Marmor – Maße – Monumente

Vorfertigung, Standardisierung und Massenproduktion marmorner Bauteile in der römischen Kaiserzeit 

New perspectives in Seleucid history, archaeology and numismatics

studies in honor of Getzel M. Cohen 

Bachiarii opera:

De fide, Epistula ad Ianuarium, Epistulae II 

Niall Ferguson, America Did Not Panic During the 1957 Pandemic

1918, 1957, 2020 Big Pandemics and their Economic, Social and Political Consequences 

The excess death toll was around 1.1m worldwide, including around up to 116,000 in the U.S. • “The global mortality rate of the 1957 –1959 influenza pandemic was moderate relative to that of the 1918 pandemic but was approximately 10 -fold greater than that of the 2009 pandemic.” • Scaled up to 2020, here’s what that would mean: 130,000 -215,143 additional dead Americans, again without social distancing and lockdowns.

Worldwide, the 1957-58 flu killed around 1.1 million people.

But struck again in January and February 1958.

And again in 1959-60.

It was a nationwide pandemic.

“For those who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing unusual about finding yourself threatened by contagious disease. Mumps, measles, chicken pox, and German measles swept through entire schools and towns; I had all four. Polio took a heavy annual toll, leaving thousands of people (mostly children) paralyzed or dead. There were no vaccines. Growing up meant running an unavoidable gauntlet of infectious disease. For college students in 1957, the Asian flu was a familiar hurdle on the road to adulthood.”—Clark Whelton, “Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances: Remembering the 1957 Asian Flu Pandemic,” City Journal, March 13, 2020.

The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of Roman Germany

Oxford University Press 

Rediscovering political friendship: Aristotle’s theory and modern identity, community, and equality

Aristotle’s theory and modern identity, community, and equality 

Achilles beside Gilgamesh: mortality and wisdom in early epic poetry

mortality and wisdom in early epic poetry 

The battle of the classics: how a nineteenth-century debate can save the humanities today

how a nineteenth-century debate can save the humanities today 

Untimely epic: Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica

Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica 

The ancient unconscious: psychoanalysis and the ancient text

Classics in theory 

Plautus: Casina

Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions 

Masculinity, identity, and power politics in the age of Justinian: a study of Procopius

a study of Procopius 

Ian Hunter with Joe Grushecky’s Iron City Houserockers Have a Good Time (But Get Out Alive) with Steven Van Zandt and Mick Ronson

Joe Grushecky's critically acclaimed 1980 Iron City Houserockers album Have a Good Time (But Get Out Alive) will be reissued as an expanded 40th anniversary two-disc set, with key contributions from Mick Ronson, Ian Hunter and Steven Van Zandt. Read More: Listen to Joe Grushecky Jam With Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson  

Imprimis Hillsdale Rein in Big Tech

Imprimis Hillsdale Rein In Big Tech

Regional urban systems in the Roman world, 150 BCE-250 CE

Mnemosyne, supplements, 431 

Visual histories of the classical world

essays in honour of R.R.R. Smith. Studies in classical archaeology, 4 

Antidorus, Dionysius Iambus, Epigenes, Lysanias, Parmenon, Silenus, Simaristus, Simmias

Supplementum grammaticum Graecum 

History of ancient Greek scholarship: from the beginnings to the end of the Byzantine age

from the beginnings to the end of the Byzantine ag 

Crimen Obicere: forensic rhetoric and Augustine’s anti-Donatist correspondence

Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, volume 120 

18 Ripping 1960s Rock Bands on TV

18-ripping-1960s-rock-roll-bands-that-performed-on-tv-sitcoms-and-dramas 

Little Old Lady 1957 Chevrolet

little-old-lady-has-owned-this-immaculate-57-chevy-since-it-was-new-video/ 

Hillsdale 1984 and Today

hillsdale.edu/orwells-1984-today/?utm_campaign=imprimis&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=103982981&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9KUM7l4KlrXWNA3-Vmh3ffs1tYgT3a3enOAdu7gB93p4DFQ1oxk6ArVzPy8mcxJToruND98s-EBY4ohO-eUP2Y2jzVSw&utm_content=103982981&utm_source=hs_email 

The Doctor of Digital Podcast

Listen to "The Doctor of Digital, G.Mick Smith, PhD" on Spreaker.

