One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
An update on my ongoing descent into madness: last night I made all (or at least, hopefully all; I have a fairly large lump of dough still in my fridge if it turns out I forgot something) the gingerbread I’ll need to assemble the monuments of the Acropolis.
Regular readers of this blog may know that, although from New Zealand, I am currently living in the United States, where I am studying for a PhD in classical archaeology. Long-time regular readers may further be aware that I have something of a penchant for baking. And, of course, even the most cursory of readers will be perfectly cognisant of the fact that I am completely insane.
Once a year, these three facets of my life come into glorious conjunction.
Continue reading “Adventures in baking the entire Athenian Acropolis”Hello. I am working on a story right now and I need to study a historical background for it. Could you recommend me good books (in English, preferably, and yes, I am willing to actually buy them, and yes, I am willing to spend a lot of my free time studying this.) about Rome and the life of common citizen of the city of Rome? The time frame is around the year AD 20. I need information about culture and customs. What were the ways common families worshipped gods? What were the naming conventions? How strict were Romans in following traditions? Was it common for “middle class” Roman family to have a slave? There is a lot I need to know before I can write my story. I obviously started with reading Wikipedia, but while I consider that useful, I still do think that I should get a more detailed and more trustworthy source of information. Thanks for help.
Let me see… for a basic introduction you could do worse than The Romans: An Introduction by Antony Kamm and Abigail Graham, which is the textbook we use for our introductory Roman Civilisation class in my department. Everyday Life in Ancient Rome by Lionel Casson is a similar level; I haven’t read it myself, but it’s quite well thought of, and possibly better tailored to your particular needs. Themes in Roman Society and Culture by Matt Gibbs, Milorad Nikolic and Pauline Ripat is a bit pricey but covers similar sorts of things in more detail. Continue reading “Sandro asks:”
This doesn’t have anything to do with pokemon, but I was wondering if you might have any thoughts with your Archaeology background: In a lot of stuff written about Greco-Roman mythology I’ve read, Hectate is called a goddess of witchcraft and Circe a witch, and there’s probably other examples I don’t know of. However, I’m not really sure what being a witch would mean outside of the context of Christianity or modern pop-culture. Was this just something that was added in by much later writers?
Well, what is a witch, exactly? Ugly old woman, warty nose, pointy hat, flies around on broomsticks, brews potions in cauldrons, turns people into newts, weighs the same as a duck, that sort of thing? Circe, Hecate and Medea aren’t witches in that sense, no; they predate that stereotype of what a “witch” is by a good couple of millennia. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
Something that’s been on my mind for a bit that your professional word may be able to help with. Would you happen to know how ethnically diverse the Greek and Roman empires were?
very
next question please
…
…what, you want more? Oh, fine, but for the record this is not the sort of thing people just “happen to know.”
Okay so I’m assuming by “Greek empire” (remember, kids: there was never a politically autonomous and unified state called “Greece” or “Hellas” until 1822) you mean Alexander’s empire (320s BC) and the Hellenistic successor kingdoms (323 BC – 31 BC), and by “Roman empire” you mean Rome starting from the time it becomes a major interregional power (say, following the second Punic War, which ended in 201 BC) rather than just Rome in the time of the Emperors. You could spend like most of a book on each of these just corralling the data that might let us answer this question, but whatevs. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
What can you tell us about the Batrachomyomachia, and how hilarious/awesome/hilariously awesome is it?
To be honest, not a whole lot. The Batrachomyomachia is one of those texts that tends not to be taught or studied very much, because it’s quite short and is not traditionally regarded as a piece of high literature, and honestly there is more interesting ancient comedy/satire out there (the Frogs, the Apocolocyntosis, the Satyricon…). You can read it in English here if you’re interested. But I’ll see what I can do.
How reliable was Herodotus’s account of the Greco-Persian Wars, especially considering that he was Greek?
well I mean it’s not like he isn’t not unreliable
Okay, so disclaimer number 1: people have literally spent their entire careers writing whole books that fail to give a definitive answer to this question. It is impossible for any answer I give here to be anything but a ludicrous oversimplification.
Disclaimer number 2: reliable or not, he is the best we’ve got. There just aren’t any surviving contemporary Persian sources that talk about the war in the kind of detail that Herodotus does, and Herodotus was literally the only person in the world writing something we would think of as “history” in his time. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
Can you tell us anything about Herodotus and/or Polybius?
Several things, but probably not much that you wouldn’t get from their Wikipedia pages, unless you have a more specific question about a particular passage in the text.
What’s your position on euhemerism in mythograhy?
(Euhemerism, for the uninitiated, is the idea that mythology derives from retellings and exaggerations of real events)
I’m not super in touch with current trends in the theory of interpreting mythology, and maybe if I were, I would have a favourite theoretical approach, but as it stands, I’m inclined to regard theories like euhemerism and structuralism and myth-and-ritual as a set of tools, which can be more or less appropriate for different jobs. Some myths make sense through a euhemerist lens and some don’t. Most myths can be explained using several different theoretical perspectives, and it’s probably a bad idea to expect any one theory to explain every myth. I think it’s been quite a long time (like 100+ years) since anyone with a real stake in the field seriously believed that euhemerism is sufficient to explain every myth.
In the course of research for a story I’m writing, I found that the Roman god Janus is a perfect allusion for my main character. Could you perhaps spare a little of your time to tell us a bit about Janus? What his place and role in the Roman pantheon was, what things made him happy/sad/angry, general personality traits he favoured, that sort of thing. Thanks in advance, Doctor-to-be!
Janus is the god of doorways, keys, beginnings and endings, change, and the New Year. He is always depicted with two faces, on the front and back of his head, so he can look through a door in both directions at once, and images of his faces could be set above either side of a doorway to invoke his protection. The month of January, the beginning of the year, is named after him, and his name is related to the Latin word for door, ianua. It’s not clear where he comes from, or whether he represents a standard Indo-European mythological archetype, but he seems to have been a very ancient Italian god whose role in the pantheon may once have been extremely important, though most of his functions are vestigial by the time of the late Republic. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
Pokémaniacal 