"This is the contemporary museum at its best: a place for scholarship that doesn't stint on pleasure."   more »

"Any one have any good recommendations for some good stories that take place in Ancient Rome or Greece? I love historical romance and I have read almost every medieval book out there. I'd appreciate any responses. Thanks."   more »

The "Aeneid" is Europe's most important written epic. Schoolboys have cursed it for more than two millennia. Thomas Jefferson's copy was the most scanned, indeed dog-eared, book in Monticello's library. Robert Lowell entitled a poem "Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid." Many readers have known similar somnolence. But no one has denied its importance.   more »

Congratulations to Chris Haynes on his MBE in the Birthday Honours.   more »

I've added more details about this fun-looking festival to   more »

Links to recent popular books on the Classics can be found here   more »

I haven't watched it all through, but it looks worth investigation. What I've seen is a mix of battle scenes, and video of excavation going on.   more »

That's it, really. Perhaps I'll just say it a little bigger:   more »

A few years ago the study of Latin appeared to be in terminal decline, owing perhaps to its negative association with rod-backed private education. But there are signs that it is reviving, and as Nicholas Ostler remarks in the preface to Ad Infinitum, “now is the time for a book about Latin”.   more »

Experiencing the archaeological site, which opens to the public on Saturday, is a bit like passing through a classically themed amusement park. Lasting roughly a half-hour, the computer-generated sound-and-light show offers plenty of opportunities to ooh and aah as the villas take physical form.   more »

A set of Latin hymns sung during the nine-day Christmas Masses, the pastorella has not been heard in many Pampanga towns for 40 years after Vatican II prescribed the use of local languages in religious rites.   more »

It is small and low definition, but free   more »

Some are familiar from posters of previous exhibitions, but others I don't remember ever having seen. Included is a reconstructed fight between Arimaspe and a Gryphon from the Villa of the Mysteries.   more »

Well there's a relief! After all the pot-boiler newspaper pieces about the Saturnalia and Christmas, we have Mary Beard bringing a bit of scholarship to the subject.   more »

This looks fun. It's for anyone over 13.   more »

The Independent reports the finding of 545 pre-Roman coins during a rescue dig in Brittany before a motorway wreaks its havoc.   more »

The pictures show rather standard bits of wall and mosaic, but there is a virtual tour (for visitors, not on the internet) which will make the visit more attractive.   more »

AFTER a lot of struggle, a Roman coffin discovered at Boscombe Down was moved to its new home at the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum on Monday.   more »

Scenes of Roman life, myths and decorations buried nearly two millennia ago by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius go on display for the first time in years in an exhibit opening Thursday in Rome.   more »

Those of us who bought into the “Latin is a dead language’’ argument in school can get confused this time of year, when the supposedly dead language comes to life in celebrations of the season.   more »

The benefit of learning Latin and Greek lies in their complexity. If you can deal with the pluperfect subjunctive,   more »

It's just a resume of a review of a book, but includes:   more »

Some 1,650 years ago someone was so comprehensively fed up with the state of the Roman empire that they committed an act of treason, blasphemy and probably criminal defacing of the coinage. They cursed the emperor Valens by hammering a coin with his image into lead, then folding the lead over his face.   more »

How bright were the colours used by the ancients?   more »

Video of newbie transferring from the scroll to the 'book'. Hilarious, in my humble.   more »

It's here on TeacherTube - a new site to me. Perhaps worth investigation?   more »

From The Times. OK, the second report isn't Classical, but it's interesting.

Norman Hammond
Archaeology Correspondent

More than 60 years ago Sir Mortimer Wheeler proved that Roman pottery had made it all the way from Italy to India: the characteristic bright red of Samian ware, bearing the stamp of the Vibieni of Arezzo, showed up in his trenches at the ancient port of Arikamedu, on the southeastern coast near Pondicherry. Numerous other finds across India have since strengthened the connection, including many wine jars or amphorae.

A new study now suggests that many of these came from Mesopotamia, not the Mediterranean, and that the triangular trade between India, the Persian Gulf and the ports of Roman Egypt on the Red Sea was much more complex than hitherto thought.