https://www.spreaker.com/show/g-mick-smith-phds-tracks

Listen on Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvMTI3OTQ2OC9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVk

Listen on Apple:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-doctor-of-digital-g-mick-smith-phd/id1545085984?uo=4

Listen on JioSaavn:

https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/The-Doctor-of-Digital%5C/1%5C/9Se2aBzFi80_

Listen on Deezer:

https://www.deezer.com/us/show/2091752

Listen on Podchaser:

https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-dr-of-digital-1571319

Listen on Podcast Addict:

https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/3188679

Not found on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/68qCzh17avGQgFm3pnwyga

iHeartRadio

Amazon Music / Audible

Castbox

Pending

Prager University: What's Wrong With the 1619 Project?

1619 

Borderline virginities: sacred and secular virgins in late antiquity

sacred and secular virgins in late antiquity 

Cicero and Roman religion: eight studies

eight studies. Potsdamer Alterumswissenschaftliche Beitrage 

Should Ethnic Studies Majors Teach High School History?

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) held a public meeting in which an agenda item (1-H) concerns teacher credentialing. Alarmingly, this proposal seeks to give college graduates with an Ethnic Studies major credentials to teach 7-12 grade Social Studies and History (Appendix B (b) (9)).

Allowing unqualified candidates who are trained to indoctrinate rather than educate to teach in K-12 classrooms will surely compromise and erode the quality of public education further.

Since late 2020, CFER (Californians for Equal Rights) has raised public awareness and conducted multiple research projects on various problems with California's Ethnic Studies paradigm. In short, the current model to teach Ethnic Studies is hijacked by a race-based, oppressor-v.-victim model.  Last year, California became the first state in the U.S. to mandate ethnic studies for all its public high schools, with the passage of AB101. The state-endorsed model framework, approved by the State Board of Education on March 18, 2022 in spite of over 7,000 opposing public comments, was laden with ideological jargon such as “four ‘I’s of oppression,” “critical consciousness,” “intersectionality,” “double helix,” and “radical healing.”

The finalized framework was so problematic that CFER sued the state contesting the constitutionality of two particular affirmations that chant repetitively to Aztec, Mayan and African deities. In higher education, the teaching of Ethnic Studies is thoroughly politicized.

CTC's proposal means Ethnic Studies majors are ill equipped to teach History and Social Studies. Their coursework, focused on the study of ethnicities through the controversial lenses of oppression, resistance and anti-racism, cannot generate subject matter competencies for such foundational courses.

Our friends at the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies (ACES) first blew the whistle on this dangerous development. We must act now to defend academic standards.

World History textbooks in higher education are already fraught with historical anomalies. Here are some historical mistakes already in college textbooks.

Lowering academic standards, as has happened already in most colleges, is problematic for impressionable youth. It has led to all kinds of egregious historical mistakes. An African civilization, with no impact on the world, is celebrated as a major accomplishment, whereas, the Dutch, a relatively minor European nation, is overlooked whereas in fact it had a major world impact in finance and trading during the Age of Adventure. Many students believe Cleopatra to be a paragon of African beauty and leadership, whereas the reality is that she was Macedonian Greek. 

An African example should not be emphasized to downplay the Dutch in World History. Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age about which little is known. During the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch provinces became the most important trading centre of Northern Europe, replacing Flanders in this respect. At the time there was a great flowering of trade, industry, the arts and the sciences in the Netherlands: in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch were arguably the most economically wealthy and scientifically advanced of all European nations. This new, officially Calvinist nation flourished culturally and economically, creating what historian Simon Schama has called an "embarrassment of riches". Speculation in the tulip tradeled to a first stock market crash in 1637, but the economic crisis was soon overcome. Due to these developments the 17th century has been dubbed the Golden Age of the Netherlands.

Similarly, Cleopatra, although nominally African, is actually Greek European. Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ, "Cleopatra the father-beloved" 69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.

The move to sociologize history has been happening for a long time; I wouldn't even stoop to call history social science though this decline occurred when I was a young student. History is done from the ground up, knowing the primary sources, language, culture, context, and background. Ethnic studies is top down ideology imposed on the past due to current political feelings. That is not how you do history. 

