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Blogosphere ~ Verbal Artistry in Vergil: Elision in Aeneid 1.520
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Blogosphere ~ A Roman Emperor Sojourns at the Getty VillaTiberius has now…
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Blogosphere ~ Pork and Fruit Minutal
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Blogosphere ~ October 30: Proverbial Lolcat
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Blogosphere ~ Got Druids? Ghastly reads on Halloween and the Ancients!
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Blogosphere ~ My attempt at a Colosseum pumpkin. Next year I’m going…
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Author of the day, Niketas Choniates (1155-1215)
Nicetas Choniates was born to wealthy parents around or after 1150 in Phrygia in the city of Chonae (near the modern Honaz in Turkey). Bishop Nicetas of Chonae baptized and named the infant; later he was called "Choniates" after his birthplace. When he was nine, his father dispatched him with his brother Michael to Constantinople to receive an education. Niketas' older brother greatly influenced him during the early stages of his life. He initially took up politics as a career, and held important appointments under the Angelus emperors (amongst them that of Grand Logothete or Chancellor) and was governor of the theme of Philippopolis at a critical period. After the capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, he fled to Nicaea, where he settled at the court of the Nicaean emperor Theodore I Lascaris, and devoted himself to literature. He died c. 1215–16.
His chief work is his History, in twenty-one books, of the period from 1118 to 1207. In spite of its florid style, it is of value as a record (on the whole impartial) of events of which he was either an eyewitness or which he had heard of first hand (though he should be balanced with the other Greek historian for this time, John Kinnamos). Its most interesting portion is the description of the occupation of Constantinople in 1204, which should be read with Geoffroi de Villehardouin's and Paolo Rannusio's works on the same subject.
His little treatise On the Statues destroyed by the Latins (perhaps altered by a later writer) is of special interest to the archaeologist and art historian.
His theological work, (Thesaurus Orthodoxae Fidei), although extant in a complete form in manuscripts, has only been published in part. It is one of the chief authorities for the heresies and heretical writers of the 12th century.
Here are some texts on Choniates as source for historical events:
- The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople, S. Basset
- Death in Byzantium, G.T. Dennis
- City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas
- Byzantine hagiographical and historiographical metaphraseis, M. Hinterberger
- A History of Byzantium (Blackwell History of the Ancient World)
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This Day in Ancient History: ante diem tertium kalendas novembres
ante diem tertium kalendas novembres
- 69 A.D. — sack of Cremona
- 130 A.D. — Hadrian’s pal Antinous drowns in the Nile
- c. 298 — martyrdom of Marcellus the centurion
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Classical Words of the Day
bidentate (Wordsmith)
Latinitweets:
verb 3: conficio , conficere, confeci, confectus => finish, wear out bit.ly/IKAclf #Latin #Vocab #LatinVocab—
(@LatinVocab) October 30, 2012
labor: work, toil, labor: noun. Example sentence:Nihil sine magno labore vita mortalibus dat.Translation:Life gi… bit.ly/Saqp95—
Latin Language (@latinlanguage) October 30, 2012
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Video: Upper Class Teen Boy Life in Ancient Rome
This … is … freaking … awesome:
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It Doesn’t Play in San Antonio Redux
A few days ago we mentioned in passing a brief kerfuffle over advertising of the Aphrodite and the Gods of Love exhibition currently at the San Antonio Museum of Art. The fine folks at SAMA sent me a copy of the ad and here it is:
From the San Antonio Museum of Art ~ Click for a larger version
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Sobre el Bronce de Novallas
El pasado Miércoles, 24 de Octubre, aparecía en la sección Cultura y Ocio Heraldo de Aragón un artículo sobre el bronce de Novallas, firmado por Mariano García y con el título "El Bronce de Novallas recoge el primer sistema de escritura ideado en Aragón". Os lo dejamos aquí en formato pdf.
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Kristensen receives Sapere Aude grant
Assistant Professor Troels Myrup Kristensen, a core member of the late antique art and archaeology research programme at Aarhus, has received DKK 7m from the Danish Council for Independent Research’s Sapere Aude career programme to support his research on the cultural history and social significance of pilgrimage in the period from classical Greek antiquity to Late Antiquity (approximately 500 BCE to approximately 700 CE). It will include a significant late antique component. Read more here.
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Impact of Sandy
If you are a family member, friend, or other regular blog reader anywhere along the East Coast or in another area affected by Hurricane Sandy, do check in to let me and others know you are alive, when you have the opportunity, and when time and surroundings permit, feel free to share your experiences.
