This week’s “In Our Times” Podcast delves into the wonders and mysteries of Romulus and Remus:

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Romulus and Remus, the central figures of the foundation myth of Rome. According to tradition, the twins were abandoned by their parents as babies, but were saved by a she-wolf who found and nursed them. Romulus killed his brother after a vicious quarrel, and went on to found a city, which was named after him.

The song “Paradise” by Wild Nothing is not my musical cup of tea. But I cannot resist promoting a song that takes a break in the middle to conjugate amo in present and perfect indicative. If that sounds terrible… well, I is. But hey, Latin! (aspiring musicians take note!)

The Latin starts around 2:00 into the song

h/t @DCComm

From almost as soon as there was Latin literature, Latin poets reveled in providing their readers with spectacular descriptions of storms at sea. They served as metaphors of cosmic and psychological turmoil, as a proving ground for courage, and a symbol of the unphilosophical life.

With Sandy bearing down like on us, now seemed a good time to stay safe and dry with a few poetic descriptions of storms.

Arranged chronologically. (most links to translations, except for Pacuvius)

Divers discover 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck that is so well preserved even the FOOD is intact
Fish, wine, oil and grain found inside pots, giving new insight into Roman lifestyle
Divers believe over 200 pots are left intact on the Roman commercial ship

One of the best preserved shipwrecks ever found has been discovered off the Italian coast.

Divers say they have found a ship off the coast of Italy which they believe is about 2,000 years old.

The ship, which was spotted in the sea off the town on Varazze in the province of Liguria, is thought to be a Roman-era commercial vessel.
Read more

Divers examine vessel found in Roman shipwreck

Here’s the mnemonic diddy to remember the morphology of the vocative singular of the second declension (slightly refined):

“If it ends in -us, then the voc. sing. is ‘e‘,

otherwise leave it be, unless of course it’s fili”

And a variant:

“If it ends in -us,

then the voc. sing. is ‘e‘,

otherwise don’t make a fuss,

unless of course it’s fili“

From my own personal Mt. Olympus (aka my living room), let’s take a look at the new and notable in the world of antiquity on-line:

• Sortes Vergilianae & Sibylline Oracle for iOS! “This app provides to you the same opportunity as the Romans, except now it’s truly random: press a button and you’ll be presented with one passage from the Aeneid or from the Sibylline Oracles. What does it mean? That’s for you to decide, but if you don’t like it just press the “burn it” button to get a new prophecy!”

• Ovid’s Metamorphoses & Art History (via The Guardian): “The National Gallery is putting on its show Metamorphosis to celebrate the two great Titians it has purchased in partnership with the National Gallery of Scotland. Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon both depict scenes from Ovid. But if Titian was the greatest visualiser of Ovid he had a lot of competition. Such marvels of art as Correggio’s Jupiter and Io, Michelangelo’s Fall of Phaethon, and Carravaggio’s Medusa all draw heat from Ovid’s imaginative fire. The exhibition Metamorphosis, an Olympic special tied in with new opera productions, involves works by contemporary British artists – including Chris Ofili and Mark Wallinger – that respond to Ovid’s myths. The gallery is also publishing newly commissioned poems after Ovid by writers who include Seamus Heaney….”
• David Bianculli talks “I, Claudius” on the occasion of its 35th anniversary: “The miniseries boasts impressive performances from several key British actors. Patrick Stewart, long before Star Trek: The Next Generation, shows up here. So does John Hurt, as a memorably unhinged Caligula. And the women, including Sian Phillips as Livia and Sheila White as Messalina, are deadlier, and even more fascinating, than the men. John Hurt (Caligula) and Derek Jacobi (Claudius) square off in the miniseries I, Claudius.Except, that is, for Claudius himself. Played by Derek Jacobi, it’s a performance that spans wide-eyed youth and weary old age…”
• A nifty collection of podcasts about ancient medicine (via Love of History Blog)
• Taylor S. (BMC ’14) reviewed Anne Carson’s memorable performance at Haverford last week.

Rome turned 2,765 years young today!

Not an authentic Roman birthday treat.

But this is: Ovid describes the Parilia, the festival Romans celebrated to mark the founding of their city. There are cows jumping over fires… and quite possibly fratricide.

Felix Dies Natalis, Roma!

