I have to recommend Naples in the middle of winter. It is definitely mental. My boyfriend even got hit by a car that was turning around in the middle of a busy street as we tried to nip across. But it’s great anyway. We had Pompeii almost to ourselves, and there was no one else at all at Herculaneum. You can eat massive, amazing pizzas for 3 euros a go. You can practice dodgy Italian, because there’s not that many people around who speak English to jump in and “help” you. I was definitely glad I was there with someone else, and I’m not sure I would have been happy there if I’d been a woman alone, but as it was it was cheap, cheerful and definitely an experience. Might even do it again soon.

I didn’t need to do much in-depth research while I was there – the main purpose of going was to take some photos to use in my thesis. Which, at the time, was a bit tricky, because I didn’t know quite what was going to be in my thesis at that point. I ended up taking photographs of all kinds of ridiculous things, even arguing with one of the guards at Pompeii (in a terrible Italian/English hybrid) that I really needed to go to a random little corner of the town, even though it was an hour until closing time, no one was around and he wanted to shut up shop. Anyway, here are some of the results.

This is an Oscan inscription from around 80 BC – unfortunately it’s behind perspex, so you can’t really see it here, but it’s very cool. It’s painted in red, and it tells the population where to go in the event of an emergency. I was so excited when I found this, totally by chance, just a few seconds from the forum.

This is the so-called “Samnite Palaestra”. Probably not a palaestra (exercise ground) at all, it’s just not big enough, and there’s nothing really to identify it as one. But still cool as a pre-Roman feature of the town.

The guards thought I was mental when I was searching for this on the wall of the brothel, while all the normal tourists looked at the pornographic paintings. Ten points if you can find the Oscan word “MARGAS” (probably a man’s name). Oscan reads right to left, so it’s pretty obvious when you manage to find an inscription.

Here’s a Latin graffito, also from the brothel.

As you can see, I’m really into all these Oscan inscriptions! But any more will make the computer explode, so I’ll leave it there for now.

Since I’ve been working full time for two months of the summer, I’ve had much less time than I thought to start learning all the lines (I hugely overestimated how much brain space I would have left for Greek at the end of the day). But I’ve had a go, thanks to a new Loeb and a fantastic recording by two members of the faculty. I’m not sure how the rest of the cast are getting on. I’m sort of afraid to ask in case it’s all going really well for them and I’m getting behind.

Even so, I highly recommend the final production, which contains many actors much much more talented than me, and fantastic director in Helen Eastman. And the website, which is very dramatic and flame-y. It runs from the 13th to the 16th of October, two shows a day. And it has surtitles. So no excuse not to give it a go.

Gods in Ruins: The archaeology of religious activity in Protohistoric,
Archaic, and Republican central Italy

Gods in Ruins is a two-day conference to be held over March 20-22, 2011 at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. This conference invites presentation of the results of current or ongoing work on archaeological evidence for religious activities in central Italy,
with a particular view to advancing scholarly debate on periods, places, and phenomena under-represented in the literary sources. We aim to bring together researchers across a range of fields including archaeology, art history, history, anthropology, archaeozoology, and religious studies; and to stimulate discussion of shared methodological concerns as well as sharing new results.

Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
• Methodologies for an archaeology of religion
• Cult sites
• Ritual objects and their cultural biographies
• Votives and dedicators
• Religious landscapes

A. You died of drinking too much, Anacreon.

B. Yes, but I enjoyed it, and you who do not drink will come to Hades too.

GA. 7.33, by Julianus, Prefect of Egypt

Androtion built me for himself, his children and his wife. As yet, I am no one’s grave and so may I remain for long; but if it must be so, may I give earlier welcome to the earlier born.

GA. 7.228, Anonymous

(My friends are there to show the scale of this thing…)

This is the portrait of Virgil, a really famous African mosaic.

I think the final two (both at El Jem) might just be my favourites!

So, this week I’ve been working on Greek epitaphic poetry. One of the earliest known Western literary genres is epitaph- almost as soon as writing came to Greece, people started to use writing as well as images on gravestones to commemorate their loved ones. Many of these epitaphs were written in hexameter or elegiac verse, even if they were only one or two lines long. Rather later, writing epitaphs seems to have become a virtuoso display for Hellenistic poets, in particular – they would write epitaphs for fictional people and fictional graves, or even for famous people long dead. In a way, it’s a very restricted genre – it’s short, and needs some essential information, like the name of the deceased, to be included. But on another level, that’s the challenge. What really strikes me about literary epitaphs (read the Loeb Greek Anthology, Volume II, if you’re interested) is the massive range of reactions which a single life can inspire – and the poets play up to that.

