Cursing, Roman Style August 26, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient***Dedicated to Mac, Invisible and Southern Man who sent the latest British curse tablet in*** The Romans were, as is well known, good at everything. They could start land wars in Asia and win; they could sell their soul for the fruits of the known world and enjoy said fruits; they could sail to southern […]
Precious Pot Sherds at Tell-el-Hesy July 23, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, ModernBeach has failed to find the original for this as it appeared unreferenced: a crime he is going to compound by unreferencing that one late inadequate reference. However, the passage almost certainly relates to the work of Flinders Petrie at Tell-el-Hesy in 1890, sometimes said to mark the birth of modern archaeology. FP, among his […]
The Postures: A Missing Erotic Classic May 22, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBeachcombing has often celebrated in this place lost books and burning libraries. Today he wants to celebrate a book that while not lost (it can be found in a modern edition on the top shelves of academic institutions around the world) got through to us by the skin of its erotic teeth. Beach refers, of course, to I […]
Immortal Meals #9: The Discovery of Nero’s Rotating Dining Room? May 17, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : AncientBeach’s reading today comes from Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, Nero (31) There was nothing however in which [Nero] was more ruinously prodigal than in building. He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly […]
The Popess: A Female Pope? April 28, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : MedievalThere are popes who had children, there are popes who took part in orgies, there are popes (at least one) who did not believe in God. However, Beachcombing has so far avoided the most remarkable pope of all: Pope Joan. The story is quickly told. Pope John VIII went out to bless the people of […]
Plotinus Meets a God January 8, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : AncientA WIBT (Wish I’d been there) moment from later antiquity, brought to mind, in part by stories at the end of 2011 about Socrate’s daemon. The subject is Plotinus, a follower of Plato and the thinker who offered the ancient Mediterranean a ‘sensible’ alternative to Christianity: neo-platonism. Plotinus, as all Platonists, had mixed feelings about […]
Immortal Meals #7: Papal Orgies November 4, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernIt has been a while since Beachcombing visited an immortal meal, one of those dinners past where the great ate and history crackled in the air. Still suffering from the Italian Renaissance bug and given that this is, after all, the season of the chestnut he thought that he would today lift the veil on […]
Buying Up Clarice October 30, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : MedievalBeach hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the Italian Renaissance this past week: blame the genitals of the mad, bad but always interesting Caterina Sforza. And in this difficult time of renaissance obsession one source that has run around and around his head is (Lauro […]
Favourite Historical Cities September 3, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, MedievalAnd so it begins… Three hours sleep, arguments about syllabi, a terrifying public-speaking engagement, a walk in the wood (six snakes spotted – an omen?), sleep and stress. In short, the students are back and the cycle of sow/reap/harvest (lesson/field-trip/exam) is starting up once again. They look (as always) like nice kids. But in an […]
Bishop Q June 27, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, MedievalToday a curious Roman marble inscription from Terni in central Italy – not Rome as often reported – that probably dates from towards the end of the Empire, perhaps from the end of the fourth century (Olybrio = consul?). It is an inscription that is so unexpected that it is difficult to know where to […]
A Frightening Roman Cat May 25, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern***This post is dedicated to Invisible who sent the reference and the picture in*** Beachcombing was going to do a post on early parachutes today but he got caught up, instead, in a disturbing cat portrait and legend thanks to an email from Invisible. This nasty little moggy – look at it! – will simply […]
Homer Hasenpflug Dubs and Roman Legionaries in Ancient China December 20, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : AncientDrum roll, trumpet blast enter Homer Hasenpflug Dubs (obit 1969) an American-born Oxford don with a name that sounds as it it was purloined from an 1890s feel-good novel. Homer, to friends, was a capable if eccentric sinologist based out of ‘the other place’ for most of his teaching life. He wrote – as was […]
Image: Pius XII in a bombed out Rome September 7, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, MedievalWhat would have happened if photography had been invented not in the early nineteenth-century but a hundred years before Columbus crossed the waters blue? Well, Beachcombing imagines Franciscan monks running around with tripods and dark rooms being built next to monastic kitchens. The Church would have monopolised this new technology, not as an art, but […]