Overheard in the bar

“Death metal is the Pindar of modern music.”

(A Caucus and/or death metal fans: discuss.)

More classical graffiti – from The Other Place

The Other Classics Library

Occasionally during the holidays I like to masquerade as a student of The Other Place by working in the Sackler Library.

A trip to the toilets during my most recent visit there provided evidence that members of The Other Classics Faculty have the same urge to create classics-themed graffiti as the inhabitants of G21…

 

 

Only Connect? A Review of ‘Meet the Romans with Mary Beard’ 1/3 (Tuesdays, 9pm on BBC2)

So, what did we all think about Mary Beard’s new programme on Roman life – with special guest cameo from Martin Millett (et al.)? Tuesday’s instalment was the first in a series of three, so the BBC programme page informs us, and its focus was on the empire and what it brought into the city: “Mary asks not what the Romans did for us, but what the empire did for Rome.” Overall, I liked it, but I had some quibbles about the position analysis seemed to be starting from.

Harking back to her talk at Newnham back in January (which I mentioned in this post), this was definitely not an attempt to fake any reconstruction of Roman lives, but the adventure of MB on her bicycle down the Via Appia into the city, brushing into contact with the hundreds of lives immortalised on tomb inscriptions and other epigraphic material (mainly) before zooming on to some other exciting spot. On the whole I thought the material was fantastic (my favourite piece was the urn of Sellia the ‘aurivestrix’, though I think viewers without Latin were robbed of being able to get the brilliant bit of Latin metonymy, where aurum, gold, stands for ‘luxury’), and I did like the set-up of MB’s bicycle adventure, if only because it was a great excuse for beautiful shots of the Via Appia and fun footage of modern Rome.

As with the Pompeii programme from whenever it was, however, I found the narrative of the hour quite difficult to follow.

Hermann Graßmann: Philologist and Mathematician

Today marks the two-hundred-and-third birthday of the German linguist and polymath Hermann Grassmann (Graßmann, 15.04.1809–09.26.1877).  Hermann Grassmann is, perhaps, not well known within Classical Studies, although anyone who has studied Ancient Greek in any depth would likely have come across his name at some point.  In 1863 Hermann Grassmann discovered a rule of Greek and Sanskrit phonology which predicted irregularities in certain nominal and verbal derivations from lexical roots containing aspirated stop consonants (in Greek: φ [pʰ], θ [tʰ], and χ [kʰ]).[1]
The rule, as Grassmann originally propounded it, was as follows:

(1) ‘Given a root with a final aspirate and an initial consonant capable of aspiration, and given also that the final element loses aspiration (by some separate sound law), then that feature is retracted to the initial element.’

(2) ‘Given two consonant groups in a word, separated by a vowel and themselves aspirated, and provided that they are within the same root, then one (and normally the first) is deprived of its breath feature.’[2]

Advert (or: Why choose Classics?)

The university has been putting out some youtube videos to help prospective applicants decide which undergraduate course to choose. And there’s a Classics one. In the grad common room we’ve been pretty divided over the jangly guitar, and the blackboard writing has proved itself to be a bit like Marmite, but we wholly endorse the message: come and do Classics here, it’s awesome! Look, there’s our Cast Gallery!  The library!  Richard Hunter, with a SHIP! (This is how people who have their homes featured on the TV must feel.)

If there are any readers out there considering whether to apply in September then do get in touch if you have any questions. Having stayed on for postgraduate study we’re obviously we’re a bit biased but we’d love to help. And check out the are the details of the open days from the faculty website.

Loebs of the East: The Clay Sanskrit Library

I was in Oxford for a conference last weekend, and that offered me an opportunity to go visit for the very first time, the infamous Blackwell Bookshop on Broad Street—a great treat for me, as those who know how obsessive-compulsive I can get over book collecting would understand.  One of the things I immediately noticed, besides the enormous gratuitously over-stocked Classics section in which I found many wonderful (if oft overpriced) academic books and textual editions, was a small section encompassing a shelf or two dedicated to Sanskrit and Indological studies, with a small but choice row of bright blue volumes from the Clay Sanskrit Library.

In Classics, since 1911 we’ve been long been treated to—perhaps necessarily spoiled by—the James Loeb founded and Harvard University Press published Loeb Classical Library, whose mission is to present translations along with facing Greek or Latin texts of the bulk of Classical Literature, usable by the layman, but also accountable to the highest standards of contemporary scholarship.  The Clay Sanskrit Library is a relatively new project of a similar nature.

The grad’s best friend

Its badass, thrash guitar-playing, Milton-reading  image is somewhat ruined when you realise it’s called RELENTLESS: ‘FREEDMAN’. Probably not what the manufacturers were going for…