I have a favourite literary epitaph I’d like to share with you. This is Book 7.176 in the Loeb Greek Anthology.

Not because I lacked a funeral when I died do I lie here, a naked corpse on wheat-bearing land. Duly was I buried once on a time, but now by the ploughman’s hand the iron share hath rolled me out of my tomb. Who said that death was deliverance from evil, when not even the tomb, stranger, is the end of my suffering?

I hope you can see immediately why I like this poem so much – it’s like imagining the sound of one hand clapping. It’s recognisably an epitaph, so we’re expecting to be able to imagine a passing traveller stopping to read it on a tomb by the roadside. But no – this epitaph could never have appeared on a tomb. So how is the deceased talking to the stranger at all? Is he talking directly to us, or to someone who has found his body? Has anyone found him? The deceased is also taking on Epicurean philosophy, which says that death is the end of all sensation and should not be feared – he directly confronts us with the fact that he is aware of his suffering after death. He also confronts Platonism and other philosophy which says that the soul separates from the body at death and forgets the experiences of the body – he still cares deeply about his body.

I came home to quite an exciting email (in Classicist terms…) from my Director of Studies, Olga, saying that she there is a conference coming up which she thought I might enjoy. It’s on the 7th of December, in Nottingham, and is on ancient gender-specific communication. Now, this is pretty much exactly the area which my dissertation will be on, so I’m already on the list of those attending.

These are the talks being given:

10.00 ARRIVAL AND COFFEE
10.30 JENNIFER COATES (ROEHAMPTON) Gender myths and gendered reality: a
sociolinguistic overview;
11.15 TONI BADNALL  (NOTTINGHAM) Gendered speech in Lesbian love-lyric?;
12.00 EVERT VAN EMDE BOAS (OXFORD) Gender-specific communication and
speaker-line attribution in tragedy: two test cases;
12.45  LUNCH
2.00 JUDITH MOSSMAN (NOTTINGHAM) A man's a man for all that: male speech
in Euripides, Trojan Women;
2.45 STEPHEN COLVIN (UCL) The koiné: a common language (for men, that is);
3.30 LUUK HUITINK (OXFORD) Xenophon's gallery of women: speaking women in
Xenophon's works;
4.15 TEA
4.30 ALISON SHARROCK (MANCHESTER) Further voices in Ovid's Metamorphoses;
5.15    HELEN LOVATT (NOTTINGHAM) The eloquence of Dido: speech and gender
in Virgil's Aeneid;
6.00 CLOSING REMARKS AND WINE RECEPTION

I’m particularly interested in the one on the Koine, as I don’t think I’ve heard it discussed in a gendered way before. But it all sounds interesting, and it will be fun to part of the grown-up Classical community; hopefully it will give me a taste of things to come when I’m (with any luck) a grad.

And today, this is in the news. Perhaps a massive statue of Marcus Aurelius isn’t the most exciting thing (cool as he is), but I always like it when Classics makes the front page.

It’s also results time in England, and I like looking at the graphs the BBC runs, such as this one. As you can see, Classics is a bit of a self-selecting area, with far higher results on average than more widespread subjects. What I’m curious to know is how they worked out in a previous study that Latin is one whole grade harder than other GCSE subjects.

My French is getting a rare outing, though. Sometimes this is a bit of a mistake – some of the more annoying girls now refuse to speak any English to me, even though everyone is supposed to speak English at camp as much as possible. I’m trying to have some grown-up conversations with the French travel company reps who’ve come over with some of the kids – they’re about my age. Sometimes it’s just too tiring, though, since I haven’t spoken French in so long. But I’ve got three weeks more to practice, I suppose!

Having my laptop back has led to happy Amazon searching (based on the lovely wages I’ll get by the time I’m home). I think I’m going to get Adams’ Bilingualism and the Latin Language, as I think one of my papers next year is pretty much based around this text. And it’s a cool-looking tome. I also want to get an Oxford Latin Dictionary, either for my twenty-first, or out of my wages. What annoys me is that it is printed in Oxford, but it is £100 cheaper to order it from America than from England, even taking shipping into account. Silly world we live in. I think £100 is quite enough to spend on a book anyway, even a massive dictionary! (Some would say that it’s silly even to spend it on a dictionary. But we don’t talk to those people, right?)

Hope all of you are well and enjoying summer – if anyone has tips for maintaining sanity at summer camp, I’d be happy to hear them!