“Roman amphorae, together with Roman coinage, are the most important artefacts for documenting exchange between the Roman Empire and India,” Dr Roberta Tomber says in Antiquity. “Since many Roman amphorae are well-dated and well-provenanced, they represent an untapped resource for the understanding of Indian Ocean contact.”

More than 10,000 Roman coins are known from southern India alone, and although there are growing numbers of amphorae reported, identification is more problematic, Tomber says. Her survey has confirmed the presence of such wine jars from 31 sites, but at about half these sites it was also discovered that amphora sherds thought to be Roman were actually Mesopotamian in origin.

In ten cases there were only Mesopotamian sherds present. These were in the form of “torpedo jars”, tall cylindrical peg-footed amphorae, common in Mesopotamia and the Gulf but not hitherto noted in India. Fragments of the rims and bodies could be mistaken for Roman wares made in Syria and Anatolia, as indeed they have been, and their dates span the Roman period from around the time of Christ onwards, although they also continue into early Islamic times in the seventh century.

Torpedo jars are lined with bitumen to keep their liquid contents from evaporating, and may have been the dequre of Sasanian texts: if so, this suggests a wine-drinking clientele in contemporary India. They are found mainly between Karachi and Bombay in areas under Sasanian influence, and inland towards Delhi, and seem to have been imported into India throughout their period of manufacture in Mesopotamia.

Some got as far as Sri Lanka and the east coast near Chennai (Madras), and others were found at ports on the coasts of Yemen and Somalia. Roman amphorae are found in a similar pattern, though rarely on the same sites: it would be interesting to know if they travelled in the same ships, Tomber notes.

The port of Qana, on the coast of Yemen and an important point in the frankincense trade, may have been an entrepôt for both Roman and Mesopotamian goods arriving from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf respectively. It has not yielded the full range of Late Roman amphorae found in India, however, and other places may have played an equal role. The overall distribution of Roman amphorae and torpedo jars suggests three seaborne routes to India, Dr Tomber proposes. One ran direct from the Gulf, one direct from ports such as Berenike on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, and one via Qana.

Western India was influenced by wave upon wave of invaders, from the Greeks to the Parthians, Scythians, Kushanas and Sasanians, and was at a nexus of trade routes. The recognition of Mesopotamian jars for finds formerly thought to be Roman has made the picture both clearer and more complicated.

Antiquity 81: 972-988

Neolithic revolution took just 200 years

The first farmers established themselves in Britain close to 6,000 years ago, a new radiocarbon date study has shown. Agriculture swept rapidly across Brtain and into Ireland within decades, and the new economy seems to have been associated with the first megalithic tombs.

Neolithic charred cereal remains “are far more widespread across the British Isles than earlier surveys suggest,” Alex Brown reports in Antiquity. “In addition, many of these sites have associated radiocarbon dates.” These include high-resolution accelerator (AMS) dates on cereal grains themselves rather than just charcoal from the same context.

In recent years a number of sites have yielded pollen evidence, suggesting cultivation by Mesolithic peoples otherwise reliant on hunting, fishing and gathering, perhaps as early as 5000 BC. Dr Brown is sceptical of this “pioneer agriculture”, “not least because of the difficulties inherent in separating cereal pollen from that of wild grass”. He identified 93 sites with charred cereal remains, 58 of them with radiocarbon dates, but of the 112 dates only 38 were actually on charred cereals.

Dates on associated charcoal run the risk of deriving from “old wood”, already centuries old at the time of deposition. At the Billown site on the Isle of Man, dates on charcoal around 4600 BC are accompanied by cereals dated to around 3800 BC.

The earliest dates on charred cereals centre around 3800-3600 BC from Billown, and from Lismore Fields and Enagh in Northern Ireland. Other early sites include Claish and Tankardstown, and the Hazelton megalithic tomb in the Costwolds where human bone was dated instead. At Windmill Hill near Avebury, the important Neolithic earthworks were dated to the same period, also using AMS dating on bone.

