Here are some podcast lectures — full courses! — available at iTunes U pertaining to ancient history that some of you might find interest in. Make sure you have iTunes to listen/download the lectures.
- UC Berkeley: History 4A: The Ancient Mediterranean World, Isabelle Pafford.
- UC Berkeley: History 106B: The Roman Empire, Isabelle Pafford.
- Yale: Introduction to Ancient Greek History, Donald Kagan.
- Yale: Roman Architecture, Diana E.E. Kleiner.
Although I haven’t been tagged with the meme of funny moments in ancient literature (see son of the fathers, Sitz im Leben), I thought it would be fun to post on the brief story of Phalaris and Perillus in Ovid’s Tristia 3.11 (and mentioned very briefly again in 5.1). As it is known, Ovid had been exiled by the emperor Augustus (for some ‘error’ he wrote). 3.11 has often, as in other places in the Tristia, been taken as a swipe against Augustus. This time Ovid tells a story of one of the cruelest tyrants, Phalaris, well known for roasting men alive in a bronze bull. Ovid may very well be comparing Augustus to Phalaris. Although it is a gruesome story, I admit that I did chuckle while translating the passage a few months ago. Here is Peter Green’s translation of 3.11.39-54:
harsher you are than grim Busiris, harsher even
than he [Perillus] who heated the brazen bull at a slow
fire, and presented this bull (so it’s said) to Sicilian
Phalaris the tyrant, touting his handiwork thus:
‘In this gift, my lord, there lies more usefulness than appearance
might suggest: it’s not just my art’s beauty merits praise.
Do you observe, here, how the bull’s right flank will open?
Thrust in any man you want
to destroy, shut him up, then bake him over slow-burning
coals, hear him bellow just like a real bull.
For this invention, to balance one favour with another,
give me, please, a reward
commensurate with my talent.’ ’Most noteworthy purveyor
of torture,’ Phalaris answered, ‘handsel your own
oustanding invention in person!’ And straightway, cruelly roasted
by the fire he’d set up, he bellowed in double wise,
man and bull both. …
Green takes a step further by saying ‘man and bull both.’ Literally it is, ‘he produced double sounds with a groaning mouth’ (line 54, exhibuit geminos ore gemente sonos)! The inventor’s ingenious creation backfires on him. Maybe it isn’t as funny as it seems but it sure was when translating it. Maybe I have a streak of dark humor.. At any rate, Ovid again briefly mentions the episode (my translation) in 5.1.51-54:
Do you require that no groans should follow my torments,
and do you forbid me to weep with a serious wound taken?
Phalaris himself allowed Perillus in the bronze
to emit moans and to bewail through the mouth of the bull.
Alas! I’m slowly emerging from blogging hibernation. Since my last post, several months ago, I have completed my degree in Classics from FSU and have been looking for a teaching position. There are a couple of leads and I hope to have an answer within about two weeks for one school I’m particularly interested in teaching at.
This summer I have been spending my time mostly in biblical studies, specifically focusing on the books of Genesis, Joshua, Matthew, and Revelation. I’ve been discussing with a friend the dating of the book of Revelation. It is a friend who holds firmly to a pre-70 C.E. dating of the book. But that is a different topic for another day.
Thanks to all sending e-mails and posting comments concerning the usefulness of the language charts. Hopefully once I start teaching, I resume those things. For now, I’ve been consumed with biblical studies. Hopefully I will get back into the swing of blogging here soon.
It has been a very long time since I have posted anything. But rest assured, once things slow down, I will begin posting again! The semester has been keeping me busy with translation as I’m taking four language courses. Hopefully sometime in the near future I’ll be posting running vocabularies of some texts from Catullus and Seneca and maybe an elegiac couplet I’ve been working on for my Catullus course. Until then!
Today Codex Sinaiticus will be available for all to see. Not all of it, but at least a bit of it. The site’s full completion of uploading the manuscript should happen by mid-summer next year. Sinaiticus, a fourth-century manuscript, is the oldest complete New Testament manuscript known to us today (Old Testament is lacking portions). I had the opportunity to see it a few times at the British Library, while passing through London. It is truly a beauty.
News has been circulating for several days about it so I thought I would go ahead and mention it here. So check it out and bookmark it! www.codexsinaiticus.org
Note: if the site doesn’t initially work it probably means they’re still working on it — it’s the launch day! So try refreshing your page if it doesn’t work at first.
Ben Witherington recently wrote a ‘postlude’ for his series of reviews on Frank Viola’s and George Barna’s work, Pagan Christianity. In the latter part of the post he mentions Pliny’s comments on the Christians in Pontus-Bithynia as an outsider investigating some of their practices. After quoting Pliny’s famous passage Ben notes that the two female servants “were tasked with the serving of the meal, since diakonia in its root meaning is ‘to wait on tables’.”
