Why Latin is Not a Dead Language
October 26, 2014
Juliet O’Brien, a first-year student studying Ancient History and History at the University of Nottingham, explains why she thinks Latin still lives! Latin is dead. Its decline has caused it painlessly to pass away in its sleep. It has been laid to rest in a stately marble tomb. RIP. Rubbish! Latin still breathes. As …
Tig, You’re It
October 17, 2014
Lynn Fotheringham, Director of the Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception (based in the Classics Dept at Nottingham University), reviews Pilot Theatre’s current production of Antigone. Pilot Theatre’s production of Sophocles’ Antigone (in a new version by Roy Williams) came to the Lakeside in the same week that we were covering screen-versions of Greek …
A Herculean Achievement: The Twelve Labours of… Vladimir Putin
October 12, 2014
Esther Eidinow reports on an intriguing use of ancient Greek myth… Herakles, Hercules, Melqart… Putin: a celebration of the Russian leader’s achievements put Greek myth back on the map last week. An exhibition of pictures, organised by a Facebook group of Putin’s supporters, showed the President engaged in Herakles’ different tasks—each repurposed to represent a …
‘Pitying Oedipus’
October 5, 2014
In our first Classics research workshop (also a Classical Association Lecture), Professor Patrick Finglass spoke on ‘Pitying Oedipus’; Professor Alan Sommerstein was inspired to offer this response… Professor Patrick Finglass kicked off the new semester on Tuesday 30 September with a talk in his usual sparkling style to the Nottingham branch of the Classical Association …
Happy Classical National Poetry Day!
October 2, 2014
In great haste… I spotted this morning, while procrastinating, that today is National Poetry Day! This clearly needed to be marked, and I’m just back from some rapid poetry-bombing of the Humanities Building. I felt that what was needed was some poetry in English (I wanted it to speak too everybody in the building) that …
The Spirit and the Argonauts Myth
September 28, 2014
Helen Lovatt finds some surprising references to classical Greek myth in The Spirit, a recent film by Frank Miller (author of 300)… When I sat down to watch a film the other night, I was happily anticipating a complete break from work. But perhaps it should not surprise me to find The Spirit (2008), directed …
Greek for the Globe
September 21, 2014
Requests for translation into ancient Greek are understandably rare. But one was passed on to Oliver Thomas recently from a friend-of-a-friend at the Globe Theatre. For their production of Julius Caesar the Globe’s creative team wanted to mark the three main deaths (those of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius) by adding a small female chorus of …
Holiday photos: late antiquity on the Adriatic (2)
September 11, 2014
In my last post, I shared some photos of the late antique basilica at Poreč, in Istria. Here, without much comment or introduction, are some more from the same part of the world, but across a few borders. Aquileia, close to the coast of Friuli Venezia Giulia in NE Italy, is an amazing place. It …
Thinking about Thinking about Ancient Greek Religion (2)
August 31, 2014
In January 2014, the Ancient Religions and Cognition (ARCog) project held its second workshop: on Transmission. Esther Eidinow gives an overview of the meeting, during which participants explored the theme of religious transmission using cognitive theorizing to think about ancient evidence, and vice versa. You can find out more about the project and the workshop, …
Holiday photos: late antiquity on the Adriatic (1)
August 20, 2014
In between research and other duties, I have taken a welcome week of holiday in Friuli (NE Italy, close to the border with Slovenia) and at Poreč on the peninsula of Istria, at the Western end of Croatia. My partner and I didn’t choose these destinations for any classics-related reason: the former is where her …
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