In Parentheses is a collection of many ancient, medieval and classic texts from all over the world, many of whom are hard to find anywhere, let alone on the internet. There are translations from Greek, Old Norse, Medieval Irish, Japanese, Incan, Old French, Medieval Latin and many more! As well as all that they have papers in medieval studies and vaguely decadent and orientalism series. Adding to that there's a linguistics section with wordlists and language flash cards in languages such as Icelandic, Quechua, Basque, Classical Armenian and a whole bunch more. [flashcard links go to pdf files]
posted on Jul 10, 2008 - View this thread

Elpenor - Home of the Greek Word is a site built around a bilingual anthology of all periods of Greek literature, but there's more, including ancient greek lessons, a collection of texts by non-Greeks about Greece, a gallery of Orthodox Christ icons and an online resource-guide on Byzantium.
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

Libya is a desert, yes, but if you trace your fingers through the moonlit sand and listen, carefully, you may hear ancient whispers: of Apollo's love of Cyrene; of prehistoric hunters making Rock Art [1, 2, 3], back when the Sahara was wet; of Phoenicians subdued by Greeks, of Romans followed by Byzantines, all leaving ruins that Libya is famous for [Cyrene, Leptis Magna, Sabratha, et cetera]; of desert soldiers in World War II, remembered in Graves and Memorials; of the occupying Italians, who responded to Omar Mukhtar's resistance of the Fascists by rounding Libyans into concentration camps; of the camps' prisoners, one of whom wrote this famous poem: "My only illness is the torturing of our young women, with their bodies exposed ... how my speech has become subdued, the humiliation of our noble and leading men and the loss of my gazelle-like horse..."; of more culture, more memories from this land that witnessed the wrenching passion of all man's history—whispering in the very dust that made his soul.
posted on May 14, 2007 - View this thread

Orpheus and Eurydice, the acid-tinged, animated music video version.
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - View this thread

We've talked about the Archimedes death ray, but it is not the only mysterious ancient war machine the Greek scientist constructed. A contemporary Greek historian describes a wide number of clever devices developed by Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse by Roman forces - most notably a mysterious "Claw" that destroyed invading ships. You can see animations and scale models that attempt to reconstruct the Claw. Other, less-warlike, Archimedes secrets are being revealed as the Archimedes Palimpset, an overwritten text of some of the scientist's mathematical writings, has been gradually recovered using new techniques. Among the suprises is the Stomachion, a mathematical puzzle (tangrams, anyone?) and early discussion of combanitorics.
posted on Feb 20, 2007 - View this thread

Sadly, the good professor is putting his project on hold for a while, but he's keeping the old stuff around. Well, there's always Latin. The Finns have been mentioned before, the Bremens not. But for sheer opulence, this site takes the prize.
posted on Feb 4, 2007 - View this thread

From Rebetika to Surf Rock: Misirlou is a melody that has spanned genres, from Greek, Turkish and Jewish folk songs to the classic Dick Dale version on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack to the Black-Eyed Peas, to the obligatory Greek folk version/Pump It mash-up.
posted on Jan 23, 2007 - View this thread

Griko is a language used by the descendents of ancient Greek colonists in southern Italy that still has thousands of speakers. Pennsylvania Dutch, the only German language native to North America, was used as a first language until well into the twentieth century. Ladino ia a variant of medieval Spanish written in the Hebrew alphabet that florished among refugees from the Spanish Inquisition in modern Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. Welcome to the world of ethnolinguistics.
posted on Jul 20, 2006 - View this thread

In 1875, Josiah Mason gave a gift to establish a college which was called the Mason Science College (now a part of the University of Birmingham). Within the terms of the gift to the institutuion, one of the stipulations was that classics not be taught. Of course at such an institution, the Founder Day's address was logically given by Thomas Henry Huxley on the place of Science in Education. Huxley preached the virtues of science and derisively dismissed all value in studying classics, and he wondered whether any rational person would choose to study classics over science. His conclusion was that the only people who would choose a study of classics are those like "that Levite of culture" Matthew Arnold. Arnold took the opportunity to respond to his friend. In his reply, Arnold acknowledged that nobody would expect him to engage Huxley in a debate about science, and though he wouldn't presume to take on Huxley in such a debate, he did want to mention something that struck him as he thumbed through a book of Huxley's friend. Arnold noted that he was struck by the idea that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Arnold acknowledged that he isn't a scientist and therefore doesn't dispute such a claim, but he did want to point out that even if that were true, with regards to this good fellow, there must have been a necessity in him that inclined him to Greek. And would always incline him to Greek. After all, we got there, didn't we?
posted on May 26, 2006 - View this thread