A number of major web sites are down as a result of Sandy, including the Huffington Post – and so their UK branch provided this hand-drawn edition to fill in the gap in low-tech form:
Meanwhile, as news outlets provide what are hopefully all real photos of the effects of Sandy, Facebook and other online sites abound with fakes – including this one adapted from Planet of the Apes:
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Not that Nebamun
It seems that this is a different Nebamun ...
This article from News from the Valley of the Kings © Kate Phizackerley is offered on a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Licence 3.0 unless otherwise noted. Please visit the blog to join the discussion.
You may reproduce articles if this notice is included unaltered and there are no adverts on your page. Comments © individual authors may not be reproduced.
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Hanukkah in the Talmud
DAF YOMI COLUMN: This week in Tablet, Adam Kirsch writes on Light Advice From the Rabbis: A Talmudic discussion of Hanukkah and Sabbath candles leads to a lesson in the sacred and profane.
Earlier columns in the series are noted here and links.![]()
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Earlier columns in the series are noted here and links.
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Happy Halloween!
Halloween first began as ‘All Hallow’s Eve’, a festival to celebrate the eve of the solemn Saint’s Day in Christianity. It is also connected with harvest festivals and festivals of the dead, either Samhain or Parentalia. It is a time when the doors of the otherworld are opened to the deceased for them to visit … Continue reading »![]()
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A Little Story about Local History
Yesterday I received an handwritten letter from an older woman who lives in California. She grew up in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. This fall, she returned to town to revisit some of her past, particularly, (as her letter says) the happy times. On her itinerary was the Grand Forks First Church of God where her brother had been married on a snowy Christmas day in early 1950s. The church has also hosted a going-away party for her brother when he went into the Air Force and it was where he received his call to join the ministry. She even recalled the name of the charismatic preacher, Reverend Ray Finley and his successor Rev. Cecil Evans. Finley’s efforts ensured that the church survived a devastating fire in the March 1944.
When she visited town, she was not able to find the little white church on 3rd and Walnut Street and she soon learned that the church has been torn down a few months before. She says in her letter that she was heartbroken. She contacted me because someone has mentioned to her that I might have some information about the church. She had no idea that the church was over 100 years old.
Needless to say, two copies of Chris Price’s The Old Church on Walnut Street: A Story of Immigrants and Evangelicals are now in the mail to her.
While some sense of modesty made me a bit reluctant to share this story on the blog (and, yes, I realize the irony of this statement), I decided to post it because it speaks so eloquently as to how individual buildings and neighborhoods serve to locate memories. Our rapidly changing urban landscape puts ever increasingly pressure on us to find ways to preserve these places of memory whether in brick, mortar, and wood-frame form or as texts, photographs, and plans. The letter that I received yesterday provided a very real experience to confirm that investing in the preserving the past will make a difference to real people. (In my 15 years of studying Late Antique churches, never once has someone from Late Antiquity taken the time to thank me or even politely as about my work (most of them, of course, have been dead for 1500 years).)
Moreover, this work is relatively easy to do. Our book took less than 9 months to bring it from a chat over a few beers to text, plans, and paper. With all due respect to Chris Price’s efforts, the result book will never win a National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize. It has, however, served its function. In my 20 some years as a professional historian, I’ve never been as pleased to share my work as I was the send those two copies of The Old Church on Walnut Street to someone who I’ve never met in California.
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14th Annual Batchelder Conference for Biblical Archaeology
The schedule of the 14th Annual Batchelder Conference for Biblical Archaeology has been announced. More than a dozen lectures will be given at the University of Nebraska at Omaha on November 8, 9, and 10. Entrance is only $10. Lectures include:
Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: How Israel Became a Nation
Harry Jol, Nazareth, Israel: What is Ground Penetrating Radar
Seeing at Mary’s Well?
Nick Jaeger, Digital Literacy in Biblical Archaeology
Jerome Hall, Jesus, Josephus, and the Migdal Mosaic: Rethinking the First Century Kinneret Boat
David Ussishkin, Jerusalem at the Times of Solomon, Hezekiah and Nehemiah: An Archaeologist’s View
Leonard Greenspoon, What the Bible Translator Has Learned – and Failed to Learn from the Biblical Archaeologist
Kris Udd, Has Radiocarbon Artificially Raised Dates for the Early Bronze Age?
Barney Trams, The Iron Age II Storehouse at Bethsaida
The website links to a promotional flyer and the full lecture schedule.
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ICOM Red Lists Database
ICOM Red Lists Database
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The Red Lists classify the endangered categories of archaeological objects or works of art in the most vulnerable areas of the world, in order to prevent them being sold or illegally exported.
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