Overall, Dr Brown says, “the evidence from charred cereals suggests cultivation no earlier than 3950 BC and certainly no later than 3630 BC. The earliest dates from charred cereals are a hundred years later than the earliest dates derived from charcoal, of around 4050 BC”. He suggests limited cultivation of cereals, which would have been introduced from across the Channel after spreading across Europe from the Near East, by 3950-3800 BC, with more widespread farming between 3800 and 3000 BC before a significant reduction, still unexplained.

The dating evidence from megalithic tombs in the Cotswold and Severn areas suggests construction beginning around 3800 BC, with recent dates for Neolithic funerary activity at Burn Ground, Gloucester, as early as 3930BC and one older date of 4230-3970BC “that may represent long-term curation of ancestral remains”. Pottery seems to have become established in Britain at this time.

The establishment of settlements and ritual sites is noted at Windmill Hill, and by the precise dating of the Sweet Track, across a wetland area in the Somerset Levels, to precisely 3806-07 BC by tree-ring dating. All the various elements of a settled village society seem to come together at more or less the same time.

What is striking, Dr Brown notes, is how all this happens more or less simultaneously in all parts of Britain and in Ireland. “The radiocarbon dating evidence from cereals, burial monuments and domestic structures could be taken to suggest a transitional period of as little as 150-200 years between 4000 and 3800 BC before a Neolithic lifestyle became a more established feature. The Mesolithic communities experimented with and then adopted agriculture more rapidly than some scholars have proposed.

The farming communities that for millennia formed the foundation of the British way of life until the Industrial Revolution thus seem to have begun some 60 centuries ago, although Dr Brown points out that “precise dating remains a key research aim for prehistoric studies.”

Antiquity 81: 1042-1052.

Oxford University Press offers a number of scholarly books on line to subscribing libraries. For those who are not members of these libraries, the free abstracts of the books may be a useful guide whether to buy the book or not.   more »

Another review of Carpe Diem and Ad Infinitum is here.   more »

Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum is to take delivery of a spectacular Roman stone coffin unearthed by Wessex Archaeology in 2007.   more »

Toutatis - ou Teutatès - est un dieu discret. On en trouve une première et brève mention au milieu du Ier siècle de notre ère chez le poète latin Lucain puis... dans les aventures d'Astérix. Entre les deux, rien, ou pas grand-chose.   more »

THE first evidence of the earliest Londoners and Romans has been discovered in the Olympic Park in Stratford.   more »

This is a fine book, but Mr. Ostler doesn't have much fondness for Latin itself. Of a beautiful Ciceronian sentence, its syntax expertly calibrated,...   more »

The ancient home of Rome's Emperor Augustus is opening to the public after 30 years of restoration.   more »

The important historical piece, discovered in the River Thames at London Bridge in 1834, will go on show as part of ‘The Face of an Emperor: Hadrian Inspects the Wall’ from Friday, February 8 until Sunday, April 13.   more »

The 50 eight-year-olds at the Braydeston Avenue school have had the chance of learning the 'dead' language as part of an outreach programme delivered by the Latin department of the Norwich School.   more »

It's a good review, but I suddenly thought on reaching this, near the end, that it would be impossible to turn these abstract sentences into convincing Ciceronian (or even Tacitean) prose. I shall be happy to publish any Latin version that proves me wrong!   more »

Now, new investigations at Caistor Roman town using the latest technology have revealed the plan of the buried town at an extraordinary level of detail which has never been seen before. The high-resolution geophysical survey used a Caesium Vapour magnetometer to map buried remains across the entire walled area of the Roman town.   more »

Background site for Greek and Roman Voices is provided by the OU here.   more »

I have just heard the last of the Homer talks, given by the poet Michael Longley. I do recommend that you listen to these programmes - use the Listen Again facility on the BBC website.   more »

"I would especially encourage fellow teachers to come along who might have an interest in using more spoken Latin in the classroom so that ideas can be exchanged."   more »

Neque iam ignoratis anno proximo in Idyllio conclavia nobis necessaria defutura esse. Sed seminarium Atticum alio loco Graeciae condicionibus mutatis fieri potest.   more »

Any Latin teacher wishing to brush up their language and bold enough to speak it can attend one of the half-dozen or so week-long gatherings throughout Europe next Summer; there are always participants new to speaking.   more »