I bring this up not so much concerning the servants’ function, but rather the translation of ministrae. Here, Ben’s comment seems a bit misleading, implying the letter was written in Greek when, in fact, it was written in Latin. Here are my comments I made on his post, followed by a few additional thoughts:
I’m sure you know that Pliny’s letter to Trajan was written in Latin; so the word translated, in my opinion awkwardly, as ‘deaconesses’ isn’t diakonia, but rather ministrae.
Also, very recently (in April during my course on Tacitus and Pliny) I had a conversation with classicist Miriam Griffin about this passage and the awkwardness of deaconesses as the translation for ministrae. Pliny certainly knows of some of the practices, but he admits in 10.96.1 that he had never been present at ‘trials of Christians.’ With the women, Pliny is dependent on what they’re saying to him. We don’t know what they said. But they must have given Pliny some explanation concerning the status of these Christians.
We both concluded that Pliny, although he was aware of these Christian practices (how much did he know?), might not have known the particular nuances of the specific function of these ministrae. We settled on a more general translation such as ’servants.’ We were trying to see things from a Roman point of view as Pliny wrote about his investigations.
This is not to detract these women’s function in their own church context, but it seems safer to keep it generic and understand Pliny is writing from his point of view as a Roman.
————–
It’s interesting that Sherwin-White, Radice, Walsh, and W. Williams translate ministrae as deaconesses. Even the OLD has that as a gloss translation. Commenting on the Latin, Williams (Pliny: Correspondence with Trajan from Bithynia, p. 143) writes, “The Latin word ministrae is probably used to translate the Greek word diakonoi, for Paul refers to Phoebe as the diakonos (servant) of the church at Cenchreae (Romans 16, 1).” There certainly may be a reason for giving that sort of translation–even connecting the dots (anachronistically?) with Paul. But as I try to see it from a Roman’s point of view, as I mentioned, although he knew some of their basic practices, I don’t think Pliny would have known the intricacies of these Christian people’s function and organization. Again, I think it may be better to translate the word more generically. (I tend to repeat myself a lot!) It really isn’t a huge issue but I’m just nit-picky sometimes. 
Does anyone else have an opinion on the passage?
I just received an e-mail from iTunes U about several of their Classics audio/video offerings — for free download. News is already circulating; I have also mentioned the iTunes U’s offering for Vergil’s Aeneid. Here is what is mentioned in the e-mail:
- Physics by Aristotle — USF
- Penn State’s Lectures/Panel discussions
- Fundamental Greek Grammar — Concordia Seminary
- Classics audio — Stanford
- Marston Lectures in Classics — Seattle Pacific Univ
- Vergil’s Aeneid — Stanford
- Roman Empire — UC Berkeley
- Roman Art from the Louvre — Idianapolis Museum of Art
- Hannibal — Stanford. This was brought to my attention by PhDiva.
Things have been almost non-existent, it seems, for me with blogging. I’ve been occupying most of my time preparing for a double load of Latin in the fall. I will be taking not only a course on Senecan Tragedy, focusing primarily on the tragedies of Thyestes and Medea, but also a course on Catullus. Basically, I have over 3,000 lines to translate (!). Since I’m taking another Greek course and will be starting German (again), in addition to the two Latin courses, I figured the time is now to start preparing. I know I will regret when the fall semester begins if I do not start now. I’m approaching completion with Seneca’s Thyestes (not translating, but familiarizing myself with the vocabulary and grammar) and will be starting Medea within the next few days. Then about mid-July, I hope to resume going through several of Catullus’ poems. So these are some of the things that are occupying my time. I may blog a few short posts here and there during the summer, but for the most part it will be light.
At any rate, I hope that visitors and returning readers find what I’ve posted already useful for their ‘ancient study,’ including the Latin and Greek pages.
Here is a link to a short video interview with Daniel Wallace about New Testament manuscript discoveries in Albania. For more information, visit the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.
Since my Galilee Boat post from last August is one of the more popular posts people come across through web search or other, I thought I would pass along this information I found when browsing a book I purchased in Bethlehem a couple years ago by Miriam Vamosh, Daily Life at the Time of Jesus. Here is an excerpt about the ancient boat discovered at the Sea of Galilee:
- In 1986, the outline of a wood boat was discovered mired in the mud on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. But its shell-first, mortise-and-tenon method of construction, pottery vessels discovered with it, and the carbon-14 test, the boat could be conclusively dated to the first century CE. … The 24 by 7 foot-long craft, made of seven different species of wood including cypress and cedar, seems to have been continuously repaired over many years by a master craftsman, but in the end was apparently abandoned on the shoreline. Its burial for two thousand years in a muddy, anaerobic environment allowed for the extraordinary state of its preservation (63).