Lectures de Lucrèce. Histoire des idées et critique littéraire

Histoire des idées et critique littéraire 

The Roman villa in the Mediterranean basin: late Republic to late Antiquity

Cambridge University Press 

Rhetoric and innovation in Hellenistic art

Cambridge University Press 

The Hellenistic court: monarchic power and elite society from Alexander to Cleopatra

Review 

Hieronymus. Biblia Sacra vulgata: Lateinisch-deutsch

Review 

Hillsdale: Mystic Chords of Memory: Learning From the American Story

hillsdale.edu/mystic-chords-memory-learning-american-story 

Rethinking the concept of "healing settlements": water, cults, constructions and contexts in the ancient world

Review 

Greek and Roman technology: a sourcebook annotated translations of Greek and Latin texts and documents

a sourcebook of translated Greek and Roman texts 

The ties that bind. Ancient politics and network research

Journal of historical network research 

Prager University Book Talk Plato, Symposium

Symposium

Ästhetische Monsterpolitiken. Das Monströse als Figuration des eingeschlossenen Ausgeschlossenen

Das Monströse als Figuration des eingeschlossenen Ausgeschlossenen

The phantom image: seeing the dead in ancient Rome

seeing the dead in ancient Rome

The Edinburgh companion to Sidonius Apollinaris

Edinburgh University Press

CHRISTIANS & CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Article

Transforming sacred spaces: new approaches to Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture from the transitional period

Spätantike - Frühes Christentum - Byzanz

Herodotus and the question why

The Fordyce W. Mitchel memorial lecture series

Liddell and Scott: the history, methodology, and languages of the world's leading lexicon of Ancient Greek

Review

Rethinking Athens before the Persian wars : proceedings of the international workshop at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Review

Animal kingdom of heaven: anthropozoological aspects in the late antique world

Review

Adressat und Adressant in antiken Briefen: Rollenkonfigurationen und kommunikative Strategien in griechischer und römischer Epistolographie

Review

Italy's economic revolution: integration and economy in Republican Italy

Review

The discourse of kingship in classical Greece

Review

Is My School District a Bully?

The news is filled with stories of parents who peaceably assemble before school boards for a redress of grievances only to find they are labeled domestic terrorists or at the very least ne'er do wells. During the Mid-term pushback victories parents are more aware of educational issues and how to successfully advocate for their children.

The first step for any parent to understand is whether your school district is a bully or not. Some parents have been banned entirely from their children's education but most often elements of the curriculum that parents object to are ignored or their concerns minimized. Included in this list are divisive and un-American indoctrination concerning CRT, pronouns, equity, social justice, LGBTQ+, BLM, drag shows, in short, any instruction that aims to create activists rather than academically prepare children. Well meaning teachers are free to advocate any social cause they are passionate about but they violate parent's rights as primary educators of their children once they cross the line into recruiting students. 

You will have a sense of whether you are being bullied or not if you have raised concerns with a teacher, principal, or ultimately a school board. If you do not obtain satisfaction for your concerns it is time for you to call in allies.

Von Pflanzen und Pflichten: Zum naturalistischen Ursprung des stoischen kathekon

Review

Man of High Empire. The Life of Pliny the Younger

Review

Fantasy in Greek and Roman literature

Book

 

America’s Most Neglected Minority: Germans

/I-am-of-German-descent-Why-do-people-usually-think-that-we-are-bad?ch=10&share=4b9295a3&sri

Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans White?

Were-the-Ancient-Greeks-and-Romans-white?ch=10&share=fb18eecd&srid=u9Egk 

First Rock & Roll Record

Who-made-the-first-ever-rock-n-roll?ch=10&share=4115ddb1&srid=u9Egk 

Changing Names

 Anne Bancroft is a classic example. Her real name was Anna Maria Italiano, and she was told outright that it was, well, too Italiano, and she'd never have a successful acting career with that name. So she changed it to Anne Marno (Marno being a combination of her middle and last names).

Nope, they said. Still too “ethnic-sounding”. So she chose “Bancroft”, because, she said, she thought it sounded “dignified”. (I bet Mel Brooks would still have married her no matter what her name was, though.)

The same story happened over and over; non-Anglo people took Anglo stage names in the hope of it increasing their chances of Hollywood success.

So Issur Danielovitch became Kirk Douglas.

Volodimyr Palahniuk became Jack Palance.

Tadeusz Konopka became Ted Knight.

Charles Bunchinsky became Charles Bronson.

Jacob Julius Garfinkle became John Garfield.

Margarita Carmen Cansino became Rita Hayworth.

