peter Brown ." If you don't know who Peter Brown is, here's a very, very brief explanation: Up until our generation, give or take, the dominant view of the fall of Rome was that barbarian hordes descended upon the place in the 5th century and wiped out the Western empire, burying our civilization in the "Dark Ages" for the next several hundred years. In 1971, Peter Brown put out a book that focused on the Eastern empire, which fared much better during that period. He said, in essence, "yes, there were barbarians, but a lot of really cool and really important stuff (especially stuff involving the infusion of Christianity into society) happened during that time and it deserves to be studied." He referred to t

New name

As I wind down from my Roman summer (more on that later) and prepare for the first semester of my senior year, I felt it was high time to come up with a better name for this blog. Studendi Miri means, more or less, "These cool things which must be studied." At least, I think it does. Intensive as it was, I only studied Latin for six weeks. If anyone can correct me, please do so.

Caesar slept (and nursed) here

A team of archaeologists in Rome believe they've found the house where Gaius Octavius--later Caesar Augustus, Rome's first emperor--was born in 63 BC. Flaky story link here ; the big news agencies don't seem to have picked it up yet. ETA 2/23/07 : Original story link is dead. Here, instead, is PhDiva's abstract of some Italian press coverage of the find.

More GE linky love with Roman ruins

Open up GE and take a trip to Segedunum . I like writing these little placemark blurbs--they force me to be concise, which is one of my weak points. Walking some or all of Hadrian's Wall is on my life's to-do list. What made me think about it this week was a cool travel article in the Atlantic Monthly about doing just that. The tourism industry surrounding the wall's remains is pretty robust, but from what I've read it also seems to be low-key and tasteful. Even the big museum and guest center at Segedunum (visible to the right of the ruins in the link above) seems like a cool place to spend a rainy English afternoon.

Period films and Good Queen Bess

I once had a medieval studies professor who required us to watch particular Hollywood movies as fodder for class discussion. We watched stuff like Ben-Hur and The Name of the Rose . He would open the class by asking us what we thought of the movie and would gradually segue into a lecture on the period in which the movie was set. As a teaching tool, it was genius; most people actually did watch the movies, and the resulting discussions--which the professor deftly managed to focus on the relevant historical topics as opposed to the fictional elements of the plot--were animated and interesting. Unfortunately, most other history profs I've met have turned their noses up at period movies when I've asked about them. The common complaints seem to be that the screenplays are rife with inaccuracies (certainly true) and that too many laypeople are content to consume them as documentaries (probably true). Fair enough. For my part, though, I'd rather see Jane or Dick watch King A

Ghosts of ancient buildings

One of things I like to do with Google Earth is look at places like London or Rome and try to make out the path of the old city walls. Often, with the help of a period map, you can see where a modern street shadows the old perimeter. Sometimes, though, you can see the "ghost" of an old building by the outline of the street or by the shape of the modern buildings on that spot. One of the better places to see what I'm talking about is the former site of Pompey's Theatre in Rome. Pompey's Theatre was, among other things, the site of Julius Caesar's assassination . Parts of the interior ruins have been excavated and are visible to the public, but most of the ruins are still underground. If you look a few blocks west of the excavated area, though, you'll see a narrow street (or maybe a pedestrian walkway) and modern buildings that follow the path of the theatre's great, round facade. After you launch GE, take a peek at this photo to get a sense of

In the beginning

I suppose I should explain what I'm doing here. I'll try to do it without writing my autobiography. About six years ago, I began studying the history of Ireland, from whence my parents came to the United States. It seemed like a culturally responsible undertaking, and there was a self-discovery angle in there, too. I bought and borrowed a lot of books on the subject. Most of them were monographs from academic presses. I discovered two things early on. The first one seems pretty obvious now. One can't really appreciate the history of Ireland without also studying a lot of the history of the rest of Europe, especially Britain. Properly studying Britain, in turn, requires one to study things like ancient Rome and medieval Europe. The second thing I discovered is that your typical Barnes & Noble doesn't carry very many popular histories of Ireland, and that the ones they do carry seem unnecessarily dry. So, a little more than two years ago, I set a long-term goal