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blogographos is a public blog to which anyone interested in Greek and Roman antiquity may post. This means interested laymen as well as professional classicists and students. This blog is not intended as a challenge to the resources for classicists currently available--chief among them the Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group, hosted at the University of Kentucky, and David Meadows's rogueclassicism--but rather as a complement.
How do I post to blogographos? Register at blogographos using the form in the sidebar. Once your registration is complete, open the blogthis window to begin a post.

But what to post? Here are some possibilities: interesting links, reviews of classics-related media, book announcements, questions, amusing anecdotes of a classical nature, suggestions about improving the blog, and so on. Try to keep things intelligent and properly spelt.

Comportment. Spam and other inappropriate material--as determined solely by the Autokrator--will be deleted from blogographos forthwith.
 
Jun 28, 2006
ePrints repositories

I've been browsing for UK-based open access archives for History, Classics and Archaeology. What I've found are:

My own university, Leicester, doesn't have an archive to put things in.

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Jun 26, 2006
Book Review

I've written a brief review of book too. One for Buy a Friend a Book Week? :)
 
Jun 21, 2006
Rules for Old Men Reading the Picolata Review

I've written a review of classicist Peter Pouncey's Rules for Old Men Waiting for the inaugural issue of The Picolata Review, just out.



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Jun 19, 2006
Ancient Ruins: 10 great sites on the Med

Porticus. Concordiae. Dedicavit. The jumble of words on the plinth above our heads was just Greek to us. Well, Latin. Either way, if my father - a classics scholar - had been there he could have reeled off a translation.

Independent Online Edition > Europe

Pont Du GardVia Bread and Circuses comes a list of the top ten ancient sites in around the Mediterranean. I agree with number one - Delphi is magnificent and Mycenae is also great. I struggle with the Pont du Gard (photo by Maddonkey). It's impressive and the area has charm even if you're not an aqueduct fan, but I don't know if there's anything more to the ancient site than the aqueduct. As for Algeria, archaeologically fascinating but not somewhere I'd go to relax.

I know it's obvious, but I think Rome ought to be on the list. There's a huge amount to see beyond the forum and Colosseum. Similarly Athens and Attica is a wonderful place to visit. I also notice Pompeii is missing, arguably the site that started classical archaeology.

There's also something to be said for Malta. The temples aren't classical they're much older, but it's a compact place with thousands of years of history crammed together.

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Jun 18, 2006
Terry Jones' Barbarians

I was pondering the legality and morality of uploading a 2min clip of Terry Jones' Barbarians to YouTube to illustrate a review. To my surprise I've found two whole episodes on Google Video. You can see The Primitive Celts complete with Coligny Calendar or The Savage Goths with the rather cool Alaric. There's probably a joke about the Roman Empire being sick and he was the Cure in there somewhere, but I won't go digging for it.

I was taught in A-Level English that Terry Jones' Barbarians suggests that the show was produced by multiple Terry Joneses. This is the sort of thing that gives me sleepless nights. That and my new copy of Trying Neaira, which is proving engrossing.
 
Jun 13, 2006
The Battle for Babylon

I missed this one one Sunday. Radio 4 has a documentary on the occupation of Babylon by the Coalition of the Willing.

It's not entirely one-sided. The US say that yes, some bags were filled with archaeological remains, but that these were out of context having being dug up during Saddam's reconstruction of the site.

Slightly more problematic seems to be the problem that bags full of remains of from other sites. The view of the guy from the BM is that archaeologists will simply have to get use to working around the Coalition layer.

It's not clear cut. Forces digging into the site seem to have done damage, but it clearly would have been target number one for looters if it had been unprotected. Is military occupation the least worst option?
 

Agamemnon Awakes

There's an interesting press release from the EU's IST site. If you have a 3G phone it may soon be possible to get personalised multimedia tours to ancient sites.

The system works through image recognition. You snap a photo of something you want to know about, then Agamemnon works out what it is you're looking at and then sends back the information.

I don't think it's going to work. The technical side of identifying a temple in a thunderstorm isn't what bothers me. It's that the application doesn't fit onto the way archaeological sites work. The site says:
Traffic-sharing agreements between sites, museums and 3G mobile phone operators could bring in new revenue for cultural institutions, reducing strain on public finances, and also boost income for networks.
Yes, they could. Or alternatively they could have their own audio-guides or human guides and keep all the revenue for themselves. It is more viable for sites that are out of the way and unstaffed, but how big a market is this? For places like Paestum, which they use as an example, I'm not sure that it adds much that a good guide book couldn't give. If mobile web devices become viable, and they may do soon, then Agamemnon will become obsolete. It would simply be better to open the latest web guide and work through that. Additionally, Agamemnon seems to work on the principle that the visitor can see something. Often the really exciting features that a guide can talk about are things you might not otherwise notice.

Technologically though it's impressive, and it should have plenty of other applications, so the project could still be worthwhile.
 
Jun 9, 2006
BAFAB First Anniversary Contest: Win Free Books, etc.!

It's nearly that time of year again! The minions and I at Buy a Friend a Book are gearing up for the July 2006 Buy a Friend a Book Week. This time around our guest book recommender/reviewer is Chris Steib, the Editor in Chief of Void Magazine. His book recommendations for the week and mine are up already at the BAFAB site's review page, ready for your perusal.

July 2006 also marks the first anniversary of BAFAB, and do you know what that means? DO YOU?! It means....

A WHOMPING BIG CONTEST! What's so big about it? Well, for starters, we're giving away more than $500 worth of literary stuff--stacks of books (including my own) and memberships in LibraryThing and even a text editor. The contest runs from July 1st to July 7th, and it's going to be hosted at BAFAB and co-hosted at six other literary sites across the web. It's a puzzle contest, and there will be six puzzles that contest participants will have to solve in order to answer a final question on the seventh day. Three prize winners will be drawn at random from the correct entries received to win between them the aforementioned more than $500 worth of literary stuff.

Official contest rules are here. And see the prize list here.

Here's the schedule of events:

July 1 -- Puzzle #1 introduced at Grumpy Old Bookman
July 2 -- Puzzle #2 introduced at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind
July 3 -- Puzzle #3 introduced at This Writing Life
July 4 -- Puzzle #4 introduced at Books, Inq.
July 5 -- Puzzle #5 introduced at Refrigerator Door
July 6 -- Puzzle #6 introduced at No Rules. Just Write
July 7 -- Final question posed at Buy a Friend a Book


Just get yourself to these sites on the appointed days and follow the directions you find there. (After they are initially announced, all six puzzles will remain available for the duration of the contest. Thus contestants who learn of the puzzle later in the week will not be barred from participating. Since the above are not permalinks you may have to scroll around when you visit these blogs to find the appropriate entries.)

Have you read this far without knowing what BAFAB's all about? Buy a Friend a Book is a holiday--created by, well, me--that urges the celebration of four quarterly Buy a Friend a Book (BAFAB) Weeks per year, in the first weeks of January, April, July, and October.

As always, bloggers are welcomed, nay encouraged to spread the word about BAFAB on their blogs--which is rendered easier with the BAFAB stickers available here. (There's a sticker there also to advertise what you wouldn't mind receiving for BAFAB.) The blogless among you will need to spread the word the old fashioned way: by telegram, or whatever it is you folks do to communicate with one another. So, let's make this a great BAFAB Week!

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Trying Neaira, by Debra Hamel
The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
TN

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