Category: Ancient
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Classical Reception: Hannibal in the Music of Killah Priest
Anyone familiar with Brooklyn-based rapper Killah Priest knows his propensity for mixing urban culture with historical topics such as Alexander the Great and the Byzantines. For example, he starts one of his more famous verses by yelling, “It’s the Byzantine king!” The man literally has a lines about watching the History and Discovery channels. One…
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Book Review: Caesar in the USA
Wyke, Maria. Caesar in the USA. Berkely: University of California Press, 2012. xii + 306 pp. Julius Caesar has ebbed and flowed in American memory, but he remains entrenched in pop culture, which is the main thesis of Maria Wyke, author of Caesar in the USA (2012). Wyke is a professor of Latin at University College…
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In Memory of the 700 Thespians at Thermopylae
Off to the side of the larger statue of Leonidas at Thermopylae, there is a monument to the 700 Thespians who died alongside the Spartans. Unveiled in 1997, it depicts Eros, the oldest of the gods. The Romans knew him as Cupid. The Thespians held Eros above all other gods, likely because he had no parents. Nearly 600 years…
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I Speak Spartan: The Lasting Lingo of 300
While there is plenty to say about the breakthrough filming style of 300 that has since been imitated to death, the real legacy of the movie is the quotable dialogue. Numerous one-liners have infiltrated popular culture, as “This is Sparta!” has become arguably as popular as “I am your father.” The real beauty of the…
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Armies “Living off the land” Walking Dead style
Among the many things I learned from a day-long Julius Caesar Workshop with Captain Antonio Salinas was a superb analogy for armies “living off the land.” Although battlefields tend to dominate popular memory when it comes to warfare, logistics direct and often determine entire campaigns. For example, the Gauls eventually adopted a scorched earth approach to…
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Leuctra Victory Monument
I remember the exact moment when I decided to go to Greece. I was flipping through my copy of the Landmark Xenophon when I came across a blurry black and white photo of the Leuctra Victory Monument, celebrating the Theban and Boeotian victory over the Spartans in 371 BC. This battle was important for many reasons,…
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Julius Caesar Workshop at Dickinson College
This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of joining about three dozen classicists for the Dickinson College Julius Caesar Workshop, featuring Captain Antonio Salinas. Currently a teacher at West Point, Salinas produced a 245-slide presentation mapping Julius Caesar’s Gallic War. This was the same presentation that Dr. Christopher A. Francese stumbled upon while searching for…
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Go tell the Spartans
Although Herodotus tells us of several monuments that resided on the Thermopylae battlefield, not a single one of them has survived to today. However, there are numerous modern recreations. One in particular pays tribute to the last stand of the Spartans and their Thespian allies on Kolonos Hill, the probable spot where they fell. ((The topography…
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The Spartans would have ruled Twitter
The Greeks and the eventually the Romans were infatuated with everything about the Spartans, especially their words. You can find choice quotes throughout the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, but no one was a greater admirer than Plutarch. Mixed in with his numerous writings were the Sayings of Spartans and the Sayings of Spartan Women,…
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Guy MacLean Rogers on Studying Alexander the Great
Every historian takes a crack at explaining why their area of expertise is important for today’s world. It is difficult to argue with Guy MacLean Rogers’s take on Alexander the Great from more than a decade ago. In less than a decade Alexander conquered the Persian empire, the largest and most successful empire in the…
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I have knelt before the tomb of the Athenians at Marathon
As with many 2500-year-old battlefields, most of Marathon is the victim of development. Although historians continue to debate over the exact positions of the Greek and Persian armies in 490 BC, the reality is that modern buildings and streets cover much of the terrain. Our modern-day concept of preserving battlefields would likely confuse the ancients…
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King Sargon II’s Warning to ISIS
Among the ancient cities ISIS bulldozed and blasted this past March was Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad in Iraq), a capital city founded by Assyrian King Sargon II (r. 722-705 BC). Like all ancient Assyrian kings, Sargon left a clear warning to those who destroyed his work. Safe from destruction was a 9-sided prism describing Sargon’s founding…