Oprheus, is said to be the founder of The Orphic Mysteries, or Orphism. While in school most students are taught the Theogony of Hesiod, but as in most religions, a differing account existed: The Orphic Theogony, summarized somewhat in this short video (nsfw? abstract nudity). The Orphic Reform to the Dionysian Mysteries included vegetarianism, abstention from sex, and restraint from eating eggs and beans — which came to be known as the Orphikos bios, or "Orphic way of life". Initiation into the Mystery school was needed to teach the Road to the Lower World, through Bone Tablets and papyrus remnants of Orphic Hymns. The Orphic Mystery has been seen as very similar to other religions. (scroll about 2/3 down the page or search for Orphics).
posted on Feb 17, 2006 - View this thread

Love that can't be withstood,
Love that scatters fortunes,
Love like a green fern shading
The cheek of a sleeping girl.
Seamus Heaney's search for the soul of Antigone.
(more inside, with Christopher Logue)
posted on Nov 4, 2005 - View this thread

Register article on Greek arrest of well known programmer I'ved been watching this story since it surfaced at the rixstep.com page here and here; also covered at Techdirt.com in a couple of threads. Worth a look.
posted on Nov 2, 2005 - View this thread

Greek as it was spoke. Mrs. Jones thinks they sound like a cross between French and Chinese. You decide. Alternatively, Latin wav files, mostly poetry. Or, for those into the bestseller circuit, there’s this (narrator rolls the r’s a bit - Jim Dale he ain’t).
posted on Oct 1, 2005 - View this thread

Ancient sculptures the way the ancients saw them.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

Are you not amazed at how she evokes soul, body, hearing, tongue, sight, skin, as though they were external and belonged to someone else? And how at one and the same moment she both freezes and burns, is irrational and sane, is terrified and nearly dead, so that we observe in her not a single emotion but a whole concourse of emotions? Such things do, of course, commonly happen to people in love. Sappho’s supreme excellence lies in the skill with which she selects the most striking and vehement circumstances of the passions and forges them into a coherent whole.   Longinus, On the Sublime
Sappho’s poem of jealousy survives only because the ancient critic Longinus quoted it as a supreme example of poetic intensity--now Ken Knabb has put up 26 translations of it in the English at the Gateway to the Vast Realms , the literature and texts section of his Bureau of Public Secrets. And wait! There's more!
posted on Oct 2, 2004 - View this thread

The Naked Olympics
Sex, nude sports, violence, boozing; a scholar's view of ancient Olympic practices.
posted on Aug 12, 2004 - View this thread

A man, just back from a trip abroad, went to an incompetent fortune-teller. He asked about his family, and the fortune-teller replied: "Everyone is fine, especially your father." When the man objected that his father had been dead for ten years, the reply came: "You have no clue who your real father is."--that's one of the jokes from The Laughter Lover (Philogelos), an ancient Greek joke book published in the 4th or 5th century AD. The New Yorker commented on it, and other old jokes here, stating about one of the possible authors: ... there is some scholarly speculation that the Hierocles in question was a fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher of that name who was once publicly flogged in Constantinople for paganism, which, as one classicist has observed, “might have given him a taste for mordant wit.”
posted on Jul 10, 2004 - View this thread

Peitho's Web: Classic Rhetoric and Persuasion.
posted on May 13, 2004 - View this thread

Ancient Greek mythology for aspiring young pagans.
warning: educational friday flash fun for the geeklings!pre-emptive comment: it's now friday in oz :)
posted on Apr 15, 2004 - View this thread

Centauromachies, Amazonomachies, Gigantomachies and Gorgo.
posted on Jan 25, 2004 - View this thread

Alphabet Evolution
See the evolutionary progression of alphabets through time and cultures. Examples include Cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, modern Cyrillic and the Latin character sets. The Latin is the best documented character set and requires a wide screen to see all the evolutionary events (especially Y and Z)
posted on Oct 7, 2003 - View this thread

Goddess : The Classical Mode, at the Met. Ancient Greek fashion and haute couture interpretations. (via fashioNroll)
posted on Sep 17, 2003 - View this thread