From Brian Bishop: I have just spotted that almost a year ago, on January 4th 2007, under 'Practical teaching' there was an item headed 'Direct method Latin' referring to Professor Tunberg's Lexington course. It is not necessary to go so far afield:   more »

Useful for those with poor sight, volume 1 of Gibbon's Decline and Fall is available as audio files (ogg, mp3) at LibriVox.   more »

An ancient doctor's surgery unearthed by Italian archaeologists has cast new light on what a trip to the doctor would have been like in Roman times. Far from crude, the medical implements discovered show that doctors, their surgeries and the ailments they treated have changed surprisingly little in 1,800 years.   more »

BIDS to turn Colchester's historic Roman Circus into a visitor attraction will be submitted later this month.   more »

CHILDREN from Greens Norton Primary School brought a flavour of ancient Rome to the school when they created a Roman museum for parents.   more »

BBC on London find of Roman bronze BBC pictures of the Herculaneum 'throne' Top News on Museum of London Roman display Norwich Castle Museum to display 250 Roman things Another version of the Norwich story, with photos and more ...   more »

Why should anyone care whether more people are studying Latin in the Age of the iPhone?   more »

Thanks to Rogue Classicism for this link to an on line preview of chapter 1.   more »

Latin, it was reported last week, is making a comeback in inner-city schools in London: 20 primaries are trying Latin lessons, under the aegis of Project Iris, run by teacher Lorna Robinson. Something similar is happening in Oxfordshire, where the language is also being introduced to selected primary schools.   more »

2 minutes 14 seconds of interesting bits of Pompeii   more »

Both authors are British-born and Oxford-educated, and both engaging writers. But their responses to declining Latinity are different.   more »

The Latin language is a little like a Russian vine. No matter how hard it is pruned, it has a habit of springing back again. Even though it is now a sorry thing compared with the great and branching plant it once was, it is still irrepressibly putting out shoots   more »

This piece for the NY Times is aimed, naturally, at American readers, but parts of it could be useful classroom wall stuff in the UK.   more »

The Iris Project, named after the messenger-goddess in Roman mythology, was so successful in trials at two of the capital's primary schools last year that it has been extended to 18 more.   more »

This AP review by Andrew Welsh-Huggins has been published by various newspapers, with optimistic or pessimistic headlines according to sub-editor's choice.:   more »

The Roman city of Londinium in the first half of the fourth century was not a pleasant place to live - and in fact increasing numbers of people were choosing to live elsewhere.   more »

Mary Beard's first target is "TV historian" (ouch) David Starkey, who has been turning his sharp tongue on the Romans. Beard gives him six of the best:   more »

A banquetting set that once graced the table of a fine-dining Roman family has been unearthed, remarkably preserved, from the bottom of an excavated well.   more »

Starting with just four pupils studying Latin and classics a decade ago, Mrs Shearer's classes are now burgeoning, with over 100 taking the subject at the school.   more »

2The demand is there alright: it is the government-imposed strangling of the supply that is so damaging to the subject and unfair to pupils."   more »

We should like to draw your attention to the document which you will find at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07_27/07_27.pdf This, in our view, is a direct attack on lifelong learning and all the classics courses available there. Please do respond if you feel able to do so.   more »

The direct link to recent OCR A level Latin papers is here.   more »

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Germany have found a 2,000-year-old glue Roman warriors used to repair helmets, shields and the other accessories of battle.   more »

Thanks to Rogue Classicism for finding this YouTube performance.   more »

I haven't been able to see it (you need the ipix plugin) but apparently there's a good virtual tour of Masada on this site.   more »

A colleague emailed me the other Saturday morning to tip me off about an interview with the Margaret-Thatcher-loving, tv-historian Dr David Starkey, in the back of the Guardian’s Guide section. Starkey, it turns out, is a real Roman hater (odd that – I’d have predicted the reverse). “What did the Romans ever do for us?” asked the interviewer:   more »

A classics project piloted in two east London schools has now been extended to cover about 20 - including one of the capital's newest city academies. Dr Lorna Richardson, founder of the Iris Project, which is backed by Cambridge University, said pupils' literacy levels could be improved if they studied Latin   more »

I am attempting to compile a list of British Latin writers of all time.   more »