Well, it’s Easter, and I have the chocolate to prove it. And as a nice eastery extra, this week’s hot online topic is Roman bunnies (I feel a ‘hot cross bunny’ joke coming on…). The press has been reporting that the earliest known bunny remains in Britain have been found, at Fishbourne Roman Palace, and … More Weekend Reading: Bunny Bones
This week I’m having an Icarus week – which for me is not particularly unusual. I was running an online tutorial the other day. It was supposed to be on the relationship between myth and reason (theories about the beginnings of the universe, early cosmology, the relationship between temple and Hippocratic medicine, etc etc), but … More Weekend Reading: Myth and Whisky
This week I’ve been learning about the methods which were used to teach Latin to non-Latin speakers in the Roman world. And to be honest, I’ve been giggling quite a lot. Sometimes loudly, in public places. This wasn’t a purposeful research topic: it came about by pure chance. There I was, minding my own business … More Weekend Reading: Latin for non-Romans
This week I went along to the Launch Event of The Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion, at London’s imposing Senate House just off Russell Square. The activities of the new Open University Centre were introduced by the OU’s James Robson, with specifics provided by director Jessica Hughes, Eleanor … More Weekend Reading: Living in a Material World
This week’s online entertainment has been the controversy dubbed ‘Cadburygate’ or ‘The Freddo Fiasco’. It was prompted by somebody on social media pointing out that Cadbury’s new marketing campaign for the Easter holidays encouraged children to go out and ransack ancient sites around the UK, on the hunt for ‘real treasure’. Archaeologists responded … More Weekend Reading: Chocolate and Archaeology
As I come, kicking and screaming, towards the end of Year 1 of a three-year doctorate in Education, I’ve been thinking a lot about what ‘retraining’ really means, from an insider perspective. I came into Classics quite naturally. After ‘A’ level Latin at school (I was lucky to go to a school which taught … More Weekend Reading: The Pain of Retraining
I’ve been finding the internet a bit depressing lately. In my weekly round-up of Classics-related blog-posts, I’m seeing a growing obsession with what Classics is, who should be in it, and why the words we use to describe it are so important. These are essential debates to have, of course. Classics is always, by its … More Weekend Reading: Women and Books
As most readers of this website know, I teach on an undergraduate distance-learning myth module, and have done for many years. It’s a great course: it looks at how myth functioned within the ancient world, and shows many different sides to Greek and Roman myth. I always enjoy teaching it. But this year, for the … More Weekend Reading: Pondering Myth
This week’s been a busy one, with all kinds of classical stuff (both serious and silly) going on. On Wednesday it was International Lego Classicism Day, organised by Liam Jensen of the Lego Classicists. I was out and about in sunny South Shields, working (I use the word loosely!) on a Lego back-story to the … More Weekend Reading: Lego and Authority
On Wednesday it’s time for the joyful annual celebration of worldwide classical silliness that is International Lego Classicism Day, across social media. So I’m hard at work producing a Lego-South Shields epic of my own, which I’m inclined to entitle ‘The Barateid’. Our hero is Barates, an intrepid travelling salesman from Palmyra, crossing … More Weekend Reading: The Barateid
