Classics in Contemporary Culture

New Blog!

On the heels of rogueclassicism, I'd like to herald the arrival on the scene of a new blog:  Pop Classics.  It's the work of a grad student in Classics at Birmingham, and already has some extended posts on Star Trek:  Voyager, Harry Potter, the Life of Brian, Terry Pratchett, Dr. Who, and Red Dwarf...I look forward to more!

Gladiators and Terrorists

Hmm...just noticed that Barry Strauss has a blog, primarily geared to his new book on Spartacus, but including a fair amount of Classical / modern world rumination, such as the current most recent post, "Terrorists and Gladiators"--basically, American anxieties over what to do about Gitmo ~ Roman anxieties about gladiators post-Spartacus...

Prometheus Bound - with Gags!

...in which Prometheus' compulsory situation becomes a sit-com - in cartoon form.  Go see Mark Weinstein's The Miserable World of Prometheus!!

[Thanks to RogueClassicism, where some "episodes" will also appear...]

Aristotle at the Beeb

The RogueClassicist notes some interesting stuff at Alun's Archaeoastronomy blog...I'll chime in, noting also his link to a BBC broadcast on Aristotle.  Here's Alun:

The Mark Steel Lecture for this week on BBC7 is Aristotle. There are plenty of things to quibble with, I’m pretty certain Solon didn’t create the first constitution. Nevertheless quite funny and interesting in comparing Aristotle to modern times.

Classical Tease-Blogs

Cape Cod Today presents some Cape-based blogs in a short article called "Blogeto, Ergo Sum."  The connected list with short descriptions includes "Cape Seneca":

Cape Seneca has lived on the lower Cape since 1964. His nom de plume Seneca is a tribute to the Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (4 BC - 65 AD.) who served as tutor to the young Nero. When the boy became Emperor in 54 AD, he retained Seneca as his advisor, and for several years, Seneca exerted a calming influence on the young emperor. After he retired in AD 62, however, he lost favor with his former pupil, and in AD 65, he was accused of conspiring against Nero and was forced to commit suicide.

I don't see any classical posts, however.  Oh, and on that list of blogs there's also a "Carpe Diem" and a "Solon"...ah, but the references are simply references...

Bloggeamus Igitur...

A new blog, the first I've seen (I think) written in Latin, more or less...by one "Scipio."  The title:  "Scipio Scripsit."  As he puts it:

Frustra petitus, ullos scriptitarios in latina lingua compositos invenire non possum. Plurimi de latina, sed nullos in ipsa latina.

He adds:

En, compositioni malae veniam mihi date, sis!

I look forward to seeing more...

Mad-Cow Dizzies

"Lewis Lindsay, the Fugitive Latin Teacher" is the author of a web journal/blog ("L. L.'s Warning to All the World") that, sadly, appears to be defunct by the time I am coming across it...although there is one post following the announcement that it is all over...Hmm...well, keep watching, I guess. It's the adventures of the narrator, beginning from his start at the Bovine Classical Academy...and moving on to matters extra-terrestrial...No Fafblog, but worth a read! Oh, here's a post on a single random piece of Classics lore: the spelling of Vergil/Virgil.

De Mediis (Rebus)

The RogueClassicist had a post on the phrase in medias res yesterday, and suggested off-the-cuff that "In Media Res" would be a good name for a blog.  I, of course, misread, didn't get the joke, etc., and went off to find a blog with the name "In Medias Res"; so now, suitably chastened, I have gone off a second time, and found the blog "In Media Res" (with the intentional play on "media").

It galls me, however, that the phrase in media res gets about 1/4 of the number of Google hits received by the correct in medias res (26,000:105,000)--I don't think all those thousands are making the same wordplay...And unfortunately, one of those 26,000 hits is a blog entry for a French enterprise devoted to bringing the world Greek and Latin quotations one day at a time...There was further discussion of the phrase in a long-ish comment thread for a post on useful Latin expressions at the Mormon blog Times & Seasons (hence quite a few comments on why Latin is relevant for Mormonism), which thread also yielded the final fruit of my "research"--a naughty little limerick quoted by a commenter:

New Blog

Looks like fun--a classics grad student is blogging, using the title "Quid facio demens?"  One recent post is a monitory story about the perils of chalkboarding:

On the board, he wrote:

OCTAVIANUS

Now, having learned his lesson about turning around entirely before, he attempted to underline part of the word without turning around. He did so, intending to explain how the form showed that Octavianus was the son of Octavius, and then asked if anyone knew what this meant:

OCTAVIANUS

I really hope I don't ever do that in front of the class....Ha!!

Heroes of the Blogosphere

More discussion on the question which of three Homeric characters come off better in the modern day--Achilles?  Hector?  Odysseus?  First, from Brad DeLong, "The Best of the Achaeans" (including consideration of the movie Troy); then, Mark Kleiman, "Against Odysseus" (including question of poisoned arrows); then over to Matthew Yglesias, back to Kleiman; Grammar.police goes off toward Aeneas...  Who said liberals were not interested in the Classics?