Alphonso D'Abruzzo became Alan Alda.

Emanuel Goldenberg became Edward G. Robinson.

Frederick Austerlitz became Fred Astaire.

Dino Crocetti became Dean Martin.

Bernard Schwartz became Tony Curtis.

Thomas Jefferson Quote Individual Rights

 Thomas Jefferson explained a concept correctly in his letter to James Madison on September 6^th 1789: “What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.”

The great persecution: a historical re-examination

 https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2020/2020.08.21/

Using the neural-net tool Photoshop and historical references, Daniel Voshart has created photoreal depictions of Roman Emperors.

using-the-neural-net-tool-photoshop-and-historical-references-daniel-voshart-has-created-photoreal-depictions-of-roman-emperors/

Classical myth in Alfred Hitchcock’s Wrong Man and Grace Kelly films

Lexington Book

Euripides. Troades

Troades

Violence in the ancient and medieval worlds

Interdisciplinary studies in ancient culture and religion

Religious dissent in late antiquity, 350-450.

Oxford studies in late antiquity

Deconstructing imperial representation: Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius on Nero and Domitian

Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius on Nero and Domitian

Roman roads: new evidence – new perspectives

new evidence – new perspectives

Great Figures in History: Xenophon, Hillsdale

great-figures-in-history-xenophon

with host Hugh Hewitt and guests Larry P. Arnn and Mickey Craig

Femmes grecques de l’Orient romain

DHA supplement

Drawing down the moon: magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world

magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world

Plutarch. How to be a leader: an ancient guide to wise leadership

an ancient guide to wise leadership

Ancient Rome and Victorian masculinity

Classical presences

Xenophon’s ‘Hellenika’. A commentary, vol. I

A commentary

Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception

Bork, Robert. Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception. Architectura Medii Aevi, 10. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Pp. x, 552. $155.00. ISBN: 978-2-503-56894-2.
 
   Reviewed by Katherine A. Rush
       University of California, Riverside
        katherine.rush@ucr.edu
 
      
Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception (2018) by Robert Bork is a work impressive both in physical size and scholarly breadth. Totaling 552 pages, including 337 black and white illustrations and 32 color illustrations (the majority the author's own), Late Gothic Architecture succeeds in broadly spanning not only architectural style, time, and geography, but also intended audience. 
 
Indeed, of Late Gothic Architecture's numerous strengths, one that stands out is its ability to engage both readers that are relative newcomers to the study of medieval architecture, as well as more experienced and focused scholars. Bork achieves this by providing (in each of Late Gothic Architecture's seven chapters) a clearly-written survey of medieval European architecture in manageable twenty-five to fifty-year chunks, as well as a carefully researched argument for the reconsideration of late Gothic architecture as worthy of renewed study. This mix of clearly explained architectural elements and history, such as the creation and evolution of the term "Gothic," with astute analysis of the events, structures, and texts at the heart of the Gothic-to-Renaissance transition allows for Late Gothic Architecture to serve as both an introductory text for students of Gothic architecture as well as a scintillating read for trained specialists. 
 
Bork takes as his main point the stylistic movement away from the Gothic in the sixteenth century, which he refers to as the "anti-Gothic turn" (1). Although he provides a comprehensive overview of European architecture from late antiquity through 1500, Bork's central aim is to provide a new perspective on the cultural transition from Gothic to Renaissance (i.e., classicizing) architecture. To this end, Bork explains the fall of Gothic architecture as a "crisis imposed by social forces beyond the [medieval] builders' control" (13). Although Bork discusses at some length, in both his introduction and epilog, his efforts to steer clear of value judgements of medieval and renaissance architecture, his constant insistence that the Gothic style was unfairly treated gives the opposite impression.  
 
This sense of the Gothic style's mistreatment at the hands of the Renaissance is most evident when Bork states that "the Gothic tradition did not die of  natural causes, but rather...was effectively murdered by a confluence of external factors" (15). As a medievalist who focuses on the visual culture of late medieval France, I agree with Bork's revisionist approach to the Gothic-to-Renaissance architectural transition. I take issue, however, with Bork's use of what I see as a faulty theoretical model. In both the introduction and the epilog Bork suggests the use of a biological model to better explain and understand this architectural transition. He states that: 
 
     "Darwinian evolutionary theory...deserves recognition as a 
     powerful and highly flexible intellectual model for the discussion 
     of change over time, one that merits far more sustained attention 
     from art historians than it has received to date" (15).
 
