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.

I think FSU Classics, where I’m attending, should jump on this bandwagon as well.  A few months ago I mentioned the department’s conference on Health and Sickness in Ancient Rome.  Maybe I should make those available for all of you.  Or maybe I should check first with the department before I do so.  The FSU Classics dept. usually has guest speakers and conferences each semester.

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).

After a hiatus for several months the Greek Font Society has returned (actually, they simply changed from .org to .gr). If you are not familiar with their work, read the about page. I’ll let you read about it there. I’ll mention briefly that they have reproduced and made available some fantastic typefaces which are great when working in Unicode. They have updated some of the typefaces they made available previously and have also added a new section with Majescule typefaces. I highly recommend these to anyone having to write/research in the Greek language (ancient or modern).

Link: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-8248943931238297406&hl=en

(via rogueclassicism)

This has been in the news for a few weeks now — an amulet containing the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4, was discovered in Austria. It dates from about the third century of our era. “This amulet shows that people of Jewish faith lived in what is today Austria since the Roman Empire.” Universität Wien has more details. The inscription is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew: ΣΥΜΑ ΙΣΤΡΑΗΛ ΑΔΩNΕ ΕΛΩΗ ΑΔΩN Α (Heb., שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד). If you cannot make out the Greek and Hebrew, see the image below.

News has been circulating that the House of Augustus once again opens to the public. It’s fascinating to see art and design from this period (ca. 30 BCE) with the rich colors of red and yellow (and more) in the second Pompeian style. Read more of it at BBC News: House of Augustus opens to public.

The University of Michigan has a Web Exhibition, Diversity in the Desert: Daily Life in Greek & Roman Egypt (332 B.C.E — 641 C.E.).

(HT: What’s New in Papyrology)

This weekend, Feb. 22-23, the Classics Dept. of Florida State University is hosting the 2008 Langford Conference. This year’s topic is Health and Sickness in Ancient Rome. For more details of the schedules and lectures, visit the FSU Classics page.

Organizer: Prof. Miriam Griffin (Langford Eminent Scholar FSU and Emeritus Fellow in Ancient History, Somerville College, Oxford)

Speakers:
Prof. Mary Beagon (University of Manchester)
Title: “Simple Gifts? The Exotic World of Roman Folk Remedies”

Prof. Glen Bowersock (Institute for Advanced Study)
Title: “Iatrosophists”

Prof. Christopher P. Jones (Harvard University)
Title: “Asclepios Mousagetes”

Prof. Vivian Nutton (University College London)
Title: “Avoiding Galen”

Prof. Svetla Slaveva-Griffin (Florida State University)
Title: “Ignore your Body: The Neoplatonic Prescription for Health”

Prof. Gareth Williams (Columbia University)
Title: “The Programmatic Value of Illness in Roman Poetry”

Prof. Anthony J. Woodman (University of Virginia)
Title: “Community Health: Metaphor in Latin Historiography”