• Daniel Mendelsohn and his father retrace the steps of Odysseus: “In the end, we never got to Ithaca—never followed “in the wake of Odysseus,” as the brochure for the cruise had promised; at least, not all the way to this most famous of literary destinations, Ithaca (Itháki in modern Greek), the small and rocky island of which Homer sings, and where Odysseus had his famously gratifying homecoming. We saw much that he had seen….” Look for the cameo by Haverford alumnus Brian Rose!
• Speaking of Brian Rose, he tackles the mystery of Atlantis in this new video on “Great Riddles in Archaeology, Atlantis: The Lost Continent?“ by the Penn Museum.
• Emily Temple has thoughtfully put together a mix tape for Odysseus. [ed. don't we call it a playlist now? I guess the archaism is appropriate]
• Latin Tattoos! Some clever, some… unfortunate: https://twitter.com/#!/LatTat
• Looking for some pleasant summer? Author Tom Holland (most recently of a history of early Islam) picks his 5 favorite treatments of the Fall of the Roman Empire.
• AppWatch: Grammaticus, brings searchable and browsable versions of Smyth’s Greek Grammar, Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar, and Goodwin’s Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb for iPhone and iPad.
• Herodotus TruthWatch: Scientists from the RWTH Aachen University have found evidence that a tsunami struck Potidea in the fifth century BC. Herodotus observed that the Persian siege of Potidea was broken in 479 BC when the Persian army was overwhelmed by a large flood (Hdt. 8.129.1-3). Via Rogueclassicist, who has much more about ancient tsunamis.

An exciting week around and about the World o’ Classics!

• The Virtual Tour of the Acropolis “is an interactive website that allows various aspects of the historical site to be explored in a unique way. It consists of high-resolution gigapixel images and panoramas of the four main monuments – the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike – as well as a detailed photographic representation of the inner and outer ancient walls surrounding the hill, all accompanied by historical information and a descriptive map.” h/t Austin!
• Via Boingboing: Lapham’s Quarterly has an interesting (and saucy!) “collection of rude and complaining messages left by monks in the margins of medieval manuscripts… Depictions of sexual consort are frequent, among men and women, among various species of animals, and enough other combinations to make even contemporary readers blush.”

• Armor, armor everywhere: an interview with the “old school” costumer for the upcoming Wrath of the Titans.
• Hoard of 30,000 silver Roman coins discovered in Bath: “One of the largest hoards of Roman coins discovered in Britain has been uncovered during an archaeological dig in Bath, experts have said.”
• In honor of the equinox: Spring in Vergil’s Georgics by Laudator Temporis Acti
• Archaeologists reconstruct diet of Nelson’s Navy with new chemical analysis of excavated bones: This is a little later than our usual fare, but I think it is nifty, and I suspect that we will see these processes applied to ancient bones soon.
• If you’re thinking, I’d like to hear a little bit about Ovid’s Metamorphoses every day, but only 140 characters at a time, then do I have a link for you: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ovidchallenge

I thought I might pass along a few of the Classical news, notes, and features that caught my attention this week during my perambulations around the internet (aka the intertextus internationalis instrumentorum computatoriorum (LRL) or interrete, if you prefer).

• Phone Homer: “Noted video and performing artist Michelle Ellsworth unleashes a one woman, multimedia portrayal of Clytemnestra, the woman left behind as her husband Agamemnon serves as leader of the Greeks in Troy. In Phone Homer she uses series of instructional videos, Skype calls with characters from The Iliad, a kinetic alphabet modeled after the Kinect, hamburger sacrifices, and an entire internet constructed specifically for this show to interpret this mythic character…”
• Santiago Ortiz visualizes the relationships between characters in the Iliad as a network diagram and a streamgraph (below). Check it out!

• This article about the language of The Lorax, mentions the important of Latin to the word craft of Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), as well as an interpretation of the name LORAX based on Greek letters.
• Thersites Consulting! (with an interesting meditation on food in the Odyssey).
• Some recent productions of Classical dramas: The Oresteia and Trojan Women.
• “The classical world just refuses to stay dead.” Considering the new editions of the Oxford Classical Dictionary and the Oxford Latin Dictionary by Harry Mount of Amo, Amas, Amat fame.
• The Ides of March brought a slew of notes about Caesar and his assassination, but this article by Barry Strauss on parallels between ancient and modern politics might be the most thought-provoking of the bunch. And here’s a roundup of the rest.
• Reviews of Mitchell’s translation of the Iliad and Oswald’s Memorial. I am awaiting the release of Memorial with bated breath.