Although I agree that the use of interdisciplinary models can often help to better explain complex historical theories and events, I disagree with the sort of downtrodden agency that Bork's Darwinian model allocates to the late Gothic style. By characterizing the "collapse of the Gothic tradition" as not necessarily predetermined, but increasingly inevitable, Bork seems to suggest that the late Gothic style itself could have turned the tide of popularity back towards the Gothic and away from the classical (16).
 
This theoretical disagreement, however, does little to dampen my overall enthusiasm for Late Gothic Architecture. There is much in Late Gothic Architecture that is eye-opening, and worthy of applause.  For example, as part of his defense of the Late Gothic style, Bork discusses the changing definition of "modern" architecture during the medieval and renaissance eras, wherein "modern" originally referred to the ahistorical Gothic style, which was viewed in the medieval period as "progressive or innovative" yet later came to represent the classicizing Renaissance style when compared to the now "outmoded and unfashionable" Gothic style (3, 14). Examples such as this serve to illustrate the arbitrary nature of the shift in popularity from Gothic to classicizing Renaissance architecture. 
 
Bork also does well to point out and debunk some of the most grievous misunderstandings about medieval architecture. First, that there was an utter lack of classical or antique architectural influences during the Middle Ages, which was corrected by the Renaissance, a period that is typically defined as a rebirth of all things classical. Secondly, Bork also deals in multiple chapters with the idea that the late Gothic style, such as the French Flamboyant, was characterized by a lack of organization or structural reason. Bork points out how Gothic architecture, while it lacked the flashy theoretical background of Renaissance architecture (Vitruvius' De Architectura, most notably), made up for it in practical know-how achieved through a millennium of guild-organized work. Indeed, much of Bork's reasoning for the rise of the classical Renaissance style rests on his point that "the association of Renaissance architecture with theory has given it an attractive air of intellectual sophistication that late Gothic architecture seems to lack" (9).
 
Bork also demonstrates his familiarity with both scholarly and survey-level texts on medieval architecture, referencing the way in which the Northern Renaissance is more often than not presented in an "architecture-free" way due to the supposed backwardness of Northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, which unlike Italy, still drew on Gothic rather than antique architectural models (5). 
 
Late Gothic Architecture does much to make us, as scholars of medieval art and architecture, question our use of periodization, most notably that of the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance. Bork posits that rather than viewing late Gothic architecture as the visual form of the decline of the Middle Ages and therefore the rise of the Renaissance, we should instead treat late Gothic architecture as a distinct period in and of itself, worthy of closer study and consideration.
 
Bork concludes his epilog to Late Gothic Architecture by stating that the overarching goal of the book is to "foster conversation about the dynamics of the anti-Gothic turn" and that "to the extent that it energizes the debate...it will have fulfilled its purpose" (436). Late Gothic Architecture most certainly fulfils its purpose, providing a welcome and much needed new voice to the scholarly chorus of art historical texts on Gothic architecture. 

Marketing the Beatles Butcher Cover

Were-the-Beatles-upset-when-EMI-Chairman-Sir-Joseph-Lockwood-ordered-the-recall-and-replacement-of-the-Butcher-Album-Cover-of-the-Yesterday-and-Today-Album

Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature

Stephens, John C. Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2019. Pp. viii, 175. $49.95. ISBN: 978-1-47667-451-3.      Reviewed by Eileen Gardiner         University of Bristol and Italica Press         eileen.gardiner@bristol.ac.uk   This book aims to "examine the ways in which religious experience became articulated in otherworldly journey narratives originating in the ancient West and early medieval Europe" (2). John C. Stephens relies on a wide variety of texts: ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Jewish, and Early Christian. Although claiming to include Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythological literature from the "early period up until the 9th century CE" (15), medieval coverage is limited to Beowulf and the Eddas of Snorri Sturluson (13th C). With principles derived from theologians, philosophers, and sociologists, such as Émile Durkheim, Rudolph Otto, Mircea Eliade, and William James, Stephens defines six categories of religious experience. He devotes a chapter to each, seeking to "clarify the ways in which these narratives [of otherworldly journeys] give expression to religious experience" (2). Stephens begins with a brief introduction outlining his strategy. This is followed by chapter 1, "Ancient Cosmology," where he looks at three systems: Ancient Near Eastern, Greco-Roman, and Norse. His Ancient Near Eastern texts include the Babylonian narrative of Enûma Eliš, the Egyptian Heliopolis myth, and the Hebrew Bible, all of which describe the formation of a sky above and an earth below without reference to an underworld, the main focus of Stephens' thesis. For the Greco-Roman world, he examines Hesiod's Theogony, where he finds Tartarus, the underworld created for the punishment of the old gods, the Titans. For Norse cosmology he relies on the Sibyl's Prophecy from the Poetic Edda.  With chapter 2, Stephens begins in earnest to examine otherworld journeys according to these six categories of religious experience: numinous, mystical, the experience of spiritual transformation, the experience of courage in the face of death, the intellectual apprehension of the sacred, and the experience of moral judgment before god. chapter 2, entitled "Numinous Otherworldly Journeys," provides a detailed description of the underworld journeys of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Hercules, then shifts to "Ancient Near Eastern Traditions," to briefly discuss the Egyptian Pyramid and Coffin texts, the heavenly journeys of the Mesopotamian mythical figure Adapa and the Sumerian King Etana, and of the Old Testament Prophet Elijah. Stephens defines numinous as "having contact with divine beings in a world beyond this one" (47), although for Rudolph, who coined the term, [1] the quality of the contact--of the experience--must be holy, but without either moral or rational implications.   In chapter 3, "Mystical Otherworldly Journeys," Stephens describes mysticism as "an inner psychological event" (48). He explains that "whereas numinous experience involves contact with supernatural beings existing outside oneself, mystical experience...typically involves finding the divine within oneself, either deliberately or through various means such as asceticism or spontaneously without any preparation" (48). Examples detailed in this chapter include Orphism and Orpheus's descent into the underworld, Jacob's Vision in Genesis 8, the Gnostic "Allogenes the Stranger" and "Ascension of Isaiah," the Conversion of Paul in Acts 9.1-9, the writing of the Neoplatonist Plotinus, and the visions of St. Perpetua, the 2nd-century, North African Christian martyr.  Chapter 4, "Journeys of Spiritual Transformation" acknowledges that "spiritual transformation often springs from...numinous and mystical experience" (68) but is intrinsically connected to "conversion." The unfortunate example of religious conversion showcased here is from Lucian of Samosata, a 2nd-century Roman satirist. He tells of Peregrinus Proteus, a Cynic philosopher, who converted back and forth between Christianity and paganism, before finally committing suicide, hardly a tale of religious conversion. Associating conversion and transformation experiences with fertility cults of rebirth and regeneration, Stephen's further examples include the Sumerian Descent of Inanna and the Babylonian Descent of Ishtar, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and the Egyptian Myth of Isis and Osiris. The most successful example in this chapter is the conversion of Lucius from Apuleius's Metamorphosis or The Golden Ass. A final example describes the Norse myth of Baldr's descent into the underworld. "Courageous Journeys in the Face of Death" (chapter 5) outlines how the development of the notion of an immortal soul provides for the possibility of a better afterlife and enables the individual to face and accept death, sometimes for the good of a community. Stephens' examples of this type of religious experience include the Epic of Gilgamesh, whose hero discovers immortality in the underworld but cannot bring it back to this world, and Beowulf, whose hero escapes mortality by becoming a hero. The author cites these two works as providing examples of apprehending the sacred through face-to-face encounters with death. The Myth of Er from Plato's Republic and Cicero's Dream of Scipio are the examples presented in Chapter 6 entitled The Journey to Philosophic Wisdom. The former describes the embrace of philosophy as the gateway to eternal life, while the latter extends philosophical wisdom to its application in bringing about political change in this world.    In chapter 7, "The Journey to Moral Awareness," Stephens describes "ethical action [as] an outward expression of one's inner apprehension of sacred reality" (123). He uses numerous examples from Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Judeo-Christian traditions.  More impressionistic and descriptive than rigorously analytic, Stephens has brought together a wide-ranging collection of otherworld journeys in this slim volume. By far most of them are underworld rather than heavenly journeys, and despite the volume's title, hardly any of them are medieval. However, the greatest difficulty with this volume is its attempt to pose questions to ancient texts based on contemporary spiritual philosophy and theology. Encounters between heroes and mythical beings in the underworld are not originally described as religious experiences, numinous or mystical. Fertility myths do not concern individual transformations. Unlike medieval visions of heaven and hell, this literature, by and large, does not reveal the state of consciousness of its heroes and does not describe conversions either to a new set of moral principles or to an advanced realm of enlightenment, both of which characterize a contemporary understanding of religious experience. Definitions of mysticism are notoriously difficult, [2] and while Stephens definition in chapter 3 may stand, it does not enable a distinction among any variety of psychological events, nor does it encompass the notion of the uniative experience with the divine, which is often an essential characteristic of mystical experience. Stephens is on more solid ground when describing otherworld travelers as achieving moral or philosophical awareness, and although such awareness may often come about as the result of a religious experience, even of a conversion, these are not religious experiences as James, Eliade, or Otto would have understood them.

