Thanks to a member of this class, I have been introduced to this site, a website and database of illegitimate Roman children.

Because, honestly, how many films in Akkadian are you likely to see in your lives?

The Poor Man of Nippur, the first film in Babylonian

…and thinking about how that affects how scholars approach this material should read this, addressing a racist event that happened at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in San Diego recently. (This is the same as the one we talked about in class at our first meeting.)

Just to make you aware of precisely how strange and odd the things an elite and educated Roman could believe, here is Pliny the Elder’s remedy for fever:

For brain-fever a sheep’s lung wrapped warm round the patient’s head appears to be beneficial. But who could give to one delirious the brain of a mouse to be taken in water, or the ash of a weasel, or even the dried flesh of a hedgehog, even if the treatment were bound to be successful?

Natural History 30.29

Not quite sure where to put this, but this is a cost sheet for things in Rome I created for another class, a few years ago.

And yet I see that audiences which used to be deeply moved by the inspiring sternness of the music of Livius and Naevius, now leap up and twist their necks and turn their eyes in time with our modern tunes.

Cicero, On the Laws 2.39, discussing the too lively beats of modern music…

Apart from copyrighted material and discussions we will do most of our work on this blog for the class.

(And I know this site is ugly right at the moment…)