IRIS

The BBC has a nifty slide show documenting the very cool hi-tech cleaning of the Parthenon Marbles in Athens, which has removed decades of pollution.

Since the damage to the Athenian reliefs turned out to be less severe than previously thought, the cleaning has fueled the debate over whether the rest of the marbles, (in)famously known […]

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Herodotus and Robert Strassler’s new Landmark Herodotus took center stage yesterday on NPR’s “On Point with Tom Ashbrook” (program available in archive). No word on whether that inveterate Herodotus-hater Plutarch, author of “On the Malice of Herodotus”, was available for comment.

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BBC7 is re-staging Andrew Rissick’s three-part radio play “Troy”:
Andrew Rissick’s trilogy of plays [re-tells] the story of events leading up to, and following the fall of Troy. As the Trojan King and his wife expect their second son, the Gods warn that disaster looms if the child lives. The cast includes: Paul Scofield, Toby […]

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The end of Plato’s Phaedo gives a detailed account of Socrates’ slow, dignified death by hemlock. Many scholars, however, have rejected Plato’s account, believing that Plato’s version omits the harsh details of the violent death associated with hemlock poisoning. The controversy, however, seems to have been settled by Enid Bloch who, through a thorough investigation […]

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Modern science weighs in on the old debate about which disease afflicted the Athenians at the start of the Peloponnesian War. DNA tests on material extracted from skeletons found in a mass grave dating to 430 BCE point to… Typhoid Fever.
From the Journal of Infectious Diseases:
BACKGROUND: Until now, in the absence of direct microbiological evidence, […]

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Word from Brown University about a new production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Flies, a retelling of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. They plan to take the play’s title a touch too literally:
Producers of the Jean-Paul Sartre play “The Flies” at Brown University will subject the audience to 40,000 fruit flies to bring to life the existentialist work about […]

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Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti posts several translations of Homer’s meditation on the vicissitudes of life in Odyssey 18.130-137. Among other insights, we can see how true Richard Bentley’s comment on Pope’s Iliad is: “it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.”
Homer, Odyssey 18.130-137 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):
Of all […]

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Stultum facit Fortuna quem vult perdere. (Publilius Syrus, Sententia 611)
pron = STOOL-toom FAH-kit fohr-TOO-nah kwem woolt PEHR-deh-reh.
Fortune makes him foolish whom she wishes to destroy.
Comment: I have addressed the double-edged meaning of “The Fool” here before…[more]
(via Bob Patrick’s Latin Proverb of the Day)

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