The sculptor's workshop. Aphrodisias

Aphrodisias

The beginnings of the cult of relics

Oxford University Press

Screening divinity. Screening Antiquity

Screening Antiquity

Plague of war: Athens, Sparta, and the struggle for ancient Greece

Athens, Sparta, and the struggle for ancient Greece

Killing for the Republic: citizen-soldiers and the Roman way of war

citizen-soldiers and the Roman way of war

Game Accurately Portray Greek Cities?

Does-Assassins-Creed-Odysee-accurately-portray-ancient-Greek-cities

Ancient Greek psychology and the modern mind-body debate

Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag

Aeschylus. Suppliants

Suppliants

All The Young Dudes: What is your Favorite Intro in Rock Music?

What-is-your-favorite-intro-in-rock-music

Greek military service in the ancient Near East, 401-330 BCE

401-330 BCE

History This Week Captain Kidd and the Nazis

May 23, 1701. Captain William Kidd is hanged at Execution Dock in London. His death sentence cements his legacy as one of history’s most notorious pirates, but he went to the gallows claiming to be an innocent man. And he may have been telling the truth. Nonetheless, his execution began a worldwide ripple effect that would change the high seas forever and ultimately help prosecute one of the most infamous Nazis that ever lived.


Special thanks to Richard Zacks, author of The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd https://amzn.to/2X5Etth.

Cassius Dio and the late Roman Republic. Historiography of Rome and its Empire

Historiography of Rome and its Empire

Longus. Daphnis and Chloe. Cambridge Greek and Latin classics.

Cambridge Greek and Latin classics

How the Gospels became history: Jesus and Mediterranean myths

Jesus and Mediterranean myths

Vivamus liberi aut America peribit.

“Vivamus liberi aut America peribit,” which literally means, “Let us live free or America will die.”

From Stonehenge to Mycenae: the challenges of archaeological interpretation

the challenges of archaeological interpretation

Wandering myths: transcultural uses of myth in the ancient world

transcultural uses of myth in the ancient world

The Cambridge companion to Roman comedy

Cambridge companions to literature

Empires of the sea: maritime power networks in world history

maritime power networks in world history

***Bonus Episode of Based on a True Story's Alexander with Ryan Stitt*** May 11, 2020 Ryan Stitt is the host of The History of Ancient Greece Podcast, and he joins us today to separate fact from the fiction in the 2004 movie Alexander.

***Bonus Episode of Based on a True Story's Alexander with Ryan Stitt***

May 11, 2020

Ryan Stitt is the host of The History of Ancient Greece Podcast, and he joins us today to separate fact from the fiction in the 2004 movie Alexander.

Based on a True Story Podcast

Website: https://www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/basedonatruestorypodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/danlefeb

Inscribing faith in late antiquity: between reading and seeing

between reading and seeing

God’s library: the archaeology of the earliest Christian manuscripts

the archaeology of the earliest Christian manuscripts

There is a category of music from the late 60s called baroque rock. The most famous song is "Walk Away Renee" from the Left Banke. What are some other songs from this genre?

There-is-a-category-of-music-from-the-late-60s-called-baroque-rock-The-most-famous-song-is-Walk-Away-Renee-from-the-Left-Banke-What-are-some-other-songs-from-this-genre

If the Greek phalanx formation was so effective, how did the Romans manage to overcome it?

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Social Justice Isn’t Justice: Prager University

Here’s a law in the Book of Exodus: “Do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.”

Here’s one in Leviticus: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great but judge your neighbor justly.”

Moses, the greatest lawgiver in history, declares in Deuteronomy: “Follow justice and justice alone.”

social-justice-isnt-justice