Heraclitus of Ephesus, sometimes called Heraclitus the Obscure: We only know him through 100 gnomic quotes and aphorisms--I loves me some gnomic aphorisms!--all direct from or inferred in the comments of various authors of Classical literature, of which no one steps into the same river twice is the best known. Mark Cohen, J. H. Lesher and Cynthia Freeman provide excellent introductions. John Burnett's 1920 translation is another academic standard. Jonathan Barnes. whose Penguin Classic The Early Greek Philosophers has the best contemporary translation, wrote Heraclitus attracts exegetes as an empty jampot wasps; and each new wasp discerns traces of his own favourite flavour. Here are the jampots of Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger. And here, in passing, is a taste of the jampot of Jorge Luis Borges. Heraclitus coined the word enantiodromia. John William Corrington's Logos, Lex, And Law is also of interest. Heraclitus figures strongly in the Archetypal Psychology of Carl Jung and James Hillman, the latter especially in his discussion of the Soul.
posted on Sep 11, 2003 - View this thread

As to The Uses and Disadvantages of Socrates, sources differ but seem to share in common an ideal fictional Socrates to speak their understanding of the common account. From Doug Linder's Famous Trials--for your bookmarking convenience--comes The Trial of Socrates, featuring ample background materials, including I.F. Stone's take. Marilyn Katz's Background Materials on Socrates' Trial and Death are essential, too. Several other accounts are offered online--consider Socrates and his Audience, The Accusations Against Socrates, Gadfly on Trial: Socrates as Citizen and Social Critic and the rather d.i.y. Socrates Had It Coming. But as to the historical Socrates, the man in context becomes key--as all of the above do contend, more or less, let it be noted--and therefore one needs to become become familiar with things like sexuality in Fifth-Century Athens, desecration of the herms, Eleusian Mysteries, the Peloponnesian War, the fateful Sicilian Expedition and the collective memory of civil war and civic memory in ancient Athens that ensued, as well as the personalities of Critias and Alcibiades to answer the question entitled in my own favorite account, the book entire: Who Was Socrates ?
posted on Jul 24, 2003 - View this thread

Art of the First Cities. An excellent online gallery courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art focusing on the beginnings of urbanization that have led to the city as a heart of the Western world. More on the brick-and-mortar exhibit here and, as a special bonus, another great online exhibit of artifacts of the Greek world from the Penn Museum (available in Greek too!)
posted on Jun 24, 2003 - View this thread

Greek Temple Architecture: They were houses--houses for cult statues, storehouses of treasures given to the gods--they were not churches. Worship consisted, by and large, of sacrificial ritual--animal sacrifice: killing animals and eating them, for the most part--and, hence, it was done out of doors. The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook's Accounts of Hellenic Religious Beliefs and Accounts of Personal Religion give additional flavor and context. Greek religious architecture evolved from wooden structures and was tradition bound--they built in stone as they had in wood according to variations on a traditional canon called the orders, first and foremost, the Doric Order , the Ionic Order and the Corinthian Order. Here are some restorations. I love restorations, on paper or models rather than at the actual sites. The first in a series.
posted on Jun 19, 2003 - View this thread

A Summary of Pythagorean Theology
posted on Mar 20, 2003 - View this thread

The Ideal Prepuce. Enter the posthe and the akroposthion.
posted on Sep 19, 2002 - View this thread

I've been accused in the past of only posting clever and astonishingly cynical quips - so just to prove that I'm no fly-by-night-non-serious-funster here is an informative link. It requires no flash plugins of any sort..... ladies and gentlemen I give you.... What Is Cynicism? thank you.. As usual, details within.
posted on Feb 3, 2002 - View this thread

Amazing Photo of real hand to hand combat. The page is in Greek but the (600K) picture on top is, I think, worth your while. This is a photo taken by a British liaison officer to the partisans in the Greek island of Crete during WWII (named John Eberson or Emberson), as a group of guerillas confronts a German patrol. What is amazing is the fact that Emberson reached for his camera instead of his gun... This is the closest view of a combat situation I've ever seen captured on film - does anyone know of anything similar on the web? Caption translation inside this thread's comments.
posted on May 25, 2001 - View this thread

The Independent has a report that excavations at Herculaneum has brought forth some 850 papyri and "Among the works, which academics hope to read using the new equipment, are the lost works of Aristotle (his 30 dialogues, referred to by other authors, but lost in antiquity), scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, Gallus, Macer and Varus."
posted on Feb 11, 2001 - View this thread

The world's most successful terrorist group strikes again. Although they can't claim the numbers of other terrorist groups, 17 November is considered to be one of the deadliest. Claiming over 20 kills with none of their members ever having been captured or killed is something to be proud of I guess. When I was stationed over in Greece, this group was our biggest fear, besides the fact that it was rumored that the group had links to the Socialist Party of the government and that the party "assisted" (using the term loosely) them from being captured. I had hoped that they had turned to internal terrorism and not International, as I hadn't heard anything about them in the last 7 years, but I guess that hope was optimistic.
posted on Jun 8, 2000 - View this thread