As you probably know, these days I am organising the Mediterranean Identities: Formation and Transformation conference in the University of Leicester, which you can also follow in my twitter account. Yesterday, one of our delegates, Norberto, asked me to set a question to the followers of this blog. I think you will find it most interesting! Who was the first Roman Imperator to die in a war against Parthia? »
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember” (W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That, 1930) »
Manolis will not grace us today with a new quiz; so, I decided to ask a Roman question. Which Roman emperor was born in North Africa and died in Britain? »
My friend Dora is a Distance Learning student in our School at the University of Leicester; writing her PhD on Hellenistic Gymnasia. Today is her upgrading from MPhil to PhD. She will meet the committee around 10, when, hopefully, they will acknowledge her superior knowledge of the Hellenistic period and her innovative ideas on the development of the Institution of Gymnasia. I am confident that she will pass with flying colours. Dora’s self confidence, on the other hand, is non existent. Since m... »
How do you measure intelligence in antiquity? Answer the following quiz. Ancient Athenians were very clever. However, just once, they have been tricked into thinking that a specific Sicilian town was rich. The fact was that the town was very poor. Its inhabitants presented to the Athenians golden cups and bowls, which did not really belong to them. Which town was it? »
Manolis is lamenting the easiness of this question. Do not let him down! He was a very good Athenian general. But Thucydides says of him that “he was given to divination a bit too much”. Who was he? »
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe” (H.G. Wells, Outline of History, 1920) »
There have been complaints that the previous competition was way too easy! So, here goes a new, improved and difficult quiz He is roasting you alive in a bull made of brass. And you’re thinking (!): ‘I shouldn’t have pissed off this tyrant’. Who is this tyrant? »
As you probably already know, I am teaching a third year module on Roman and American Slavery in Leicester. This year, and for the first time, I decided to encourage my students to contribute to a collective blog http://romanandamericanslavery.wordpress.com . Only then, it became obvious that they were intensely preoccupied more with issues of racism than with the generic topic of slavery. I suspect that the reason for such a preference is the fact that they have had no direct experience with sl... »