Ancient

Morality of Money in Ancient Greece and Rome

constantinakatsari January 3, 2020

How many times have you used terms loaded with moral judgement when you mention money? How many of you think that money is ‘evil’ or that debt is ‘disgraceful’? How many of you watched Benefits Street in 2014 and argued with disdain that you would never end up in this position? For those of you who do not watch tv, Benefits Street was a documentary series broadcast in Channel 4. It showed benefits claimants committing crimes, thieving and cheating. It was so successful (despite the opposition) t... »

The American School of Archaeology in Corinth

constantinakatsari November 24, 2019

Recently a few photographs appeared in the Facebook page of the American School of Archaeology at Athens. They were photographs of the diaries of the first American archaeologists who excavated Ancient Greek Corinth. The excavations started at the end of the nineteenth century in 1896 and by now we have diaries that cover this year until 2007. Specifically, there are 1116 excavation diaries (digitalised) of around 200 pages each. This is a wealth of information for modern archaeologists of ancie... »

Ancient city discovered in Greece

constantinakatsari May 20, 2013

Ancient historians may complain about the lack of new data coming to surface. Archaeologists, on the other hand, do not seem to have such a problem, since new excavations reveal new and exciting material all the time. Of course, most of the sites are already known to seasoned archaeologists, although excavations are slow to come about due to increasing financial difficulties. An announcement on a new ancient city found in Greece is about the city of Thuria in Messenia (south west Peloponnese). T... »

Inscriptions of Attica online.

constantinakatsari December 19, 2012

You can find some of the published inscriptions of Athens and Attica in English translation at the following site: www.atticinscriptions.com “It is being launched with translations of the 281 inscribed laws and decrees of Athens, 352/1-322/1 BC, which have recently been edited by Stephen Lambert as *IG *II3 1, 292-572.” (Seen in Classics list) The material will probably be updated soon enough to include a lot more information. So, keep checking! »

Realencyclopaedie online

constantinakatsari December 1, 2012

“Since 2007, a handful of volunteers is working on the task of reproducing the Pauly-Wissowa’s ‘Realencyclopaedie’ in the internet [2]. This project is hosted on Wikisource, a sister project of Wikipedia. Of course, Wikisource only features RE articles that are out of copyright, which means (in Europe) the author must be dead for more than 70 years. Now this project has reached a milestone: 10,000 articles, nearly all of them proof-read and interlinked. Also, the voluntee... »

Arrests in Crete

constantinakatsari November 5, 2012

The police in Crete seems to have had some success in retrieving stolen artefacts and arresting the culprits. Specifically, they arrested 8 men in Messara (Herakleion) last Thursday. They found among others a Roman vase, the upper part of a column, twenty coins from the fifth century BC to the Roman period, some weapons from the Second World War and copious quantities of modern drugs! The gang does not seem to very serious in its efforts of amassing ancient treasures. Nevertheless, I include a p... »

Ancient curse on a cup

constantinakatsari November 1, 2012

I have always been fascinated by ancient curses. We tend to find them on funerary stele or on little bronze tablets in temples. Occasionally, they may be found also in other materials, such as the cup (skyphos) that was unearthed in Methone of Pieria. This is definitely the oldest curse inscribed on a symposium cup and is dated between 730-690 BC. The inscription says ‘I am (the cup) of Akesandros and (whoever steals me) will lose his eyes (or money). It is worth mentioning that another cu... »

Wikiloot

constantinakatsari June 23, 2012

Finally, activists aim at creating an Open Source platform that will include photos and information of all the antiquities that have been stolen. Wikiloot will be the name of the new crowdsourcing platform, a new experiment on data mining. Its creator seems to be Jason Felch, the co-writer of Chasing Aphrodite, the story of the stolen statue of Aphrodite and its return to its native island of Sicily.Felch and his team are trying to raise the necessary funding for the creation of the platform. Fo... »

New discovery of ancient temple?

constantinakatsari May 16, 2012

How many times have you found yourself walking without noticing anything around you. It looks like it happened to me countless times. Last week, when I stopped and looked, I realised I may have been on top of an ancient (classical or Hellenistic?) temple. I will not disclose the exact area because the architectural elements I found have not been catalogued. Suffice to say it is on the eastern coast of Attica. I also could use some help from expert archaeologists to explain what I am looking at. ... »

Podcasts and videos on ancient medicine

constantinakatsari April 28, 2012

I would strongly recommend listening to the following podcasts and videos, if you have even a distant interest in ancient medicine. Helen King, professor in ancient history, talks about her work. Recent podcasts: On ancient medicine, and ‘Gladiator’, April 2012: http://www8.open.ac.uk/platform/news-and-features/professor-helen-king-ancient-medicine-and-the-flashing-midwife (NB the full content is not available if accessed on an iPad) On Agnodike the ‘flashing midwife’, Ma... »