More ancient music!

For fans of reconstructions of ancient music, here’s a post by a friend about a recent reconstruction of an ancient Greek tragic chorus – complete with a link to a podcast of the piece’s first performance!

Greek Tragedies were as much musical as theatrical performances. Much of the text uttered by the Chorus, and some by individual characters as well, was sung. The ancient tragedians were as much composers as writers, creating both the texts and the musical settings. Indeed, in Aristophanes’ Frogs, when the ghosts of Aeschylus and Euripides fight […]

via The Music of Tragedy — historiai

School visits to the Faculty of Classics

For any teachers who might be readers of this blog, the Faculty is taking bookings now for school visits during the next academic year – groups of Key Stages 3-5 students from maintained schools can visit the Museum of Classical Archaeology, listen to a talk by a Classics lecturer, and tour a college, plus there’s a free lunch on offer! (and help with travel expenses is available too). Students don’t have to be studying any particular topics, just to be interested in learning more about the ancient world.

Check out the Faculty’s outreach site here, and if you’re a teacher interested in bringing your students, talk to our outreach co-ordinator Jennie Thornber (jlt39 [a] cam.ac.uk; 01223 767044).

Barefaced Greek: Trojan Women

Another fantastic short video from Barefaced Greek, this one from Euripides’ Trojan Women, set in the aftermath of the Greek army’s sack of Troy: Poseidon and Athena agree to destroy the Greek fleet on its way home:

Frescoes in the Roman Catacombs

A couple of days ago we had some exciting news about new Roman finds in Britain; now here’s some even more exciting archaeology news from Rome itself. Frescoes in the Catacombs of Domitilla, just outside the city, have been restored to show images and inscriptions which provide new evidence for life in Rome in the 3rd-4th centuries CE – from the organisation of the communal corn dole to the role of Christianity in the city at this period – plus graffiti left by the catacombs’ first excavators in the 17th century. Details and some nice pictures here. This is definitely going on my list of things to see in Rome!

Barefaced Greek: Lysistrata

Another great video from the team behind the Cambridge Greek Play, whose new ‘Barefaced Greek‘ project is creating a series of short films with extracts from ancient Greek plays in the original language (with subtitles!). After doing the opening speech from a tragedy, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, for their first film, now they’ve turned to comedy, with an extract from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The eponymous heroine explains to the men of Athens how she and the other women aren’t going to put up with the men fighting wars any more – or as Barefaced Greek’s description puts it, ‘why patriarchy is pants’. Enjoy!

“Tails from Mycenae”

There’s a nice temporary display that’s just gone up in the Museum of Classical Archaeology here in the Faculty, called “Tails from Mycenae” – it’s a case displaying various different depictions of animals on Mycenaean artefacts (i.e. from late Bronze Age Greece, c. the 16th-13th centuries BCE), put together by four current Classics undergradutes (Katie Phillips, Caroline Clements, Georgia Lowe and Anya Morrice). It’s nice to see such a range of different kinds of artefacts even in one small case – from pottery fragments and figurines to (replicas of) daggers and golden disks, plus of course Linear B tablets (I helped out a bit by providing a transcription of a tablet listing sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle). It’s also a good chance to see stuff that isn’t usually on public display at all in the Faculty – most of what you see in the museum is casts of statues, but as this case shows, the collection is actually quite a bit more diverse than that!

Cambridge readers can head to the Museum to see the display (free admission, Mon-Fri 10-5, Sat 10-1 during term time) – and by the way, this is also an excellent excuse to look around the rest of the Museum if you haven’t seen it before! For non-Cambridge readers, there’s a couple more pictures of the display below. And thanks to Katie, Caroline, Georgia, and Anya for putting the whole thing together!

Pottery, figurines, and Linear B tablet cast

Replicas of daggers, a cup, and gold disks

More classical board games: Cyclades

Not a game that I’ve made this time, but one I bought some time ago: when I found out there was a board game called ‘Cyclades‘ about a bunch of Greek cities fighting for control of the Cycladic islands with the help of various gods and mythical creatures, I pretty much had to get a copy and give it a go. I finally just got around to trying it out with my usual crew of fellow-Classicist-board-game-fans and can report it was a great success (and not just because I won. OK, a little bit because I won.)