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Showing posts from March, 2007

Whither Ithaca?

The conventional wisdom is that Homer's Ithaca is the modern island of Ithaki, off the coast of Greece in the Ionian Sea. British archaeologist Robert Bittlestone is challenging that assumption, and modern science will be at his disposal .

Late Antique Yemen

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Old City Sana'a Photo by eesti . On the heels of the last post, I was entranced by this lush travel article in the New York Times (free registration required) about the Yemeni island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa. It's not difficult to imagine traders on that Alexandria-India run porting here for one last pit stop before the big push across the Arabian Sea: Socotra is significantly inhabited, and has been for some 2,000 years. More than 40,000 people now live there: many in Hadibu, the island’s main town, the rest scattered in small stone villages, working as fishermen and semi-nomadic Bedouin herders. Nature and culture are longstanding neighbors. I especially liked this bit: Lying on the rocky ground, with the scent of frankincense fresh in memory, I felt as though I had stumbled into a chapter of the Old Testament. Well before dawn I woke to the sound of the family patriarch’s voice warbling a long, mournful prayer. He finished after a few minutes, and the ni

Indian spices and Roman trade deficits

There is news from India today on continued archaeological efforts to identify the site of the ancient Indian city of Muziris, one of the most important ports for trade between India and Rome. Traders from Alexandria and the rest of Roman Egypt would wait until July to set out for India. Under typical conditions, it was a two month journey, but departing any sooner would place a ship off India's southwest coast during the most dangerous sailing conditions of the year—even modern maritime insurers are reluctant to offer summer coverage in the area. For the wealthy, high-powered Alexandrian merchants who could afford to underwrite such expensive voyages, the payoff was enormous. Arriving in India in September and leaving in December, the traders would ride home on the winds of the northeast monsoon, hulls packed with incense, myrrh, ivory, spices, silk, wild animals, pearls, and other luxuries of the Far East. After they docked at the Red Sea ports of Berenice or Myos Hormos, cara

Homebrewed Masses in the 4th century

Fordham University's Kimberly Bowes will explore the division between public and private expressions of Late Antique Christianity in her upcoming book , Possessing the Holy: Private Worship in Late Antiquity . From the article: In the fourth century, said Bowes, the concept of “church” was not yet defined—many people still worshipped in private home chapels or in estate churches which served both their owners and local peasantry. “There was no consensus on what the church was,” said Bowes. Once the Christian church became established, the bishops, who often called such worship heresy, condemned private gatherings. “You’ll find some really angry texts [written by bishops] from this period,” said Bowes.

Laeti and foederati

Anthropologist Stefano Fait offers an essay on the 5th century invasions that nicely surveys the major events of the period while framing the "barbarians" within the modern debate on immigration, assimilation and ethnic identity.

Porta Salaria

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Salarian Gate, Rome Buses, scooters and Smart Fortwos roll through a breach in Aurelian's wall as wide as any made by the 19th century artillery that ended the last vestige of the Papal States . Their drivers meet only a little less resistance than the Italian army did when they blasted through , a few hundred feet to the east. The Salarian Gate didn't survive the onslaught, and when they cleared the rubble, it revealed the tomb of an 11-year-old poet laureate. In 94, Sulpicius Maximus won a poetry contest held in honor of Jupiter Capitolinus, but the light of his fame burned too briefly to prevent him from being lost under a pylon two centuries later. His monument was whisked off to the Capitoline Museum, and a replacement for the old gate was erected soon after. It, in turn, gave way to the march of progress in 1921; room had to be made for bigger things than salt merchants' carts. Now there's an enormous gap that would have horrified the city's anc

Pilgrimage

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6th C. tomb epigraph, S. Silvestro in Capite I'm back from my first visit to Rome, where I discovered that one can pack a lot of quality sightseeing into 60 hours if one picks their spots carefully. I also discovered how very, very little I really know and understand about the Roman world, despite all the reading and studying I've done. I was an armchair expert without my armchair. It was very humbling (in a good way). Just breaking the silence for the moment; there is more to come on my weekend in Urbs Aeterna. In the meantime, enjoy this 6th century tomb epigraph (I think? Anyone?) from San Silvestro in Capite . ETA : As Judith mentions in the comments, she wrote about San Silvestro in Capite just a few weeks ago.