Here’s something engaging for those of you in the Phoenix area, a lecture on the Delphic Oracle:
The lecture is at the Pueblo Grande Museum at 6 pm on March 22, 4619 E. Washington Street, Phoenix, AZ 85034
Here are details about the topic and the speaker:
Title: Mysteries of the Delphic Oracle
Speaker: Dr. John H. Hale, University of Louisville, Kentucky
Ancient Greek and Roman authors stated that the Apollo’s sacred oracle at Delphi in central Greece was located at the site of unusual geological features an phenomena: a chasm or fissure in the rock; an emission of sweet-smelling vapor or gas; and a sacred spring. The priestess who pronounced the oracles, known as the Pythia, sat on a tall tripod above the fissure where she could inhale the vapor, thus triggering a prophetic trance in which she could serve as a medium for the prophetic oracles of the god Apollo. So great was the influence of the woman’s words that scarcely a colony was founded or a war undertaken in Greece for over a millennium without the sanction of the Delphic Oracle. Famous figures from Oedipus and Agamemnon to Alexander the Great and various Roman emperors consulted the shrine.
During the 20th century, most scholars adopted a skeptical attitude towards the ancient traditions about Delphi, denying that there had ever been a fissure or a gaseous emission in the crypt of the temple. However, in 1995 an interdisciplinary team was created to study not only the archaeology of Delphi, but also the evidence from geology, chemistry, and toxicology that related to the oracle. The results of the research vindicated the ancient sources. Our team has gone on to study Greek oracle sites elsewhere in the Aegean and Asia Minor, where we have found similar geological features. Click here for the AIA Central Arizona Society
Here are some links I enjoyed the last few weeks (I have been very lax in getting posts up…):
Beautiful Roman mosaic of men in togas found in Caesarea, Israel under a Byzantine church. Excavators don’t know yet if the mosaic was part of a private villa or a public building. Extensive restorations are being undertaken around this city that gained its name as a Roman port under Herod and later was a center of Crusader activities. The slide show in this post does a good job of showing the mosaics and some of the cleaning, uncovering that gets done to them. Click here for “Israeli archaeologists unearth 1,800-year-old mosaic”
Here’s an interview with the actor playing Achilles in Troy: Fall of a City. Interesting to hear what he thinks is key in Achilles: “How does Achilles hold the weight of his deity and humanity in the same body? Sometimes he doesn’t and walks away. What must it be like to suck the life out of hundreds of men, to see the light go out of their eyes? It means nothing for someone seeking self-worth, greatness and legacy. It’s a very lonely existence.”
This series is releasing on BBC One on February 17 and then Netflix will release it globally after that. Click here for Evening Standard “David Gyasi on playing Achilles in BBC’s Trojan War drama: I feel very good about myself”
Here’s one to put a smile on your face. As a yoga-practicing writer—for me the two are essential complements to each other—I offer this comic. I think I have perfected limp rag and waterfall. This weekend, I read a NYT article and an in-depth, long-term study that told me I’m building bone mass with my yoga better than I would if I took the quite harmful available drug therapies, very helpful since part of my follow-up cancer treatment is going to take a toll on my bones. In your life, how do you balance taking care of the body and keeping time for the brain work? Click here for Mystery Fanfare’s Cartoon of the Day “Yoga Positions”
Those excruciating lines in Homer’s Odyssey when, after Odysseus’s return and the slaughter of the brutish suitors, Odysseus turns his attention to the maids of his now regained household. He tells Telemachus to kill them because they slept with the suitors and thus insulted him. Telemachus makes them clean up the bloody mess of suitor-slaughter and then forces them to put their heads in nooses and hangs them. So much that is wrong with this. Sorry Homer. You’re my favorite composer of tales, and I fully believe this is what that Bronze Age hero would have done. But I don’t like it. I cringe and feel ill with it. Just what does one do with this part? This article in the Paris Review, in which a daughter is reading aloud the Odyssey to her mother, who knows what’s coming is quite compelling. No easy answers here. I confess to my cowardice when I taught ninth graders this epic. I did not spend a lot of time talking over the implications of this part, challenging the view of men and women it contained. I could honestly have plead that my students’ parents would have come after me with pitch forks and tar. I taught in Arizona, after all. Feminism, yikes. Can’t let that kind of subversion into young minds… But I’m guessing I just didn’t want to face up to what Homer says with apparent approval. Epic bad faith. Heart breaking. I should have owned up to my feelings and prodded those students to explore theirs aloud. But then I’d have had a mess as bad as the post suitor slaughter, methinks. What should we do with these parts of our literary heroes? Click here for The Paris Review “In Turn Each Woman Thrust her Head”
I love it when historical fact is weirder than fiction. Here’s a Roman temple in what’s now Turkey that was viewed as a gateway to the Underworld and it has volcanic emissions of CO2 that are deadly—and, just for best effect, are most deadly at night. I’ve actually read novels that use this idea, so it’s extra fun when the researchers provide more evidence of the real use of such deadly spots for religious gateways. But I think I won’t try going down to Hades by this path! What’s your favorite bit of history that’s too weird to be believable? Click here for Science Magazine “This Roman ‘gate to hell’ killed its victims with a cloud of deadly carbon dioxide”
From The Atlantic: The Shape of Ancient Dice Suggests Shifting Beliefs in Fate and Chance. So a lot of Roman dice, these Dutch researchers say, are clearly unbalanced and would favor certain throws over others. They suggest Romans didn’t care because they thought the gods or fate or their prayers to the gods or some other outside source determined the throw. They note that when Galileo and others began to look at the way the heavens work and numbers and probability. Hmm… Isn’t this an interesting idea—a Roman dice player wouldn’t notice the imbalance of a dice and the higher frequency of a certain number because he thought his favorite god was making it all happen as he wished. So when he loses, it’s a problem of having displeased the gods, not having a cheating friend. What do you think? Is this a persuasive interpretation of these irregular dice? Click here for The Atlantic “The Shape of Dice Reflects Suggests Shifting Beliefs in Fate and Chance”